Alice Parker & the Curse of Fate (10 page)

‘
Jack would
love it here!’ enthused Alice.

‘
Don’t
get any ideas,’ warned Thomas. ‘We’re not driving
to Germany with him in the car! That journey down to Arcanum Cove
was bad enough!’

‘
Your enormous
animal would not be welcome in my apartment either,’ Brigitte
informed her.

Alice pulled a face.
‘Are you sure you two are sisters?’ she asked Grandma.

‘
Shh! You’re
starting to sound like your Grandad!’

Hearing a text
message alert, Alice reached in to her pocket. Ralph wanted to know
if she was OK. She had tried not to think about him since they
arrived at the farm, by making herself focus on other things. She did
not want to reveal her location but this message would spoil that –
Ralph was on her mind now. What a sneaky move!

Fine thanks.
Nice place. Hope to do some sightseeing soon x

She felt sure she
could have replied to Ralph by thought, but preferred the
conventional method. After much consideration she removed the kiss
before sending the message. It was too much, she thought. Some
people, like Sarah, put kisses on the end of messages to everyone,
but it didn’t feel right to Alice.

At the end of a long
walk admiring the fields in the winter sunlight and Ingrid’s
impressive flock of two hundred sheep, they stopped at the stables on
the way back to the house. Ingrid introduced them to Heinrich, who
was feeding the horses.

‘
These are my
three beauties!’ announced Ingrid proudly, stroking the noses
of her horses who were observing their visitors with interest.
‘Would you like to ride while you are here?’

‘
Yes please!’
replied Alice enthusiastically. Grandma and Brigitte shook their
heads. Thomas hesitated, not wanting to look cowardly.

‘
Why don’t
you do that while I go in to town with Ingrid?’ he suggested.

‘
Ha! I might
have known you’d prefer televisions to horses!’ laughed
Alice. ‘Good excuse, though!’

Ingrid nodded in
amusement. ‘Fine. Heinrich is here to help you, Alice.’

‘
I won’t
need help. Can I ride this one?’ She pointed to the horse
nearest to her – a beautiful chestnut with a wild look in his
eyes.

‘
Sammy? No,’
replied Ingrid. ‘He is young. He is not ... how do you say
... safe to ride? Always he is lively and behaves bad!’

‘
Ah! You mean
he’s not broken in.’ Alice smiled to herself, determined
to ride that unruly horse.

Thomas rolled his
eyes. ‘Great. I suppose you’re planning to do a spot of
horse whispering.’

‘
I shall enjoy
this!’ said Grandma cheerfully, nudging Alice.

‘
What? Going
in to town to look at televisions?’

‘
No! I’m
staying here to watch you ride and have a break from Brigitte.’

*

When Ingrid, Thomas
and Brigitte returned from the shops, Grandma was waiting in the
kitchen.

‘
Where’s
Alice?’ asked Thomas.

‘
Where do you
think?’ Grandma nodded towards the window.

Sammy was walking
calmly around the yard, Alice sitting proudly on his back. When she
spotted everyone in the kitchen, she said something to Sammy in
hushed tones, who promptly sauntered over to the back door.

‘
This is
incredible!’ murmured Ingrid. ‘How did you ...’

‘
Alice is very
good with animals,’ interrupted Grandma. ‘She spoke to
him for a while and made friends with him. Then she asked Heinrich
to saddle him up. Sammy didn’t protest at all!’

Ingrid stared at
Alice with an expression of wonder and confusion.

‘
Your sister
is very odd, Thomas,’ remarked Brigitte.

Thomas did not
reply. He was already upstairs unpacking the new, even bigger
television he had chosen.

‘
Ach, diese
Familie!’ Brigitte grumbled to herself.

*

That evening they
all settled down in front of the new television. Thomas took control
of the remote, as if it belonged to him but fortunately Ingrid didn’t
mind. She had dug out a box of old photographs and was rummaging
through it to find some of Grandma and Brigitte when they were young.

‘
Guck mal!’
she called to them, chuckling at a photo in her hand.

Brigitte turned her
nose up at the sight of the three of them wearing swimming costumes,
sitting next to a lake.

‘
Good grief!’
gasped Grandma. ‘The date’s on the back – 1959!
We were still at school!’

‘
Actually,
I
was not,’ Brigitte corrected her. ‘I was teaching then.’

‘
Blimey!’
whispered Thomas. ‘There’s an Ancient History lesson
going on over there!’

Alice curled up with
the packet of cinnamon stars that he had bought for her in town.
Maxi and Morritz sat at her feet drooling, then squeezed themselves
between her and Thomas on the sofa. Alice had enjoyed her day and
had even managed to push Isabella out of her mind for a few hours.
Perhaps this trip to Germany wasn’t so bad after all!

‘
Careful!’
warned Thomas. ‘You almost look happy!’

‘
Happy but
tired,’ yawned Alice, resting her head on a cushion. ‘I
need sleep, not T.V.’

‘
Sleep then.
There’s nothing worth watching at the moment anyway. Even if
there was, I wouldn’t hear it over all that squawking!’

Alice closed her
eyes and drifted off to sleep in spite of the shrieks of laughter
coming from Grandma and Ingrid. Brigitte didn’t seem quite as
enthusiastic about embarrassing photos. But then, thinking about it,
Alice couldn’t imagine her getting excited about anything.

For a couple of
hours Alice dozed peacefully, her feet kept wonderfully warm by the
dogs. But she woke up with a start for no apparent reason. She sat
up and looked around the room.

