Secret Friends Read online

  For Hannah

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter One

  She was the very first person I met on my very first day at Dale Road Secondary School. We bumped into each other at the door of the hall where we’d been sent to wait for our class teachers.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said.

  ‘Me too,’ I said.

  She was much taller than me and quite thin. She had a bush of brown curly hair and pale brown skin which was dotted all over with freckles. But what you noticed straight away was her ears. They were large and stuck out away from her head. Like bats’ ears.

  ‘My name’s Lucy,’ I said.

  ‘I’m Rafaella,’ she said.

  I don’t know what got into me. Perhaps it was the nervousness of starting a new school. Perhaps it was the way she looked down at me, a little aloof, as if I was an interesting insect miles below her.

  ‘I can’t call you that,’ I said bursting into loud laughter. ‘I’m going to call you Earwig. Eerie-Eerie-Earwig.’

  She flushed up to the roots of her hair and turned away.

  I could tell that tears had sprouted behind her eyelids, but she wasn’t going to let me see them.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said awkwardly. ‘Rafaella’s a nice name actually. Sort of unusual, but so what?’

  It was too late. Other people, standing silently nearby, not yet knowing how to talk to each other, had overheard us.

  I saw one boy nudge another and look up at Rafaella’s closed pale face.

  ‘Earwig,’ he whispered, and they both giggled.

  I’ve often thought I could have stopped it then and there, stood up for her, got things back on to the right track, but I didn’t. I just waited, standing and fiddling with the pleats of my new navy uniform skirt, letting the laughs and the sideways glances go on round the hall.

  I’m going to regret that moment till the day I die.

  Chapter Two

  It’s crazy starting at a new school. For days you feel so new and lost it’s as if you’ve wandered into a foreign country where you can’t speak the language. Then, all of a sudden, everything falls into place and you feel you’ve been there for ever.

  The people fall into place too. It doesn’t take long to work out who’s going to be popular and who’s going to be out of it, who’s going to get into trouble and who’s going to be a teacher’s pet.

  It was obvious, from that very first day, that Rafaella was going to be an outsider, on the edge of everything, not liked. No one actually hurt her or even teased her much. They just ignored her and left her out of things.

  ‘What do you want, Earwig?’ a group of girls would say, as Rafaella approached them.

  They would stop their conversation to turn and look at her coldly, and she would blush, as she always did, mumble ‘Nothing,’ and turn away.

  I was in those groups sometimes, trying to talk to Kate and Sophie, the two super-popular girls in the class. And I’d watch Rafaella and think, Not like that, you idiot. Smile. Say something cool. Don’t show you care.

  But after school it was different. Rafaella’s house was quite near mine and we both had to get off at the same bus stop and walk down the same long road. For the first three weeks of term, we walked one behind the other and neither of us showed by a word or a look that we knew the other was there.

  Then, one afternoon, she suddenly ran up behind me and said very quickly, ‘Come round to my house for tea.’

  And I was so taken by surprise that I said, ‘Yes.’

  I regretted it at once, of course, and I started talking in a stiff, short way so as not to appear too friendly while she led me down a side road towards a small old house behind a high wooden fence. She didn’t seem to notice that I was being so distant. She was as excited as a puppy who’s just unearthed a bone.

  I felt even more uncomfortable when she opened the front door and I followed her inside.

  The house was unlike any I’d been in before. Strange, beautiful pictures hung on the walls and old rugs covered the floors. From the front room I could hear the sound of sad music and I smelled spicy food.

  I wanted to turn and go home at once, but Rafaella said, ‘Come in here,’ and pushed me into the front room.

  Although it was sunny outside, the curtains were half drawn. A red shaded table lamp was on and by its light I saw nothing but books. They were stacked on shelves up to the ceiling, balanced on the old piano, piled up on the floor.

  Then I saw the man. He had a white beard and was sitting in the window, a rug over his knees, his glasses slipping down over his nose. He must have been eighty years old at least.

