Spellweaver (9 page)

Jamie laughed. “Yeah,
right. Hollie’s going to be a model, as far as our dear mother is
concerned. Apparently that makes homework redundant in her case. As
for me, well, I’m destined to become whatever requires the most
training, the most qualifications and the most intelligence. One
week it’s a doctor, the next it’s a lawyer... she has only the
highest expectations of me.”

Felicity had wondered
then what expectations her father had of her. He hadn’t mentioned
any since she had moved in. He dutifully checked her homework
planner and regularly asked how school was going, but Felicity
sensed that he did so because he felt he should, rather than
because he actually cared, and even this had become less and less
of a priority as time went on. Had she been so inclined, she could
have easily hidden homework tasks and lied to him about her
progress, but she didn’t want to risk another confrontation like
the one that had come from her going to the Talk, and she certainly
didn’t want any trouble from the teachers, however ineffective some
of them were.

Felicity and her
father had never really recovered from that exchange, in spite of
the time that had passed. She had been spending even more time in
her bedroom than she used to, if that were even possible, but not
only in an effort to avoid her father, but because she still had
her mother’s journal. Every night before she went to sleep she
would flick through the worn pages, reading the words and studying
the strange pictures. She never made any more sense of it, but she
was glad just to have it.

Mr Oakley had not
returned to Greenfields, and nor had Oliver. Hollie had been upset
for a week or two and had tried in vain to locate him using various
social networking sites, but no one had seen or even heard anything
from him. What was even more curious was that no one even seemed to
know where he had come from. It was quite a mystery, which made it
all the more enticing for Hollie. Still, as the weeks rolled by and
they heard no news, she stopped talking about it
altogether.

Felicity was relieved,
though she said nothing. Although she could not fully recall the
events of that night, Oliver still unnerved her, and she felt much
more relaxed now that he and Mr Oakley were gone. No one seemed to
know much about the school counsellor, either, but then his work
was not limited to Greenfields; it had been his job to visit
students in all of the schools in the area. The students didn’t
much care that he wasn’t around at present, and Felicity didn’t
show how much the counsellor bothered her. She was just glad that
he had not come back, and given the fact that she had heard nothing
from the head teacher regarding the apparent theft of her mother’s
journal, she guessed that he had not reporting her for
stealing.

It was snowing on
Christmas Eve. Felicity’s father was working late, so she took the
opportunity to spend time outside her tiny bedroom and watch some
television. There had been many festive films on. For the most part
Felicity had avoided them, but as the snow floated down outside and
the coloured lights adorning the neighbouring buildings twinkled in
through the windows of the flat, she found herself entirely
absorbed in the story of a little girl trying to prove that Father
Christmas really did exist.

When
the film ended, Felicity went to bed. Dressed in her pyjamas and
dressing gown, for her window was still stuck open, she nestled
beneath her thick duvet and flicked through the pages of her
mother’s notebook, just as she did every night. The words glared at
her, challenging her to understand them and mocking her when she
failed. She muttered them under her breath. She had looked online
to find a translation to the words that were not in English but
could find none. It was gibberish to her. She wondered how Mr
Oakley had come to have been in possession of the book, and why he
had been so desperate to get it back.
You don’t know what you’re dealing with,
that’s what he had said to her the
last time she had seen him. The words chilled her more than the
bitter winter air.

She drifted off to
sleep before she even realised it, and when she awoke it was
Christmas Day.

There were no bells.
Felicity pushed the covers aside and got dressed, eager to be out
of the flat before her father got up. She had arranged to meet
Hollie and Jamie later, for the two of them were not looking
forward to sharing the Christmas spirit in the style of the broken
Clarke family. She opened her bedroom door and stopped abruptly
when she saw the Christmas tree standing by the
television.

Her father had been
sitting on the sofa when she came in, but he stood up when he saw
his daughter. He shuffled awkwardly on the spot, clearly unsure of
what to say, before he settled for: “Merry Christmas.”

Felicity looked from
the tree to her father and then back again. He was holding a
beer.

He noticed at her
attire. “Are you going out?”

She nodded.

“Oh.” He lowered his
eyes. There was a pause, and then he put his bottle on the table
and retrieved something from beneath the tree. “Well, open this
before you go,” he said, and handed it to her.

Felicity looked at the
gift. It was small and rectangular, and was poorly wrapped in thin,
cheap wrapping paper with festive cartoon figures all over it.
Aware that her father was watching her expectantly, she slowly
unwrapped it, and was surprised by the flicker of excitement that
stirred within her.

It was a trinket box
of some kind. Made of wood that had been finished in a dark
varnish, it had intricate floral patterns carved all over it. On
the top was a brass inlay of a rose.

“I thought you could
put your, uh, mother’s things in there,” her father
explained.

Felicity turned the
box over in her hands, feeling the grooves of the carvings with her
fingers. When she turned it upside down she caught sight of a white
sticker that read: £6.99.

Her father’s shoulders
slumped. “Uh, sorry. I uh, forgot to take that off.”

Felicity held the box
in her hands and stared at it for the longest time. This was the
first Christmas gift she had received in many years; she couldn’t
even remember exactly when it was that her mother had stopped
buying them for her. She felt strange and warm, and didn’t really
know what to do.

“Thank you,” she said
quietly.

Her father nodded,
smiling slightly, and then he sat back down on the sofa and resumed
his vigil of the television. Felicity had originally planned to go
out that morning, to escape the flat and wander around town before
meeting her friends, just to avoid spending any time with her
father. But the gift and the Christmas tree changed her mind. With
the box still in her hands, she slowly sat down on the sofa beside
him. He didn’t look at her.