‘
Hey, Thomas,
can you smell something?’

‘
Oh, you
haven’t, have you?’

‘
No! I’m
being serious. I think I can smell burning.’

‘
I can’t.’

Alice continued to
sniff the air anxiously. After a moment the dogs jumped off the sofa
and ran to the door of the living room, barking in alarm.

‘
See? They
can smell it too! Something’s burning.’

‘
Oh, great!
Never a moment’s peace!’ moaned Thomas. ‘I suppose
you want me to go and take a look?’

Alice nodded
anxiously. ‘Yes please. But be careful!’

‘
Everything
all right?’ asked Grandma as he walked across the room tutting
in annoyance.

‘
Alice thinks
she can smell something burning. She won’t rest unless I check
it out, you know what she’s like.’

‘
I smell
nothing, but I will come with you,’ said Ingrid. ‘Perhaps
I forget something in the oven.’

‘
Take this,’
ordered Brigitte, handing Thomas a torch that she had taken from her
handbag.

‘
Always
prepared, my sister!’ chuckled Grandma. ‘Although the
lights are working fine at the moment!’

Thomas opened the
living room door and began to follow Ingrid across the huge landing.
Alice held on to Maxi and Morritz by the collar. She had a horrible
feeling that Thomas would discover something far worse than burnt
food downstairs.

‘
Wait!
Thomas, stop! Can you smell it now?’ she called after him.

‘
What?’

‘
That smoky,
burning smell.’

‘
Obviously!
The wood burner’s doing its job!’

‘
No! It’s
much stronger now you’ve opened the door. Just wait!’
Alice guided the dogs towards Grandma. ‘Hold them back!
Please!’ She tore out of the room and stopped in her tracks in
the middle of the rug on the landing. Having left the warmth of the
cosy living room, it should have felt colder out there. But it
didn’t. It was warmer. ‘GET BACK IN HERE!’ she
yelled, grabbing Thomas and pulling him back. ‘SCHNELL,
INGRID!’

Thoroughly
bewildered, Ingrid hurried after them and Alice slammed the living
room door behind them.

‘
What is it?
What is wrong?’ croaked Ingrid.

‘
There’s
a fire down there! Something’s on fire!’

‘
Rubbish. The
smoke detectors would have gone off,’ replied Thomas.

‘
There are no
smoke detectors in this house,’ Brigitte pointed out, shaking
her head in disapproval. ‘I noticed that yesterday.’

‘
Perhaps
you’re mistaken, Alice,’ said Grandma gently. ‘I
can’t smell anything unusual.’

‘
No, nothing,’
added Ingrid. ‘I think ...’

Her words were
extinguished by a deafening bang that shook the house. The dogs
howled in fright then began to bark uncontrollably.

‘
Don’t
let them out!’ yelled Thomas. ‘Something just exploded
downstairs. Phone the fire service, Brigitte! I’m going to
take a look.’

‘
You are not!’
screamed Grandma. But she was too late. Thomas was already out on
the landing, staring in horror at the flames that had engulfed the
stairs and were already licking the edges of the rug. He retreated
quickly.

Alice and Ingrid
were trying to open the windows in the living room, hoping for an
alternative escape route.

‘
They won’t
open!’ shouted Alice.

‘
No! I do not
understand!’ wailed Ingrid, frantically tugging on a handle.
‘This is not possible!’

Thomas dashed out to
try the windows in the bedrooms and returned with their holdall and
an armful of coats. ‘The windows are stuck in every room,’
he announced with an anguished expression. ‘It seemed silly to
come back empty-handed.’

‘
She’s
here
now
,
isn’t she? You have to do something! Please!’ Alice
begged him.

Brigitte had
finished her call to the emergency services. ‘Who is here?
What are you talking about, child?’ She folded up a blanket
and hurried to the door. Smoke had begun to creep underneath it and
snake through the air. The dogs growled angrily at this mysterious
intruder.

Red-faced, Alice
ignored her questions and watched as Thomas attempted to concentrate
on a window, his hands flat against the glass. For a couple of
minutes nothing happened, apart from Brigitte tutting in annoyance at
being ignored. Grandma was trying to console a devastated Ingrid
while restraining Maxi and Morritz.

Everyone jumped when
the entire window fell out without warning and landed outside with a
crash.

‘
Got it!’
Thomas breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Er, sorry, Ingrid. I had
no choice but to push it out.’

She nodded without
even looking, her face buried in her handkerchief.

Alice leaned out in
to the fresh air. ‘How do we get down from here?’

‘
We?’
said
Thomas in a low voice. ‘There’s an obvious answer for
you. It’s the rest of us who need to worry.’

‘
As if I’d
leave you! I could try and carry you one at a time.’

‘
You couldn’t.
Anyway, it won’t come to that. Give me a minute.’

‘
Where have
the firemen got to?’ asked Grandma in panic. ‘We can’t
jump – it’s too high, and we can’t stay in here
much longer.’

‘
We won’t
need to. We can get out without them!’ announced Thomas.

When Alice looked
down she saw that a flat roof had appeared just four feet below the
missing window. Adjacent to that was Ingrid’s truck. They
could climb down!

Ingrid stared in
bewilderment as Thomas slipped out of the window and showed her their
escape route by torchlight.

‘
Why is ... I
mean, how?’ she stuttered, pointing down at the corrugated
metal roof beneath them.