  ‘So,’ he said, and I could tell at once that he had a foreign accent. ‘Rafaella has brought home a friend.’

  He smiled and stretched out a long thin hand, so I had to cross the room and go up to him and shake it though I didn’t want to.

  ‘Her name’s Lucy, Dad,’ said Rafaella.

  The old man’s hand was surprisingly firm and strong.

  ‘You think I’m too old to be the father of this little girl?’ he said smiling at me and reading my thoughts so accurately that I blushed.

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ I stammered, and in fact, now that he was looking up at me, I could see that he had Rafaella’s deep set eyes, though his were pale blue, not brown, and that the ears under his bushy white hair were huge.

  ‘Look,’ he said, as if he was carrying on a conversation that had been interrupted. ‘This picture, so beautiful, so extraordinary, you think so?’

  He pointed at the open book on his lap, and I looked down and saw whirling suns and flaming clouds, horsemen trailing banners and tigers leaping.

  I wanted to look at it more closely, but Rafaella said, ‘She’s come for tea, Dad, not for pictures,’ and he shut the book obediently.

  ‘Biscuits and buns, better than art, no?’ And he winked at me.

  I laughed.

  He’s really nice, I thought, but I couldn’t imagine him being a dad. There’s no chance my dad would sit looking at a book filled with pictures in the middle of the afternoon, or at any other time of the day come to think of it.

  ‘Darling! Here you are!’

  A little woman, dark skinned and with black curly hair, had come into the room. ‘How was the torture chamber today?’

  She hadn’t seen me.

  Rafaella pulled me forward.

  ‘This is Lucy, Mum,’ she said. ‘I’ve brought her home for tea.’

  ‘How wonderful! How lovely!’

  Rafaella’s mother seemed really pleased, as if I was a princess or something. She smiled with her whole face, patting my arm with her soft hand.

  She looked as young as my mum, but different in every other way. Her clothes were foreign and so was her voice, though not in the same way as her husband’s. She might have been from some southern or eastern country. I couldn’t tell.

  ‘How lucky,’ she said with a chuckle that came from deep in her throat. ‘I made sweets today.’

  We had tea in the kitchen, sitting round the little table, nibbling at strange things made of honey and nuts. I’d never seen things like that before. I tried one, but I wasn’t sure of it and I didn’t want any more, so Rafaella fetched out a packet of biscuits and I ate a lot of those.

  The three of them kept pouring more tea into my cup and smiling at me and asking me questions as if I was a strange being from outer space, as if I was the first outsider who had ever walked into their house.

&nbs
p; ‘Oh! Your mother!’ said Rafaella’s mother suddenly. ‘She’ll be worried so much that you haven’t come home!’

  ‘No she won’t,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t finish her shift till six.’

  I left at last, full of tea and biscuits, feeling good. Rafaella and her mum waved to me as I walked away, standing with their arms round each other’s waists.

  They really love each other, I thought enviously. They like being with each other. They’re really nice.

  Chapter Three

  Kate and Sophie used to hang round the front of the new art block. There’s a nice place there, a fence with round metal bars that you can sit on. I used to be there all the time too, laughing when they laughed, listening to everything they said.

  The strange thing was that I didn’t even like Kate and Sophie much. They were funny, I suppose, always ready for a laugh, but spiteful too. I used to have to watch my back all the time in case the laughter turned on me.

  I don’t know why I spent so much time trying to get in with them. I didn’t later on. I made new friends. Real friends.

  We were there one day watching Kate, who was perched on the top bar, doing her impression of Miss Lewis. We were all egging her on.

  ‘Go on, Kate. Do the bit where she falls in love with Mr Warburg.’

  ‘Yeah. When she says, “Oh, Harold …”’

  ‘What?’ I couldn’t help interrupting. ‘Mr Warburg’s not really called Harold, is he?’

