Butterfly Beach Read online

  It was very confusing.

  ‘It might be a prisoner being held against their will,’ said Tinkerbell darkly. ‘They could be being hideously tortured for most of the day, and only be allowed out every now and then, for good behaviour. And if anyone sees them waving, back indoors they go for more thumbscrews.’

  Pea took this very seriously. She hadn’t really believed that Dot had been a secret spy in need of rescue, but this was different: there was definitely something odd going on next door. There was a sign on the red-brick pillar at the end of the drive: a square brass plate, with DR KARA SKIDELSKY & DR G. M. F. PAGET: CHILD PSYCHOLOGY & FAMILY THERAPY etched into the metal. Different people scrunched up the gravelly drive every day – always children, usually with an adult or two to drop them off or pick them up. They always looked worried. Sometimes they were crying. Pea suspected that Dr Kara Skidelsky or Dr G. M. F. Paget was quite capable of keeping one of them behind, for imprisoning purposes.

  She began to imagine chains and padlocks, just on the other side of the wall, and resolved to learn semaphore and Morse code in case the waving was really a desperate signal for help. Tinkerbell made flags, and they stood at opposite ends of the landing, trying to spell each other’s names. Tinkerbell definitely seemed happier, now there was plotting to do to take her mind off Tenby – and Pea remembered that her little sister could be quite kind sometimes, even if her eyes did light up alarmingly whenever she said ‘thumbscrews’. But it turned out that semaphore was quite complicated and boring to learn, and there was a very good reason someone had invented text messages instead. Unfortunately, imprisoned persons didn’t tend to have mobile phones – and neither did Pea or Tinkerbell.

  That afternoon Clover put up a new sign:

  Banished, they holed up in Tinkerbell’s bedroom – Tinkerbell standing on her bed, ear pressed up against the mysterious nailed-up door; Pea kneeling to peer under the bed at that telltale crack of light. There was a piano being played somewhere in the neighbouring house, and the music – the Moonlight Sonata, very slow, with the same part being played over and over, always going wrong at the same place – drifted eerily through the wall. They couldn’t hear any rattling chains or screams of terror, but the stop-start piano was quite creepy enough.

  ‘We could try un-nailing this door,’ said Tinkerbell, poking under a nail with her finger-tip. ‘That must go straight into the house next door.’

  ‘Tink, you mustn’t, ever!’ said Pea, appalled. ‘That would be like breaking into their house!’

  That wasn’t the whole reason. Pea had read Coraline last year, and though she knew it was only a story, it seemed best for everyone if the door between the houses stayed nailed shut. Just in case.

  There had to be another way of getting a message to the person next door.

  When the tatty red-and-blue football bounced into their garden again a few days later, Pea had a brainwave.

  She tucked the note through a small hole in the stitching of the football, and got Tinkerbell to kick it high up in the air, back over the wall.

  Then Pea and Tinkerbell knocked on Clover’s door, again and again, until it was obvious that not letting them in would be much more annoying.

  ‘We have to check something – it’s very important,’ said Tinkerbell, marching past Clover.

  The person was in the garden, idly kicking the red-and-blue football against their wall – so it had definitely found its way into the right garden. But after a while – without a glance up at the window – she or he went inside.

  ‘Maybe they’ll notice there’s a note inside later?’ said Tinkerbell, not sounding convinced.

  ‘What if the horrible imprisoning doctors find it first?’ said Pea.

  ‘What?’ said Clover, who was reclining on her bed with cucumber slices over her eyes.

  Tinkerbell explained their fears for the poor chained-up, thumbscrewed person.

  ‘Are you two mental?’ said Clover. ‘The person next door isn’t horribly imprisoned. They’ve got a piano. There are monkey bars in their garden. And look – now they’re eating an ice cream.’

  Pea watched miserably as the person returned to the garden, licking a vanilla cone.

  It was comforting to think no one was being chained to a wall and thumbscrewed, but now there was no reason at all for the friendly waving to have stopped. Unless, with all those other children coming and going, they simply didn’t have time for more friends.

  The floppy-haired person probably had a million Dots of his or her own already; no need for a Pea.

  Pea sat dejectedly on Clover’s bed.

  ‘Did you really want to be friends with this next-door person?’ asked Clover, quite gently and ever so slightly Mumlike.

  Pea nodded.

  ‘We tried learning semaphore and everything,’ said Tinkerbell.

  ‘Then you can’t just give up,’ said Clover. ‘They’ve got that piano next door. I could go round to ask if I can practise on it – say once a week – and you could come too, and accidentally bump into her. Or him. Whichever it is.’

  Pea felt much better now that someone else was in charge of finding her a best friend for a bit.

  Clover waited until quarter past two on a Monday afternoon (‘because anyone who’s at home at quarter past two on a Monday will probably like being distracted by the doorbell – Mum always does’), and scrunched down the gravelly path.

  Pea and Tinkerbell waited at the end of the drive, by the red-brick pillar with the engraved brass plate for DR KARA SKIDELSKY & DR G. M. F. PAGET: CHILD PSYCHOLOGY & FAMILY THERAPY. Even without any imprisoning going on beyond it, Pea still found it quite intimidating, for a brass square was almost certainly more important than a blue plaque.

  When the front door swung open, they dipped behind the pillar.

  Pea could hear Clover’s voice, unusually meek, then another, rather brisk, in reply, and couldn’t resist peering out. The person on the doorstep was a pale, elongated lady: long skirt, long cardigan, long strings of beads. Clover looked oddly pink and three-dimensional beside her. They talked quietly for a short time. It all looked very business-like. They even shook hands.

  Then the front door closed, and Clover hurried down the path.

  ‘That was Dr G. M. F. Paget, and the G stands for Genevieve,’ Clover told them, once they were safely back inside their own front door. ‘She wasn’t very scary. But she said she was with a patient, and actually quarter past two isn’t at all a good time to ring people’s doorbells. We should tell Mum she’s doing afternoons all wrong. Anyway, she said I can play their piano whenever I like! And she finishes early on Tuesdays and we can come for afternoon tea tomorrow. All of us. She said she’s been meaning to invite us over ever since we moved in. And’ – Clover beamed at Pea – ‘she asked me to give this to “the red-headed girl from the window”.’

  Clover pressed a folded scrap of paper into Pea’s hand.

  Pea glowed. Her person had a name (a frustrating one, true; if only they were called something helpful like Jack or Julietta), and the waving had been friendly all along, and they hadn’t thought she was silly for writing ‘love from Pea’ on her note or thinking they might be horribly imprisoned.

  And tomorrow she would meet them properly, for afternoon tea.

  We hope you enjoyed reading

  BUTTERFLY BEACH

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