‘Good luck finding Elly!’ Alice pulled a face to show that she didn’t expect to. Really she meant she didn’t want to and she was sure now that Doctor Ramsay understood this. He turned on his radio and mimed along to Tom Jones singing ‘It’s Not Unusual’, her Mum’s favourite. This time it was fine to laugh. Alice could still hear the music as Doctor Ramsay’s car whizzed out of sight round the corner of the lane to the White House. After that she forgot about Lucian. He was childish in comparison to Doctor Ramsay.
Alice shivered. The sun had gone in as dark clouds crept across the sky from the coast. Soon it would rain, like her Dad’s barometer had forecast. Doctor Ramsay hadn’t mentioned the cheese. She dared to hope Eleanor hadn’t told him what she had said, although it was worse not to be told off. Alice would definitely have told her Dad if Eleanor had been mean to her. She heard a rumble of thunder. She should get inside. She decided that next time it was her turn to hide she would slip away. Eleanor would be watching from the hedge so she made a feeble play of looking elsewhere, even checking the ditch in case Eleanor was lying there. Then thinking of Doctor Ramsay and dropping all pretence, Alice trotted up the lane to where she had last seen Eleanor. It was time to end the game.
The branches were knotted together with bindweed and brambles so she couldn’t find the hole. She was sure she was being spied on. Alice didn’t understand why Eleanor had to spy all the time. She hid behind cupboards, under tables, behind sofas, and wrote down what people said in a notebook. Apart from Gina no one said anything worth recording.
‘I can see you,’ Alice told the hedge. ‘I said, I can see you.’ She smiled to cover her discomfort: she had promised herself to be nice to Eleanor after yesterday. She nodded firmly to a twig with three leaves that hid Eleanor’s eyes.
The twig didn’t move.
‘About what I said about your Mum and the cheese.’ She spoke to a small bluish beetle that scurried from one leaf to the next on the twig. ‘I’m sorry.’ The beetle stopped.
Silence.
Alice felt better. It wasn’t polite to ignore an apology. Now it was evens. Now Eleanor had upset her in return.
Then Alice saw the hole and made a snap decision. She picked her way down the clumps of grass into the ditch and dragged the branches aside. She ignored the nettles that stung her ankles to come out on all fours in a space between the bushes, completely hidden from the road. By her nose was a wooden crate with French writing on the sides. It was draped with a faded red velvet curtain on which was placed a blotchy canvas cushion. The surprisingly homely feel was emphasised by a mess of comics and two empty bottles of Coke. The ground was carpeted with dried leaves and dry twigs. It was soft and spongy. Alice tentatively turned the cushion over, checking for insects and spiders, rather comforted by its fusty smell. She perched on the homemade seat. Now she had the perfect look out, through a natural window in the hedge. She would see anyone coming down the lane, but no one would see her. Eleanor must have sat here spying while she talked to Doctor Ramsay then got out when she saw Alice coming. Alice reflected that if she had been Eleanor, she would have waited until Alice had left the den and hidden there again. Eleanor would assume that Alice wouldn’t come back there.
She would be wrong.
Alice smiled to herself and hugged her knees tightly. She liked her own company and seldom felt lonely. In fact she resented having to play with other children, a resentment that had reached a conscious pitch with Eleanor. But as the minutes wore on, she began to feel lonely. She couldn’t dismiss this comfy little hole with its nice things to read. She wished Eleanor would stop hiding, and then they could sit together and spy on people going by. Alice would do the notes because her writing and her spelling were better. She bent down and rearranged the leaves and crushed branches to hide patches of soil and rubbed away at a mark on the box until it went. As she shuffled the comics into a straight pile, Alice made up a story for Eleanor.
There was once a magic cave heaped to the ceiling with treasure where for hundreds of years there had lived a wizard who cast spells on the people of the kingdom. He cured the sick and made miserable people happy. All the children loved him because he treated them like real grownups and cared what they thought. If they were upset then with a whoosh of his wand everything was made better.
Alice was sure Eleanor would like the story and became so absorbed in her narrative that it was a shock to remember that she was an intruder and that Eleanor would be angry to find Alice in her den without permission. She saw that her hands were dirty, and there was a tear in her dress.
Alice scrambled out of the ditch back to the road and ran towards the White House.
Eleanor was by the gates, singing Young Girl loudly with the wrong words and out of tune while slashing the hedge with a stick. Leaves ripped off and flew up in a shower. She was making no attempt to hide and seeing Alice waved the stick above her head like the Red Indian with a tomahawk she had been all yesterday morning. Alice thought Eleanor must be in a bad mood, but as she got nearer she saw that Eleanor was smiling. So she smiled too. They would sit in the garden and have tea. Alice would whisper to her about the wizard and offer to get some pretty material from her Mum to make curtains for the den. They could hang them from the branches, she would show Eleanor how. On another day they might even go back to the Tide Mills. Alice was dizzy with a torrent of bright ideas as she hastened up the lane towards the scruffy little girl dawdling along the hedgerow.
‘I gave up hiding as you took so long coming.’ Eleanor tossed her stick up in the air.
‘Careful, it might hit me.’ Alice jumped back as Eleanor failed to catch it and the stick clattered at Alice’s feet, just missing her head. Alice’s good feelings evaporated.
‘Doctor Ramsay said to wash your hands and come in for tea, I just saw him.’ Alice was safe because she knew for certain that Eleanor would never talk to Doctor Ramsay about her. If she did, Doctor Ramsay would never believe her because now he was Alice’s friend. Alice folded her arms over her chest and stalked past Eleanor up the circular drive to the big front door. Outside the gates Eleanor continued to hurl the stick and after the fourth time to catch it with easy precision.
Seven
When Gina offered Alice a slice of Lizzie’s fruit cake she, without thinking, still imbued with courage after her talk with Doctor Ramsay and now excited by the flower-pressing expedition he had promised that they would go on after tea, asked for a fork to eat it with. This had made Lucian and Eleanor hysterical with laughter. They tried to hide it. Alice stopped being hungry as she pretended not to see them gasping for breath. When they finally exploded, they said it was about their cat. She had wished Doctor Ramsay would stop them for after their chat earlier that afternoon she knew he would agree with her about the fork. It would even be all right if Gina gave her a friendly smile, but, one by one, Mrs Ramsay, Gina and finally Doctor Ramsay had gone away. Lucian and Eleanor played hunt the fork, doing mad dances on the lawn, around the table and climbing into the branches of the tree above making crow-noises that sounded like ‘fork’. Gina had gone after her mother, striding away in her bright white plimsolls, her hair flying out like a mane. Alice silently pleaded with her to come back. Through brimming eyes, she stared at the fearsome lump of cake on her plate, unable to leave the table without permission even though there was no one to ask or to mind. Gina had actually spoken to Alice when she and her Mum had first met the Ramsays on Friday morning. She had asked her if she liked her new home. Alice wanted to tell Gina how she missed their house in Newhaven, but that she loved her new bedroom and hearing the village shop bell tinkle when a customer opened the door. Instead she had managed no more than a nod.