The Other Alice Read online

  ‘“What are they?” she asked.

  ‘“Stories.” He pulled one out. “And this one I wrote for you.”

  ‘She felt her cheeks reddening, and heard the whispers and giggles of her friends behind her. “I suppose you want paying for it?” she said. She thought about putting it back in the box, but curiosity wouldn’t allow it.

  ‘He shrugged. “Have to eat, don’t I?”

  ‘“How much?”

  ‘“Tell you what.” He picked a blade of grass and chewed it with bright, almost perfect teeth. Almost perfect but for the bottom row where the front four stood at angles to spell out a ‘W’.

  ‘W for words, she thought. W for writer . . . water gypsy, wandering.

  ‘“Read it,” he continued, “then pay me what you think it’s worth.”

  ‘So she took it and stood away from her friends to read it. Before she even reached the end, his words had worked a spell on her and she was already falling in love with him.

  ‘W for weakness, W for wishing . . .

  ‘And so love was the price she paid for it. A high price, because he loved his stories more than he loved her. Four years later, he was gone. And she found that W was for weeping, and wretched, and woe, too. But, even though he’d left her, he hadn’t left her alone.

  ‘Their baby was called Alice. It was an easy choice, because that had been the name of the girl in his story.’

  Alice paused as she often did at this part of the tale. Sometimes it was clear she didn’t want to go on, but she always did in the end. ‘Alice grew up barely remembering or knowing her father, but with his love of stories and the same gift for telling them. As she grew, so did her curiosity. One day she decided to look through her mother’s things and she found something which led her to him. So she went.

  ‘He seemed happy to see her. They spent a day together, talking and learning about each other. They caught fish in the river and ate them for supper, and they told each other stories. When the day ended and she had to leave, they made plans and promises. But they, too, were stories – for when she returned next he was gone.’

  Alice went quiet then. The story was finished, but every time she told it I wondered what she had left unsaid, what she had held back.

  I remembered the day that Alice had gone looking for her father. It had felt like an adventure at first, like one of Alice’s stories. The two of us whispering as I kept watch on the landing and Alice filled her small suitcase: clothes, a packed lunch, a book, notepad and pencil, and her best story – tied with a silver ribbon – for him.

  I was only small, but old enough to recognise the panic in Mum’s voice, and know something was really wrong, when she discovered that Alice hadn’t arrived at school that day. I’d finally cracked when Mum started to cry. As soon as I’d given up Alice’s secret, I was left with a neighbour while Mum went looking for her. It was late when she returned with a red-faced Alice. Both of them wore the silvery streaks of dried tears on their cheeks.

  We were sent to bed straight after supper that evening. It was early, and I was too upset to sleep, but Mum had said we weren’t allowed to talk. Alice was at the desk, looking at a well-thumbed book of fairy tales. The page was open on Sleeping Beauty. Her finger rested lightly on the spindle in the picture.

  We jumped when the door opened and Mum looked in. Neither of us had heard her come up the stairs.

  ‘Don’t you think you two are in enough trouble already?’ she snapped. ‘Lights off, books away and no talking.’

  ‘Mum?’ Alice said in a small voice.

  ‘What is it?’ Mum’s voice was brisk. She’d calmed down now, but was still cross enough to be scary.

  ‘Do you believe in curses?’ Alice asked.

  The room was very quiet. Then Mum’s voice sliced through the silence.

  ‘No.’ She walked over to Alice and took the book out of her hands, closing it. ‘And neither will you, if you’ve any sense.’ She put the book down and placed her hand on Alice’s cheek. ‘I can guess exactly what your father’s been saying to you. Filling your head with stupid ideas.’

  ‘But what if—’ Alice began.

  ‘It’s rubbish,’ Mum cut in. ‘I should know, because he told me the same rubbish, too, once.’

  Alice said nothing, but she turned her face away from Mum’s hand.

  ‘I know he’s your dad, Alice,’ Mum said, sighing. ‘And I know you want to get to know him. I won’t stand in your way – but I will say what I think, even if you don’t want to hear it. Be careful of who you believe and what you believe in. Belief can be good, but it can also be dangerous. If a person thinks they’re cursed, then they are.’

