paid for out of which book. And Janine nodded enthusiastically and reminded him that Nick’s basement came out of The Curse on the Cottage; and he retorted with the fitted bookcases out of Surrender, You Devil; and they both told me that after Shadowfall they were able to afford an interior decorator to revamp the living room. I thought that was an awful way to look at a book. I thought a book was a Work of Art.
“But we left the windows in all the rooms as they are,” Uncle Ted added. “We had to.”
Now I had been fascinated by the glass in the windows. I remember it from when I was small. It waves and it wobbles. When you look out at the front – particularly in the evenings – you get a sort of cliff of trees and buildings out there, with warm lighted squares of windows, which all sort of slide about and ripple as if they are just going to transform into something else. From some angles, the houses bend and stretch into weird shapes, and you really might believe they were sliding into a set of different dimensions. From the back of the house it’s just as striking. There you get a navy blue vista of city against pale sunset. And when the streetlights come on they look like holes through to the orange sky. With everything rippling and stretching, you almost think you’re seeing your way through to a potent strange place behind the city.
I knew Uncle Ted was going to destroy all the strangeness by saying something dreary about his windows, and I terribly didn’t want him to. I almost prayed at him not to. But he did. He said, “It’s genuine wartime glass from World War Two, you know. It dates from when Hitler bombed the docks here. This house was caught in the blast and all the windows blew out and had to be replaced. So we leave the panes, whatever else we do. The glass is historic. It adds quite a bit to the value of the house.”
I ask you! He writes fantasy. He has windows that go into other dimensions. And all he can think about is how much extra money they’re worth.
Oh, I know I’m being ungrateful and horrible. They’re letting me live here. But all the same…
Nick at least has noticed about the windows. He says they give you glimpses of a great alternate universe called Bristolia. And, being in some ways as practical as his father, he has made maps of Bristolia for a role-playing game…
[3]
…a low time. I ache inside my chest about Robbie. I go into the university but I just mooch about there really. One’s supposed to get over being crossed in love. People do. It was months ago now, after all. I don’t seem to be like other people. I don’t know what I’m like. That’s the trouble with being adopted and not knowing your real parents. They have little bits of ancestry you don’t know about, and aren’t prepared for, and they cone up and hit you. You don’t know what to expect.
And my money has dwindled away to almost nothing…
[4]
Well, what do you know! I got a letter from someone called Rupert Venables. I suppose he’s a lawyer. No one but a lawyer could have that kind of name. He says a distant relative has left me a hundred quid as a legacy. Lead me to it!
Those were my first, joyous thoughts. Then Janine put the kibosh on them by asking sweetly, “What distant relative, dear? Your mother’s, your father’s, or your own?”
And Uncle Ted chipped in. “What’s this lawyer’s address? That should give you a clue.”
Practical Uncle Ted again. The man Venables writes from Weavers End, Cambridgeshire. Mum’s family comes entirely from South London. Dad’s is all Bristol. And none of them have died recently as far as we know, not even my poor little fat dad, who is still hanging on in there, out in Kent. That only leaves real, genuine relatives of my own, who could have traced me by mysterious means. I was almost excited about it until Nick said he thought it was a cruel hoax.
Nick gave his opinion an hour after the rest of us had stopped discussing it. It takes Nick that long to stop being his morning zombie self and become his normal daytime self. He got his eyes open, collected his stuff for school and picked up the letter, which he subjected to powerful scrutiny on his way out through the back door. “The address doesn’t say he’s a lawyer. The letter doesn’t say who’s left you the money. It’s a hoax,” he said. He threw the letter back at me (it missed and fell on the floor) and departed.
Hoax or not, I can use the money. I wrote to the man Venables saying so. I also suggested that he should tell me more.
Today he wrote back saying he’d come and give me the money. But he didn’t say when and he didn’t say who’d left it to me. I don’t believe a word of it. Nick is right.
[5]
…and said I had passed my driving test! I was feeling so pessimistic by then that I didn’t believe him and asked him to tell me again. And it was the same the second time round.
I wonder if test examiners aren’t used to being kissed. This one took it sort of stoically and then climbed out of the car and ran. I vaulted out. I tore off the L-plates, shot inside the car again and drove off with a zoom. I felt a bit guilty about leaving Robbie’s friend Val standing on the pavement like that, but he had only sat beside me for the hundred yards or so between his flat and the test centre. Besides, Val gives me the feel that he thinks he’s going to get me on the rebound from Robbie, and I wanted him to know different. I drove to Uncle Ted’s and screamed to a stop, double-parked outside. Nick had some sort of free day off school and I wanted him to be the first to know.
Unfortunately Janine was there too. I think she runs that clothes shop entirely by phone. Uncle Ted was in London that day, so she had come back to make sure Nick had some lunch, even though she never eats it herself. A study in Sacrificial Motherhood (actually Nick, when left to make lunch for himself, tends to drape the kitchen in several furlongs of spaghetti, and I almost see Janine’s point of view on that). She was in the kitchen with Nick when I burst in.
“So you failed again, dear. I’m so sorry,” she says. How to replace joy with anger in eight easy words.
“No, I passed,” I snapped.
“Excellent!” says Nick. “Now you can take me for a drive round Bristolia.”
“Says you!” I said. And Janine put her hand on my arm and said, “Poor Maree. She’s far too tired after all that concentrating. You mustn’t pester her, Nick.”
At that, I realised that Janine was really here to prevent me risking Nick’s neck in Dad’s car. “Tired? Who’s tired?” I said savagely. “I’m on top of the world!” I wasn’t by then. Janine had put me in a really bad mood. “You just think I’m not safe to drive Nick anywhere.”
“I didn’t say that, Maree,” she said. “But I do know I only started to learn to drive after I passed my test.”
“That’s what they all say, but it’s different for me,” I said. “I practised beforehand and ruined your fun.”
“Maree, dear,” she said. “I know you love breaking all the rules, but you really are no different from everyone else. Cars are dangerous.”
Well, we argued, Janine all sugary sweetness and light and me getting more and more inclined to bite. That’s Janine’s way. She expertly puts you in the wrong and never loses her temper. Just smiles sweetly when she’s got you hopping mad. Nick simply watched and waited. And at the crucial moment, he said, “You know she’s been driving that car for years, Mum. Maree, if you’re not going to drive me, I may as well go and see Fred Holbein.”
