Farrant After Iris

COSTA AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-29796-2
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 320 Seiten

Reihe: A Bluebell Gadsby Book

Being a combination of conventional diary entries and transcripts of videos shot by the author on the camera she was given for her 13th birthday, and beginning at the end of summer. Bluebell Gadsby is 13 but that's the least of her problems. Both her parents seem more interested in their careers than the family, leaving Blue and her three siblings in the care of Zoran the au pair, as well as their three pet rats (who may or may not be pregnant). The enigmatic Joss moves in next door and Blue thinks she might be falling in love, until he takes out her older sister Flora instead (who, incidentally, is trying to make a statement by dying her hair bright pink but no one takes the blindest bit of notice). Blue thinks and feels very deeply about life but can't really talk to anyone about it, because no one in the Gadsby family wants to address the real problem - that Blue's twin sister, Iris, died a year ago, and they are all just trying to hide their grief in busyness... So Blue turns to her diary and her unique way of seeing the world through her camcorder to express herself. A tender, funny, smart and ultimately heartwarming story.

Natasha Farrant is the author of the Costa Award winning novel, Voyage of the Sparrowhawk, bestselling middle-grade novel, The Children of Castle Rock, the acclaimed Bluebell Gadsby series and Carnegie-longlisted and Branford Boase-shortlisted YA historical novel The Things We Did For Love. She was shortlisted for the Queen of Teen Award 2014. She lives in London with her family.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Farrant, Natasha

Leseproben

Wednesday 31 August (Cont’d)

Wednesday 31 August (Cont’d)

‘But what a peculiar thing to write!’ said Zoran.

After inspecting the pen, we went back to the kitchen, where Zoran made hot chocolate and Flora groaned under the duvet she had dragged downstairs with her.

‘Is that all you can say?’ she said. ‘What a peculiar thing to write?’

‘Well it is,’ said Zoran.

‘The weird thing,’ cried Flora, ‘the creepy, freaky thing is that somebody is obviously watching us and has broken into the rat run!’

I don’t know if anyone else saw Zoran’s mouth twitch.

‘Was it you?’ I asked.

‘Me?’ he said. ‘Go near that monster?’

‘Then who?’ demanded Jas, and Twig repeated who who who?

The weather has changed and it rained all day but we all took turns watching the rat run, even Flora, who huddled under the umbrella in a blanket with more hot chocolate and a book and said she’d like to catch the so-and-so who was spying on us and give him a piece of her mind. Those were her actual words. She sounded like Grandma.

And obviously we never saw the spy.

Tomorrow we go back to school. I have never looked forward to anything less in my entire life. Dad always says that anything is possible. Perhaps this term things will be different, but somehow I doubt it.

Thursday 1 September

Since Iris died, at school I am the shadow. I slip down corridors, from assembly to class to break and back to class and no one sees me, no one talks to me. People who have known me since primary school, people I’ve peed with in paddling pools and who have smeared my face in birthday cake – they squeal when they see each other and fall into each other’s arms, they giggle and whisper, but me they just blank and I know that nothing has changed.

For a moment this morning, I thought things might be different. I caught Dodi Cartwright’s eye in assembly and I was pretty sure she acknowledged me – not much, a sort of half dip of the head, an almost smile. But then in our first class, which was English, I was going to sit down near the window at the back, when Dodi shimmied in and parked herself on my chair. I did try to say something. I thought, what would Flora do now and I tried to say hey, Cartwright, get lost that was my seat but no words came out and even if they had there wouldn’t have been any point because by then everyone was crowded round listening to her yabber on about her summer holiday in Italy or Spain or somewhere. So I just picked up my stuff and slunk off to the only free desk, which was right at the front next to Jake Lyall, who has to sit there because the teachers say they have to keep an eye on him and was actually asleep so couldn’t have spoken to me even if he’d wanted to, which he probably didn’t.

We have Miss Foundry in English, who is insane even by Clarendon Free School standards. Today she wore a beaded shawl which reached down to her ankles, told us to call her Anthea and tried to recruit us for the Clarendon Players’ Christmas Extravaganza.

‘This term,’ she announced, ‘they will be doing tales from the Brothers Grimm!’

Everybody looked blank. ‘The brothers who?’ yawned Jake.

‘Snow White! Hansel and Gretel! Little Red Riding Hood!’ cried Miss Foundry.

‘What’s she on about?’ asked Tom Myers.

‘Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm,’ said Hattie Verney, confirming that she is going to be just as much of a swot in Year 9 as she was in Year 8. ‘Together they collected and rewrote over two hundred traditional folktales, some of which we know today through Disney adaptations.’

Tom pulled a face at her. Miss Foundry pretended not to notice.

‘As usual, the Clarendon Players are looking to local schools to swell the ranks of their Christmas production. Bluebell, dear, will Flora be taking part?’

Cressida Taylor, who is Dodi’s best friend, sniggered Bluebell like it was the most idiotic name on the planet. Which, of course, it is.

