unannounced, and Belle thought it was hysterical to ask: Has X ever stormed in just as ur getting STUCK IN on a chalanging BIKINI WAX??!!
But it’s not funny at all, and I suspect that Scarlet is feeling spooked by the Chloey Percival case, terrified that she’s next.
At school, I watch everything coming to life on the Peter Pan front. At break-times Tilda spends most of her time with Hook, whose real name is Liam Brookes. The two of them sit on the stony ground in a corner of the playground, hugging their knees and going over their lines. When I stand close by I hear Tilda say, ‘First Impressions are Awfully Important,’ and the line she’s in love with, she says it so often, ‘To Die will be an Awfully Big Adventure.’ Then she notices me and says, ‘Go away, Callie,’ so I resume my tour of the edges of the playground.
At home, Liam keeps coming up in conversation. At first it’s in the context of Peter Pan, which is now Tilda’s main interest in life, and which allows her to speak in her Peter voice, a constantly rising lilt, so that she endlessly seems to be rallying her troops, once more my friends! We hear interminable stories of her scenes with Hook, and how their sword fight is so complicated, and requires terrifying jumps from rock to ship and back to rock. Then Liam’s name starts coming up in everything else, so I hardly dare say anything for fear of prompting it, thinking that if I mention that I like peas, we’ll be treated to a long description of how Liam absolutely adores peas. Over our beans on toast one time, Tilda, out of the blue, tells us that Liam can swim twenty-five metres under water and I slam my head down on the table and refuse to look up.
Mum ignores my protest, and picks up on Tilda’s hint. In a nonchalant way like the thought has drifted into her head, she says, ‘Well, Liam could come along to swimming on Saturday if he’d like.’ Tilda practically shoots out of her chair. ‘Can I phone him now and ask?’
I leave the table and stomp up the stairs, then I take Tilda’s diary from its pillow case, and find little ‘L’s in the margins and kisses and hearts, and she has been practising the signature of the future Tilda Brookes. I can’t help it – I tear off a corner and eat it.
On Saturday, when the doorbell rings, I run to answer it, and find Liam standing on the doorstep, his stripy towel rolled up under his bare brown arm, and serious-faced like a cub scout ready for inspection. I feel a surprising surge of warmth because of the undisguised element of expectation in his expression, as if he’s waiting to be liked, or questioned, or teased. Also, I notice that his dark hair stands up on end. He just stands on the doorstep, looking at me, and I see that his towel is faded and rough and frayed at the edges, and his red swimming trunks are poking out from the middle, like the jam in a Swiss roll.
‘You’d better come in,’ I say.
On the bus, Tilda sits with Liam, and Mum and I sit in the seat behind, with all our bags. I lean my head on Mum and she puts her arm around me, saying, ‘Chip chip,’ because she knows that makes me smile. Then we both stay silent, trying to eavesdrop. But all they talk about is Peter Pan, and I realise that any other subject would be too much effort. And, in the pool, there’s no conversation other than about swimming.
It turns out that Liam’s a better swimmer than both Tilda and me, stronger and quicker and – as previously advertised – particularly good at holding his breath (my specialty!) ‘Watch this!’ he shouts, before he holds his nose, and sinks down to sit cross-legged on the bottom. We start counting – one, two, three. At thirty, bubbles come up, and at seventy-two we’re still going. Then he bursts up in a great whoosh, looking like he’ll explode. Afterwards, he swims a width under water, turns and comes half-way back, before coming up for air. On the way home, Liam asks Tilda if she knows how to roller-skate, and she says no but she wants to learn – so I expect a roller-skating invitation to come her way. After he leaves, Mum says, ‘That boy has intelligent eyes.’
The days pass but the roller-skating invitation never comes and, in its absence, Tilda becomes edgy if Liam’s name comes up, no longer wanting him to be a feature of every meal-time conversation. It’s in her character to be pushy and to ask Liam outright to teach her to skate, but either he puts her off or she keeps quiet. On my tours of the playground, I see that she and Liam still get together to prepare for Peter Pan, but I sense an awkwardness about their huddles that wasn’t there before. And, at home, Tilda is scratchy and moody with Mum and me, and starts spending long hours in our bedroom with the door shut. One evening, though, she calls me up to help her practise her lines and when I arrive I find her curled up in her bed, bloodshot eyes, runny nose, the sheets pulled up to her neck. ‘You look awful,’ I say. ‘What’s the matter?’
She puts her finger in her mouth and bites on it so hard that I expect to see a trickle of blood. Then she sits up and starts bashing her head against the wall.
‘Stop it!’ I pull her away, thinking she’s gone insane, and we both collapse back under the covers heaving with emotion. I stroke her hair and try to reassure her.
‘Come on, it’ll be all right. Really. Remember you have me to look after you… Remember that we’re the loved ones.’
She manages a wet little smile. The loved ones is Mum’s name for us – ever since we were tiny.
‘And what about Peter Pan?’ I say. ‘Think about Friday, and how wonderful you’ll be…’
‘I know…’ She sounds despairing. ‘I have to be good on Friday… I have to…’
On Friday afternoon I keep an eye on her at school, fearing that she’ll be in meltdown. When I ask if she’s scared she just says, ‘Oh no, I’m fine,’ as if there’s no cause for concern, but I carry on worrying right up to 5pm, when the audience arrives. By 5.30, the school hall is packed and buzzing and noisy, but the chat quietens down swiftly as the music starts and the curtains part to reveal the bedroom of the sleeping Darling children. A few minutes later, when Tilda appears, I feel sick.
She walks shakily to the centre of the stage, her face white, her eyes blank with fear, and I’m rooted to my spot by the wall, hardly able to breathe. But, from somewhere, my sister summons up her courage and starts to let rip with the Peter Pan voice, loud and clear. Soon she’s dominating the stage, jumping around as though the floor were on fire, waving her sword about. And it becomes clear that it’s Liam, not Tilda, who is shaken by the occasion. He was dynamic and swashbuckly in rehearsal, but is now somehow diminished by the spotlight. In every scene he’s out-acted by Tilda. Sometimes she does little asides to the audience that have everyone laughing, and her performance causes several bursts of spontaneous applause. At the end, when the parents clap and whistle, she glows as she bows, with Liam glancing at her, half-admiring, half-puzzled. Afterwards, Mrs Brookes comes over to Mum, and I’m surprised to see that she’s one of the obese mothers from the Nelson Mandela estate, and she has a row of fat metal hoops that go all the way up one ear-lobe.
‘Right little actress, your Tilda,’ she says, with a smile as wide and open as Liam’s. ‘I could see her going professional.’
She turns to me. ‘What about you? Didn’t you want to be in the play?’
I shrug. Liam joins us, and Mum says he gave Captain Hook a soulful side, and he must come to our house sometime. As she’s speaking, Tilda arrives and we all go out to the car. ‘See you Monday,’
