Alice in Time

Alice
in time

Penelope Bush trained and worked as a tapestry weaver, but always knew that one day she would write. She lives in West Sussex with her husband and son and elderly cat. She hides away in an old caravan to do her writing, where the only distraction is the occasional pheasant wandering past. Now and again, the family reclaim the caravan and it is towed down the coast to Dorset, where many happy hours are spent looking for fossils.
Alice in Time
is her first book.

P
ENELOPE
B
USH

PICCADILLY PRESS • LONDON

First published in Great Britain in 2010
by Piccadilly Press Ltd,
5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR
www.piccadillypress.co.uk

Text copyright © Penelope Bush, 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

The right of Penelope Bush to be identified as Author
of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978 1 84812 077 8 (paperback
eBook ISBN: 978 1 84812 146 1)

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Printed in the UK by CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, CR0 4TD
Cover design by Simon Davis
Cover photo © Alamy

For Helen Percival

‘I’m
not
wearing it.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘No, I’m not.’

Repeat those last two sentences about fifty times and you’ll get some idea of what I’m up against. I’m trying to get my little brother into his page boy outfit so that we won’t be late for Dad’s wedding, but I’ve been trying for the last hour without success.

Actually, I don’t blame Rory for not wanting to put the suit on, but I’m not going to let him know that. And how am I going to get him to wear the pink silk sash that is supposed to go round his waist? I don’t know what made Trish think that a seven-year-old boy was going to put up with that, but then everything was done in a bit of a hurry.

Trish and I had spent a whole afternoon at the fabric shop choosing the material for my dress. Eventually we picked a
lovely cornflower-blue silk, because my eyes are blue. I couldn’t wait for the dress to come and when I went to Dad’s, on the weekend it was due, I was really excited. When Trish unpacked it and held it up for me to inspect, I was completely speechless.

‘What do you think?’ Trish asked me.

Instead of the beautiful blue silk, the dress was vile pink and I don’t think it was silk either but some fake nylon stuff. It wasn’t even a nice pink, if there is such a thing. The only way I can think to describe it is Pig Pink. Obviously it wasn’t a mistake and they hadn’t delivered the wrong dress or why would Trish be holding it up asking me what I thought? I couldn’t tell her what I thought either, because this was Trish, not my mum, so I couldn’t go off on one and tell her that nothing in the world would make me wear that dress. Instead I just about managed not to cry and said, ‘What happened to the blue silk that we chose?’

‘Oh, that turned out too expensive in the end and this gorgeous pink was on offer. Don’t you like it?’

‘It’s lovely,’ I lied. I was trying to impress Trish with my mature attitude.

And now it’s finally the day of the wedding and I really want to feel excited but instead I’m just exasperated because I’m stuck with my annoying little brother. It’s not fair.

‘I want to wear this,’ says Rory, holding up his Spider-Man outfit.

I close my eyes, breathe in deeply and count to ten. I assess my options. I could pin him down and force him into the suit but then he’d start screaming and yelling and be totally uncooperative for the rest of the day. Alternatively, I could
go and get Mum and insist that she deal with him, but I’m not actually talking to her at the moment so that could be a bit difficult. Or I could just give up and let him go to the wedding as Spider-Man. I decide to go for the fourth option: bribery.

‘If you put the suit on I’ll buy you that Pokémon comic you wanted.’

‘You mean this one,’ he says, picking it up from beside his bed. ‘Mum got it for me yesterday.’

Just my luck. She’s always spoiling him, which is why he’s such a brat. I grab the comic off him and hold it high above my head.

‘OK. Put the suit on and I’ll let you have it back.’

He doesn’t look impressed so I hold it by the spine, making a tiny rip. ‘And I won’t tear it in half.’

He picks the trousers up off the floor. He knows I’m not joking. But he’s not going to give up without a fight.

‘I’ll put these on if you read me a story tonight.’

As you can see, my brother is no stranger to bribery.

‘OK.’ I hate reading to Rory but all I want right now is for him to be ready when the taxi gets here.

‘Promise you’ll read me a story.’

‘I said OK, didn’t I?’

He smiles triumphantly and scrambles into his trousers. I sigh at the sight. They’re all creased from being on the floor while we were arguing. Also, they’re too short. He must have grown since Trish ordered them for him. Typical. Now we both look stupid.

At this point Mum sticks her head into the room. ‘You both look gorgeous.’

Yeah, right!

‘Rory, hurry up and get your jacket and shoes on. I have to go to work now. I’ll see you later – have a wonderful time.’

To my ears her cheerfulness sounds a bit forced. I don’t think she likes the idea of Dad remarrying. Well, she should have thought about that before she left him. I have no sympathy for her, whatsoever. Luckily, she doesn’t seem to be expecting a reply – which is just as well.

