Pandora (4 page)

“We’ll get the girl’s things upstairs first,” she announced. “That way, they can start their own unpacking. I’m not doing it for you,” she snapped to Pandora and the twins. This was almost true. She would indeed refuse to do the unpacking, but she would then reorganise everything that her daughters did, moving their furniture, clothes and possessions around until satisfied.

“Girls,” she continued to the twins. “Your room is on the next floor up, at the back, where it will be quieter for you. Your father and I will have the front room that overlooks the street, and I hope you appreciate the sacrifices we make for you.”

“Yes, Mummy,” chorused the twins, though neither could work out exactly what sacrifices were being made on their behalf, given that it was a very quiet road.

“Pandora, you’re on the top floor.” No explanation was given as to why Pandora was in the top bedroom, but Pandora guessed that she too was expected to appreciate whatever sacrifice had been made for her. She dashed upstairs, following the removal men as they carried her boxes to her new room.

The bedroom had been converted from the original attic. Looking up, Pandora could see the pointed roof of the house, plastered and painted a bright, cheerful white. Indeed, the whole room was very light and airy, thanks to two large windows set in either side of the roof. They gave rather good views of the village at the front and the woods behind. The removal men dropped the last of Pandora’s boxes down, followed by her bed, which they assembled in record time.

“There you go, love,” said one of them. “All ready for you to sort your stuff.”

“Thanks, I’ll do that and stay out of the way of Mum,” replied Pandora with a conspiratorial grin.

The men laughed as they left.

Pandora looked around, her grin widening. Her new room was twice the size of her old one, was far lighter and didn’t suffer from damp. She began to appreciate why her mother had been so keen to move. Everything she had seen so far did seem to be much better than Lowell.

Pandora set about her boxes, unpacking her belongings. She didn’t have much in the way of possessions. She then turned her attention to her clothes, hanging her favourite items up neatly and shoving the rest into cupboards and shelves before sitting on the bed and taking a break, at which point her mother walked in.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “You’ve no time to be sitting there, not with all the work going on. If you can’t find something to do up here, I can find you plenty to do downstairs.”

How does she do it?
wondered Pandora. It was uncanny. If Pandora had just wrestled an alligator before re-tiling the bathroom, her mother would walk in just as she was taking a five-minute rest. And probably complain about the dead crocodile on the floor.

“Yes, Mother,” replied Pandora with what she hoped was noticeable sarcasm. “I’ve just sorted my clothes, and now I’m going to do everything else.”

“See that you do. I’ve no time to do anything for you, not with your father making such a mess of things downstairs.” As she spoke, Mrs Laskaris began rearranging Pandora’s clothes on their shelves and re-hanging those in the wardrobe.

“I thought you didn’t have time to do that?” said Pandora through gritted teeth. She hated having her stuff messed with. Her mother had no idea about privacy. What was Pandora’s was also her mother’s, by some strange extension of matrilineal right.

“You haven’t done it properly,” snapped her mother as she refolded clothes and put them in different drawers for no obvious reason. Pandora breathed out heavily and wondered, not for the first time, how her father had failed to either divorce or murder his wife.

That evening, Pandora slipped from the house to explore Willowcombe Clatford.

She had already seen it with her family, but this was the proper exploration of the area, the solo journey to find out how the village worked when it thought no one was watching.

Getting out of the house was a little more difficult than in Lowell. There, Pandora had the help of the kitchen extension to drop onto from her bedroom window, but here it was a case of sneak out through the back door and into the fragrant garden. Then, it was a hop over the wall into the woods, which ran along the length of the village.

The moon was covered by clouds, so Pandora used a torch to pick her way along the track, stopping frequently to listen for any strange sounds. Unfortunately, the wood was full of strange sounds belonging, she assumed, to rabbits, foxes, badgers and whatever else lived in trees. She shone her torch into the bushes, and myriad creatures scuttled away in alarm.

