‘Really? We used to live there too!’ said Ludo enthusiastically. ‘In one of those old cottages down by the dike. We used to say it was …’ He looked at Lucy’s mother for help, but she didn’t seem to notice. She downed her glass in two, three big gulps. She’d gone all white.
‘Idyllic,’ said Duco, ‘that was the word, Ludo. But I don’t remember any family by the name of The Rat.’
‘Silly,’ said Lucy fondly, ‘that’s not his real name.’
‘But isn’t that what it said on the invitation?’
‘My last name’s Iedema,’ said Thomas.
‘Iedema!’ cried Ludo. ‘You mean the florist?’
Duco snickered. ‘Well, well! What did your parents think of Lucy’s card?’
‘I didn’t let them see it,’ said Thomas. ‘No need for them to know I’m with her.’ He rolled his head in a gesture that took in the whole messy room, including the spider webs in the corners of the ceiling.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Ludo. ‘Lucy has snagged herself an Iedema!’
‘I still remember it like yesterday, the time your father …’ Duco started to laugh, his eyes crinkling with mirth.
Lucy’s mother stood up so abruptly that her chair nearly toppled backward. ‘I am really disappointed in you, Thomas.’ Her voice came out sounding throttled. ‘I don’t like sneaky children who do things behind their parents’ backs!’
There was a baffled silence.
‘But Mum,’ said Lucy. ‘It’s only because his mum gets so worried about him getting dirty. She was already in such a state the time he came home dripping wet …’
‘Dirty? Who’s dirty? Are you? Well, well, isn’t that a nice thing for a boyfriend to say!’
‘What’s got into you?’ asked Ludo, astonished.
‘I won’t have that little sneak in my house. I won’t have Lucy going around with the likes of him. If I’d known, I’d have …’
‘Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute,’ said Duco. ‘We were having a party.’
‘Anyway, we’re already engaged, so there!’ cried Lucy. ‘Too late!’ She pulled a rude yah-boo face at her mum.
We were so agitated we couldn’t help going into hysterical laughter. The Luducos started laughing too; they didn’t have to set a good example, or raise anybody. The more everyone laughed, the more it felt as if Lucy’s mum must have been kidding.
We spent the rest of the afternoon playing up in the attic. We must have spent an hour playing the Monkey Game, and then The Duchess’s Visit. We played as if our lives depended on it. That was always the best solution, we’d found, if you didn’t understand what was bugging the grown-ups.
-
C is for Crisis
It was only a matter of days now before we’d finally, finally, be learning to read and write. This milestone involved stiff, brand-new clothes, and also pencil cases, gleaming rulers, and big boxes of markers, pens, and coloured pencils. We sharpened our pencils to razor-sharp points. Lucy was the only one who wasn’t getting a new set; there were always plenty of pencils lying around her house—enough, anyway, to highlight important words in red or blue till kingdom come. They were big, fat, round sticks, those—the real thing, they were; our own thin, hexagonal pencils looked kind of mingy in comparison, even if they were now honed like daggers. And that was what really counted, we assured one another, for you never knew when you might need a weapon to defend yourself. Take Lucy’s mum, for instance.
She hadn’t set foot outside the house since the engagement party. That was because, Lucy reported, the Ten of Swords had suddenly turned up on the Tarot table—the dude with all the swords stuck through his gut, the card of catastrophe and ruin. Which was why her mother had wisely decided to stay indoors. Better safe than sorry; no need to throw yourself deliberately in danger’s path! Danger could be lurking anywhere, really—behind Mr De Vries’s counter, on any of the four streets of the village, or even out here on the green, right at her own front door.
We spread the word, increasingly concerned. Thomas was especially worried. According to him, the circumstances called for drastic precautions. But there was no need for him to go around acting as if putting the rectory on heightened alert had been his idea; we had all arrived at the same conclusion. Not long now, and we’d be at school all day; we could hardly be expected to keep an eye on things from there. When and if the danger foretold in the cards finally did show up, Lucy’s mother would have to face it on her own. What we had to do now was help her arm herself to the teeth. She’d be so grateful that she’d gather us up in a great big bear hug. Her shirt partly unbuttoned, the red scarf wound around her head like a brilliant flame. We would clamp our legs around her hips and get all woozy from the patchouli smell.
The trees in the rectory’s front garden were already turning colour. We were pelted with shiny chestnuts as we darted up the gravel path. Scattering in alarm, we ducked, prowling like tigers, keeping in touch by walkie-talkie. We looked left, right, and left again, because that’s what our mums had drilled into our heads, and, doubled over, sprinted to the front door—those heavy, banged-up, scratched double doors.
It was Duco who opened the door.
He wasn’t shaved.
He looked surprised.
So did we. Our fathers had been at the office for hours; they were probably sitting in an important meeting, or dictating a memo to give someone a good dressing-down. It worried us that Duco wasn’t at work; fathers were supposed to be in the office, but on the other hand, the Luducos weren’t fathers, they didn’t do real work, just something to do with stocks and shares or something. Once we had that straight, we felt right as rain again.
‘Have you come to play with Lucy?’ Duco asked in an unusually dull voice, as if he couldn’t take it any more.
For appearance’s sake, we nodded.
It wasn’t until we were inside that we could tell how right the Tarot cards had been. There was an uneasy atmosphere in the house that smacked of whining and moping, quarrels, sulks, and negotiations. In the corridor the pictures hung all askew, as if when nobody was looking they’d been trying to shake their way out of their frames, in case they had to beat a hasty retreat. Instead of the usual enticing aroma of the Luducos’ breakfast, the only smell coming from the kitchen was the sorry stench of cold ashes. Alarmed, we thundered up the staircase with the creaky treads.
Lucy and her mother were sitting in the first-floor studio among a jumble of papers, paint jars, and Tarot cards. The curtains were drawn and there were barely any lights on, which made the room seem murkier than usual. Even the cool drawing of Clara 13 over the mantelpiece looked as if someone had smudged mud all over it.
Lucy, seated on a stool at the drawing table, was just cajoling, ‘But Mum, why don’t you just stop reading the cards?’
‘As if that makes any difference,’ said her mother. ‘Don’t be silly.’ With an irritated sigh she rolled her eyes up at the ceiling festooned with plaster grapes and curlicues.
Our ceiling at home had designer fixtures, lighting fixtures that cost—well, our fathers said, don’t even ask, you don’t want to know. In our homes everything was different. And suddenly, out of the blue, we felt as if we had landed in a strange country with all sorts of edicts we didn’t know, where ornate plaster and darkness were the rule, not polished steel or halogen. Panicked, we all started talking at once.
Lucy’s mother stared at us, baffled. ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked. ‘What about them, my pencils? Why do I have to sharpen my pencils?’
We were so excited, we were ready to