  When Mum had gone back downstairs, I couldn’t help but pester Alice in loud whispers to tell me more about the mysterious curse. But Alice refused to say, and to this day she’d kept that particular part of the story to herself.

  ‘Alice?’ I said now, using my toes to prod her elbow. ‘Do you believe in curses?’

  ‘If a person thinks they’re cursed, then they are,’ she said, repeating Mum’s words.

  ‘Do you think you’re cursed?’ I asked.

  ‘Go to sleep, Midge. It’s too late to be talking about this. It’ll only give you nightmares.’

  ‘Alice?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘The answer to the riddle . . . is it a pencil?’

  ‘Yes, well done. Now go to sleep.’

  I closed my eyes, happy I’d scored one victory at least. As for the curse, I made up my mind to ask her again in the morning.

  Only I never got the chance, because, when morning came, Alice was gone.

  3

  Black Cat

  WHEN I CAME DOWNSTAIRS INTO the kitchen the next morning, I found the house empty. There was no sign of Alice or Mum, but someone had pulled out the rainy-day boxes from the cupboard under the stairs and left them on the kitchen table. Alice loved them – they contained all sorts of craft materials to keep us busy when the weather was too wet for us to go outside.

  There was a note stuck to the fridge under a magnet. I took it off and read it.

  Alice and Midge, it said, I won’t be long. Don’t eat breakfast – pancakes when I get back! Love, Mum. PS Got the rainy-day boxes out to make Likenesses for the Summoning.

  Pancakes! Now, in the light of day and with pancakes on the horizon, last night’s talk of curses with Alice seemed no more than a bad dream. I called her name, wondering if she could be upstairs in the shower, but there was no answer and none of the usual gurgling of pipes when someone was in the bathroom.

  I’d woken alone in Alice’s bed which wasn’t unusual – if I slept up there, she’d often get up without waking me; she was as quiet as a mouse. But what was strange was that the room was freezing cold. The heaters hadn’t been switched on, which was normally the first thing Alice did.

  I poured a glass of orange juice and sat down. Something warm and furry slithered past my ankles under the table, and then a dark shape slunk away through the kitchen door. ‘Morning, Twitch,’ I called after it, peering into the nearest box as I drank my orange juice in one go. Inside was a jumble of wool and fabric scraps. A black paw shot out of the tangled contents to swipe playfully at my hand.

  ‘Ouch!’ I pulled my fingers back. A bead of blood swelled on my thumb. The box on the table rustled, and then a mischievous black face popped out of it with ribbon looped over one ear.

  ‘Oh, no,’ I muttered. This was Twitch.

  I went into the living room and had a quick look around. We’d had problems before, with other cats coming in through the cat flap and stealing Twitch’s food, but there was no sign of any intruder now. Perhaps it had sneaked out again. I went back into the kitchen and was about to sit down when I heard a distinctive bleep, and something buzzed next to the toaster.

  Alice’s phone.

  It had been left to charge, but, typical of Alice, she had forgotten to switch on the plug. The bleep was the warning tone for low battery. I went over to it
and turned on the power.

  I frowned. Alice never left her phone behind – but she hadn’t been in bed, either. Or had she? Suddenly, I doubted myself. Could she have been still asleep under the covers when I got up and I just hadn’t noticed? It would explain the heaters not being on. I decided to go and check.

  I took the stairs two at a time, then scrambled up the ladder into the attic. I hadn’t been mistaken. The covers were thrown back as I’d left them, and Alice’s single bed definitely had no Alice in it. It wasn’t empty, though.

  ‘How did you get up here?’ I said, puzzled. ‘You were in the kitchen a minute ago.’

  Twitch blinked at me from within the folds of the rumpled bedclothes, then deliberately turned her back on me and started to lick her sleek, black coat. I turned away, ready to go back down the ladder, but noticed something.

  The skylight in the roof was open, just a crack.

  ‘No wonder it’s so cold in here.’ I climbed on the bed and pulled it closed, then looked round the room and back to Twitch. Something glinted within the cat’s fur: a golden pendant on a deep purple velvet collar. Twitch didn’t have a collar as posh as that; hers was green and tatty.