I’m so relieved Rory’s finally ready that I completely forget about the pink silk sash that’s meant to go round his waist. It doesn’t help that he’s kicked it under the bed. He only tells me this when we’re in the taxi and it’s too late to do anything about it. If Trish notices, I’ll blame it on Mum. I know that doesn’t sound very nice, but it’s important that I look good in front of Dad and Trish at the moment. You see, when they suddenly decided to get married and move out of their tiny flat into a two-bedroomed house, I came up with a brilliant plan. I just need the right moment to break it to them.

The taxi drops us off in town outside the registry office. When Dad and Trish told us they were getting married and said I could be a bridesmaid, the wedding suddenly became my favourite daydream.

I imagined myself walking up the aisle of a beautiful old church in the country. A big organ was playing
The Wedding March
and every available surface was covered in white and pink flowers. The sun was coming through the stained-glass windows. In this dream, my boring straight hair (which Mum says is toffee-coloured and won’t let me dye, even though it’s obviously ‘beige’) is transformed into a thick curtain of waving
blonde gorgeousness. I am also willowy thin and spot-free. The wedding guests gasp as I walk down the aisle. One old lady nearly faints and has to be taken out into the churchyard to recover. When we reach the altar, the vicar, who is very young and very handsome, blushes when our eyes meet. At the reception, which is held in a very posh country house hotel, there is an endless stream of gorgeous boys waiting to dance with me. The photographers from
Hello!
magazine can’t get enough of me either.

This daydream got me through countless maths lessons. Naturally, the reality couldn’t have been further away from it. When Trish said they were having the wedding at the registry office, with the reception in a pub because their flat is too small, my dream dissolved like a wet sherbet lemon.

Of course, I tried to steer Trish away from her grotesque wedding plan. I even offered to organise it all for her, because she has a very exciting and time-consuming job and I thought that might be the reason why she wasn’t concentrating on having The Wedding of the Year. As it turned out, it was because they wanted to get married as soon as possible and they’d only managed to get the registry office on that day because someone had cancelled and also they couldn’t afford anything grander, what with the move and everything.

I still tried to have the wedding daydream but it wasn’t the same any more. Mr Green’s voice kept infiltrating, droning on about fractions and stuff and drowning out the organ music, so in the end I gave up.

And now everything’s turning out even worse than I thought it would. As we get out of the taxi, it starts to rain. I
grab Rory and run to shelter in the nearest shop doorway, but not before some serious damage has been done to my hair which I spent hours on this morning, trying to get it to curl. Now it’s hanging in lank wet snakes and my new silk pumps are soaked into the bargain. Just to add to my problems, Rory begins to whine.

‘Where’s Dad? I thought he was going to meet us.’

I have some sympathy with this. Where the hell
is
Dad? He said he’d be here. He couldn’t bring us himself so he paid for a taxi to come and get us and drop us off at the registry office where, he’d said, he would be waiting. I scan the street, which isn’t too crowded because of the rain, but I can’t see Dad anywhere.

After about ten minutes, I’m seriously worried and fed up with having to stand out in the rain every time someone wants to go in or out of the shop. As we’re sheltering in the doorway to a newsagent’s, this is pretty much all the time. By now Rory’s whining has turned to grizzling, and I’m very close to joining in. People are staring at us, which is hardly surprising, considering what we’re wearing. I haven’t brought a coat, so there’s nothing to tone down the pink effect.

It suddenly occurs to me that I am stranded in a seedy part of town and I don’t even have any money with me. In fact, all I have is a seven-year-old who is crying in earnest now and who is relying on
me
to do something. Perhaps I could ring Mum except a) I’m not talking to her and b) I don’t have a mobile phone. Ironically, this is the main reason that I’m not speaking to her. I’ve explained, till I’m blue in the face, that I’m the only fourteen-year-old in the
world
without a mobile
phone, but all she does is say, ‘Has Imogen got one?’ to which I have to reply ‘No’, because she hasn’t.

It’s no good trying to explain that Imogen, who by the way is my best friend, is a special case because it’s hopeless trying to explain anything to Mum. She never listens and always ends the conversation with the extremely annoying sentence, ‘It’s about time you realised that not everything is about you, Alice.’ This is
so
unfair because in her eyes
nothing
is about me, not one tiny little thing.

But back to the present dilemma and what to do, except I can’t think straight because Rory is off again. ‘I want to go home. Why can’t we go home?’

I try explaining that it’s too far to walk home and anyway, nothing would persuade me to walk through town in this get-up. By now I’m seriously freezing. Who in their right mind has a wedding in February? So I go into the shop just to keep warm, even though I can’t buy so much as a penny chew. It’s blissfully warm inside, if a bit on the pongy side. It’s one of those old newsagent’s that smell of wet dog and newspapers, which is hardly surprising really as that is exactly what’s in here. The dog, which I assume belongs to the owner, goes some way to cheering Rory up. It’s a big golden retriever and it goes up to him, wagging its tail, and slobbers all over him.