Where Everything Seems Double by Penny Freedman (good books to read for 12 year olds .TXT) 📗

Gheorghe will cover for him if necessary, and he departs, taking our crockery with him. I watch him go and then lie back in my chair and absorb the sun. And tomorrow, I think, we will segue neatly into a discussion of why exactly you weren’t in Ruby’s boat with her on the night she disappeared, and what you were doing instead.

Chapter Six A FAIR WIND

Thursday

It was all so good that it made her a bit nervous. Today, she thought, had probably been one of the nicest days of her life. The work in Eve’s studio had been so interesting, and Eve had talked to her as though she was really being useful and not just hanging about getting in the way, and then the afternoon with the gang, out on the lake, and Micky’s dad letting Micky and Milo drive the ferry when it was coming back nearly empty from the town. And then her hair hadn’t gone frizzy despite her afternoon on the lake, Granny was on her best behaviour after her meltdown last night, and this evening they were going across to see the play at the theatre. So why did she feel nervous? Enjoy it while it lasts, she admonished herself. Stop worrying about how it could all go wrong.

They ate an early supper in the bar, which was rather a relief as it meant that they didn’t have to sit and face each other across the table in the restaurant again and remind themselves of yesterday’s row. The bar was comfortable and they sat by the window, and the menu wasn’t in French, which was a bonus. They both ordered smoked salmon – hers as an open sandwich, her grandmother’s with a salad – and she decided that it would not be embarrassing to order a coke in here. They were served by a good-looking waiter called Dumitru, who seemed to have become Granny’s new BF. There was lots of joking about his English homework which they didn’t explain to her and which she really didn’t want to know about. If Granny was focusing her need to reorganise people’s lives on the waiters, that was all to the good – it meant she might leave Milo and Fergus and the others well alone.

The play was really good. When they had read it at school Mrs Endicott had done her best to help them to imagine it on stage, and they had watched some bits of a film, but it was difficult really to get into it with someone like Hester Biggs-Anderson reading Titania and Gordon Duncan being really unfunny as Bottom. She liked them all being in modern dress in this production – especially Hermia arriving in the wood to run away with Lysander toting her wheelie case. And the fairies looked really good – not childish and frilly but quite scary. Oberon’s followers wore slinky onesies that looked like they were made of snakeskin, and animal masks – foxes, weasels and owls. Titania’s fairies wore leotards with floaty stuff over the top that looked like moth’s wings when they danced. She quite wished she was one of them – until, that is, the interval came and they were all ushered out to the lakeside, and there the fairies were, in canoes, floating about with lanterns, singing the song that they sang round Titania when she was asleep. It was sort of magical, but she couldn’t help thinking how cold they must be out there on the water. She was glad she had taken Granny’s advice and brought a sweater, and she still shivered when she thought properly for the first time about what had happened to Ruby and who had taken her and how really terribly scared she must have been.

The fairies were out again at the end of the play, standing by the lakeside, but she thought everyone had had enough of them by then, heading for their cars or for the ferry back to the other side. Back at the hotel, Granny said they needed to warm up and they went to the bar for hot chocolates. Sitting curled up in an armchair with her drink, watching the cream melting nicely on the top, Freda had one of those moments of pure happiness that you could sometimes have. She felt warm and loved and safe and completely content. She smiled at her grandmother and then looked stricken.

‘Granny,’ she said. ‘We didn’t ring Mum.’

Granny was unbothered. ‘Well, we’ll do it in the morning,’ she said. ‘Too late now. Remind me in the morning.’

But the morning wouldn’t do. Mum would be worried. They hadn’t even let her know that they had arrived safely. She had thought of ringing that morning but the boys told her that there was no mobile signal at the hotel – the hills behind blocked it. Apparently there was one spot in the corner of the car park where you could get a signal, and she and Granny had planned to try calling from there before they went to the theatre. But they had forgotten. She had forgotten. And Mum would be worried.

‘We have to ring,’ she said, ‘we have to go out now and ring.’

‘Freda, do you know what time it is? It’s eleven-thirty. Look around. We’re the only people left in here. We can’t wake Mum now just to tell her that we’re all right. If she was worried about us, she could have rung the hotel. She knows where we are.’

‘I suppose.’

Freda drank her chocolate but its power to comfort was lost. She felt jangled and wrong now. How could feeling change so quickly? Was there something the matter with her?

Her grandmother yawned. ‘I am going to have a long bath,’ she said. ‘There was some interesting looking bubble bath among our toiletries – camomile and something. I shall try it out.’

Upstairs, Freda did her teeth and vacated the bathroom. In her room she looked at the hotel phone on the bedside table. She could ring home