  ‘Wait,’ I said, stepping towards the cat. ‘You’re not Twitch, are you?’

  The cat stopped licking itself and leaped on to Alice’s desk, sprawling across her notebooks. It regarded me lazily as I approached.

  ‘Who are you then?’ I said. ‘We’d better get you out before Mum gets back.’ I kept my voice soft so as not to scare it, but the cat seemed at home. I reached out and gently ran my hand along its back. It purred and lifted its tail. Up close, I could see that there were small differences between this cat and ours. Its coat was longer and sleeker than Twitch’s, its tail less bushy and, where Twitch’s eyes were a very feline shade of green, this cat’s were golden.

  I scratched its neck, my fingers finding the small, jewelled pendant on the collar. I turned it over, looking for an address or a phone number on the other side. There was none, although three letters were engraved in the surface.

  T. E. A.

  I frowned. T. E .A.?

  ‘Come on,’ I said, sighing. I moved my hand under the cat’s chest to try to lift it up. The cat rolled on to its back and swatted me away playfully. The undersides of its paws were black, too, and its nose. Twitch’s were pink. This was the blackest cat ever.

  ‘You really are beautiful,’ I said, stroking it again. ‘But you can’t stay here.’ I had a quick look round the attic, sniffing. A tomcat had got in once and peed upstairs, but I couldn’t smell any evidence of that. ‘At least you haven’t done anything.’

  ‘Done anything?’ the cat enquired. ‘Do you take me for a common alley cat? I know the difference between inside and outside, you know!’

  I staggered backwards in shock, colliding with Alice’s bedframe.

  ‘Huh?’ I whispered.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, shook my head and opened my eyes again. The cat was still there.

  ‘Did you just . . . what did you say?’

  ‘I said I do know the difference between inside and outside.’ The cat stared at me for a long moment, then licked its paw and started to wash its face. I dropped to my hands and knees, peering under the bed, in the wardrobe, then down the hatch to see if there was someone on the landing. There was no sign of anyone, no Alice. No one that could be playing a trick on me.

  ‘Say something else.’ I felt sure it wouldn’t and that I had some kind of fever.

  The cat carried on washing its face with no sign that it had heard me. Just as I was starting to convince myself that I had imagined it, the cat sat up and looked straight at me.

  ‘I miss soap and water,’ it said.

  ‘Wh-what?’ I stuttered.

  ‘Soap . . . and . . . water,’ the cat repeated slowly, as if it were speaking to someone stupid.

  Still disbelieving, I moved towards the cat and sunk a finger into the warm, soft fur. There had to be batteries, or some kind of remote control. The cat batted my hand away again.

  ‘Do you mind? How would you like it if someone poked you?’

  This time I felt the warm hiss of its breath on my skin.

  ‘You are real,’ I whispered. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I got in through the cat flap,’ the cat drawled, like it was obvious. For the first time, I realised that its voice was female.

  ‘Yes, I guessed that,’ I said. ‘But, um . . . what I meant was, why did you come here? Where are you from? And how can you talk?’

  ‘So many questions.’ The cat yawned and spread herself over Alice’s notebooks once more. ‘Too many questions make me sleepy.’ She half closed her amber eyes, but still watched me through the narrow slits. It was a sneaky look.

  ‘One at a time then,’ I said. ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘The Crowstone Marshes,’ she replied. ‘It’s cold there. Next?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of that place,’ I replied. ‘It must be far away. How did you get here?’

  ‘That I can’t answer,’ said the cat. ‘Because I don’t remember.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t be asking me all these things,’ the cat said. ‘Weren’t you ever warned about talking to strangers?’

  ‘I don’t think talking cats count.’

  ‘Fine,’ the cat replied. ‘My name is Tabitha. Tabitha Elizabeth Ashwood.’

  ‘So you’re T. E. A.,’ I said, remembering the initials on the pendant.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tabitha. ‘Speaking of which, I’d love a cup. Would you mind?’ She glanced at Alice’s little tea-making table.