  ‘Course he is. Everyone knows that. Shut up, Lucy. Go on, Kate.’

  ‘Oh, Ha-Ha-Harold,’ Kate started. She put her arms round an imaginary man, closed her eyes and pretended to kiss him, screwing up her lips and making sucking noises. We all doubled over with laughter.

  Suddenly I saw Rafaella coming round the corner of the art block towards us. I frowned and looked away. I didn’t mind being friends with her out of school. In fact, I’d gone to her house several times. But in school it was different. You were a social outcast if you were seen with Earwig, and I didn’t want to risk it.

  Kate was contorting herself into even funnier positions.

  ‘Ooh, Harold!’ she was cooing. ‘My da-a-arling!’

  Rafaella’s shoes crunched on the gravel path behind Kate’s back.

  ‘Oh, hello, Miss Lewis,’ Sophie said loudly, winking at me.

  I smiled feebly.

  Kate straightened herself up at once and looked round, her face scarlet, her lips visibly struggling to find words of excuse. We all burst out laughing.

  ‘I might have known it,’ said Kate glaring furiously at Rafaella. ‘Trust you, creeping up on me, pretending to be Miss Lewis. Buzz off, Earwig.’

  ‘Hey,’ I said, shocked at the unfairness of it. ‘It was Sophie who …’

  They both looked at me, then through me, as if I wasn’t there.

  ‘You coming?’ said Sophie linking her arm through Kate’s. ‘Let’s go round by the tennis courts. It’s not so crowded there.’

  I looked at Rafaella. She had said nothing and her face was closed. It looked hard, as if a shell had formed over it.

  ‘See you later,’ I said lamely and, feeling treacherous, I followed the others, flicking my hair back over my ears as I had watched Kate doing a hundred times before.

  Rafaella ran after me and before I’d caught the others up she darted in front of me, blocking my way.

  ‘Why?’ she burst out, and her voice sounded tight as if she was trying not to cry. ‘Why do they all hate me so much?’

  ‘They don’t hate you,’ I said awkwardly. ‘It’s just …’

  ‘Just what? I don’t smell, do I? I’ve never been mean to them. I’ve never hit any of them, or told on them, or stolen their things …’

  ‘They don’t hate you,’ I said again, ‘but you’re different at school. Sort of closed up and touchy.’

  She wasn’t listening.

  ‘It’s because of my mum and dad being different,’ she said.

  ‘No, I don’t think it’s that.’

  She was worked up, twisting her hands, her voice catching.

  ‘It’s my ears, isn’t it? It’s these,’ and she put both hands up to her ears and tugged at them as if she was trying to pull them off.

  I felt terrible then. I remembered that first day of term and I wanted to tell her how sorry I’d been ever since. But I couldn’t find the words.

  Tears were rolling down her cheeks now.

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ she said. ‘The way they look past me. The way they ignore me. It’s like being dead. Like I’m the living dead.’

  Chapter Four

  I went home with Rafaella after school. That was the day I met her older brother. We had gone up to her bedroom as soon as we got in and had started looking at some clothes.

  Rafaella was completely different at home. When she was at school it was as if she had been enclosed in one of those hard cases caterpillars make for themselves, but at home she came out like a butterfly, brilliantly coloured and full of movement. She looked like another person. You only noticed her bright dancing eyes. You never saw those round protruding ears.

  She had pulled out of a drawer a piece of the finest, softest white material embroidered in bright colours round the edges.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘You’re supposed to wrap it round your head,’ she said.

  ‘What, me? Are you joking? I’d look daft all tied up like a mummy.’

  ‘No, look. I’ll show you.’

  She took the thing out of my hands and tied it round my head so that all my hair disappeared. My hair’s quite long now and it falls over my forehead and dangles down over my shoulders. But when it had all been tucked away, I looked amazing. I could see the shape of my face in a way I’d never seen it before. It looked completely grown up and even beautiful, like a photograph of a sculpture in one of her dad’s books.