Later that day, when
her father announced that he was going down to the pub, Felicity
went to meet Hollie and Jamie at their father’s house. It was in a
different part of the neighbourhood, a part where trees lined the
streets and the tall, terraced houses were surrounded by black iron
fences. Each house was at least three storeys high, and that didn’t
even include the cellar. Felicity had visited once before and had
been naturally intrigued as to why the twins had been sent to
Greenfields when their parents could have easily afforded to buy
them a private education, to which Hollie had explained that their
mother was a local councillor and had to be seen as ‘doing her bit’
for the local community. Felicity wasn’t entirely sure how sending
the twins to the worst school in the area could have been seen as a
service, but she didn’t ask.

When Felicity arrived,
Hollie and Jamie were slumped miserably over the table in the
massive kitchen, wearing expressions that did not reflect the
joyous nature of the day.

“Thank God you’re
here, Fliss,” Hollie said when she saw her.

“Why?” Felicity asked.
“What’s wrong?”

“Don’t ask,” Jamie said. “You do
not
want to know
what kind of day we’ve had. Seriously.”

“It was terrible!”
Hollie suddenly cried. “Firstly, Mum invited her horrible
boyfriend, who ate all of the chocolate fingers. All of them!
They’re my favourite,” she added sadly. “And then she started
ripping into the presents that Dad got us, saying that they were
crap, that he hadn’t put any thought into them, blah blah
blah...”

Jamie looked at his
sister and sighed.

“Was it really that
bad?” Felicity asked.

“You have no idea,”
Hollie groaned. “She wouldn’t stop badmouthing Dad. It only got
worse when the karaoke party started.”

“Karaoke?”

“She alway does
karaoke when she’s had too much to drink,” Jamie explained. “And
she always sings that D.I.V.O.R.C.E song.”

“Very badly,” Hollie
added. She threw herself down on the table with a loud groan. “This
is the worst Christmas ever,” she moaned with her face down,
causing her voice to come out muffled.

“We shouldn’t have
expected anything else. It’s the same every year,” Jamie said with
a hopeless shrug. “At least we managed to escape.”

Hollie snorted. “Mum
didn’t even notice. She was too drunk.”

Felicity didn’t talk
about her morning, for she feared that it would sound incredibly
insignificant to the chaos at the Clarke household. She didn’t
mention that her father had put up a three foot tree and
haphazardly flung some tinsel over it. She didn’t tell them that he
had given her a cheap gift that she loved, and so embroiled were
they with their own affairs that they didn’t ask, which suited
Felicity just fine.

Suddenly and
decisively, Hollie got up from the kitchen table and began raiding
the cupboards of her father’s kitchen, eventually returning with a
couple of bottles. “I’ve decided that I’m not gonna have a crappy
Christmas,” she said, and placed the bottles on the
table.

Jamie rolled his eyes.
“So you want to be just like Mum?”

“Well, at least she’s
having a good time!” Hollie exclaimed, and looked at Felicity.
“Come on, Fliss, what do you say? Fancy a drink?”

Felicity looked from
the wine bottles to Hollie, who had a desperate, pleading look in
her eyes. She shrugged her shoulders.

“Brilliant!” Hollie
cried excitedly.

It didn’t take the
three of them long to finish the two bottles of wine. Hollie showed
them a drinking game that she had seen her mother play when she had
friends over and thought Hollie was in bed. It consisted of
drinking a shot glass full wine as a forfeit, though, as Hollie
explained, it was supposed to be vodka. But she hated vodka, and
wine was the only other alternative. Jamie was particularly bad at
the game. Several shot glasses and wine bottles later, the three of
them found themselves sitting in the front lounge, giggling and
grinning much more than usual.

Felicity had never had
alcohol before, and though she drank the least out of all of them,
she could feel the effects almost instantly. Her eyes found it
difficult to focus and it soon became a challenge just to walk in a
straight line, so she avoided it and settled on the sofa instead.
Hollie sat next to her, still clutching a glass full of wine,
whilst Jamie sat on the floor with his back resting against an
armchair.

“You should have seen
his face,” Hollie was saying, though it was hard to understand her
between the giggles. “I thought he was gonna cry.”

Jamie looked hurt.
“Well, I’d never been sent out of a lesson before. And I was only
twelve!”

“Why did she send you
out?” Felicity asked, grinning widely.

“Oh, oh! That’s the
best part,” Hollie said, shuffling on the sofa to face Felicity.
“He got sent out for talking, right -”

“But everyone was
talking!” Jamie cried defensively.

Hollie ignored him.
“The teacher said that it was because...” She paused deliberately.
“He was the closest!” With the revelation made public, she rolled
back on the sofa, laughing wildly and spilling her wine.

“Careful!” Jamie
reprimanded her, sitting up to examine the floor for drops of
fluid. “Dad’ll be pissed if you stain the carpet.”

Hollie pointed at her
brother. “You see?” she said to Felicity. “He’s such an old man.
Here, bro, I think you need some more wine -” And she promptly
began filling Jamie’s glass.

“You callin’ me an old
man?” Jamie asked, slurring his words slightly. “Well at least I
didn’t go to the toilet in my toy box!”

Hollie’s eyes widened
and she threw a cushion at Jamie, who fell over
backwards.

“And I wasn’t the one
who couldn’t hold my bladder on the school trip, either!” Jamie
declared.

“You absolute swine!”
Hollie screamed, launching more cushion missiles at Jamie. “We were
at primary school!”

Jamie tried to defend
himself from the attack and managed to catch Felicity’s eye. “She
totally wet herself, you know. Had to borrow a fresh pair of
knickers from a friend!”

“Jamie!” Hollie
cried.

Jamie then proceeded
to act out the embarrassing scene in an overly dramatic way,
complete with sound effects and a surprisingly good impersonation
of his sister. Both girls fell over themselves in laughter. When
they finally recovered, Hollie turned to Felicity.