Artichoke Hearts (30 page)

Today, I don’t feel like me any more. It’s like my whole life, up to now, I was someone else. I look at this me in the mirror, trying to see who she is. I brush her
hair and wash her face where a rash of spots coats her once smooth forehead. I choose some clothes for her to wear. Everyone will just have to get used to the idea . . . this girl in the mirror is
me.

Mum comes in and puts her arm around me and we sit together looking at our reflections. I try to fix this in my mind, the way my mum’s head leans in close to mine, the place where her hand
rests on my arm, the slight curl up to, nearly a smile, on the corner of her lips. The way that she is like me, skin colour, same hair, same little nose, same round face, same look in her eyes . .
. and the ways that she is not.

She walks over to the easel and picks up my painting and studies it for a long time.

‘That one’s for you, Mum,’ I tell her.

‘You’ve had your ears pierced, already,’ smiles Mum, looking back at me.

‘Can I?’ I ask, getting ready to explain the whole period thing to her.

‘Yes, I promised, didn’t I?’

No questions, nothing.

‘What a mess!’

Mum scurries around my bedroom, tidying, folding and picking up the clothes I have scattered all over the floor. Usually she’d tut and tell me off, but today she just starts sorting
through, occasionally asking me if I’ve worn this or that.

She opens my wardrobe and sighs as the pile of clothes I have flung in there, in one of my tidying-up sessions, avalanches towards her. I pass her the clothes and she places them on hangers in
my wardrobe. I wonder how it is that Mum doing something so normal, like picking up clothes and folding them and just not saying anything at all about my periods starting, or Jidé Jackson,
can make me love her so much.

I thread a piece of navy blue ribbon through the holey stone, measuring its length against mine, threading it through, looping it around and pulling it tight. Then I start to
wrap layer upon layer of tissue, just enough so that she won’t make out the shape. I choose silvery grey paper . . . the colour of the sky on the day I found this holey stone.

I glue a love-heart shape on to the top layer of tissue and sprinkle it with the leftover glitter from Nana’s funeral. Now I get it, why Nana spent so much time and care and love wrapping
. . . presents are the giver’s secret, just for a moment, until they pass from one hand to another.

The letterbox clanks. I take the stairs in threes, hurling myself down, flinging open the front door. Standing there, with a worried look on her face, is Millie, but before she can say anything
I order her to close her eyes and hold out her hand, pressing my secret parcel into her palm. She opens her wise owl eyes and giggles as she slowly unwraps my present . . . it’s the moment
before you actually know what’s inside that’s the most exciting. Millie traces the stone with her fingers through the thin layers of tissue paper.

‘A holey stone! You found me one!’ Millie throws her arms round me and clamps me in the tightest hug, as if I’ve given her the most precious jewel in the whole world. When we
unclasp each other, she tips her head forward, letting her hair ripple towards the ground in a golden wave so that I can tie the ribbon in a tiny knot at the nape of her neck.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here for the funeral,’ she says.

‘It’s OK!’

I check my watch. It’s still so early, not even eight o’clock, but we walk to school anyway. The first person we see is Orla, waiting on a bench outside the school gates. When
we’re halfway down the path, she turns, and for a minute I think she looks pleased to see us.

‘Sorry about your nana, Mira.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I heard her on the radio. My mum and me . . . on the programme about the Pope. Why didn’t you tell us she was famous?’

‘She wasn’t, really,’ I shrug. I don’t know what to say. Orla has never ever been this nice to me.

‘What’s
that
?’ she asks, pointing at Millie’s holey-stone necklace.

Here goes, I think. Now she’ll go in for the kill.

‘It’s a present from Mira.’

Then Orla notices my holey stone, which I’ve forgotten to tuck inside my blouse.

‘My nana and me, we used to collect them on the beach.’

Orla nods.

‘Could you get me one?’ she asks, smiling shyly at me.

I can’t believe that Orla Banks wants me, Mira Levenson, to find her a holey stone!

‘Looks like your nana’s started a new craze,’ laughs Millie.

At break we sit on our wall, Millie and me, as if nothing’s changed . . .

‘You found your charm then?’ Millie picks up my wrist to get a closer look.

‘Turns out I never lost it,’ I say.

