Vicky Angel Read online

  “You're thinking ‘Great funeral outfit!’” I say.

  We both burst out laughing.

  The funeral.

  The funeral.

  The funeral.

  Oh God. I don't feel like laughing now. I don't know how I'm going to get through it.

  I close my eyes tight and burrow down under the duvet.

  “No! Hey, come on, sleepyhead!” Vicky plucks at my covers, pulls my hair, tickles my neck. She's lighter than a cobweb now but it's hopeless trying to ignore her.

  “Go away!”

  “Don't say that. Think how you'd feel if I really did,” she says. “Aha! That made you wake up, eh! Come on, you want to look good for today, don't you? My big day!”

  “Oh, Vicky, I'm dreading it.”

  “I'm looking forward to it no end. I hope it's huge, with masses of flowers and lots of weeping and everyone saying I'm wonderful.”

  “You're the vainest girl I know. Honestly. Get off the bed then and let me up.”

  Mum suddenly barges into my bedroom with a breakfast tray. She's staring at me.

  “Jade? Who were you speaking to?”

  “I wasn't speaking to anyone.”

  “I could hear you from the kitchen.”

  “Well, I don't know. Maybe I was dreaming. You know, talking in my sleep.”

  Mum puts the breakfast tray in front of me and then sits down on the end of the bed, rather pink in the face. Vicky sits primly beside her, giving her little nudges every now and then.

  “Jade, I heard you. You were talking to … Vicky,” Mum says, not looking me in the eyes.

  “I must have been dreaming about her.”

  “Fibber!” says Vicky.

  “I know this is really dreadful for you, love. But maybe once the funeral is over and … and Vicky's at peace—”

  “Peace? I'm not going to rest in peace! I'm going to h-a-u-n-t everyone!” says Vicky, shoving the sheet over her head and acting like a cartoon ghost. She looks so funny I can't help laughing.

  Mum looks bewildered. Can she see the sheet moving? I bend my head over my breakfast, sniffing, so she'll think I'm sobbing instead.

  “I wish I knew what to say to you,” she says. “Anyway. Get that breakfast down. The muesli too. You need something solid in your tummy to see you through the morning.”

  The funeral's at eleven. Mum's coming too. And Dad! He's only had a couple of hours' sleep. He looks gray and his hair is sticking up oddly from the way he lay on the pillow, but he insists.

  “I've known little Vicky since she was that big,” he says, hand out by his knees. “Of course I'm going to her funeral.”

  Dad has always liked Vicky. He's seemed specially fond of her since she got older. Mum's got a lot less fond. In fact the last year she's done nothing but nag me about Vicky, telling me it was time I branched out and made some new friends. She acted like she thought it was a bit too weird to be so close to a best friend.

  Mum doesn't really have any real best friends. She chats to the women in our housing development and she had a spell of going line dancing with a crowd from work but that's all. Mum gets on with men much better than with women. I've seen her chatting away, having a little flirt here and there. It's not serious or anything. Well, I don't think it is.

  My head's cluttered up with boring daft stuff about my mum and my dad because it's too awful to think about the funeral. Vicky's gone quiet too. She's barely there, in a corner, just standing still and looking round my bedroom, examining some of the little-girly stuff still littering my display shelves: my teddies and my little plastic Belle and Cinderella and Ariel and a handful of Dalmatian puppies and poor Baldy Barbara Ella. There are all my old Flower Fairy books too. We used to dress up in two old ballet dresses with silk scarves for floppy wings and pretend to be Flower Fairies ourselves, pointing our toes and flapping our scarves.

  “I'm like a real Flower Fairy now,” Vicky says sadly. She points one toe and effortlessly glides upward and out the window.

  I think she's gone to be with her mum and dad. My mum and dad look stiff and awkward, Mum in her navy work suit with her pink silk scarf and a lot of pink lipstick, Dad in his gray pinstripe, which is too tight for him now so that the jacket flap is pulled too far apart at the back, showing his big bum. I don't look much better myself. I wanted to wear my black trousers but Mum wouldn't hear of trousers for a funeral, so I'm wearing a dark gray long skirt I've always hated, with a white blouse and my black jacket. I feel a mess, and yet it seems so petty to fuss about the way I look on a day like this.

  We're going to leave at half past ten to give us plenty of time, but then Dad is stuck in the bathroom while Mum and I stand fidgeting in the hall. It's the shift work, it always affects his stomach. Then there are cars blocking our parking space so it takes ages to squeeze out. We end up getting to the crematorium with only a couple of minutes to spare.

  It's crowded. So many people are milling about that we all three stand confused, wondering what's happening. Then Mrs. Cambridge comes up, wearing a big-brimmed black hat and a gray suit, looking so elegant I don't even realize who she is for a second.

  “There you are, Jade! We've been looking for you everywhere. You missed the rehearsal yesterday.”

  Help! Mum's frowning, looking at me. But Mrs. Cambridge has me by the arm and is pushing me through the crowds to the chapel door.

  “You're to sit right at the front, with all Vicky's class. We wanted your grade to be involved in the service. We thought you might like to read one of Vicky's essays. We've got it all marked. You go and sit at the front then. Mr. and Mrs. Marshall, there's two chairs at the back. I must just go and have a quick word with Mr. Failsworth.”

  She dashes off on her black patent high heels.

  “Is she a teacher?” says Dad.

  “How come you missed the rehearsal?” Mum hisses.

  “I didn't feel well. I was in the sick room,” I whisper.

  “Ah. Poor love. You should have said,” says Mum. “You always keep everything to yourself, Jade.”

  I'm certainly keeping it to myself that I went on a jaunt up to London with the ghost of my best friend.

  I can't see Vicky now.

  I can see Vicky.

  Oh, God, there's her coffin, covered in white lilies. Their sweet sickly smell is as overwhelming as chloroform. I stagger forward to the front row and sit down beside Vicky Two. My Vicky is just a few feet away, lying there in the coffin. I wonder what they've dressed her in. A long white nightie to match the lilies? And maybe more flowers in her hair, and lilies in her clasped hands? I wonder if Mrs. Waters dressed her like a big stiff doll?

  “Are you all right, Jade?” Vicky Two whispers anxiously.

  “I feel a bit sick.” I slump down in my chair, feeling the sweat on my forehead.

  “Swap with me, Vicky Two,” Fatboy Sam whispers. He's rustling in his jacket pocket. When he's beside me, practically squashing me because we're all squeezed in so tight, he manages to pull out a small plastic bag of sandwiches.

  “You can't eat in here!”

  “I'm not going to, idiot. It's for you. In case you're sick.”

  “What about your sandwiches?”

  He puts his hand in the bag, but then shakes his head at the impossibility of taking them out in the chapel.

  “Be sick on them. It doesn't matter,” he says nobly.

  Mrs. Cambridge is peering our way. She edges over, walking delicately in her heels so that their tapping isn't too insistent. I think she's going to tell us off, but she gives my shoulder a sympathetic squeeze.

  “You'll be fine, Jade, don't you worry,” she says. “Now, this reading. Shall we get Vicky to do it instead of you?”

  I blink at her. Then I realize she means Vicky Two sitting next to me. Vicky Two's OK, but I can't stand the idea of her having anything to do with my Vicky.

  “I'll read it,” I say, reaching for the book of Vicky's English essays.

  I glance at it. It's very short. Vick