Alice in Time Read online

  Alice

  in time

  Penelope Bush trained and worked as a tapestry weaver, but always knew that one day she would write. She lives in West Sussex with her husband and son and elderly cat. She hides away in an old caravan to do her writing, where the only distraction is the occasional pheasant wandering past. Now and again, the family reclaim the caravan and it is towed down the coast to Dorset, where many happy hours are spent looking for fossils. Alice in Time is her first book.

  PENELOPE BUSH

  PICCADILLY PRESS • LONDON

  First published in Great Britain in 2010

  by Piccadilly Press Ltd,

  5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR

  www.piccadillypress.co.uk

  Text copyright © Penelope Bush, 2010

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any

  means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

  without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  The right of Penelope Bush to be identified as Author

  of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 1 84812 077 8 (paperback

  eBook ISBN: 978 1 84812 146 1)

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD

  Cover design by Simon Davis

  Cover photo © Alamy

  For Helen Percival

  PART 1

  Chapter One

  ‘I’m not wearing it.’

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  Repeat those last two sentences about fifty times and you’ll get some idea of what I’m up against. I’m trying to get my little brother into his page boy outfit so that we won’t be late for Dad’s wedding, but I’ve been trying for the last hour without success.

  Actually, I don’t blame Rory for not wanting to put the suit on, but I’m not going to let him know that. And how am I going to get him to wear the pink silk sash that is supposed to go round his waist? I don’t know what made Trish think that a seven-year-old boy was going to put up with that, but then everything was done in a bit of a hurry.

  Trish and I had spent a whole afternoon at the fabric shop choosing the material for my dress. Eventually we picked a lovely cornflower-blue silk, because my eyes are blue. I couldn’t wait for the dress to come and when I went to Dad’s, on the weekend it was due, I was really excited. When Trish unpacked it and held it up for me to inspect, I was completely speechless.

  ‘What do you think?’ Trish asked me.

  Instead of the beautiful blue silk, the dress was vile pink and I don’t think it was silk either but some fake nylon stuff. It wasn’t even a nice pink, if there is such a thing. The only way I can think to describe it is Pig Pink. Obviously it wasn’t a mistake and they hadn’t delivered the wrong dress or why would Trish be holding it up asking me what I thought? I couldn’t tell her what I thought either, because this was Trish, not my mum, so I couldn’t go off on one and tell her that nothing in the world would make me wear that dress. Instead I just about managed not to cry and said, ‘What happened to the blue silk that we chose?’

  ‘Oh, that turned out too expensive in the end and this gorgeous pink was on offer. Don’t you like it?’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I lied. I was trying to impress Trish with my mature attitude.

  And now it’s finally the day of the wedding and I really want to feel excited but instead I’m just exasperated because I’m stuck with my annoying little brother. It’s not fair.

  ‘I want to wear this,’ says Rory, holding up his Spider-Man outfit.

  I close my eyes, breathe in deeply and count to ten. I assess my options. I could pin him down and force him into the suit but then he’d start screaming and yelling and be totally uncooperative for the rest of the day. Alternatively, I could go and get Mum and insist that she deal with him, but I’m not actually talking to her at the moment so that could be a bit difficult. Or I could just give up and let him go to the wedding as Spider-Man. I decide to go for the fourth option: bribery.

  ‘If you put the suit on I’ll buy you that Pokémon comic you wanted.’

  ‘You mean this one,’ he says, picking it up from beside his bed. ‘Mum got it for me yesterday.’

  Just my luck. She’s always spoiling him, which is why he’s such a brat. I grab the comic off him and hold it high above my head.

  ‘OK. Put the suit on and I’ll let you have it back.’

  He doesn’t look impressed so I hold it by the spine, making a tiny rip. ‘And I won’t tear it in half.’

  He picks the trousers up off the floor. He knows I’m not joking. But he’s not going to give up without a fight.

  ‘I’ll put these on if you read me a story tonight.’

