“I lit the fire myself today,” says Rowan, with a slight air of pride. “My shirt caught fire, but it wasn’t one of my good ones.”
“I can smell it,” sniffs Snowdrop. “Did you smoke yourself out? I told you to clear the grating before you put the kindling on. Your eyes look a bit pink. Did you take the ash out? Mum gets cross if you don’t. And do you need more firelighters? I brought some more anyway. They’re under the croissants. That’s okay isn’t it? Are they poisonous? Will it make the croissants taste funny? Where does the word ‘croissant’ come from, uncle Rowan? There’s a girl at school says her mum calls them crab-rolls. She says they look like them. They don’t, do they? You won’t die from eating them, will you? I’ve got a book on chemicals …,”
Rowan smiles and puts his covered hands to his ears. “Dippy, you‘re going to make my head explode.”
Snowdrop peers past him through the open door. It’s smoky inside the cottage; the grey air peppered with the greasy scents of bacon grease and spilled red wine. Her eyes shoot to the stain on the rag-rug in front of the open fire. Red wine and burned cloth. A small, rather pitiful flame attempts to devour a large stack of A4 pages and a sheaf of newspapers. The fire gives off a pitiful amount of light and makes the cottage feel gloomy: turning the windows into mirrors. The walls seem closer today than when the sun shines. The creak of the gate sounds more threatening, like violin strings played with a saw. Snowdrop wipes her feet on the step and slides into the room like sunlight. She crosses to the far wall and flicks on a standard lamp with a gaudy, seventies-style shade. Yellow light fills the poky room: picks out the wooden ceiling joists, the soft flower-patterned wallpaper; the random smattering of watercolour landscapes and Victorian school photographs in their mismatched frames. A pile of books has toppled over on the little table, knocking dirty glasses and crumb-covered plates onto the flagged floor.
“Nothing we can’t sort out,” says Snowdrop, brimming with optimism. She looks at her uncle, slouched disconsolately in the doorway, and puts her head on one side as if talking to a younger child. “You’re doing so well. You’ve had no practice at this. Who could cope with having both hands out of action, eh? Especially when everything they’re good at involves being pretty nifty with their fingers.”
Rowan chews his lip. “That sounded vaguely encouraging,” he says, moodily. “Have you heard somebody else say that?”
Snowdrop busies herself arranging papers, muttering something about an overhead conversation between her two mums. “Typing, drinking, fighting – that’s what Jo said. Said something about it being like Usain Bolt losing use of his feet….,”
“That’s a clever line,” he says, begrudgingly.
“And no matter what they say, I know you’re working hard here. Just because you won’t tell anybody your idea for book two, it doesn’t mean you haven’t got one. I mean, your deadline’s Christmas, isn’t it, so you’d be pretty daft to not even have a title by this stage!”
He listens to her happy life. Manages a smile. “Yeah,” he grumbles. “That would be the work of a fucking idiot.”
The voice, thoroughly disappointed: Yes, my son.
2
Monday, September 19, 1986
Silver Birch Academy, Wasdale Valley
11.41am
Violet peers up at the bruised sky - the low clouds pressing down upon the valley like a boot heel. She tells herself the specks of purple and yellow are sunflowers and crocuses. Looks down at the reddish stones around her and tries to see something other than blood. It doesn’t work. She’s only ten, and hasn’t yet learned to believe her own lies.
She looks across the stark, still surface of Wast Water. Makes out the shape of the school, emerging from the gloom like an iceberg. Pictures the big wooden door. Imagines her way inside: high ceilings; bookcases; triple-tiered bunk beds and big comfy sofas capable of swallowing the unwary.
Violet is beginning to regret slipping away from the rest of her party and taking herself off to this isolated spot. According to Daddy, Violet makes lots of bad decisions. Violet is a ‘difficult child’. A ‘problem child’. A ‘naughty girl’. Violet is ‘Trouble with a capital T’. Nor, apparently, is she still pretty enough to charm her way out of trouble. Apparently, she has tried it on one too many times. Apparently, it’s time to make big changes before she gets too far down a road from which she won’t be able to come back. Violet hopes that Daddy won’t be cross at her for going off on her own. She also hopes that he’ll be furious. Apparently, she’s a Contrary Mary. When she’s in charge, she intends to take that stupid word out of the Dictionary. Apparently, such grandiose claims are half her problem.
Daddy is a busy man. According to Mummy, he’s ‘well-to-do’. He’s from ‘old money’. He makes their lives easier and it’s the least they can all bloody do to act grateful and give him a moment’s peace, for God’s sake…
This school is Mum’s choice. If Daddy had his way she’d be attending one of the boaters-and-knickerbockers places down in the stockbroker belt. But Mum likes Silver Birch and eventually, Mum tends to get her own way. Daddy’s done a lot of sighing and snorting, letting out little breaths of contempt each time the head teacher has spoken about the school’s holistic approach to ‘whole child’ education. He’d seemed almost evangelical as he spoke of his pride in helping a whole generation of children how to become ‘citizens of the world’ and to appreciate their ‘inner lives’.
“Hippy claptrap,” muttered Daddy, as if he hadn’t already read the brochure cover to cover.
“…. eventually everybody will be taught this way, and even the word ‘taught’ is something I have issue with. This is of course our flagship school and two further academies are on the verge of opening in the next 18 months. Obviously we live in a capitalist world and as such we have to make sure we balance the books but it’s important you share our vision that all funds go straight back into education. We’re trying to create a family here – that’s why we keep the numbers small. For those pupils lucky enough to be boarding with us it’s a real home-from-home mentality. I actually feel very jealous – this is going to be the start of a wonderful chapter in your children’s lives…”
Violet had stopped listening around the time Mr Tunstall had told them that maths was interchangeable on the curriculum with art, drama, homeopathy or modern philosophy. At her last school she was deemed an exceptional student – advanced in all aspects of schooling and extremely literate for somebody who turns 11 on their next birthday. Where she struggles is socially. She can be a boisterous girl. She loses her temper; gets easily upset. When she was small she used to pull her hair until it came out. Mum says she has too many feelings inside her – that’s she’s ‘highly strung’ and ‘neurotic’ and ‘trying to find her path: Daddy calls her a bloody nuisance. Silver Birch is supposed to be a fresh start. They keep promising her things will be different here. They tell her she’ll find peace. She doesn’t believe them. They don’t understand that she’s two people. She’s Violet Sheehan. She’s clever and sweet and caring and artistic. She’s also Violet’s shadow. Those who have witnessed her temper say it is like watching a fight between hissing cats. She is all claws and spit and venom.