‘I suppose so, Miss,’ I stammered. Flora has been taking part in the Players’ productions pretty much since she could walk. Her dream is to be discovered, leave school, appear in a West End show and then be whisked off to Broadway. ‘Please, dear, call me Anthea.’

‘Antheaaaaahhh’, said Tom, and Miss Foundry ignored him again.

‘What about you, dear?’ she asked. ‘Will you audition?’

‘What, her?’ sneered Cressida.

‘No, Miss,’ I said.

Anthea looked worried and sad and disappointed. All at once.

*

Dad says there are victims in life and there are fighters. He says he hopes that we will always be fighters, and by lunchtime I’d had enough. There was no way I was going to give Cressida and Dodi the satisfaction of seeing me eat alone. It wasn’t difficult to slip out with a group of sixth-formers. Most of them didn’t notice me but those who did sort of fell in around me so the teacher on gate duty didn’t see. Which considering it was Madame Gilbert didn’t really matter anyway.

I ate tomato soup and bread and butter in a cafe off Portobello Road. The cafe is called Home Sweet Home and it was full of mothers with pushchairs and workmen in overalls and people with black-rimmed glasses reading iPads. A very old Labrador panted by the counter. Capital was on the radio, and the whole place smelled of chips and coffee and wet dog. Nobody talked to me, but it didn’t matter because nobody was meant to.

Madame Gilbert was just finishing off her Gauloise when I got back. I wasn’t supposed to be out but then she wasn’t supposed to smoke, so she just looked vague and waved me in. We revised factorisation in maths. Dull, but so, so easy. I slept all the way through and Mr Forsyth (aka Mr Maths) didn’t even notice.

Like I said. Totally invisible.

Thursday 1/Friday 2 September:
The Middle of the Night

I am sitting on the flat roof outside my bedroom window, and I am very cold.

At dinner (sausages and mash – Zoran doesn’t cook anything else and he gets really hurt if you complain) Twig said we should be watching the rats twenty-four/seven. His words. He said it was only luck that nothing else had happened since last time. Jas said what about when we are at school, and Twig said Zoran could watch them then. Zoran said he had to go to classes too, and he couldn’t just sit around here all day waiting for us to come back and he had a thesis to write or didn’t we know? Jas said no, she didn’t know and what’s a thesis, and then Twig said, what about when we are asleep?

‘Last time he came at night,’ said Twig.

‘He’s only been once,’ said Flora. ‘And he might be a she.’

‘Even so. It doesn’t mean he won’t come again, and when he does, I bet it’ll be when we’re in bed.’

‘You can’t stay up all night,’ said Zoran. ‘I expressly forbid it.’

Zoran has been trying to assert his authority this evening because Mum emailed this morning to say she wasn’t coming home between Moscow and New York, and Flora went to her friend Tamsin’s after school where she dyed her hair bright pink and also dreadlocked it using a kit Tam’s brother had ordered on the internet.

Really. Pink dreadlocks. Zoran went ballistic.

‘And another thing.’ Twig pushed his plate aside, brought it back for a last mouthful of sausage, and hopped off his chair. ‘We haven’t even looked for clues.’

‘Oh God,’ Flora groaned.

‘Blue?’ Twig doesn’t do the round cat-eye thing like Jas, but his lower lip wobbles when he wants something and you just can’t say no.

‘Oh, go on then,’ I sighed.

We all went, even Zoran who after only a week has pretty much given up on the washing-up. Flora insists there’s no point doing the dishes at night because what if you die when you’re asleep, so now he makes us take turns doing them in the morning. We crossed the lawn and stood by the pen and Twig gave us our orders, which were basically leave no stone unturned.

‘That child watches too much television,’ grumbled Flora.

It was Jas who found the footprints. There was nothing on the lawn or the gravel – nothing we could see, anyway, and it had been raining – but right in the far corner, behind the rhododendrons, at the bottom of the Batemans’ wall, there were two deep marks of somebody’s trainers.

‘Male, I should think.’ Zoran was getting into the swing of the whole detective thing. ‘Judging from the size. And they’re facing the wall, which suggests he jumped down or climbed up here.’

‘Mr Bateman?’ cried Jas.

‘He’s like, a hundred and three,’ Flora explained to Zoran.

‘He would die if he jumped this fence,’ said Twig.

‘So there must be somebody else.’

Zoran wanted to go round to the Batemans’ to talk about it but we said no, we’d known them all our lives and it would be too embarrassing. He sighed (in actually a very non-authoritarian way) and asked what we wanted to do, and we sort of shuffled around and said nothing, it didn’t matter.

So here I am. Sitting on the flat roof. Freezing my little socks off in the middle of the night.

*

I took over from Flora at one o’clock. We’re doing two-hour shifts.

I love London at night. At Grandma’s, in Devon, the night is black as coal and the stars are brighter, but it’s creepily quiet. Here you can still hear the traffic, and the sky is dark but orange, and even though most...