  As you can see, my brother is no stranger to bribery.

  ‘OK.’ I hate reading to Rory but all I want right now is for him to be ready when the taxi gets here.

  ‘Promise you’ll read me a story.’

  ‘I said OK, didn’t I?’

  He smiles triumphantly and scrambles into his trousers. I sigh at the sight. They’re all creased from being on the floor while we were arguing. Also, they’re too short. He must have grown since Trish ordered them for him. Typical. Now we both look stupid.

  At this point Mum sticks her head into the room. ‘You both look gorgeous.’

  Yeah, right!

  ‘Rory, hurry up and get your jacket and shoes on. I have to go to work now. I’ll see you later – have a wonderful time.’

  To my ears her cheerfulness sounds a bit forced. I don’t think she likes the idea of Dad remarrying. Well, she should have thought about that before she left him. I have no sympathy for her, whatsoever. Luckily, she doesn’t seem to be expecting a reply – which is just as well.

  I’m so relieved Rory’s finally ready that I completely forget about the pink silk sash that’s meant to go round his waist. It doesn’t help that he’s kicked it under the bed. He only tells me this when we’re in the taxi and it’s too late to do anything about it. If Trish notices, I’ll blame it on Mum. I know that doesn’t sound very nice, but it’s important that I look good in front of Dad and Trish at the moment. You see, when they suddenly decided to get married and move out of their tiny flat into a two-bedroomed house, I came up with a brilliant plan. I just need the right moment to break it to them.

  The taxi drops us off in town outside the registry office. When Dad and Trish told us they were getting married and said I could be a bridesmaid, the wedding suddenly became my favourite daydream.

  I imagined myself walking up the aisle of a beautiful old church in the country. A big organ was playing The Wedding March and every available surface was covered in white and pink flowers. The sun was coming through the stained-glass windows. In this dream, my boring straight hair (which Mum says is toffee-coloured and won’t let me dye, even though it’s obviously ‘beige’) is transformed into a thick curtain of waving blonde gorgeousness. I am also willowy thin and spot-free. The wedding guests gasp as I walk down the aisle. One old lady nearly faints and has to be taken out into the churchyard to recover. When we reach the altar, the vicar, who is very young and very handsome, blushes when our eyes meet. At the reception, which is held in a very posh country house hotel, there is an endless stream of gorgeous boys waiting to dance with me. The photographers from Hello! magazine can’t get enough of me either.

  This daydream got me through countless maths lessons. Naturally, the reality couldn’t
have been further away from it. When Trish said they were having the wedding at the registry office, with the reception in a pub because their flat is too small, my dream dissolved like a wet sherbet lemon.

  Of course, I tried to steer Trish away from her grotesque wedding plan. I even offered to organise it all for her, because she has a very exciting and time-consuming job and I thought that might be the reason why she wasn’t concentrating on having The Wedding of the Year. As it turned out, it was because they wanted to get married as soon as possible and they’d only managed to get the registry office on that day because someone had cancelled and also they couldn’t afford anything grander, what with the move and everything.

  I still tried to have the wedding daydream but it wasn’t the same any more. Mr Green’s voice kept infiltrating, droning on about fractions and stuff and drowning out the organ music, so in the end I gave up.

  And now everything’s turning out even worse than I thought it would. As we get out of the taxi, it starts to rain. I grab Rory and run to shelter in the nearest shop doorway, but not before some serious damage has been done to my hair which I spent hours on this morning, trying to get it to curl. Now it’s hanging in lank wet snakes and my new silk pumps are soaked into the bargain. Just to add to my problems, Rory begins to whine.

  ‘Where’s Dad? I thought he was going to meet us.’

  I have some sympathy with this. Where the hell is Dad? He said he’d be here. He couldn’t bring us himself so he paid for a taxi to come and get us and drop us off at the registry office where, he’d said, he would be waiting. I scan the street, which isn’t too crowded because of the rain, but I can’t see Dad anywhere.

