Invisible! (13 page)

She arrived at Holy Family with ten minutes to spare. It was great, loitering by groups of her classmates, earwigging. Just before nine Teresa Walsh said, ‘Hey – anyone seen Spider?' Spider was Charlotte's nickname. Then the bell rang.

‘Charlotte Webb?' Ms Weekes was doing the register. She looked up. ‘Anybody seen Charlotte this morning?'

‘No, miss.'

‘No, miss.'

Charlotte, perched on a corner of the teacher's desk, smiled. Ms Weeks was looking right through her.

Marked absent, she didn't go into assembly. Instead she reclined on two giant beanbags and had a snooze. When the class returned, she sat in her usual place and trod on Toby Coughlin's foot under the table.

Toby winced and glared at Teresa Walsh. ‘Give up, you spasmo!'

‘What?' Teresa was indignant. ‘I didn't
do
anything, you leper.
Ouch!
Miss,
tell
him, miss, he stamped on my foot for nothing. Oh, miss, it kills.'

‘Toby Coughlin …?'

‘I
didn't
, miss, it was her who stamped on
mine.
Oh, oh, I'm
crippled
miss, honest.'

‘All right, that'll do,' rapped the teacher, ‘from
both
of you'.

When everybody was busy Charlotte got up, crept to the board and scrawled a rude word in large letters. She returned to the beanbags and waited. After a minute Cecilia White noticed. Her gasp made everybody look up.

‘Oh, miss, look on the board. It says …'

‘I
know
what it says, Cecilia White, thank you very much.' Blushing furiously, the teacher strode to the board and rubbed out the word. ‘Who wrote that? Was it
you
, Kevin Regan?'

‘No way, miss.' The boy grinned. ‘I didn't know you spelled it like that, miss.'

Charlotte chuckled, the sound masked by general laughter. Who said school was a drag? It was going to be a wonderful day.

It all started to go wrong at half past eleven. By then Charlotte had done a few things, like giving Kylie Reid's hair a sharp tug during Silent Reading, tripping Esau Enright in P.E. so that instead of sailing over the vaulting horse he performed a spectacular sliding dive
under
it, and transferring the terrapin from its tank into Ms Weekes' coffee cup. The kids were enjoying an unusual morning and the teacher was starting to look a bit wild-eyed when there was a shy knock on the classroom door and Split le Beau walked in.

Charlotte couldn't believe it at first. She goggled.
Split le Beau, lead singer with Dead
Ringer?
It certainly
looked
like him, but why the heck would… ?
Ah!
She recalled a rumour she'd heard, that Split's real name was Douglas Murgatroyd and that he'd once been a pupil at Holy Family.

‘Douglas!' Ms Weekes stood up, smiling, as the world-famous superstar approached her desk. ‘To what do we owe
this
honour?' A buzz of excitement rippled through the class, especially among the girls, most of whom had Dead Ringer posters on their bedroom walls.

The lad grinned. ‘I was in the area, miss, so I thought I'd drop in. Hope I'm not wrecking your lesson?'

‘No, no.' Her old pupil was making her blush harder than Charlotte's rude word had. ‘It's lovely to see you, Douglas. Or should I be calling you Split?'

The lad shook his blond head. ‘Oh no, miss – that's just for the fans.'

‘I suspect you've got a few fans among these children, Douglas. Just look at their faces.'

Split grinned at the gobsmacked class. ‘How you doing?' Sighs and moans rose from the young people. His grin broadened. ‘How about
I sign some jotters or something?' He glanced at the teacher. ‘That all right, miss?'

‘Of course.' She smiled. ‘I fancy I'd have a riot on my hands if I said no.'

In a flash, everybody had their jotters out and were scraping back their chairs.

Ms Weekes held up a hand. ‘Just a minute!' Reluctantly they subsided. ‘We'll do this properly, a table at a time.' She looked at the superstar. ‘Why don't you sit at my desk, and we'll form a queue?' She stared at the class. ‘An
orderly
queue.'

And so it was that over the next twenty minutes, every kid in the class got to chat briefly with the scrummy Split le Beau and collect a personalized autograph. Every kid in the class
except
Charlotte Webb, who had to hover at the back of the room, drooling.

He departed at five to twelve with a grin and a wave, having turned down the teacher's invitation to stay for a school dinner. The class, twitchy with residual adrenalin, tidied up under Ms Weekes' eagle eye and filed out to lunch. The teacher remained for a moment, gazing at the signature on her own jotter, then swept off towards the staffroom, leaving Charlotte cold, distraught and alone.

She crept unseen out of school and down the road.
Oh, Split – why today, of all days?
There was a spiteful wind, and it would be at least four hours before she could retrieve her clothes. She pulled a face.
Invisibility? You can keep it
.

