Page 10 of Lost Luggage
‘Let’s do it, flower.’
‘Pinky promise? You do the challenges in the notebook and I join Guides?’
Dolly nodded.
Flo thought for a moment and then wrapped her little finger around Dolly’s. ‘Right, let me tell you all I know about Matilda. There’s no going back now. A deal’s a deal.’
8
Tuesday the eighteenth arrived sooner than Dolly would have liked. At just before seven, Deansgate was quiet. Most shoppers and commuters had hurried away to avoid rain that spat its warning of an imminent cascade. She blinked through the darkness at New Chapter Café across the road, along to the left from the small Tesco. Dodging headlamps, she left the bottom of Market Street and crossed over. Her rucksack contained the belongings she felt compelled to return to Phoebe. Dolly stopped outside the café, admiring the illustrations on the front glass, in white and green, of books and pens and quills.
Setting out on an adventure should have lifted her spirits. But then, Dolly didn’t do ‘shoulds’ any more.
She pulled her hood down further and pushed open the glass door, twitching under the fluorescent light like a disorientated moth. She’d expected a cosy, olde worlde atmosphere but the bookish café looked more like an American diner with glossy tables and chairs, chrome bookshelves that matched the coffee machine, and black-and-white floor tiles. Anime sketches such as one of Ebenezer Scrooge and another of Hogwarts brought life to the walls. Warmth, laughter, the aroma of coffee, all did their best to welcome Dolly, but she’d become used to the dim light of her living room with only Maurice and the continuity announcer for company.
Throat tightening, she spun around. What had she been thinking? Dolly charged into a woman with a shock of purple hair and eyes that wrinkled in a kindly manner.
‘First time?’ she asked. ‘We don’t bite. At least not until you become a regular.’ She winked and walked on.
Dolly continued towards the door. There was no shame in leaving. She had every right to keep the contents of the steamer trunk.
But what about Flo?
Tonight coincided with her first trip to Guides. Over the last two weeks Flo had readMatildawith Dolly, listening whilst she practised her speech, and Dolly had helped her research Guides online so she knew what to expect. Despite her confidence with people she knew, Flo had always been shy with anyone new – like with Tony; she’d not been her usual talkative self if he and Leroy popped in to Dolly’s whilst she was there. Not until the time he brought a bag of doughnuts and they played Monopoly all together.
Flo had been told by her dad, Mark, not to bother Dolly quite so much, but Dolly didn’t mind; it wasn’t as if she were ill. A disagreeable sensation gnawed at the pit of her stomach. She tugged off her hood, leaving her hair standing on end. With a sigh she sat at the back, feeling crumpled and out of place. She only had to talk about Matilda for two minutes. Greta used to tease her sister about her non-stop chat. Funny that, seeing as it must have been Greta’s fault because since she’d died Dolly hardly spoke. She studied the other customers, a group of students and people of every age including a man who looked older than the Scrooge sketched on the wall. A few fitted her idea of how Phoebe must look.
A barista walked past, glanced at her rucksack and shot her a dirty look. Dolly looked down at her turquoise flask. After a moment’s thought, she got up and ordered herself a pot of tea. As she carried it back to her table, the woman with the purple hair stood at the front and took hold of a mike. She introduced herself as Trish.
‘Welcome, everyone. Thanks for attending. Great to see a couple of new faces. We’ll kick off in ten minutes, to give you all time to grab another drink or snack. New Chapter Café doesn’t charge us for having this room, so let’s give back.’
Dolly found herself with no appetite, so bought a giant cookie to take home to Flo. She counted the size of the audience – forty-five people, not including the compère.
‘Right, folks, here we go,’ said Trish. ‘Let’s pick our five to go into the balloon.’ She waved her hand across the floor space next to her, in front of a wall bearing a sketch of an attic surrounded by petals. Years ago, Greta had thoughtFlowers in the Atticsounded like a lovely, cosy read but stopped a few chapters in and wouldn’t let Dolly try it.
‘First off, Bella Swan.’
Three students raised their hands. Several people volunteered for Sherlock Holmes and two were middle-aged women – one of them could be Phoebe, although one had feet too small for the rose-gold-heeled trainers and the other sounded Romanian. Scarlett O’Hara proved popular and the volunteer picked was in her late forties and wore a sweatshirt and loose jeans. Dolly would try to catch her afterwards for a chat. The elderly man was chosen to represent Mr Darcy and suddenly it was the turn of Matilda and…
Only one hand went up. Somehow Dolly got out of her seat and headed to the front, banging into a table as she did. She could have simply spectated – not everyone had put themselves forward. Two, four, six, eight minutes passed as the others gave their speeches. The young woman defending Bella went first and talked about how fearless it was to fall in love with a vampire. A young man spoke up for Sherlock Holmes. Stickers of book images littered his wheelchair’s handles. He declared Holmes was the best character because his unappealing personality traits made him relatable; despite his admirable intelligence he was only human. Dolly forgot her nerves briefly when it was the turn of Scarlett O’Hara and the middle-aged woman took the floor. She sounded like a university-educated person who might go to Paris, well-spoken and measured as she outlined how Scarlett was brave to go against the era’s conventions of how the female sex should behave.
Next, Trish introduced Mr Darcy but Dolly didn’t hear a word, practising her own speech in her head, fighting an urge to fetch that giant cookie and shovel it down. The out-of-date cake she’d eaten for breakfast was less dry than her mouth as Trish turned to her and passed the mike. Dolly wavered from foot to foot, like she had at Greta’s funeral, up by the pulpit. How could you sum up a life in a few sentences? How could you express the loss of a person who was your whole family? Yet she’d got through it for Greta’s sake, done her homework on public speaking. She’d made herself pause, made herself slow down, suppressed the tears. Dolly had sworn, at the end, she’d never go through that again.
However, Matilda was a fictional character. There were no emotional binds.
‘Um, hello. For those of you who don’t know the story of Matilda…’
‘We do,’ called an impatient voice.
‘Down, John,’ said Trish, ‘we all remember our virgin balloon debate.’
Heat crept up Dolly’s neck. She longed to be sitting on her sofa, immersed in the soaps and eating toast. But then she thought of Flo again, who’d called in after school yesterday, not meeting her in the eye, suggesting it wasn’t too late for either of them to drop out, saying she’d had tummy ache all day.
‘You may think you know her story, you may write Matilda off as a naughty schoolgirl. But really…’
‘Speak up, love,’ another voice called.
Perspiration prickled in between Dolly’s breasts.