  After about ten minutes, I’m seriously worried and fed up with having to stand out in the rain every time someone wants to go in or out of the shop. As we’re sheltering in the doorway to a newsagent’s, this is pretty much all the time. By now Rory’s whining has turned to grizzling, and I’m very close to joining in. People are staring at us, which is hardly surprising, considering what we’re wearing. I haven’t brought a coat, so there’s nothing to tone down the pink effect.

  It suddenly occurs to me that I am stranded in a seedy part of town and I don’t even have any money with me. In fact, all I have is a seven-year-old who is crying in earnest now and who is relying on me to do something. Perhaps I could ring Mum except a) I’m not talking to her and b) I don’t have a mobile phone. Ironically, this is the main reason that I’m not speaking to her. I’ve explained, till I’m blue in the face, that I’m the only fourteen-year-old in the world without a mobile phone, but all she does is say, ‘Has Imogen got one?’ to which I have to reply ‘No’, because she hasn’t.

  It’s no good trying to explain that Imogen, who by the way is my best friend, is a special case because it’s hopeless trying to explain anything to Mum. She never listens and always ends the conversation with the extremely annoying sentence, ‘It’s about time you realised that not everything is about you, Alice.’ This is so unfair because in her eyes nothing is about me, not one tiny little thing.

  But back to the present dilemma and what to do, except I can’t think straight because Rory is off again. ‘I want to go home. Why can’t we go home?’

  I try explaining that it’s too far to walk home and anyway, nothing would persuade me to walk through town in this get-up. By now I’m seriously freezing. Who in their right mind has a wedding in February? So I go into the shop just to keep warm, even though I can’t buy so much as a penny chew. It’s blissfully warm inside, if a bit on the pongy side. It’s one of those old newsagent’s that smell of wet dog and newspapers, which is hardly surprising really as that is exactly what’s in here. The dog, which I assume belongs to the owner, goes some way to cheering Rory up. It’s a big golden retriever and it goes up to him, wagging its tail, and slobbers all over him.

  There’s a big woman behind the counter. She’s talking to a customer, an old wrinkly man, and they both turn and stare at us.

  ‘Well, well. Look what the dog dragged in.’ The old man’s laugh is a painful-sounding wheeze. He thinks he’s hilarious because Rory is being dragged across the shop by the dog, which is busy chewing the sleeve of his jacket. Luckily Rory doesn’t seem to mind and he’s actually laughing now, so I just leave them to get on with it.

  ‘What can I get you?’ The woman sounds very friendly and kind but I can feel myself going bright red and can’t think what to say.

  Rory has none of my problems. He’s never shy and can talk to anyone. He shakes off the dog, makes his eyes all big and says to the lady in his best voice, ‘We’ve recently been orphaned and abandoned. We’re all alone and have nowhere to live and were wondering if you could take us in and look after us. I’ve always wanted to live in a sweet shop.’

  Rory’s always doing this sort of thing. I think it’s just to embarrass me, because he never does it when Mum’s there. And the weird thing is that, whereas I find his behaviour deeply annoying and puke-making most adults think it’s desperately cute and they go all gooey-eyed and say, ‘Ahh, I’d love to have you, but —’ at which point I always step in and save them the embarrassment of trying to think of an excuse. This is exactly what’s happening now with the big shop lady, so I jump in and say, ‘We’re looking for the registry office.’

  ‘You don’t say! You’re getting married, are you?’ says the old man, going off into wheeze world again. ‘And there was me thinking you were the new bubblegum sales rep.’ He points at my hideous dress and he’s so amused by this oh so funny joke that he goes into a paroxysm of laughter and I’m seriously worried that he might actually die.

  I ignore him, but Rory, who’s just got the joke, is now dancing round me shouting, ‘Bubblegum, bubblegum,’ over and over. That’s the trouble with seven-year-olds; they never know when to stop.

