Chapter 23

Dad took Tilly to school by car in the morning because he was going to go straight to the hospital as soon as he’d dropped her off.

“Emil, Jonah, Noah, Toby, Todd?” Dad said. “Like any of them?”

“Toby or Todd,” Tilly said. “Then we’ll both be Ts.”

She flipped through the pages of the baby names book on her lap. She read out more funny ones. “How about Norbert? It means ‘Bright North,’ in old English.”

Dad laughed.

“Or Orson, from the Latin for bear.”

She looked for her own name and frowned. “Tilly isn’t in this stupid book!”

Dad glanced over at her. “Try under Matilda,” he said.

“Matilda, meaning ‘mighty in battle.’ Short forms: Matti, Tilda, Tilly,” she read aloud.

“See? That about sums you up, Tilly!”

“What does?”

“Mighty in battle. It means you’re brave. You have courage and spirit. And so you do.”

They’d got to school. Dad parked the car under the trees next to the playground. “Should I come in?”

Tilly shook her head.

“Want to invite someone to come over after school?” Dad asked.

“Maybe,” Tilly said. She picked up her bag from the backseat, got out, and slammed the car door.

Dad wound down the window. “Any messages for Mom?”

“Say Come home SOON.”

Tilly ran into the school. The bell was ringing.

Everyone in her class was already sitting at their tables, reading. Tilly slipped into her place next to Susila. Mrs. Almond was reading a book too.

“OK,” Mrs. Almond said to the class, as usual. “Start bringing yourself back from the story world. Find a good place to leave the story for now.” She put her own book down on the desk. “Later on today, we’re going to be sharing our own work-in-progress and helping each other with editing and revising our stories.”

Tilly thought about her story. Did she really want anyone else to hear about her secret fox? The story was in her notebook, deep at the bottom of her bag, still unfinished. But now it was time for math. There was no point worrying.

At recess, Susila asked her about the baby.

Tilly described how tiny he was. “This big,” she said, holding out her hands.

“Sweet,” Susila said. “I can remember when both my brothers were born. Can I come and see him?”

Tilly felt herself flush. “Yes,” she said. “When he’s home. You can come and play after school today, if you want.”

“Yes please!” Susila said.

And now it was the afternoon, and time to work on their stories. Tilly got hers out of her bag.

“You’ve written a lot,” Susila whispered. “Mine’s only short.”

“Take turns to read what you’ve written aloud, then listen to what your partner has to say: the things they like, the questions they have, any suggestions,” Mrs. Almond said.

“You go first,” Susila said to Tilly.

Tilly took a deep breath. She moved her chair around a little, so no one else could hear. She started to read her story about the fox and the girl.

“You’re supposed to say what to do to make it better,” Tilly said when she’d finished reading.

“I don’t know,” Susila said. “I loved it all. Just write some more, and make it have a happy ending. I don’t like sad endings for stories.”

“I don’t know what the ending is,” Tilly said. “It hasn’t happened yet.”

“You mean, it’s all for real?”

Tilly nodded.

“Will you show me the foxes if I come to your house?”

“Yes. But don’t tell anyone.”

“Promise,” Susila said. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Your turn now,” Tilly said.

Susila’s story was set in London, about a girl who was an orphan. “It’s not about me,” she said. “It’s all made up.”

“The descriptions of the house are good,” Tilly said. “You make it sound amazing. The girl living by herself and everything.”

“She couldn’t do that in real life if she was eleven,” Susila said. “But so what?”

Granny was waiting at the school gate.

Tilly and Susila ran over.

“Can Susila come home with me today?”

“Of course. Hello, Susila!” Granny said. “Have you asked your mom? Shall I have a word with her?”

“She’s not here. I walk home by myself usually,” Susila said. “It’s only around the corner.”

“Do you want to borrow my phone, then?” Granny got her cell phone out of her bag and handed it over.

Tilly watched Susila chatting on the phone.

Susila nodded and grinned at Tilly. “I can stay till six,” she said.

“Good,” Granny said. “Tell your mom we’ll give you a ride back. Then she won’t have to come out to get you.”

Granny chatted as she drove them home. She’d been at the hospital before coming to get Tilly. “Your mom sends you a big kiss, and baby sends a little burp.”

Susila laughed.

Tilly was quiet, thinking about Mom.

“Your house is huge,” Susila said as they climbed out of the car. “And there’s a garden and everything! It’s like a house in a story.”

“It’s freezing cold and very impractical,” Granny said. “But the garden will be lovely in the summer, won’t it, Tilly?”

Having Susila with her meant that Tilly saw everything a bit differently. In her story, she’d made the garden sound bigger and grander. She hoped Susila wouldn’t be disappointed when she saw it for real. They walked all the way around, and Tilly showed Susila the flowers hiding under the dead leaves and the way the birds flew down for bread crumbs and the robin almost tame enough to take cheese from her hand, and then she showed her the way out of the metal gate, across the path, to the wild garden behind the flint wall, through the rickety wooden gate.

But here too it all looked smaller and more messy and drab than when she came by herself. There seemed to be fewer trees, even.

“Is this where the fox lives?” Susila asked.

“Yes. In the bramble bushes. Ssshh, now.”

