Midnight Read online

  Will eventually burst out laughing the tenth time I leaped up. ‘For God’s sake, Violet!’

  ‘She said ten minutes! It’s nearly three quarters of an hour. Where do you think she’s got to?’

  I was so anxious, desperate for her to get here. Yet I also couldn’t help hoping she wouldn’t come at all. Part of me wanted the phone to ring and Jasmine to tell me she couldn’t make it after all. I didn’t know why. I didn’t think I needed to worry too much about Will. He seemed to be trying really hard to be on his best behaviour. He could be so beguiling when he wanted. I knew Jasmine didn’t seem to like boys, but she’d actually said she quite liked the look of Will, hadn’t she? It would be so perfect if we could all get on together, Will and Jasmine and me.

  So why was my heart beating hard under the butterfly wings on my T-shirt? Why was I staring at the phone, willing Jasmine to ring with some excuse?

  I thought of all my fairies, the Dragonfly, the Rose, the Willow, the Crow Fairy, and in my head I set them spinning, scattering fairy dust.

  ‘Ring!’ I wished – and the phone started ringing.

  ‘She’s not coming after all,’ I said, running to the phone.

  ‘Yes she is,’ said Will. ‘You wait.’

  ‘Hi, Violet,’ said Jasmine on the phone, her voice wavering because she was speaking on a mobile. ‘Sorry, slight delay. I decided to get a bit of food seeing as we’re having this party and I had to wait for the shops to open. I’ll be with you in ten minutes – and I mean ten minutes this time. OK?’

  ‘Yes. Sure. Lovely. See you soon,’ I said, and put the phone down.

  I looked at Will.

  ‘I’m always right,’ he said smugly.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’m magic.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘The changeling child. The dark fairy goblin who disrupts family life. The child who saddens the mother and infuriates the father and terrorizes his little sister.’

  ‘Oh yes, help, help, you’re frightening me,’ I said, trying to turn it into a joke. ‘I wish you wouldn’t go on about being a changeling, Will, it’s sick.’ But seeing him lounging on the sofa, even in his good clothes with his hair brushed, there was still something unearthly about his white skin and black hair and glittery green eyes, something savage about his big gleaming teeth, something strange about his bare feet with their long toes and pointed nails . . .

  ‘Cut your nails, why don’t you?’ I said irritably.

  ‘Right now? So that the princess arrives while I’m hacking at them with your sewing scissors?’

  ‘Do you really use my scissors to cut your toenails? That’s disgusting! And I wondered why they got blunt so quickly.’

  We were still bickering noisily when the doorbell rang at last. Jasmine stood smiling on the doorstep, weighed down with huge carrier bags.

  ‘Hi! Here’s the picnic!’ she said. ‘Shall I take the bags into your kitchen?’

  She looked incredible, wearing a tight black low-cut top edged with lace, a pale pink and primrose flouncy silk skirt, and her black high-heeled boots. She was wearing one armful of bangles and a new home-made necklace, my Jasmine Fairy hanging from a long black velvet ribbon.

  ‘Doesn’t she look lovely?’ said Jasmine, giving the fairy a little flick with her fingers. ‘You’re so clever, Violet.’

  I was pleased she liked the Jasmine Fairy so much, but disconcerted to see her worn as a necklace. It made her more of an object, a pretty little ornament. I didn’t like to see her tied up, hanging on the ribbon, even though Jasmine had attached her very neatly. She’d tied a matching black velvet ribbon round the end of one tiny plait, but the rest of her hair hung loose and shining to her waist. I reached out my hand as I followed her, longing to slide my fingers down those golden curls.

  ‘Is it through here?’ said Jasmine. ‘Isn’t your house neat and tidy! Jonathan and I are such slobs, we never get the place straightened up. Oh wow, look at your kitchen, it’s gleaming! And it all looks brand new. Have you just had it fitted?’

  ‘My dad did most of it.’

  ‘My dad can’t even bang in a nail without knocking a wall down – and ending up in Casualty,’ said Jasmine.

  She started unpacking her bags, producing the most amazing luxury food – lobster, king prawns, chicken breasts, flans, salads, baguettes and brioches, chocolate cake, cream cakes, a pineapple, melon, peaches . . .

  ‘Jasmine! There’s heaps and heaps!’

  ‘Well, it can be tea as well as lunch. And I thought maybe your brother’s got a big appetite. Will he really help me with my homework, do you think?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Will, standing in the kitchen doorway.

  He wasn’t staring at the feast spilling out over the entire kitchen unit. He was staring at Jasmine. She was staring straight back at him.

  The kitchen was very quiet apart from the tick tick of the timer clock. The fridge suddenly switched itself on and made us all jump.

  ‘Is this for all of us?’ said Will, reaching for a peach.

  ‘Do you dare to eat it?’ said Jasmine.

  Will looked impressed because she was quoting from his beloved T. S. Eliot. She probably didn’t know the poem at all, quoting at random from some play Jonathan had been in.

  ‘Oh, I dare all right,’ said Will, sinking his teeth into the peach. A little juice ran down his hand. He licked his fingers.

  ‘Will, stop eating. It’s only half past eleven,’ I snapped.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Will.

  ‘You can’t be. You had all that bread and jam at breakfast.’

  ‘I love bread and jam,’ said Jasmine. ‘My granny used to make her own raspberry jam. It was so good.’

  ‘Home-made jam doesn’t count. Or nutritious brown bread. The true bread and jam aficionado demands limp white sliced bread and synthetic scarlet jam.’

  ‘Or how about chocolate spread?’ said Jasmine. ‘Or, I know, that thick sweet milk you get in tins. We had it once when we went camping, Jonathan and me.’

  ‘Condensed milk! Excellent choice. I can’t imagine you shivering in a sleeping bag, rain dripping down on your canvas roof.’

  ‘That’s Boy Scout camping. Though I bet you weren’t ever a Boy Scout.’

  ‘I’m certain you weren’t a Brownie.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t that sort of girl.’

  They seemed to have forgotten I was in the kitchen too.

  ‘I went to Brownies once,’ I said. ‘I thought it might have something to do with fairies. How sad is that!’

  Jasmine and Will didn’t react at all, not even to laugh at me.

  ‘We could have a coffee now,’ I said, putting the kettle on. I scurried round the kitchen, getting out the best rose-patterned cups and saucers, hunting for a jug for the milk, rifling through the cutlery drawer for the special silver sugar spoon . . .

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Violet, stop faffing about,’ said Will, spooning instant coffee into three big mugs. ‘Let’s have the cake now anyway.’

  ‘Chocolate cake,’ said Jasmine, ripping open the packet.

  Will cut the cake with the breadknife, hacking it into clumsy wedges. ‘Here,’ he said, handing the biggest slice to Jasmine.

  ‘Great,’ she said, taking a large bite.

  I’d only ever seen her nibble at food before – one bite, sometimes just one little lick – but now she chewed her way through the great big slice, seemingly relishing it.

  Will gave me a big slice too but I was feeling too anxious to eat.

  ‘So what about your homework, Jasmine?’ I said, trying to make things normal. ‘Is it just the maths, or all of it? I could maybe help you with the history or the French.’

  ‘Give it here,’ said Will. ‘Seeing as Violet’s bottom of the class in practically everything.’

  ‘I’m not! Only maths. And I’m nearly top in art.’

  ‘What about you, Will? You’re top in just about everything, aren’t you?’

  Will shrugged. ‘Have