  ‘Where did you get it from?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s my mum’s. It’s sort of like a national costume. What they wear where she comes from.’

  I never asked what that country was. Somehow, I didn’t want to know.

  Rafaella’s parents seemed like magic people to me and their house was an Aladdin’s cave, full of treasures whose meaning I couldn’t understand.

  Rafaella was rifling through a chest of drawers, throwing things out onto her bed. At last she pulled out a thick metal pendant with a dull silver sheen, cut all over in a criss-cross pattern.

  ‘Here, put this on,’ she said. ‘Then let’s go down and show Mum.’

  The pendant was on a chain. I clasped it round my neck.

  ‘I feel like a complete idiot,’ I said.

  Her eyes were dancing with laughter and pleasure.

  ‘No, no, you look brilliant! Mum’ll love it,’ and she pushed me towards the door.

  I was down the stairs and half way to the kitchen when the front door crashed open. A boy came in.

  He was like Rafaella, only taller and even thinner, about eighteen I guessed, with the same pale brown skin and intense dark eyes.

  Rafaella’s mother came running out of the kitchen.

  ‘Dani, what happened?’ she said anxiously. ‘Did you get the job?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  He didn’t look at her. He was looking at me.

  ‘Who’s this?’ he said, and his voice wasn’t friendly. ‘Why’s she wearing Mum’s things?’

  ‘She’s Lucy. She’s from my school,’ Rafaella said frowning warningly at him.

  ‘From that school? Then you’re one of those stuck-up kids who won’t go round with my sister! Know what I’d like to do to all of you?’

  ‘Shut up, Dani!’ said Rafaella furiously, ‘Lucy’s my friend!’

  ‘Oh, sorry, I’m sure,’ Dani said and as he pushed by me on the way to the kitchen, I felt the heat of his anger as if a fireball had passed by.

  ‘Who is there? What is wrong?’ Rafaella’s father called out from the sitting room. ‘Is it Lucy? Come and
see me, Lucy!’

  But I was scarlet with embarrassment. I ripped the headdress off, pushed the necklace into Rafaella’s hand and groped around for my coat and bag.

  ‘Got to go,’ I said. ‘Homework,’ and ran out of the house.

  ‘Come back, Lucy,’ Rafaella called out after me, but I didn’t stop.

  Anger spurred me down the street and I ran as fast as I could.

  What did he want to shout at me like that for? I thought. I haven’t done anything. He’s stuck up himself.

  Then I remembered how he had seen me in the headdress and the way his eyes had burned with contempt.

  ‘Suppose he thought I was making fun,’ I muttered, and I burned with shame and embarrassment instead.

  I slowed down to a walk and by the time I got home my mixed feelings still weren’t sorted out. I was only sure of one thing. I wished I had a brother who’d care as much about what happened to me as Dani cared for Rafaella.

  Chapter Five

  I went down with flu that weekend and missed a week of school. It was miserable being at home on my own all the time, though my gran came round nearly every day to get me something to eat and keep me company. All I did most of the time was lie on the sofa and watch TV until I was so bored I hated the sight of it.

  When I got back to school, still feeling weak in the legs, Rafaella hardly spoke to me. She’d retreated into her hard shell again and gazed down at me with her distant look, like a timid giraffe preparing to bolt from a hungry leopard.

  By now it was nearly Christmas time and there were only two weeks to go until the end of term. Miss Lewis had organized a party from the school to sing carols in the town centre one Friday after school.

  ‘Do your bit for charity,’ she said to the class brightly and I saw Kate and Sophie exchange speaking looks. They wouldn’t have been seen dead in school uniform round a Christmas tree, singing.

  I volunteered. I liked doing things after school. It was better than going home to our empty house and Rafaella hadn’t invited me back to hers since I’d had flu. I’d had the feeling that she was avoiding me on the way home too. She didn’t make a thing about it. She just never seemed to be at the bus stop at the same time as me.