Extracts

A foot in the hedge

“It’s a foot!” cried Pippa in wide-eyed surprise.
“We can see that,” replied Dippy with alarm bells already ringing in her head, “but what’s it doing here?”
When Pippa tried to get closer to see what was happening, her elder brother and sister shooed her away. Being only nine years old, she wasn’t privy to grown up things, but then neither should they be, yet here they were dealing with what seemed to be a tremendously adult thing. Pippa bit her lip and watched as Dippy and Matty crouched down by the dangling foot.
“I want to see,” said Pippa.
“There’s nothing to see,” Dippy called back. “It’s just a red shoe with a foot inside.”
“Where’s the leg, then?” Pippa asked, sensibly. “There must be a leg.”
Assuming there was a leg attached, it was well hidden.

The mystic

“Don’t you remember anything, maman?”
“Very little. I try, Zara, I really do.”
“What do you think, Pippy?” Zara asked, “does maman try?”
“Zara, poppet, you talk to your doll far too much. You’re nine years old now.”
“Better than talking to dead people,” said Zara sharply, “and I haven’t got any friends here to talk to, have I? No one wants to be friends with someone like me.”
“You have friends enough.”
“I don’t, not true friends. They all think I’m weird because you make me do what I do, and I can’t tell them it’s all lies because you won’t let me.”
“If you tell them, we go hungry.”
“You could get another job. Other mothers do proper jobs. They don’t all stare into crystal balls and pretend they can see into the future and speak to dead people. I think it’s wrong.”

The body and the money

Dippy stuffed the remaining notes into her pocket and watched her father stumble towards them, his eyes red and bleary. As ever, he made her nervous. It was hard for them all, to love and fear the same man.
“Well, my little chickabiddies, what have we here?”
“We were going to tell you, Daddo,” said Matty.
“I should think you were, my lanky boy. Did you do this?”
“Did we do what?”
“Kill this poor woman, Matthew. What else would I be talking about?”
“No, Daddo. We found her this way.”
Daddo stopped and stared at the dead body for a few moments. “An unusual sight, don’t you think my children?” They said nothing. “Cat got your tongues, then? Tell Daddo what happened.”

Zara and her doll

Zara’s head was often in the clouds, along with much of the rest of her, floating away on thoughts and dreams because there was no one and nothing to keep her feet on the ground. She never felt complete and whole; there was always a part of her missing, a part that Pippy did as much as it could to fill. Conversations covered many subjects, but this was a fairly typical one:
“Pippy, are you as lonely as me?”
“I am.”
“Is there anything we can do about it?”
“You can run away and find the real me.”
“I can’t run to England. It’s very far away.”
“Don’t you love me enough?”
“Yes, of course I do, but I’m only nine. I wouldn’t know how to get there.”
“You’d find a way.”

The second photograph

Werner was not impressed. He had waited three years for his first child, a girl! Brigitta was now nine and was thoughtful, serious and lovely, but incontestably a girl and Werner found this hard to accept. Now, in the year 1912, the Lord had seen fit to deliver him of another child, another girl, Yolanda. She slept in the cradle, blissfully unaware of the contrast between her mother’s deep love and her father’s resentment. Brigitta was fascinated with the new arrival and had spent the past weeks staring at her, stroking her and telling her stories that she obviously could not understand. Yolanda responded in a way that cheered Brigitta immensely. She smiled and gurgled and seemed to love having Brigitta around. In a home where this was a rare event, Brigitta was drawn to her new sister and tried to spend as much time as possible with her. In fact, when her mother came looking for her to see if she was ready for the photograph, she was in the nursery rocking the cradle and whispering “Yolly, Yolly, Yolly,” to the baby.

Reviews

I really enjoyed reading your book, and I thought it was very good. I like the way that in the end everything seemed to fit in and it all made sense about Zara and Werner and Hester. I think that the ages are about 10 to 13 but not much younger than ten, for some parts were quite complicated and detailed for younger children to understand. It was good how you could imagine it happening to you. Once again I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and I hope it is successful.

by Hannah Redhouse, London, aged 11

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