Chapter Twenty-One

Snow hasn’t spoken to me since yesterday and now she is avoiding me. Everyone is making the most of the snow before it melts. Despite everyone saying that it was a freak weather occurrence brought to us straight from Siberia and that there was no way it would stick, it has stuck and they are all snowball fighting and building snow people and the smallest igloos which collapse every five minutes. We knew it would be a cold holiday but none of us had even dreamed of snow. It’s like some kind of miracle and we are all hoping that it means going back home to school will be cancelled.

Mam is inside, whittling a spoon and I want to help out, so I offer to make all the beds. Mam gets up straight away and feels the temperature of my forehead and then collapses in stitches. She’s not well, but she’s here, and once you face your fear you can deal with it, whatever that fear is.

The guilt of traumatising my little sister makes me restless, so having a task is almost welcome. Mam and Dad’s bedroom is tiny and I’m sweaty and pretty annoyed by the time I manage to get it all straight. I almost don’t bother with Snow’s bed, but the guilt reminds me I have to.

I decide to give her clean covers. We brought spares. She’s got her baby-blue cover on. It’s her favourite so it’ll probably be on again as soon as it’s out of the wash when we get home. For now, I’m going to put on one that’s covered with stars. I tussle with the blue cover and as it finally gives in and lets itself be removed, something falls to the floor.

It’s a very small piece of sea glass. Nothing unusual in that, we’ve had the stuff all over the place, but it makes me stop to think. I check where everyone is. Snow is out with the other kids, Mam is working, Dad is putting the teeth on a pathetically small snowman. I know it’s not right to poke around in someone else’s things, but I reason that I’m doing it for Snow’s safety. It’s a poor excuse but I’ll use it all the same.

There’s nothing else inside her duvet cover. I check it twice in case something has got stuck in the folds. There’s nothing under the mattress, under the bed, behind the curtains, in her wardrobe. There’s nothing anywhere.

I’m relieved, of course, but there’s also something niggling away at me. Where’s that hideous doll? I wipe the condensation from the window and look out, then almost jump a mile when I see that Snow has stopped, frozen in the centre of the mayhem, and is staring straight at me.

‘I’m changing your duvet,’ I mouth and then hold up the dirty one to show her. She doesn’t react. She’s not stupid. She glances across to Mam-gu’s caravan. It’s an almost imperceptible glance but if you’ve known someone your whole life you would notice it. She smiles at me fake innocently then goes back to climbing the small snowy bank, so she can sledge down it on a tea-tray. I look as if I’m taking my time tidying. Make a show of picking up the duvet cover and a sock from the floor. I go back in to Mam.

‘I’m nearly done.’ Mam’s tongue pokes out like Snow’s does when she’s concentrating. A lamp on the table is focused directly on a symbol that she’s carving, and she’s lost in the pool of light. I don’t want to disturb her when she’s so involved in her work, so I sneak out quietly.

Of course, I’m hit by a snowball to the face immediately and I give Jake a look that tells him I’m not at all impressed. I can’t see where Snow has gone. I scan round as quickly as I can. Jake is shoving snow down the back of Lorelei’s collar. Gwenni and Charlie are concentrating on the doorway to their half-collapsed igloo. Wiley Riley is scattering seeds for the birds. No sign of Snow.

I go to Mam-gu’s caravan. Snow’s in there sitting on Mam-gu’s chair. I can see how angry she still is with me. I’m not scared of my own sister. I’m not.

‘Why aren’t you out there playing with all the others?’

‘Why aren’t you?’

‘Because I’m thirteen.’

‘So?’

‘So I don’t play.’

‘That’s sad.’

She’s right. It is sad but not in the way she means it. I look around as if I’m just hanging out here and taking in my surroundings casually. Someone clatters up the steps. It’s two life-savers in the form of Leila-J and Betsey-Anne. ‘Snow, come and see the snow sculpture we’ve made.’

‘It’s amazing. It’s in the shape of a throne and we can all sit on it like royalty.’

‘We’re having our photo taken in it.’

‘Come on, before the arms fall off.’

They grab Snow, who gives me a wrathful glower, then leaves with them. I know that as soon as that photo is taken she’ll be back. The place is small enough so if there’s anything here it shouldn’t be hard to find. I shut the door, when I’ve checked that Snow is well away.

It’s almost too easy. There’s a bucket in the cupboard under the sink with a bin bag in it, which would convince anyone else that it was being used for rubbish, but I know better. Nice try, Snow. I’m impressed.

Glancing over my shoulder, I fish it out and untie it, trying desperately not to tear the plastic so I don’t leave any signs of breaking and entering.