They crept closer to the tangle of dead branches and leaves and thorns. It was bitterly cold. The wind carried tiny bits of ice, like frozen rain. There was no sign of the foxes. They waited. Nothing stirred. The brambles looked empty of life.

Susila was shivering.

“We may as well go back,” Tilly whispered. “Nothing’s going to happen here today. It’s too cold.” She didn’t show Susila her own den. She had the strangest feeling that Helen might be there, and she didn’t want her to see Susila. She didn’t know why.

Granny had made them tea.

“Let’s explore the house!” Susila said. She wanted to look in all the rooms, even Dad’s study. She thought everything was amazing. “So many rooms!” She ran along the landing and shouted, so she could hear the way her voice echoed from the high ceilings.

The house had never seemed so alive!

Downstairs, Granny turned up the radio.

Now what? They’d run out of things to do.

“We could go on your computer?” Susila suggested. “What games have you got?”

“None,” Tilly said. “I don’t even have my own computer.”

“What do you usually do, then, when you’re at home?”

Tilly thought for a bit. “I read. And I play outside. Sometimes I watch TV or DVDs.” She nearly mentioned the dollhouse but that sounded much too babyish. “I know!” Tilly said. “We could go and look in the attic.”

Together, they tugged the ladder from the spare room onto the landing and set it up beneath the trapdoor. Tilly went first, to open the hatch, and Susila climbed up close behind.

“Wow!” Susila said. “Look at all this old stuff! It’s like an antique shop!”

“There’s a chest full of old clothes,” Tilly said. “Want to see?”

They pulled out armloads of clothes and started trying them on. “Careful where you step,” Tilly said. “You don’t want to go right through the ceiling.”

That made Susila giggle—that and the funny clothes. They pranced around in front of an old mirror they found stacked up next to loads of old, framed pictures. The pictures were paintings mostly, and some more photographs, like the ones in Dad’s study. There was one of a girl. Tilly pulled it out to look. A girl with darkish hair in a woollen dress stared back at Tilly, out of the spotted old photo. It was the same girl who’d been in that other photo before, but older. More like twelve or thirteen.

“Helen,” Tilly whispered.

“Who? Who’s that?” Susila asked.

Tilly put the photo back down on the floor. “No one, I mean, I don’t know,” she said.

Susila looked at Tilly. “She’s like the girl in your story.”

“Yes.”

“But this photo is really old. Like, it’s from the olden times.”

Tilly didn’t say anything.

Downstairs, Granny was calling their names. They both stood still to listen. They heard footsteps and then Granny was calling again, up into the attic. “Tilly? Susila? Whatever are you doing up there? It’s time for Susila to go home.”

They pulled off the clothes, stuffed them back into the chest, and went back down.

Granny fussed about the ladder. “I’m not sure how safe it is. I wish you’d told me that’s what you were doing, Tilly.”

“Sorry,” Susila said.

“Never mind now. Get your things together and I’ll take you home.”

The house seemed so quiet now, without Susila. Tilly flopped down on her bed. It had been nice having a friend to play with again. It was a long time since that had happened, what with the move and everything. The time had just whizzed by. She thought about Susila’s house when they’d dropped her off: the big family of children crowding around Susila’s mom at the door, all the chatter and noise and pushing and shoving and questions. It was a little like Ally’s family.

Next time, perhaps she would pluck up courage to show Susila her den. And with any luck they would see the fox cubs together.

And Helen? Tilly didn’t know what to make of her and the photograph in the attic and the garden that was sometimes there and sometimes not.

Dad sat on Tilly’s bed. He was so tired he kept yawning. He nearly fell asleep when he was reading the next chapter of Tilly’s bedtime book.

“Dad?” Tilly said. “How can something be there and not there? Is it possible?”

Dad perked up a bit. It was the sort of question he usually loved. “Well,” he said slowly, drawing out the word. “At the same time, do you mean? Or sometimes it is there and other, different times, not?”

“That. The second one.”

“Hmm. What sort of thing are we talking about here? For instance, something simple, like ice? Ice is sometimes there, on a cold day, and sometimes not, when it’s warm and sunny, for example.”

“No! Not like that. That’s obvious,” Tilly said.

“What then?”

“A person. Or a place. That is sometimes there and at other times it isn’t. Or you can’t find the way in.”

“Well, people come and go. But a place, that’s a little different. You expect a place to be there all the time. Unless it’s a dream place, I suppose, or an imaginary one, like in a story. Is that what you mean?”

“I don’t know really,” Tilly said.

“That reminds me,” Dad said. “Granny says someone’s started working on that old garden next door. Clearing it up. Cutting trees. Perhaps someone’s bought the place. Maybe we’ll get new neighbors. Someone else for you to play with. That will be good, won’t it?”

What about Helen? And the foxes?

Tilly felt angry with Dad suddenly, as if it was all his fault. “You can go now,” she said. “I want to go to sleep.”

“Me too!” Dad stood up, stretched, and yawned again. “Unfortunately, I’ve got work to do first. I haven’t written a word for days. Night night, Tilly. Sleep well.”

Don’t say it! Tilly thought. Don’t say “sweet dreams.” She pulled the blanket up over her ears so she wouldn’t hear.