Lily Alone Read online

Well, I thought I did. Our flats seemed almost next door to the park when you looked from the top balcony. But down on the ground I wasn’t really sure how to find it. I knew the way to the bus stop to get into town, I knew how to get to the chippy and the sweet shop, I knew how to get to school – so I reckoned if I turned the other way we’d find ourselves in the park in no time.

  Perhaps it would have been easier on my own. It was hard work herding Baxter and Bliss along, especially with all the teddies and teapots and stuff, and I didn’t have Pixie’s buggy so I had to carry her half the way.

  ‘Where is the park then?’ said Baxter, peering all round. ‘This is all just houses.’

  ‘Yes, it’s right down this road, I’m sure of it,’ I said, but we trailed up roads, down roads, all over, and still couldn’t find it.

  ‘Are we lost?’ said Bliss anxiously.

  ‘Of course we’re not lost,’ I said, but my heart started thumping hard in my chest. We hadn’t found the park and now I wasn’t certain how to find our way back to the flats.

  ‘Should we ask someone?’ Bliss suggested.

  ‘No! They’ll wonder why we’re not in school,’ I said. They didn’t look the right sort of people to ask anyway. They weren’t ordinary people out here. They were all very posh people: this old lady cutting flowers in her garden in her funny padded waistcoat, and this old man getting into his shiny car, and this big woman striding along in her checked shirt and ironed jeans taking her lollopy Labrador for a walk . . .

  Ah!

  ‘We’ll follow that lady,’ I said.

  She marched down the road, turned left, the dog straining forward eagerly. I saw iron gates right up at the end of the road.

  ‘There’s the park!’ I said.

  There was an ice-cream van parked by the gates and all three of the kids clamoured for a whippy, but I didn’t have any money. Pixie started howling, kicking me hard as I held her.

  ‘I want an ice cream!’ she wailed, her mouth square with grief.

  ‘Stop that kicking, it hurts! Look, Pixie, we’re going in the park now. Isn’t it lovely?’

  ‘No, it’s horrid, I don’t like the park, I like ice cream,’ Pixie yelled, still kicking – but after a minute or so she calmed down and started staring around, astonished.

  ‘Shh now,’ I said. ‘See, it is lovely here.’

  We seemed to have stepped straight from the town to the countryside. I’d never seen so much green before, all different shades of green, from the leaves, the ferns, the grass. Even the birds squawking above our heads were green, flocks of parakeets. It wasn’t flat and boring like other parks. There was a big hill right in front of us with a pebbly path leading upwards.

  ‘Come on, race you to the top,’ said Baxter.

  He started scrambling upwards. Of course he got there long before us because all he had to carry was his fork-lift truck. I had Pixie, who was still refusing to walk, and Bliss lugged the blanket full of teddies. The teapot fell out of the blanket halfway up and broke its spout and handle.

  ‘Oh look!’ said Bliss, panicking. ‘Mum will be so cross!’

  ‘No, she won’t, she hardly ever uses it,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Can’t we mend it?’

  ‘It looks too broken,’ I said. ‘But never mind.’ I kicked the teapot hard into the bushes. ‘There! It’s gone now. It’s not a teapot any more. It’s a little home for a hedgehog or a squirrel, OK? Don’t look so worried, Bliss, Mum won’t ever know.’

  I dumped Pixie, gave Bliss a quick hug, then held my sisters’ hands and pulled them up to the top of the hill where Baxter was waiting for us, scarlet and triumphant.

  ‘I won, I won! You’re all slowcoaches. I got here ages ago! And look, there are animals!’

  We were standing on a grassy plain and only a little way away a large herd of red deer were staring at us, blinking their big brown eyes. There were several deer who stood tensely, their noses in the air, but most of them went on munching grass, flicking their strange little tails. They were mostly females with their young, beautiful little fawns that danced about, but there was one big stag with great antlers growing out of his head like massive branches.

  ‘Will he hurt us?’ Bliss whispered, clutching me.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

  ‘Lovely doggies,’ said Pixie, and she started running towards them fearlessly.

  ‘No, Pixie, stop,’ I said, catching her by the back of her T-shirt. ‘Don’t – you’re startling them. Don’t make them run away.’

  ‘I want them to run,’ said Baxter. ‘And I’ll run after them and I’ll get a long stick and spear them and kill them all dead.’

  ‘Stop it, you monster, you can’t want to kill them, they’re beautiful,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I do. You hunt deer, I know you do, and I’m a hunter,’ said Baxter, swaggering about, miming his spear – but when the stag raised his huge head and took one step towards us, Baxter clutched my hand tightly and pressed up against me.

  ‘He’s coming to get us!’ Bliss squealed.

  ‘No, he’s not, he’s just looking at us to see we’re OK – and we are,’ I said. ‘Let’s sit down and stay quiet and watch them.’

  We sat down and counted them – well, three of us did. Pixie had no idea about numbers and went ‘One, two, three, twenty, a hundred.’ The deer kept moving around so we all got muddled. There were about thirty altogether. Bliss and I tried to sort them into families. I rather liked the idea of having lots of mothers and children all living together with just one father.

  We started choosing names for some of them. I chose Brown Eyes and Bramble and Moonbeam and Fleetfoot and Apple and Treewind and Jumper and Snufflenose and Wagtail. Baxter called the stag King and the others Soldier and Sailor and Badboy and Fighter and Kung Fu and Bighead and Gnasher and Fang, all boys’ names, though I kept telling him they were girls. Bliss chose real girls’ names – Judy and Shelley and Katy and Claire and Ella and Sarah and Hannah and Lizzie and Mandy. We let Pixie choose names for the smallest – Fluffy and Muffy and Duffy.

  We couldn’t really keep track of which was which, apart from the stag and the small ones, but it was a good game, and we repeated our own names over and over so that we would remember them.

  Then a man walked past with a dog. It was on a lead but it barked at the deer and they all ran off, King and all his ladies and children. We stood up and ran after them, but they were much faster than we were. We followed them through the trees and then onto another grassy plain where there were lots of little grey rabbits popping in and out of their burrows.

  ‘Oh, a rabbit, please, lily, can we have a rabbit?’ Bliss begged.

  ‘I’ll catch you one,’ said Baxter, but thank goodness he was nowhere near quick enough.

  We carried on walking through more trees. Some of them were very old and gnarled, with strange knots and warty bits so they looked like faces.

  ‘They’re just like the trees in my fairy-tale book,’ said Bliss. ‘Can we play we’re princesses, Lily?’

  ‘Of course we can, Princess Bliss,’ I said. ‘We’re three enchanted princesses dancing through the forest and Baxter’s a handsome prince.’

  ‘No, I’m not, I’m a big bad ogre and I’m going to stamp and stomp after all you silly princesses and bash you with my stick and bake you in a pot and eat you for my supper,’ said Baxter.

  ‘No, no, you can be an ogre, but you bang your head on the topmost branches of the tree because you’re so tall and you fall down bleeding all over the place, wailing and moaning, and we princesses take pity on you. We dip our petticoats in a handy stream and wash the blood away and put special herbs on your gaping wound and bandage you up with more petticoats and you’re so grateful you become our friend and protect us when we all go on our journey,’ I said, and we acted it out, even Pixie.

  Several times people walking their dogs came by and smiled – but one woman stopped and stood watching us. I heard my voice go all high and silly, worried that she’d t