The doll is the first thing I see but instead of the old blank sockets it now has new, painted on eyes. Snow is a brilliant artist and I have to put the doll face down, so she doesn’t follow my every movement. There’s a load of sea glass in a smaller plastic bag and then right at the bottom a stack of leaflets held together with an elastic band.

A snowball hits the wall of the caravan outside and I feel the bones of my skeleton jolt. I listen and hold my breath. Shrieks of laughter, one of the kids crying, the muffled thud of snowballs hitting other things.

I pull the leaflets out. They are the usual collection of local interest things that you get pretty much everywhere. A model village that looks about a hundred years old, a steam train that chuffs its way along the side of a verdant hill, an impressive waterfall that I decide immediately I am going to go and see. I leaf through them rapidly. They must be things that Snow has been copying for her drawings. There must be something else. I check the bin bag again and right at the bottom of the bucket, in case I’ve missed anything. I start to put things back in the bag and a leaflet which had been hidden inside another, flutters down and lands on my knees.

Local Myths & Legends. I check over my shoulder. It’s a good job I can read fast. It’s the usual sort of stuff. Dragons, changelings coming in from the sea, petrified forests, the witches who lived in the woods and on the back the story of the German ghost. A girl who was killed tragically with her mother in a night of the Blitz. The Luftwaffe caught their house in the woods with a bomb, in a night of terror so horrific that the sky seemed to be on fire. How she is said to appear, in the green dress she wore that day, to wreak her revenge.

Snow has known this story all along.

I’m sweating. I check over my shoulder again. And then again.

She and her mother were living in a rundown house in the woods. They’d been ostracised from the community because of their nationality. The girl’s father had been arrested and taken away as a prisoner of war, even though he’d come here as a refugee.

I place all the leaflets carefully back in the exact order they were before, trying not to look the doll in the face. Tying the knot in the same way I place the bucket back. As I spin the bucket a couple of centimetres to the left, I dislodge something else.

It’s Mam-gu’s photo album. Why has Snow hidden this? I open it and one of the pictures is loose.

It’s a very old photo I can’t remember Mam-gu showing us. It’s black & white, gone a bit brown with age, and faded at the edges. I tilt it to pick up the blue-white snowy light from outside, so I can see it properly. It only takes me a split second to work out who the girl in the photograph is. It’s my mam-gu; I’ve seen pictures of her at this young age before. She’s outside somewhere, smiling directly into the camera. She looks so happy. Behind her there’s a line of washing caught forever in the wind. And then I see something that makes my head spin so fast my brain hurts. Behind the washing, in the woods, there’s a figure. Hard to distinguish because of the quality of the photograph, but I know her. I hold it up closer to my face. My mind is racing, and my mouth is as dry as a desert. The figure is grainy, blurred, but I’m almost completely certain it’s the German girl.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Oh for…’ I drop the photo and snatch it back up. ‘You scared me half to death.’

‘Why have you got all my stuff out?’ Snow’s face is glowing from the cold and fury.

‘Why have you hidden it in here?’

‘I haven’t hidden it, dweeb face. There’s no room in our caravan in case you hadn’t noticed.’

I have a moment of doubt. ‘Oh yeah. Then why did you put it in a bag?’

‘Erm, because you’ve been trying to make me get rid of the doll since I found it, so I knew you wouldn’t want to see it.’

‘Oh. OK. Well, there’s no need to be ratty about it.’

‘I’m not. Just leave my stuff alone.’

I slide the photograph into my back pocket as she takes her bag out from under the sink to check I haven’t messed with her stuff.

‘The ghost is back again, isn’t she?’

She stops, for such a minuscule amount of time it’s almost unnoticeable, and then carries on. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve brought all this stuff over here to show her, haven’t you?’

‘You’re crazy.’

‘OK. Maybe I am. But you are still talking to her, aren’t you? Why else would you hide all this stuff over here? It’s her doll, isn’t it?’

‘If you like.’

‘No, I don’t like. It’s the truth.’

‘What would you know about the truth? You told me Mam was dying.’

I stagger. ‘I apologised. I made a mistake. What do you want me to do, grovel?’

‘Maybe. It’s going to take me a lifetime to get over it.’

‘It’s going to take me a lifetime to get rid of the guilt. Satisfied?’

‘Good. I’m glad. I hope you feel guilty forever.’ She picks up a cushion and throws it at me. The zip catches the corner of my eye and really hurts.

I yell a battle cry as I run towards her.

‘Enough!’ Mam-gu never ever shouts. She completely fills the caravan doorway with her presence and we are blown apart by her holler but I still want to retaliate so I keep on yelling.

‘I said, that’s enough.’

I don’t ignore her twice. I reach into my back pocket instead and hold the photograph up to her.

‘And you,’ I say. ‘Enough hiding.’