That Grey Area - Book 1 - The girl from Otherworld

Homecoming

A car honks as it passes us, making me look up from my diary. Mum's sluggish driving has sent another Frenchman into a rage, but she doesn't react. I look back down at my homework when a word, typed next to the date, jolts me. Autumn.

Peter loved autumn. On Halloween day, he would get up at dawn to carve the pumpkins and decorate the house with paper garlands and crumpled leaves. Then he would spend the rest of the day re-enacting spooky stories of spirits and ghosts coming back to earth for one night. If I ever got scared, and I often would, my brother would reassure me with his expert knowledge on how to keep ghosts and goblins at bay.

Autumn. Tomorrow it will be autumn, but you couldn't tell. The stifling heat makes strings of my hair, beaded with pearls of sweat, stick to the damp skin on my neck.

'It's autumn tomorrow, Mum,' I say, breathing in the air from the open window.

'That's lovely, dear.'

Her face betrays not even a flicker of life. She's somewhere else, or years behind, before her fair hair turned white, her eyebrows faded and her grey eyes became empty.

I clench my jaw and hug my school diary closer, a pain in my throat. Dad is the same. They say that it's just that 'Mum and Dad don't love each other anymore but they still love you like before'. But I'm fourteen and I understand more than my parents give me credit for. I know why we left Brittany and Grandpa's house in such a rush after the funeral, why we moved to London, and why Mum and I have to move back to Grandpa's house now that Dad and her have split up. The truth is that the day Peter died a part of them died with him. They wanted to forget. And no matter how hard I tried, I was never a good enough reason for them to stay alive.

For years I forgot, too. But since being back, the past has caught up with me and the memories keep rushing back. The rain, the small casket, the endless hours of waiting punctuated by frantic phone calls, someone telling Mum and Dad that they had found Peter's body. The visitor looked like an important person; he had a shirt on in spite of the stuffy heat.

'I have to warn you, it might be quite upsetting,' the man said to my parents. 'He's been attacked by some sort of wild beast, maybe even wolves. But there've been no wolves in Brittany for hundreds of years.'

I found this puzzling at the time. All the fairy tales Peter had told me said the woods were full of wolves.

'Forensics will tell,' the man added. Dad grabbed his coat as Grandpa's car revved in the driveway.

'Did the Big Bad Wolf eat Peter, Daddy?' my seven-year-old self asked. 'Like the Little Red Riding Hood?'

Mum hugged me between two howls of pain and stroked my nose with her finger.

Dad jumped, as though he'd forgotten I was still there. 'Yes, Lacie', he said, 'but be a good girl and don't ask questions, you're making Mummy cry. You stay with Grandpa, we'll be back soon.'

So I stopped asking questions, even when I wondered why there was a thunderstorm that evening, as if the weather-man had waited for us to be sad to start the rain after the days of heavy heat, why Peter was buried in an ugly cemetery and not in his beloved forest, and why his favourite plush dog, Barney, had to go with him, even though Barney was promised to me and would be lonely in a dark coffin with a dead body.

Worst amongst all the questions I was forced to swallow back down with breakfast every morning was why, within weeks of losing my best friend, my brother, my Peter, why on earth I had to leave Grandpa, the second best person in the world. How sad I was to be forced into a cloudy London life with grey parents.