She moved soundlessly until reaching the village, staying close to garden walls, bushes, trees, anything that provided shadows and cover. When a vehicle drove past, she seemed to melt away into the dark before emerging once more. She soon came to appreciate that Willowcombe Clatford was truly nothing like Lowell, where danger was always present from urban decay and human predators.

Here in Willowcombe, there were no drunks, drug abusers or thugs lurking on dark corners. No unattended children roamed the streets, setting fire to anything that would burn. There wasn’t even an empty lager can or a discarded cigarette end on the ground, the usual droppings of modern life. Pandora made her way back home. Perhaps she could relax and enjoy herself here. It was a new feeling, and one she was keen to share with the twins before going to bed.

“What’s it like out there?” whispered Sarah in fear as Pandora opened the door to their room. As always, the twins were still awake, waiting for the return of their big sister.

“Peaceful,” replied Pandora in a soft tone. “Everywhere was very quiet.”

“Really?” said Anne. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” said Pandora with a reassuring smile. “It seems we’re in a much nicer place.”

“Great!” exclaimed Sarah.

“You’re still going to check though, aren’t you?” asked Anne worriedly.

“Of course. Every night, if need be.” Pandora felt slightly guilty as she spoke, aware that her nightly walks were as much for her benefit as for the twins.

The twins smiled and relaxed.

“Night-night,” whispered Pandora, kissing each one lightly before quietly leaving the room. The girls were asleep almost instantly.

The next morning, the family went into the village to do their shopping.

Pandora would never have believed that shopping could be so sociable. Throughout the village, people stopped as they passed each other and exchanged smiling words. It was certainly a change from shopping in Lowell, where you kept your head down and hurried through the crumbling concrete centre, grabbing what you needed and getting out fast before any trouble erupted.

The new arrivals were of particular interest to the rest of the village and not one person went by without giving them a cheerful greeting. Some even stopped to talk, usually with the same opening phrase, which Pandora soon grew to hate. “Oh, you must be Mabel’s family!”

Many of the shoppers consisted of families. Pandora had never seen so many parents together before. It seemed that separation and divorce had never caught on in Willowcombe Clatford.

“Right,” said Mrs Laskaris eventually. “We need to get some vegetables first. There’s the greengrocer. In we go.”

Pandora looked at the shop. It was a double-fronted affair, each side made up of large panes of glass on which was etched
Roger’s Greengrocer
. Outside the shop were sacks of potatoes, parsnips, carrots, sprouts and many other vegetables. Fruit stood on tables on each side of the door, including huge red apples, long curved bananas, slices of moist watermelon and grapes so large and perfectly round that Pandora could scarcely believe they were real. Unlike the cheap produce on sale in Lowell, which was always bruised, tired and borderline rotten, the fruit and vegetable here did actually look good enough to eat.

“Can we have some of those grapes, please?” asked the twins simultaneously.

Mrs Laskaris looked surprised but pleased. Ordinarily, her family preferred crisps and chocolate. Not that she’d ever done much to change that.

Over the following twenty minutes, Mrs Laskaris brought many different types of fruit and vegetable, despite Pandora’s concern that her mother had no idea how to prepare the vegetables adequately, if at all. It seemed that in Willowcombe Clatford, Mrs Laskaris was determined to cook for her family rather than heat up microwave meals.

After a busy two hours, the shopping expedition was over. The family began the walk back to their new house but were inadvertently blocked by a dozen children, accompanied by a small terrier, running along the path. The boys all wore grey or black shorts and short-sleeved shirts, while the girls wore frocks. Everyone in the group was wearing old-fashioned sandals or plimsolls.

“Hello,” said one of the boys.

“Teddy!” said one of the girls. “You know you shouldn’t talk to grownups like that.” Teddy merely grinned as he looked at the Laskaris family.

“Hello,” said Sarah.

“We’re Sarah and Anne,” said Anne, finishing the sentence.

“I’m Teddy and this is Patch,” said Teddy, indicating the white dog, which had a single patch on its face. “Are you coming to play?”

