Secret Friends Read online

  To my astonishment, Rafaella volunteered too. It was the first time she’d done anything out of the ordinary at school. She’d been different all that day, full of suppressed excitement.

  ‘Glad you’re coming,’ I said a bit shyly, not quite knowing how to break the ice. ‘I didn’t want to do it without anyone I know.’

  She smiled at me and I was surprised and relieved to see that she was wearing her home face, the open, lively, happy one.

  ‘It’s going to be fun,’ she said, and she twirled around on her dancer’s feet.

  ‘What are you looking so pleased about?’ I said as we walked together behind Miss Lewis down the hill towards the town centre. I’d probably have walked with her anyway, at least, I hope I would, but it made it much easier that Kate and Sophie weren’t around. In fact, Rafaella and I were the only two from our class who had volunteered, so I could relax for once.

  She turned to smile at me and I was taken aback by the blaze in her eyes.

  ‘You don’t know how pleased I am!’ she said, jumping up to touch the branch of a tree that leaned out across the pavement.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘You’ll see. You’re going to get a surprise after Christmas. A big surprise.’

  ‘What do you mean? What surprise?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. It mightn’t come out all right. I don’t dare tell anyone in case it doesn’t happen.’

  I went on at her, but she wouldn’t say another word. She just shut her mouth and shook her head and beamed at me, her eyes full of laughter.

  We stood round the Christmas tree for what seemed like hours, singing ‘Away In a Manger’ and ‘O Come All Ye

  Faithful’ until our feet were dead with cold and our voices hoarse.

  We took turns to rattle the money buckets that people were supposed to put the cash into. The buckets were a bit optimistic, I thought. The money we got would hardly have filled a teacup. But Miss Lewis was pleased.

  ‘Thank you very much, everyone,’ she said. ‘You’ve been magnificent.’

  She came up to Rafaella and touched her shoulder.

  ‘I hope it all goes very well, dear,’ she said.

  ‘What? Why? What’s going to go well?’ I burst out as soon as Miss Lewis had gone.

  Rafaella shook her head.

  ‘You won’t make me tell,’ she said, ‘not even if you torture me.’

  She swung her bag off her shoulder and dug down into it.

  ‘Here’s your Christmas card,’ she said.

  I took it.

  ‘Thanks, but it’s a bit early, isn’t it? We don’t break up till the end of the week.’

  She pulled her bag back up onto her shoulder.

  ‘I’m not going to be around for the rest of term,’ she said. ‘This is my last day in school.’

  ‘What? Are you going on holiday, or something?’

  ‘Yes. I’m going away.’

  I turned away, offended.

  ‘Thanks for not telling me.’

  She shook my arm.

  ‘I couldn’t, Lucy. I can’t tell anyone. Something’s going to happen to me and it’s going to change my life. You’re the first person I’ll tell, the very first, when it’s all over. I promise.’

  ‘OK. Suit yourself. See you next term then.’

  I wasn’t going home straight away. I’d arranged to meet my gran at the café so we could start the search for a Christmas present for Mum. I started walking away.

  ‘Yes, see you!’ she called out after me. ‘Have a great Christmas. Don’t be angry with me!’

  I turned then with a brief wave and a smile. She made a tall dark shape against the tinselled, twinkling cone of the huge tree.

  I went off to the café feeling let down. It wasn’t Rafaella’s secret that disturbed me. I realized I was disappointed. I’d been looking forward to seeing her in the Christmas holidays, to going to her house again, feeling its welcoming warmth and glowing light, eating the honey sweets her mum made that I’d really grown to like, listening to her Dad’s gentle stories. I wanted very much to see Dani again too, and wipe the contempt out of his eyes.

  Chapter Six

  I went around feeling angry and rejected for two or three days, telling myself that I didn’t miss Rafaella at all. But the truth is that I did, even during school, where I had always found her company embarrassing.

