The Imaginary (17 page)

Rudger hadn't noticed it happen. You'd've thought, he thought, you'd notice something like that, wouldn't you?

He'd made his way through the library to the Corridor holding Julia's photo, just as he and Emily had done with John Jenkins' picture. He had felt perfectly normal then. He'd pushed through the half-real door and walked down the passage lined with the wallpaper peppered with those small blue flowers. He had felt perfectly normal
then
. He'd pushed through the door at the other end and…

Julia had opened the wardrobe door and found him.

Except she hadn't found
him
.

She'd
found
her
.

The answer was simple: Rudger was Julia's imaginary friend now, so he looked the way she wanted him to look. In this case she wanted him to look like a girl called Veronica.

Emily had never warned him this could happen.

Somehow it didn't seem quite fair.

He still
felt
like Rudger inside. He could remember all the Rudgerish things he'd done. He still remembered climbing trees and descending into the bubbling mouths of volcanoes with Amanda, but now his long red hair kept getting in the way of his face and his legs were already getting cold under his skirt.

But Rudger had to face the facts. He'd become a girl.

Julia led Rudger down to breakfast.

‘Mum,' she said. ‘I want you to meet my new friend.'

‘A friend, dear?' her mother said over her shoulder, from the sink where she was doing some washing up.

‘Yes, she only arrived this morning, so she's probably hungry.'

‘What do you mean, dear? A friend?'

‘I found her in the wardrobe. It's okay, she's called Veronica.'

Her mother put a freshly washed mug carefully down on the draining board and turned round.

‘Julia, I don't think you should be bringing friends home without telling me beforehand. I've not vacuumed and your father needs to clean the pond out. What would people think?'

‘
Oh, she doesn't mind. She used to live at Amanda's house and her mum
never
vacuums, everyone knows that.'

Julia's mum stood there for a moment, letting the words her daughter had said sink in. There were quite a lot of words and not all of them belonged together.

‘What do you mean, “she used to live at Amanda's house”?' she asked.

‘Well, she used to be Amanda's friend Roger, but now she's my friend Veronica.'

‘Amanda? Amanda Shuffleup? From your class at school?'

‘Yeah,' Julia said. ‘But she's too weird so Veronica had to find a new friend, a better one. That's why she came to me. Ow!'

‘What happened?'

‘Veronica kicked me.'

‘She's here?'

‘Of course she is. She's stood right there.'

Julia pointed at Rudger.

Her mother looked very carefully at the empty space.

It was definitely space and definitely empty.

‘Darling,' she said, slowly.

‘What?'

‘There's no one there.' (She said this in a tiptoeing half-whisper.)

‘Well,
you
can't see her, can you? She's imaginary.'

‘Imaginary?'

‘Duh!'

Rudger didn't get any breakfast from Julia's mum.

She didn't seem to be as taken with him as Amanda's mum had been.
She'd
always treated him nicely, said ‘Good morning' to him whether he was in the room or not. Julia's mother wasn't like that.

While Julia was sat at the breakfast bar eating her breakfast, her mum was in the front room on the telephone.

‘I think she's banged her head,' Rudger could hear her saying. ‘She's seeing things. I need an appointment urgently. I'm worried it might get worse.'

Rudger, or Veronica, sat on a stool at the breakfast bar next to Julia.

‘Julia,' he said.

‘What?' she said between mouthfuls of cornflakes.

‘Do you know about Amanda?'

‘What about her?'

‘Do you know she got knocked down?'

‘Knocked down?'

‘Yes, the other day. It was at the swimming pool.'

‘Knocked down? What, by a dog or something?'

‘No. By a car. In the car park.'

Julia put her spoon down.

‘No way!' she said. ‘What an idiot. Who gets knocked down by a car in a car park? They're parked.'

Rudger stared at her for a moment. He couldn't tell if she was making a joke or not. If she
was
making a joke, he didn't think it
a
very funny one. On the other hand, if she
wasn't
making a joke, then she wasn't being very sensitive.

‘No. It was moving,' he said. ‘We were running away—'

‘I don't want to know,' Julia interrupted, holding her hand up to silence him. Then she leant in closer and added, in a whisper, ‘Is she…?'

‘No,' said Rudger. ‘No, she's not dead. I thought she was, but the cat told me—'

Julia held her hand up again.