She tells me about her holiday and I tell her about Nana Josie’s funeral. I want to tell her about pretending to go to hers for tea but going to Jidé’s instead, and about
Jidé and his sister and Pat Print turning up at Nana’s funeral . . . and about my dreams . . . but somehow I can’t think of a way to tell her any of these things. Suddenly I
remember my deal with Notsurewho Notsurewhat the day I saw Pat Print on the beach; the day I found Millie’s holey stone.

‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ I ask Millie.

She shoots me one of her ‘Do you have to be so random?’ looks.

‘No, Mira, definitely not.’

That’s what I love about Millie. She’s always so sure about everything.

‘How about spirits or angels then?’

‘I spy with my little eye . . .’ Millie stares through her new holey stone, scanning the sky for signs of spirits or angels.

‘None that I can see,’ she laughs, focusing her gaze closer to home until it comes to rest on Ben Gbemi.

And through the eye of
my
holey stone I spy Jidé Jackson striding towards me, closer and closer . . . Nana Josie’s voice fills my head . . .

‘People who need charms, you’ll know them when you meet them.’

Writing a first novel is quite a journey. Although the author’s name is on the front cover of a book, there are so many other people behind that
name who have also made huge contributions to making a dream become a reality. Firstly I wish to thank my husband, Leo, who has given me the love, time, encouragement and support needed to write a
novel in the midst of bringing up a young family; my children, Maya, Keshin and Esha-Lily, who are a constant inspiration to me. I would especially like to thank my daughter, Maya Harrison, whose
extraordinary relationship with her grandmother is at the heart of this book.

I have been blessed with the most beautiful (in every sense) agent and editor in publishing! I wish to thank my agent, Sophie Gorell Barnes at MBA Literary Agency, for
championing
Artichoke Hearts,
and my editor, Samantha Swinnerton at Macmillan Children’s Books, for being so passionate about this book, and for crying when she first read it
(apparently Sam doesn’t cry easily, so her tears made her fellow editorial team sit up and take notice!).

Thanks also to authors Maria Beaumont and Louise Millar, playwright Noël Greig and poet Wendy Jones, for their encouragement and insightful reading of early drafts; to
Maria Levenson, for lending me her surname and sunny support; Sophie Lockhart, for her excellent criticism and permission to use a little of her character; Gabrielle Bikhazi, who looked after
Esha-Lily while I wrote; the unique Simon Gould; Mira Basak, my greatly missed aunt and namesake for my heroine, and I wish to thank my mum, Freda Brahmachari, for her love, courage and spirit.

Final thanks are for Bill Tyler, Diana Tyler, Leo Harrison and Trilby Harrison, for giving me permission to write a story inspired by an extraordinary woman loved and
remembered by so many family and friends. On behalf of our whole family I would like to express our gratitude for the work of the Marie Curie Hospice. Sadly, part of growing up is having to say
goodbye to treasured loved ones – perhaps those who have passed away deserve our greatest acknowledgement for the gifts that they have bestowed on us. So it is that I send my most heartfelt thanks
to my father-in-law, Bernie ‘The Book’ Harrison; the beautiful, bohemian inspiration of this book, Rosie Harrison, and my beloved father, Dr Amal Krishna Brahmachari.

Dear Reader,

I know that some people like to know a bit about the author, but deep down I think a writer’s job is to do a bit of a disappearing act and let the characters and the
story take over. So I’ll keep it brief. I was born in Derby in 1966. My dad was an Indian doctor from Kolkata, and my mum an English nurse from the Lake District. I have two sisters and a
brother. As a child I was a daydreamer and late to learn to read, but once I got going no one could prise me away from the magical world of books. I always dreamed of becoming a writer, and now,
with my first novel,
Artichoke Hearts,
my wish has been granted! This just goes to show you should never give up on your dreams.

I live in London with my husband, Leo, and three children, Maya, Keshin and Esha-Lily, and a handsome cat with a serious attitude problem called Smokey-blue, because
that’s what colour he was as a kitten, but now he’s just an ordinary brown tabby . . . maybe that’s his problem!

Like Smokey-blue’s colour, things change in life, and the things that change can change you too.
Artichoke Hearts
is a book about a month in a girl’s life
when just about everything changes.

I hope you enjoy reading about a world that might just have something to do with you. Whenever I disappear into a book I come out as a slightly different person. I hope you do
too. Let me know.