  Then, three days before Christmas, I walked down her street. There was a light on in the sitting room. I recognized the red glow of her father’s old lamp, but the other windows were dark and I imagined him sitting in his big chair in the corner by the window, alone in the house, smiling as he turned the pages of one of his books and listening to his lilting music.

  It was late in the afternoon but the shops were still open. I had told myself that I wouldn’t bother sending Rafaella a Christmas card, but I suddenly wanted to be in touch with her and her family and sending a Christmas card was the only way to do it.

  I hurried to the newsagent on the corner of the street. Their selection wasn’t brilliant, but I found one I thought she’d like. It was of a Christmas tree, a huge green cone covered in tinsel and twinkling lights with a beautiful golden star at the top.

  I bought it, then I saw, on a shelf nearby, a row of funny little fluffy bears, red, yellow and blue. They were tiny, only a few centimeters tall, but they looked so cheeky and pleased with themselves that on an impulse I bought a blue one.

  ‘Mind if I borrow a pen?’ I said to the lady behind the counter and she pushed one over to me. I wrote, ‘With love from Lucy, have a great Christmas whatever it is you’re doing,’ put it into the envelope with the little bear, wrote ‘Rafaella’ on it, and went back out into the dark street.

  I felt quite nervous as I ran up to the front door and pushed the card in through the letterbox. I was scared that Dani would come up behind me and look at me that way again.

  Quite honestly, I don’t remember much about Christmas. Nothing special happened. Mum got into a great state about the cooking, as usual, and Gran came round to help. I had some nice presents, clothes mostly, and we watched some good films.

  I kept wondering about Rafaella and her surprise, and about what Christmas would be like in their house. I imagined it would be exciting, with exotic presents wrapped in richly coloured paper and piles of hot, highly-spiced food, and ceremonies by candlelight. Then I wondered if they’d celebrate Christmas at all. Perhaps they didn’t, wherever it was they came from.

  The thought made me feel better. Less envious.

  Chapter Seven

  I was glad when the holidays were over, to be honest. I always am. It’s so boring once Mum goes back to work. Even when she’s at home we don’t seem to know what to say to each other. I’m always pleased to get back into the hearty, crowded rowdiness of school.

  ‘Oh, Gawd, look at me, all those mince pies have given me spots,’ said Kate, as she stood in front of the mirror in the cloakroom, inspecting her perfect skin.

  ‘Hey, Soph, let’s see your brace,’ some others said, crowding round Sophie and laughing as she bared her newly metalled teeth at them.

  The bell rang. I looked round for Rafaella but she wasn’t there. Disappointed, I followed the others to our classroom.

  Miss Lewis took a long time coming and we began to muck about. Some people started drawing faces, and worse, with their fingers in the condensation on the windows. We all fell about laughing.

  ‘She’s coming!’ someone yelled, and they rubbed out the drawings with their sleeves and scuttled to their seats.

  Miss Lewis didn’t need to calm us down. One look at her face silenced the class at once. She’d been crying. And behind her was Mr Samson, the head teacher. We looked at them both, agog with curiosity.

  Mr Samson cleared his throat.

  ‘Is there a special friend of Rafaella’s in this class?’ he said.

  Nobody moved. I felt my heart begin to beat faster. I was a special friend of Rafaella’s, the best she’d got in that
class anyway. I was sick of denying it. There and then I made a new resolution. Social death or not, I’d stop pretending. I’d be her friend at school just as much as I was at home.

  I stood up. Everyone swivelled round to look at me.

  ‘Go with Mr Samson, dear,’ said Miss Lewis. ‘He’s got something to tell you.’

  The walk down the corridor to Mr Samson’s office wasn’t far but it seemed like miles that day. I couldn’t imagine what had happened. Was this Rafaella’s surprise? Why was Mr Samson so silent? Something like dread began to grip my heart.

  I’d never been into Mr Samson’s office before. His secretary watched us as we walked past.

  ‘Bring Lucy a cup of tea,’ he said to her.

