After Iris: the Diaries of Bluebell Gadsby (18 page)

Just for a moment, in the garden with Joss, I thought he was going to surprise me. When I told him about the Babes, for a few seconds I thought he was going to come up with some crazy way of finding them. Daft, I know, when you think of what happened afterwards, but I haven’t forgotten the incident with the rats. Joss just has that effect on people. Well, he had that effect on me.

After everyone had embraced everyone else, we crowded back into the kitchen where Grandma made tea and cut enormous slabs of Christmas cake for everybody, even Joss who had to keep his head tilted back because of his nosebleed, and Constable Roberts who kept trying to tell Dad that he was
under
arrest, and in between hugs and mouthfuls of cake the Babes told us what had happened.

They did make it to Warwick – well, obviously, because they found Dad. Twig did some secret research online after he left my bedroom on Thursday night and they left the house at half-past four, planning to catch the five-thirty train from Paddington.

‘It was freezing,’ said Twig. ‘But it wasn’t snowing yet. We got to Paddington no problem.’

‘We got the tickets out of the machine on the platform,’ said Jas. ‘And then we found a lady and sort of stuck near her so people thought we were with her. It all went fine until we got to Reading.’

‘But we didn’t realise we had to change trains,’ said Twig.

‘And then it started to snow . . .’

‘And the train just stopped. For
hours . . .
’

‘And we only had Christmas cookies and some ham sandwiches and an apple and two bananas and a Mars bar to eat . . . And then the train started again but it was the wrong one anyway . . .’

‘So then we had to go back to Reading, which took
forever
. . .’

‘And then we had to change trains
again
and this time we got it right, but it was going so slowly it was like hardly moving at all . . .’

‘And when we got to Warwick it was dark and we didn’t have any money for a taxi and we didn’t even know where Dad lived . . .’

‘And then I started to cry . . .’

‘It was very difficult,’ said Twig, ‘because we don’t have mobile phones. I do think after this we should. It’s very unfair that we don’t. We had to ask a complete stranger to call Dad for us. It’s very lucky we know his number by heart.’

‘He felt sorry for me because I was crying,’ said Jas. ‘And then Daddy came to fetch us in the helicopter.’

And then it was all eyes on Dad, who coughed and looked embarrassed, and the stranger who had arrived with them and whom Dad had just introduced as
Herbie
stood up and gave a little bow and said that as it happened, the helicopter belonged to him.

‘YES BUT WHO
ARE
YOU?’ boomed Grandma.

‘My name is Herbert Goldman,’ said Herbie. ‘I am a director of the Goldman Picture Company, and I am pleased to say that this afternoon we finalised a contract with your son to write a major motion picture set in twelfth-century Britain called
Daughters of King Arthur
.’

‘We were in a meeting with our lawyers all day, and my phone was off,’ said Dad. ‘I couldn’t tell anyone before now because they swore me to secrecy, and also I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. I’ve been working on it all term.’

‘Oh my God, the glasses!’ said Flora. ‘The long hair! The phone! The designer jeans! All those crazy questions! We thought you were having an affair!’

‘No!’ Dad looked round the room at each of us in turn. We all nodded.

‘I TOLD YOU YOU SHOULD SAY SOMETHING,’ said Grandma.

‘Does Mum know?’ asked Flora, and we were all quiet for a moment, thinking about Mum.

Mr Goldman’s phone rang at that moment, and he hurried out of the room.

‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Dad. ‘I know it’s been difficult, but you have to understand how much money they are paying me for this. To be honest, it’s rather obscene. I’ve never seen so many zeros on a cheque. I’ve actually resigned from the university.’

Mr Goldman came back into the room and announced that his helicopter was going to take him to his hotel and did anyone need a lift anywhere? Constable Roberts looked sour and said no, he and Dad were going to walk to the station, and Dad said he could stick his walk to the station. Constable Roberts said Dad should be careful not to add resisting arrest to his charge of assaulting a minor, which was when Grandma asked Constable Roberts WHAT ON EARTH HE WAS DOING HERE ANYWAY and it was his turn to look embarrassed as he said he came to tell us the children had been sighted at Warwick station before being whisked away in a helicopter.

‘We believed they had been kidnapped,’ he said with dignity. ‘It’s not the sort of news you want to give someone over the phone.’

