My Sister Jodie Read online

  ‘Oh dear, now I wish we hadn’t,’ she said.

  ‘It’s my fault, I made him look so nice,’ I said.

  ‘Jodie made a guy last year but he was really scary with a devil’s mask and long toothpick teeth. We were glad to get rid of him.’

  ‘Where’s Jodie now?’ Harry asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I was starting to get really worried. I was sure Jodie was plotting something but I wasn’t sure what. Maybe she’d invented some kind of Bonfire Night game?

  Mum was trundling a food-laden trolley over the grass. She caught hold of me.

  ‘Help me hand all this stuff round, Pearl, there’s a dear. Get Jodie to help too.’

  ‘ I’ll help,’ said Harriet. ‘Oh, yum – your mum’s such a good cook, Pearl.’

  I darted around, thrusting paper plates of sausages and baked beans and potatoes at everyone. Then I poured jug after jug of hot chocolate. Half the little ones spilled their chocolate all down their duffel coats but at least it didn’t show in the dark.

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  ‘My Man wants his own cup,’ said Dan. ‘And he ate my marshmallow, so can I have another one?’

  I knew this was a deliberate scam but I still gave it to him.

  ‘I do like you, Pearl,’ Dan said happily. He paused, sucking his marshmallow. ‘I like Jodie too though, lots and lots. I didn’t mean to get her into trouble.’

  ‘I know you didn’t, Dan.’

  ‘I can’t find her.’

  ‘She’s around somewhere, Dan,’ I said, trying to sound reassuring.

  ‘She’s missing the food!’ said Zeph.

  ‘She won’t miss the fireworks, will she?’ said Sakura.

  I remembered Jodie asking what time they started. It must have been for a reason.

  ‘I’m sure she won’t miss the fireworks,’ I said.

  The first rocket soared high in the sky at exactly half past seven. We all gazed up at the golden stars exploding way above the tower. And then there was a gasp. There was an eerie light inside the tower room, spotlighting a figure standing inside, right up on the window ledge, a strange ghostly figure in a long white dress, a shawl draped over her head.

  ‘It’s the sad white whispering woman!’ Dan shrieked. ‘It’s a ghost, it’s a ghost, it’s a ghost!’

  Everyone was peering up and pointing, and the little children were all crying, and even some of the Seniors were screaming. Harriet nearly snapped my arm in two.

  ‘It really is a ghost!’ she whispered.

  Another rocket went up, but no one looked as the new stars exploded. Everyone stared transfixed at 385

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  the tower-room window. I stared too, seeing my sister Jodie making them all believe in ghosts.

  Dan was screaming hysterically.

  ‘It’s OK, Dan, truly. It’s not really a ghost,’ I whispered, but he pulled away from me, scared senseless.

  ‘It’s the ghost woman and she’s coming to get me!’ he yelled, throwing himself on the ground.

  I saw Jodie banging on the window, shouting something, but of course we couldn’t hear. She struggled with the catch, hitting it with her hand until it opened. Another rocket soared, illuminating Jodie with its green ghostly light.

  ‘It’s only me, Dan!’ she yelled. ‘Look, it’s just silly old Jodie.’

  I’m sure that’s what she said.

  She hung right out of the window and tugged at her shawl to show her purple hair. She tugged too violently, she jerked forward, she wobbled in her crazy red shoes – and then she fell.

  She fell all the way to the ground, the shawl billowing out behind her, the white lace dress floating, one shoe falling off. Her mouth was open and I heard her scream high above all the others.

  She fell onto the lawn with a terrible thud, head flung back, arms and legs spread open, while another rocket showered the sky with lurid sparks.

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  Melchester seems like a dark dream.

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  They wouldn’t let me hold her. I wanted to rock her the way she’d rocked the badger cub. They said she mustn’t be touched in case her neck was broken. I screamed at them then because of course her neck was broken. She was broken all over, my sister Jodie, and I needed to hold her to keep her together.

  But they took her away in the ambulance and I didn’t get to see her again.

  I begged and begged and begged to go to the funeral parlour. I needed to see Jodie when she was put in her coffin. I knew exactly what I had to do. I had to shut her eyes and turn her mouth up in a little smile. I had to comb her dear purple hair and dress her in her shortest shirt and slip her crazy shoes back on her upturned feet. I wasn’t sure if she’d want books tucked into her coffin too. I planned to give her all my stories instead and I wanted to put her old wooden rocket in her hand.

  Mum wouldn’t listen. She just cried and cried.

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  Dad tried to understand, but he kept shaking his head.

  ‘I can’t let you do that, darling. It’s too morbid. I don’t think it’s allowed anyway. It would likely give you terrible nightmares seeing our poor Jodie now.’

  Dad started crying then and I couldn’t argue any more with him.

  There was so many tears, so many arguments.

  We couldn’t have the funeral straight away. There were mad questions and enquiries. Some people thought Jodie had killed herself deliberately. This was so crazy I started screaming again. Of course my sister hadn’t committed suicide. She’d been trying to reassure Dan and the other littlies. She’d leaned out of the window to show them she wasn’t really the sad white whispering woman, she was just our mad Jodie with her purple hair and her red shoes. She’s slipped in those shoes, she’d lost her balance, she’d fallen. It was an accident.

  I said it was an accident, Mum and Dad said it was an accident, Mr Wilberforce said it was an accident, but the newspapers wrote all kinds of sleazy lies about my sister. They suggested she was a total misfit at her exclusive boarding school, treated harshly by the teachers, bullied by the other pupils, made so miserable that she took her own life.

  They couldn’t prove it though. I’m the only one who knows everything about Jodie, because she was my sister and she loved me more than anyone else in the whole world. As if she’d ever kill herself and leave me behind!

  When we could have her funeral at last, Mum and Dad wouldn’t let her be buried at Melchester church. They couldn’t bear the thought of leaving 390

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  her, lonely and moulding in the grounds. We were moving far away immediately afterwards. We needed to set Jodie free.

  They held the funeral in the nearest cremato-rium, twenty miles away in Galford. They wanted the ceremony to be private, but the whole school attended.

  ‘I don’t want them there! They just want to show the school in the best light possible after all that bullying scandal in the papers,’ Mum said bitterly.

  ‘Maybe. But maybe they want to mourn our Jodie too,’ Dad said.

  Everyone was in their neatest uniform. Every little girl had snowy socks, every little boy had his hair grimly parted. Every Junior had their tie neatly knotted and their shirt tucked in. Every single Senior carried a lily to put on top of Jodie’s coffin.

  Mr Wilberforce wore a dark suit and a black tie.

  He pushed Mrs Wilberforce in her wheelchair. She wore a black net veil over her long white hair and a black velvet cloak that covered her legs. Miss French stood humbly behind them in a shiny navy suit that was too tight for her. The teachers stood in a sober line, gripping their hymn books.

  Jed was there too, in an old donkey j