  I couldn’t believe this. I was actually sitting in an armchair in Mr Samson’s office, stirring sugar into a cup of tea.

  Mr Samson leaned forward in his chair towards me.

  ‘Did Rafaella tell you what she was going to do in the holidays?’ he said.

  ‘No, sir.’

  I felt shy and awkward being in there with him. I could hardly concentrate on what he was saying.

  ‘She only told me I was going to get a big surprise and that she was really excited about something. She wouldn’t tell me anything else.’

  ‘She went into hospital,’ Mr Samson said. ‘For an operation.’

  The dread was growing in my chest, making me feel cold.

  ‘An operation? But she wasn’t ill.’

  ‘No. She wasn’t ill. It wasn’t that kind of operation. It was what they call “corrective surgery”.’

  I looked at him blankly.

  ‘Perhaps you noticed, Lucy, that Rafaella had rather large ears?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I expect she got a bit teased about it now and then, didn’t she?’ He was speaking very gently.

  ‘Yes. They – we – called her “Earwig”.’

  ‘I know.’

  He cleared his throat. I realized with surprise that he didn’t know how to go on.

  ‘The operation was to pin back and reduce the size of her ears. It’s quite a common thing. It would have changed the way she looked. She was desperate to have it done. Quite desperate.’

  I waited. I was so cold I was shivering.

  ‘Lucy,’ Mr Samson said, ‘I’m afraid this will be a dreadful shock to you. Something went wrong when she was under the anaesthetic. She didn’t pull through.’

  I couldn’t take in what he was saying.

  ‘What do you mean, sir? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Rafaella’s heart gave way during the operation. There was a defect no one knew anything about. She passed away.’

  Everything around me looked strange. The table, the chair, the cup of tea, Mr Samson. I’m in a dream, I thought. I’ll wake up in a minute.

  ‘You mean – she’s dead?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He sat there looking at me, not knowing what to say, expecting me to burst into tears or to start shouting or something. But I was frozen stiff and the ice inside me had hardened into rock. He was still speaking.

  I found it hard to listen.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘if ever you want to come and talk, the door of my office will be open. Don’t try to carry this alone, Lucy. Talk to your other friends. Have a good cry. It was a terrible, tragic accident, a one in a million chance. No one’s to blame. It was no one’s fault, no one’s fault at all.’

  Chapter Eight

  What’s worse, guilt or grief? I felt them both, deep down inside, but it was the guilt that really hurt.

  Mr Samson said I could go home for the rest of the day. It seemed like a good idea. I didn’t want to face the others. I went to Gran’s house but she was out, so I spent the rest of the morning wandering around town on my own.

  The Christmas tree had gone, of course, with all the rest of the tinselly stuff, and the sales were on.

  The place was busy. I stood near where I’d last seen Rafaella, in the shopping mall where we’d sung carols together, and I tried to remember her face. The funny thing was that I couldn’t see it clearly. I could only see her outline, as it had been against the tree. It seemed incredible, impossible, that she had gone forever.

  Suddenly, in the distance, I saw a girl in a navy coat walking away from me round a corner.

  It’s her! I thought with a shock of relief. Mr Samson’s got it wrong. He made a mistake.

  I darted after the girl, pushing past irritated shoppers, and when I came round the corner I nearly bumped into her. She was standing still, looking into a shop window. She wasn’t Rafaella. She didn’t even look like her.

  I sat down on a bench and my chest began to heave.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ I kept saying under my breath. ‘Sorry for not standing up for you. Sorry for not being your friend at school. Sorry for calling you Earwig.’

  It was hot in the shopping mall. I knew my face was bright red, from the heat and the tears. People were looking at me.

  ‘What’s that child doing out of school?’ I heard a woman say.

  I’ll have to face them sometime, I thought. Might as well get it over with, so, slowly, I walked back towards the school.

  It was lunch break. Everyone was out in the playground. They stood around in little knots talking quietly.

  I saw Kate and Sophie at once. They were red-eyed.