This time, it was one of the boys in the group who looked horrified. “Teddy, you can’t just ask that, it isn’t right.”

“Why not?” demanded Teddy. “We’re all going to the quarry and they might want to come too. What’s the harm in asking?”

“Can we go, Mum?” asked the twins in unison.

“Well, I’m not sure,” said their mother.

Pandora gritted her teeth at her mother’s reaction. It wasn’t that she didn’t know–she always had to make any decision seem like a big deal.

“I’ll go with them,” said Pandora, taking control of the situation. She didn’t want her sisters’ chances of making new friends being spoiled by her mother’s selfish character.

“Good idea,” said Mr Laskaris, recognising what Pandora was doing and agreeing with her. “Fresh air, just what you all need.”

Mrs Laskaris looked rather put out at having the decision taken from her. “Be back by four, sharp!” she said to regain some control, despite the fact there was no real reason for anyone to be back by four.

Mr Laskaris watched his children run down the road and wondered if he too could escape anywhere for the afternoon.

Having continued down the street and across the green, carefully skirting the village cricket team, the children ran along Sampson Road which led to the brand new housing development, some of which was still under construction. The new houses were all modern in that they were small, boxlike and rather mean looking.

Pandora glanced back, and it flashed across her mind that the new development looked completely different from the old-world style of the original village. She also saw that the people already living on the development weren’t going into the village to do their shopping, preferring instead to use a tiny utility supermarket on the edge of the new estate. Only the children seemed to travel from the estate to the village and back again.

Before they reached the development, the children veered off onto a muddy track, which led to several large fields and an abandoned quarry. Huge, jagged cliffs rose up like broken teeth on the far side of the quarry before the smooth lines of the fields and woods continued once more. The bottom of the quarry was flooded from years of rainwater, creating a large pool. Bushes and grass grew in cracks on the ground and along the walls of the cliff face, as though an army of vegetation was advancing over the bare stone.

The children spread out, some playing hide and seek, some scrambling over the rocks, while others hunted for blackberries amongst the brambles. Some of the boys piled into an old, burnt-out car that had been abandoned on the water edge twenty years before. Teddy was in the driving seat making engine noises, while his passengers flung themselves from one side of the vehicle to the other on the ancient seats, making the car rock from side to side. Beside them, Patch leapt and barked, wagging his long tail.

The afternoon wore on. The children swapped activities regularly, so the boys in the car went to hunt for fruit in the bushes, while those playing hide and seek moved to the car and those who had already filled themselves on delicious, swollen blackberries rested in the shade of the huge boulders. Many stripped off their outer clothes in the surprisingly warm March weather to swim in the pool. They shrieked and laughed as they splashed and paddled, frequently running out to the rocks to rest before plunging back into the water.

Pandora took advantage of one break to ask a question that had been bothering her. “What did you mean earlier, when you said you can’t talk to grownups the way Teddy did?”

“Oh, you know,” replied a boy, stretching his legs out and examining his scabbed knee. Many knees were similarly grazed after a hectic afternoon on the rocks. Sarah and Anne had already taken a tumble each, to no harm. “You’re not supposed to talk to grownups unless they speak to you first, and you certainly can’t just ask someone if they’re coming to play without asking their parents’ permission first.”

“Really?” said Pandora in surprise. She wondered why any adult would object to being spoken to by a child.

“Really,” said the boy with a shrug. To him, it was just the way the world worked.

Pandora went for a walk around the edge of the quarry. She was the eldest there and felt a little lonely. As she walked, she saw a man some distance away, standing in a small grove of trees at the edge of the quarry, looking at the children below. She squinted at him, trying to make out who he was and what he was doing, but he was too far away and the sun was shining on her face.

She quickened her pace, shading her eyes with her hand, but she still couldn’t make out many details. At that moment, the man saw Pandora looking at him and he leapt backward as though bitten, flinging an arm up to his face. Something swung around his neck and caught the sun with a bright flash and the man was gone, running away through the trees.