It stayed dry, so the barbie went ahead as scheduled. While Rosie was at school the two Bears built the oven out of stones borrowed from a nearby crumbling wall, then combed the woods for kindling and sawed up a fallen tree, stacking the logs beside the oven. In the afternoon they drove into Inchlake and loaded up the ambulance with sausages, steaks, fish, rolls and fizzy drinks. They bought firelighters too, just in case. When Rosie got home everything was ready.

‘Looks great, Dad, Mum. The kids're going to love it.'

Mummy Bear smiled. ‘What time did you tell them, sweetheart?'

‘I said around seven. That OK?'

‘Sure. Change into jeans and jumper, then help me carry chairs out. There'll be seven of us, is that right?'

‘There's supposed to be, but I'm not sure about Conrad. He fell last night and knocked himself unconscious. They kept him in hospital overnight so he wasn't at school today.

‘Oh, dear. What was he doing to fall, Rosie?'

‘Messing about up Inchlake Ring with Carrie. She thinks he'll come if his mum and dad'll let him.'

‘I don't think
I
'd let him come, sweetheart. Concussion's a funny thing.'

‘I bet
he
's not laughing.'

‘You know what I mean.'

At five to seven the Waugh family Volvo appeared. Carrie got out, then to Rosie's delight Con emerged with a bandage round his head.

Daddy Bear bent by the driver's window. ‘We'll keep an eye on the lad, Mr Waugh.' He smiled. ‘Unless you want to stay, of course. You'd be very welcome.'

The twins' father shook his head. ‘Thanks, but
my wife's got a job for me. I'll collect them around ten if that's all right.'

‘Certainly is. See you then.' He gazed after the car as it crunched away down the bit of broken road.

It was five past seven and the kindling was ablaze when Peter arrived on foot. ‘Hey, you'll never guess who
I
just saw.'

Rosie looked at him. ‘Who?'

‘Split le Beau.'

‘Did you heck.'

‘I
did
. He drove right past me in this fantastic Merc.'

Conrad shook his bandaged head. ‘What would Split le Beau be doing in a dead hole like Inchlake, you moron? It was someone who
looked
like him, that's all.'

‘No it was
him
, as close to me as you are now. He looked just like his poster.'

Carrie pulled a face. ‘It's dark, Pete. You could've been mistaken.'

‘He's not,' said Charlotte flatly. She'd arrived unnoticed by her friends, though Daddy Bear had seen her.

‘How do
you
know?' asked Carrie. ‘Did he
pass
you
in this fantastic Merc as well?'

‘No, he came to school.'

‘Yeah, right.'

‘No, he
did
. He used to go there, that's why. Miss Weekes was his teacher.' She could see they didn't believe her. ‘He signed everyone's jotter, so there.'

Conrad looked at her. ‘Show us, then.'

‘He didn't do mine.'

‘Aaah,
see
.' He looked at the others. ‘She's giving us a load of old cobblers.'

‘No I'm
not
. I couldn't get mine done because nobody knew I was there. I was flipping
invisible
, see?'

‘You went to school invisible?' Carrie chuckled. ‘Wish
I
'd thought of that.'

‘Well
I
wish I hadn't.'

Conrad nodded, fingering his bandage. ‘Know what you mean, Spider. Not always fun, eh?'

‘Hey, you kids!' Daddy Bear called from beyond the flames. ‘Anyone ready for a sausage?'

Everybody was.

‘They were clever, those neolithic people,' said Daddy Bear. ‘They knew hundreds of things we don't – things that are lost now. Forgotten. But they couldn't understand why invisibility didn't work any more once they reached the age of twelve or thirteen. It could have been useful to them in all sorts of ways. Hunting. Avoiding enemies. They kept walking widdershins round fairy rings but it never worked. They thought maybe they needed a
bigger
circle 'cause they were bigger, so they built stone circles like Inchlake Ring but that didn't work. They tried other shapes, such as spirals and swastikas and mazes. They carved 'em on rocks, cut 'em into
the turf and built 'em out of stones but it was all no use. They never cracked it because it can't be done, but they left all these elaborate experiments behind and that's where some of our most famous patterns were copied from. It's why we have mazes. You know, those puzzles in comics where there's a tangle of lines and you've got to find your way to the centre without crossing one?'

‘Wow!' Conrad swigged Coke from the bottle. ‘I never knew
they
had anything to do with the Stone Age.'

Daddy Bear chuckled. ‘Oh, you'd be amazed how much we owe to those guys, Con. Their forest clearance and farming formed a lot of our landscape. The countryside wouldn't look the way it does if they'd never lived.' He smiled round the circle of tired faces. ‘They were here and then they were gone, and we must go too.'

There were mumbled protests as the big traveller clambered to his feet. ‘Aw – can't we just have five more minutes, Daddy Bear? Three then? One? Fifteen seconds?'

He shook his head. ‘Everything comes to an end, kids. Even the good stuff. Mr Waugh will be along any minute, and then Mummy Bear'll
drive Charlotte and Peter home while Rosie and I clear up here.' He grinned. ‘Hands up if you've had a rotten time.'

There were no hands.