  Hypocrites, I thought. Murderers.

  I was going to walk past them, but Kate said, ‘Oh, Lucy, isn’t it awful?’ and she looked so upset that I stopped.

  ‘We had no idea,’ Sophie said, ‘that she was going to have an operation. Why didn’t she say?’

  ‘It would have been great if she’d had her ears fixed,’ said Kate. ‘She might have turned out really pretty.’

  ‘You must be feeling awful,’ said Sophie, squeezing my arm. ‘We didn’t know poor old Earwig was such a good friend of yours.’

  I shook her hand off.

  ‘Don’t!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t ever call her that again! Her name was Rafaella, right? Rafaella!’

  Sophie was offended.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘No need to go crazy on me. You started it. You called her Earwig on the first day of term, remember?’

  I was crying again.

  ‘Of course I remember! Don’t you understand? It was why she died. She couldn’t bear her ears. She felt awful about them. She thought that was why no one liked her. She thought that if she had them fixed she’d be popular. I know it was me that started everyone calling her Earwig. I feel like a murderer.’

  There was silence.

  Then Kate said quietly, ‘It wasn’t you, Lu. It was the rest of us. We were much worse than you. And it wasn’t just calling her Earwig either. We were awful to her. We’re all murderers.’

  Sophie had been kicking at a pile of gravel with the toe of her shoe. Now she said angrily, ‘That’s daft. You heard what Miss Lewis said. Ear– I mean, Rafaella had a heart defect. She’d have died anyway if she’d had her tonsils out, or got flu or something. We never killed her.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kate, ‘you’re right. We didn’t really, but I wish we’d been nicer to her, all the same.’

  Chapter Nine

  It was amazing how quickly the gap that Rafaella left at school closed over. For a few days everyone was rather solemn and unusually nice to me, then they forgot, and two weeks later it was as if Rafaella had never even been at the school. I needn’t have worried that people would go on calling her Earwig. They never spoke about her at all.

  But the gap didn’t close over inside me. It grew deeper and wider. It bled. I would come home to our cold dark house and wish and wish that I was still a welcome guest in her warm bright one.

  After a while school wasn’t too bad. I made a few new friends and I didn’t feel the need to follow the crowd any more. But at night I had to drive the image of Rafaella out of my mind before I could get to sleep. I only ever thought of her
as sad and angry. I never remembered the good times we had had.

  One night I dreamed about her so vividly that I remember the dream still.

  She was at home with her family, happy and lively, but the room slowly changed. The red shaded lamp disappeared, the books and pictures and rugs faded away and we were all at a cold dingy railway station.

  ‘I’ve got to go away,’ Rafaella said as she climbed into a dark train.

  ‘And it’s your fault, your fault,’ her mum and dad and Dani all said together, pointing their fingers accusingly at me.

  When I woke up my pillow was wet with tears. The dream was so real that I couldn’t shake it off. I had a desperate desire to see the three of them, to tell them I was sorry, that I had truly wanted to be Rafaella’s friend.

  My parents were asleep, but that wasn’t surprising. They always slept late on a Saturday morning. I scrambled into my clothes, left a note for them and ran down the road to the familiar little house behind the high wooden fence, anxious to get there before I lost my courage.

  Chapter Ten

  There was a long silence after I’d pressed the doorbell.

  They’ve gone away, I thought, and a dreadful, cold desolation wrapped itself round me.

  Then the door suddenly opened.

  I’d expected to see Rafaella’s dad, leaning on his stick, or her mum, wiping her hands on a towel, but it was Dani who stood there. He was still in his pyjamas and his hair was rumpled as if he’d only just woken up.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here? It’s only half past seven.’

  I hadn’t looked at the time. I hadn’t known it was so early.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t realize. Sorry to bother you. It wasn’t that important anyway.’

  He shot out a long arm and pulled me in through the front door.

  ‘You’re freezing,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you put on a coat? Here, take this.’