‘Come out, come out, wherever you are,’ said Mr Telford in a singsong voice.
It was to Nesta these words were playfully addressed. Mr Telford had asked her to read. She was not looking out of the window, or talking or doing anything wrong at all. She even seemed to be paying attention, but all the words in the book and all the words that were being spoken as part of the lesson were passing her by unobserved.
‘Come on, Nesta,’ said Mr Telford, a little less patiently, ‘read the next paragraph – “One evening just before the new moon was due . . .” Do get a move on.’
Nesta came out of her thoughts, blushed and gave Mr Telford a nervous smile. She had lost her place and didn’t know where to begin.
‘Page 40, fifth line down. I hope you’ll decide to stay with us for the rest of the lesson. I won’t ask you where you’ve been,’ said the teacher. Nesta was one of his best pupils. This aberration was unusual.
With an effort, Nesta read the next page and was relieved when told she could stop. Mr Telford made no further comment on her inattention. It was as well the lesson was English and not History with the sharp-tongued Mr Fielder. If he had come out with the usual, caustic, ‘Which planet are you from?’ or even, ‘Welcome to this world!’ it might have been more than Nesta could bear.
At break, Amy was quick to ask her what was wrong.
‘I lost the place, that’s all,’ said Nesta. ‘I was just thinking about something.’
‘But you look worried, Nesta,’ said Amy. ‘I know you by now. I don’t know why you have to hide it when people upset you. It’s always much better to tell. Is it the same as what was upsetting you on Saturday? Do you know you’re going now?’
Nesta desperately wanted to tell Amy everything, but ‘everything’ would have been incredible, and nearly everything might be dangerous. I can’t tell her we are leaving on Wednesday. I can’t really tell her very much at all.
‘I don’t know when we are going,’ she said, ‘but it seems pretty certain that we are. And I honestly don’t want to go at all. But I’m not even thirteen till next month; so I have no choice.’
‘In that case,’ said Amy, ‘I suppose you’ll just have to get used to the idea. I don’t want you to go – and I will really miss you. But things like that can’t be helped. Remember Lucinda McNeil – she went to live in Greece. At least you won’t have a new language to learn.’
It was all Nesta could do not to cry. Compared to where I am going, Greece is just next door. And what was the language of Ormingat? Strange sounds made by that boy in his hospital bed, eerie sounds not of this Earth!
Amy looked at her woebegone expression and said, ‘If you are really so unhappy about it, why don’t you ask your parents not to go? That’s the only way you’d be able to stay.’
‘I can’t,’ said Nesta. ‘Don’t ask me why. I just can’t.’
In saying that, she suddenly realized that she would never be able to tell anyone the complete truth ever again. She could not even talk to her parents properly any more. The secret they had hidden from her for years, in which she was now included, did not bring them closer together. It drove them apart. I can’t trust them. I still love them, but in some strange way I almost hate them too. Is it possible to love and hate the same people?
The bus was late. The rain came on in a steady light drizzle. Nesta didn’t bother to take out her umbrella. She just stood waiting and stoically enduring the damp and the cold. Ormingat might have wonderful weather but that did not seem a particularly compelling attraction. Stuff your wonderful weather, Organmat, she thought, deliberately and bitterly distorting the name to the one that Jamie had given. This is Earth and I am of the Earth!
When she eventually reached home it was almost dark and her mother was waiting at the bus stop under a big golf umbrella. Alison was relieved to see her daughter alight from the bus. Nesta’s clothes were soaked and her fine hair was so wet that strands of it were clinging to her cheeks.
‘I thought the bus would be late,’ said Alison. ‘It’s been on the local news about the traffic. I guessed you might have forgotten your umbrella. And I wasn’t wrong. You look half-drowned!’
‘I didn’t forget my umbrella,’ said Nesta with a hint of aggression in her voice. ‘It’s in my bag. I couldn’t be bothered to get it out. There’s not much I can be bothered with today.’
They walked along the street in silence after that. Alison held the umbrella over the two of them. Nesta did not object. She kept her head down, looking at the pavement, making no effort to avoid any puddles. But, whatever it might appear to be, this was not adolescent rebellion. The feelings Nesta was harbouring were mature and terrible.
‘Go and get changed,’ said her mother as they entered the house. ‘And dry your hair. You don’t want to catch pneumonia, do you?’
‘I wouldn’t much care,’ said Nesta dourly. ‘Do germs diminish? Or will I be put into quarantine?’
‘We shall all have three years of quarantine,’ said her mother, ‘if you think of it that way. And there are wonderful treatments for all Earth’s ills in the ship’s medicine cabinet. But I would rather you stayed healthy.’
As Nesta went up the stairs, she turned back and looked down at her mother. She had come to a decision. She would not ask them to stay. It could, if they liked, be a one-sided conversation. She would simply inform them that she was not going. It would be their job to sort it out.
‘I want to talk to you when I come down,’ she said. ‘No stopping for tea or trying to be ultra English. I want to talk straight away to you and to Dad.’
Alison nodded.
‘Talking would be best,’ she said. ‘We do love you. Please don’t hate us.’
It was not what Nesta expected her mother to say. It seemed uncomfortably perceptive.