  ‘Tea? You don’t want milk?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Tabitha. ‘Tea would be lovely, thanks. Milk and two sugars.’

  I put a tea bag and sugar into a cup and switched the kettle on.

  ‘Why did you come into our house?’ I asked.

  ‘I needed somewhere to stay,’ said Tabitha. ‘Somewhere I hoped I wouldn’t be noticed while I figured out what to do.’

  ‘And so when you saw Twitch in the garden you decided to follow her through the cat flap?’ I guessed. ‘Because you look alike enough to be mistaken for her?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the cat. ‘Although that part didn’t exactly go to plan, did it?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But it would have if I hadn’t come up here to . . .’

  To look for Alice.

  All the excitement and weirdness of the talking cat had distracted me from wondering where my sister was. I wanted so badly for her to be here that I actually felt an ache in my throat. A talking cat, in Alice’s room. It was just so, well . . . Alice. Exactly the sort of thing she loved and would write about . . .

  The thought sat uneasily in my mind as I remembered the things Alice had been saying the night before and what had happened last summer.

  I made the tea and put the cup in front of Tabitha. She lapped at it in neat little licks that made it look like she was trying not to wet her whiskers.

  ‘How long have you been a cat?’ I asked. ‘And who turned you into one?’

  Tabitha didn’t answer straight away. She drank all the tea in the cup, then a second after I refilled it. When it was licked clean, she settled down, purring, her tail curled over the keys of Alice’s typewriter.

  ‘What makes you think someone turned me into a cat?’ she said finally. ‘And that I haven’t always been one?’

  ‘Because you can talk,’ I said.

  ‘All cats talk,’ said Tabitha. ‘But not all people understand them.’

  ‘Twitch definitely can’t talk,’ I said.

  ‘But you can still understand her, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s different. She just stands around and meows, but you talk. You really, actually talk. And you drink tea. Normal cats don’t drink tea.’

  ‘It’s more refreshing than milk,’ said Tabitha.

  For the second time, I got the feeling that the cat
was being sneaky and more than a little unhelpful. Then I remembered something.

  ‘You said something a minute ago, when you were washing yourself. You said, “I miss soap and water.”’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And that proves it – you were a human once. Cats don’t use soap and water to wash, and missing it means it’s something you used to do!’

  Tabitha’s tail twitched. ‘Cleverer than you look, aren’t you?’

  I was clever enough to know that that wasn’t much of a compliment.

  ‘So who are you?’ I knew I sounded huffy now, but I couldn’t help it. ‘Or who were you?’

  ‘Have to be careful about who I tell that to.’ Tabitha tucked her paws underneath her.

  ‘Why? Are you hiding from someone?’

  I didn’t get an answer. The front door rattled and a moment later Mum called up.

  ‘I’d better go downstairs,’ I said, still staring at Tabitha. I didn’t care about pancakes for breakfast now. I wanted to stay and quiz the mysterious cat, but it seemed she had had enough of my questions, because she’d gone to sleep.

  I climbed down the ladder, hesitating when I reached the bottom. All it would take was two quick folds of the ladder and the hatch would swing back in place, trapping the cat in the attic. Eventually I decided not to. She wasn’t my prisoner and, besides, she seemed in no rush to leave. There would still be time for questions and Alice should be back soon. She’d know what to do.

  Mum was pouring the pancake mixture into the frying pan when I got downstairs and the table had been cleared of the rainy-day boxes and set for two.

  ‘Where’s Alice?’ I asked.

  ‘I haven’t spoken to her,’ said Mum, slicing a lemon into quarters. ‘But I saw her in town just before I came back.’ Her forehead crinkled. ‘I waved, but she didn’t seem to see me.’

  I sat down at the table. When the pancakes were cooked, we sprinkled them with sugar and squeezed wedges of lemon over them, digging in. But each mouthful of pancake stuck in my throat. I washed it down with a slurp of tea, unable to shake the feeling that something was wrong. It wasn’t like Alice to go out so early on a Saturday, especially not without telling anyone where she was going. And she’d been in such a weird mood last night.