  ‘Now, let me see,’ says the shop lady. ‘There used to be a registry office two doors down, but they’ve just moved it, haven’t they, Stan?’ She appeals to the old man, who’s just about recovered his breath.

  ‘Yep, it’s a travel agent now. You could book your honeymoon there.’ And he’s off again, overcome by his own wit.

  ‘So where is it now?’ I manage, through gritted teeth. ‘We’re missing our dad’s wedding.’ I’m close to tears, because I’ve just realised that they’ll all be waiting for us and won’t have a clue where we are.

  ‘I think they moved it to the town hall,’ says Stan gleefully and he’s about to start his wheezy laugh again but the shop lady, seeing a tear finally escape and mingle with the rain on my face, gives him a warning look.

  ‘Here, I’ll draw you a map. It shouldn’t take you more than fifteen minutes, if you walk quickly.’ She hastily scribbles some lines on a paper bag and holds it out to me, smiling encouragingly. I grab it with one hand and Rory with the other, and yelling ‘Thank you’, we run.

  The run soon slows to a trot, and then a walk. Although it’s not raining heavily any more, it is mizzling – a sort of cross between drizzle and mist which you walk through without realising how wet you’re actually getting. Of course, Rory is whinging again. ‘Why can’t we get in another taxi?’ His whiny voice really gets on my nerves.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ I say. ‘And God knows where we’d end up then. We might get the same stupid taxi driver and he’d probably drop us at the zoo or something.’

  ‘The zoo, the zoo! I want to go to the zoo. Let’s go to the zoo, Alice. It’s much better than a boring old wedding.’

  Aaarrgh. I really want to hit my little brother sometimes. Well, nearly all the time, actually. The trouble is, if I do, he’ll start bawling and we’re just entering the centre of town where all the shops are, and I’m desperately trying to keep a low profile. If anyone from school sees me in this dress I think I will literally die. Oh God! What if I bumped into Sasha and her friends?

  And then, of course, because this is my life we’re talking about, that is exactly what happens. I see Sasha coming out of Accessorize, surrou
nded by her horrible friends. I just freeze. I go hot and then cold. She hasn’t seen me yet because she’s showing off a new pair of earrings. Even though they’re all too far away to hear, I can imagine her friends going, ‘Ooh, Sasha. They do suit you.’ That’ll be Chelsea. And Clara will be saying, ‘Oh, Sash, are you going to wear them to your party?’ She’s been going on about her fifteenth birthday party for weeks, and how wonderful it’s going to be.

  She’s still admiring herself in the shop window so I dive for cover into the nearest shop.

  ‘Are we here? Is this it? Where’s Dad?’

  God! Why is my brother so thick? This is so obviously a book shop. Rory is hopeless at reading, which is probably why he’s always trying to get me to read to him.

  I look at the map. The town hall is at the end of this street. I peer out of the doorway and see Sasha and co going into Starbucks. That is so typical of her. When I come shopping in town with Imogen, we always go into the café near the station because it’s about four times cheaper. And we go to Claire’s instead of Accessorize for the same reason. Not that we shop that often, because I’ve never got any money and Imogen doesn’t like shopping much. She says it’s boring, which of course it is, if you haven’t got any money.

  Finally we make it to the town hall and, miracle of miracles, there’s Dad standing under the portico looking worriedly up and down the street.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ He looks seriously stressed out. Well, he’s not the only one. I’m just about to launch into an explanation about the hopeless taxi driver and the rain and the newsagent’s and the trek across town, when Trish appears.

  ‘Thank God!’ she says. ‘There you are. Come on, let’s go.’ Instead of heading into the building, they set off up the road, me and Rory dragging along behind like bits of baggage. It’s then that I realise that Trish is not wearing her long, white, dreamy wedding dress. Instead, she’s got on a very smart but, let’s face it, very boring cream-coloured suit. I hurry to catch up with her.