‘Why didn’t
you
phone when you found them?’ Flora asked Dad.

‘I tried,’ he said. ‘But the line was engaged.’

‘You are a danger to society and to these children,’ said Constable Roberts.

‘You’ve got the wrong man,’ shouted Dad, which can be a good line in a film but in our kitchen sounded a bit overdramatic.

‘I can prove it,’ I said. Everybody turned to stare at me then. I blushed and held out my camera. ‘He was only defending Flora. He was a hero. You’ll see, I filmed everything.’

After he saw my film, Officer Roberts didn’t take Dad to the police station but marched him and Joss round to his grandparents instead. He said he could understand how Dad got so angry, but that Joss was a minor, and even though it did look like everyone had been attacking everyone else, breaking his nose was a bit of an overreaction and Joss’s family might want to press charges.

Mr Goldman watched them go, looking thoughtful. ‘Maybe one day we could make a film about your family,’ he told me, and he gave me his business card. ‘Call me if you’re interested,’ he said.

And then he said goodbye to everybody and he was gone, just like that, in his helicopter.

Dad looked quite pleased with himself when he came back. He said Mr and Mrs Bateman weren’t going to press charges and had finally admitted that Joss came to London because he kept getting into trouble at his old school, not just for pranks like the rats or bunking off class but for more serious things like stealing and drinking and getting into fights. Apparently he and CJ and Sharky and Spudz used to fight all the time, and the final straw for Joss’s parents was when Joss punched someone in the face at a party because he didn’t like the way the guy was looking at Kiera. His grandparents said how pleased they were when Joss started going out with Flora, because she seemed to have such a calming influence on him, but then when Dad asked why he and Flora were fighting Joss admitted that he had been lying to her about Kiera. She had finished with him after he hit the boy who was supposedly looking at her, but then she heard he was seeing someone in London and decided she still really liked him after all. So he started going out with her again, but then when Flora found out and yelled at him over the phone it made him upset because he realised he really liked her too. So, he came to London to try to get back with her as well, only things didn’t quite go according to plan.

‘Nobody messes my daughter around,’ said Dad, Flora started to cry again and said did we think she should forgive Joss or should she actually never speak to him again, and Grandma said, ‘IF YOU FORGIVE THAT BOY
I
WILL NEVER SPEAK TO
YOU
AGAIN.’

It was a strange day. We all went back to bed at about three o’clock in the morning, and when we got up it was properly Christmas Eve. Grandma was cooking an enormous breakfast and Dad was making mulled wine. There was a fire in the grate and lights on the tree and there were the four of us, building a snowman in the garden.

But this is us, the Gadsbys. Christmas Eve is different for us, and the snowman actually looked more like a snowgirl, because without consulting us Jas had gone into my old bedroom and taken Iris’s red Father Christmas hat out of the box full of her things at the back of the wardrobe, the girl’s one with the long blonde plaits hanging down the side. We couldn’t help laughing when we saw it, except then we all cried a bit as well because Iris used to wear it every single Christmas since she was about five years old.

‘Was it wrong?’ asked Jas. ‘Just, I look in that box quite often, and I thought it would be nice.’

‘Oh Jazzy.’ Flora drew Jas into her arms for a kiss. ‘Of course it wasn’t wrong. It’s lovely.’

‘I look in her box too,’ said Twig. ‘And sometimes I lie on her bed.’

‘I pretend my shadow is actually her,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I talk to it.’

They all stared. ‘That’s a bit mad, Blue,’ said Flora, but her smile got all twisted, and then Jas started to cry so hard it was quite difficult to understand what she was saying, but when I did I wanted to cry again too.

‘I don’t remember her!’ cried Jas. ‘I smell her clothes and I touch her things, but when I close my eyes I CAN’T REMEMBER WHAT SHE WAS REALLY LIKE!’

‘Me neither,’ whispered Twig. ‘That’s why I do it too.’

Flora wrapped her arms round both of them.

‘Say something,’ she hissed at me. ‘Say something to make them remember.’

I can’t
, I wanted to say.
I can’t talk about Iris, I just can’t
. But they all carried on looking at me, with their big round eyes and wobbly lips and pleading expressions, and suddenly I knew exactly what to say and I started to smile.