‘Okay, Veronica,' she said. ‘I know you're new here, but I think we should set some rules. For a start, in this house we never begin a sentence with the words, “The cat told me…” Nobody says that. It's mad. I don't want a
weird
imaginary friend who sees talking cats. No way. Secondly, I'm pleased Amanda's not dead, course I am, but can you please stop
going on
about her. You told me you're
my
friend now. If you keep going on about how good everything was with her, then I'll stop believing in you. Understand?'

Rudger was a little taken aback by this. Amanda had always said nice things about Julia, she said they had fun at school together and sometimes swapped sandwiches at lunchtime. But the Julia he was seeing told a very different story.

‘I need you,' Rudger said. ‘I need you to take me to the hospital. I've got to see her. Amanda.'

Julia folded her arms. She shook her head.

Then she knocked her bowl to the floor.

It
shattered in a puddle of milk and cornflakes and the spoon rattled across the tiles.

Her mum rushed in, banging through the door.

‘Darling? What happened?'

Julia screwed her face up tight and said, ‘It was Veronica. She did it.' She pointed at Rudger for good measure.

Rudger was used to being blamed for accidents and for things which weren't
exactly
accidents but which shouldn't have turned out quite how they had. But whenever Amanda dobbed him in she had a twinkle in her eye, she did it with crossed fingers and a wink.

Julia's eyes, on the other hand, twinkled with nothing but malice.

Amanda's mum would listen patiently to her daughter's finger-pointing and tell her to get the dustpan and brush or write a sorry letter to the neighbour and that would be the end of it, but Julia's mum, like Julia, didn't seem to understand exactly how having an imaginary friend worked.

‘Oh darling,' she cried, and pulled her daughter to her bosom, patting her back and kissing the top of her head. ‘You poor thing. You poor, poor thing.'

The Radiche household seemed, to Rudger's mind, to be a rather highly-strung place, with too much useless emotion sloshing round and about.

And coming here didn't seem to have got him any closer to Amanda. In fact, after the way Julia had spoken to him, he felt further away than ever.

After the breakfast things had been swept up and the milk mopped (by a quiet woman in a pinny who came in two mornings a week to clean) Rudger followed Julia upstairs.

‘Today,' she was saying to him, ‘is washing day. We have to get all the dirty clothes and clean them.'

‘Not the other way round?' Rudger said, trying to make a little joke.

Julia stopped halfway up the stairs and turned to look at him.

‘Veronica Sandra Juliet Radiche. You are the most stupid girl I've ever met.
Of course
not the other way round. Who takes clean clothes and makes them dirty? I do wish you'd think before you speak.'

Rudger, who had never dreamt he'd have so many names, did think about it for a moment and said, ‘But if nobody ever takes clean clothes and makes them dirty, then why do we have to clean them?'

‘Because,' said Julia, in the way that made the one word sound like the end of the conversation. ‘Just because,' she added to drive her point home, before turning round and stomping the rest of the way up the stairs.

What surprised Rudger, when he followed, was that instead of emptying a laundry basket and carrying the clothes down to the washing machine, Julia sat down in front of a huge dolls' house and pulled open the walls.

Inside were sat, neatly and upright at tables and in chairs, a dozen dolls of various shapes and sizes.

Amanda
had had some dolls, but hers had never looked like this. Julia, it seemed, had never cut her dolls' hair with scissors or glued tin-foil to their faces to make them look more like robots. It seemed such a shame.

‘Veronica,' Julia was saying. ‘Pay attention. We'll make a pile here,' (she pointed to an area of carpet) ‘of the dirty clothes. You start on that side and I'll start here.'

She carefully removed the first doll and began to undress it, laying the clothes out neatly on the bit of carpet she'd indicated.

Rudger sat down next to her, feeling the rough carpet tickling his legs. He shifted himself and tucked his skirt underneath him. If she had to have a girl for a friend, he grumbled to himself, well, he could just about live with that, but why not make him a girl with trousers? How hard would that have been?

He pulled a doll out of the dolls' house by its feet.

‘No! No! Be careful,' Julia said, getting flustered. ‘Brunhilde doesn't like being upside down. Careful.'

Rudger set her down the right way up. Carefully.

He looked at the dress she was wearing.

‘This looks clean,' he said.

‘Give it here.'

Julia held out her hand.

Rudger handed her the doll.

Julia looked at it closely, sniffed it and gave it back.

‘Dirty,' she said.