‘She was bossy,’ I said. ‘And she was fearless, and she was good at climbing trees. She never paid attention to anything anyone said, and she used to make us shampoo cats.’

‘Not just cats.’ Flora was smiling too. ‘Dogs as well. Even, once, a gerbil.’

‘We had ice-cream competitions,’ remembered Twig. ‘To see who could eat the fastest. It used to give me a headache because of the cold, so she made me wear a hat.’

‘She taught me to ride on the living-room sofa,’ whispered Jas. ‘She made me sit on the arm and pretend to do the rising trot.’

‘She nicked all my best T-shirts,’ said Flora. ‘She sold them at the school fete, to raise money for Chinese pandas.’

We sat out there together for ages, the four of us, snuggled up in the snow, and every memory and story led to more memories and stories. The cold and wet seeped through our jeans and coats. Jas’s lips turned blue and Twig’s teeth started to chatter, but when the light faded and Grandma called us in, we didn’t want to go.

She’s still out there now, our snowgirl Iris, watching over the garden.

Watching over us.

There was a message from Mum on the answerphone this morning. She left it at half-past ten New York time, so just after we had gone to bed, saying that she had found a flight to Paris and that she wasn’t sure how she was going to get to us from there but that she loved us very much.

‘Paris?’ said Flora.

We played it again. She did say Paris. Dad has been trying to call her all day. We know she is in Europe, because of the different ringtone, but we have no idea where.

‘There are no trains,’ moaned Dad. ‘There are no ferries, the airports are still closed. What earthly use is it her being in Paris?’

‘Maybe she’s with Zoran,’ whispered Jas.

‘Paris is a big place, pumpkin,’ said Dad.

She called at lunchtime and spoke to Dad.

‘What did she say?’ asked Flora.

‘I couldn’t tell,’ he admitted. ‘She was crying too much.’

Twig answered when she called at tea-time.

‘Something about a tunnel,’ he said. ‘And a queue, and a backlog, and having to wait.’

Dad tried calling Mum back.

‘Also,’ said Twig, ‘something about using someone else’s phone because her battery is dead.’

The doorbell rang at half-past nine. The Babes leaped off the sofa to answer.

‘IT BREAKS MY HEART.’ Grandma actually wiped away a tear. ‘IT CAN’T POSSIBLY BE HER.’

The rest of us crowded around the window to look. Flora shrieked.

‘IT’S ZORAN!’ she cried, and tore out of the room. By the time Dad and I reached the hall, the front door was wide open and snow was pouring in. Zoran stood on the doorstep in a shearling coat and his fur hat, with a Babe on each leg and Flora hanging round his neck.

‘But, how?’ said Dad. ‘I mean, why? And where . . .’

Zoran laughed. It’s amazing how two weeks in Paris can change a man. He’s shaved off his beard for a start, and I have never seen him look so happy, not even at the piano.

He put a finger to his lips. ‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Come outside.’

There was a new car parked in front of the house. By which I mean an old car, but one we had never seen before.

A Renault 5, said Twig who notices such things, a model discontinued in 1991, with the steering wheel on the wrong side.

A Renault 5 with the steering wheel on the wrong side, and Mum asleep in the passenger seat.

‘Shhh,’ said Zoran again. He was grinning from ear to ear. ‘She’s been asleep pretty much since we left Dover.’

So we got our Christmas Eve, one way or another. Grandma made sandwiches and cut more cake, Dad heated more wine, and we sat around the fire until gone midnight. The Babes told the story again of how they went to fetch Dad in Warwick to bring him home. Dad told us all about Mr Goldman, the film, and his new career as a screenwriter.

‘I told you I could do it,’ he said to Mum, and she said she never doubted it for a moment, she just didn’t understand why he couldn’t do it at home. And then before they could start arguing Grandma said TELL US WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU, CASSIE. So Mum blew her nose and told us how she used up the last of her phone’s battery to call Zoran, who came to meet her at the airport in a borrowed car, and just kept on driving north until they got to England.

‘We waited for hours at the Tunnel,’ she said. ‘I
told
you, when I phoned.’

‘I’m afraid I didn’t really understand,’ said Twig.

‘I’ll drive the car back after Christmas,’ said Zoran. ‘When the snow has gone.’

‘But your family!’ cried Flora. ‘Christmas!’

‘It’s all about the people you love,’ he smiled.