The Tulip Touch Read online

  ‘She’s mad,’ said Mum. ‘There has to be something wrong with her. She’s insane.’

  Officer Stallworthy decided the visit was over. He took a card from his breast pocket, and after hesitating between Mum and me, put it in my hand.

  ‘Any time,’ he said gently. ‘Anything you can think of that might help. Anything at all.’

  I nodded.

  They moved towards the door. Mum signalled me to stay behind, but still I distinctly heard her say,

  ‘Honestly, I don’t know what Natalie ever saw in Tulip Pierce.’

  Perhaps it was her dismissive tone that irritated Officer Stallworthy. Maybe, if you’re in the police, you get a little tired of people in plushy surroundings telling you how they’re above all the squalid little messes you spend your whole life sorting out.

  Anyhow, he said rather coldly:

  ‘Perhaps, Mrs Barnes, it’s time to start wondering just what it was that Tulip saw in Natalie.’

  Mum just ignored the jibe. But to remind him who was supposed to be the villain here, she asked,

  ‘And what is likely to happen to Tulip now?’

  ‘Oh, we’ll speak to her. She won’t go bothering them again.’

  The wall I’d built so carefully broke. Not even caring that Mum would realize I’d been eavesdropping, I rushed through the door and caught him by the sleeve.

  ‘Promise me you won’t tell her father! Promise me!’

  Mum looked first shocked, then disapproving.

  ‘They’ll have to speak to Tulip’s parents, Natalie.’

  ‘No! Please!’ I begged. ‘They mustn’t! If they tell Mr Pierce, he’ll kill her. I know he will!’

  Officer Stallworthy said kindly,

  ‘Don’t you worry. We’ll take it very gently. I think we all know about Mr Pierces temper.’

  ‘No!’ I cried, dragging at him, near hysterical, half dead with fright for Tulip. ‘You don’t understand. If you tell him what she’s been doing, he’ll half murder her. He’ll just be glad to have the chance. He’ll sound reasonable enough while you’re there. But the minute you’re gone –’

  The words came searing back from games we’d played together, things she’d said.

  ‘The minute you’re gone, he’ll thrash her like a redheaded stepchild! He’ll whip her till her freckles sing!’

  They stared at me, appalled. Even my mother was silent.

  The officers eyed one another, said nothing, and were gone.

  4

  News travels fast in a hotel. Mum didn’t say a word to me, but she must have spoken to someone, because the very next evening I walked through the lounge to hear the argument raging around me.

  ‘Wickedness!’ Miss Ferguson was saying. ‘Pure wickedness!’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Pettifer. ‘The child is obviously deeply disturbed.’

  Instead of moving on through the double doors, I drifted to a halt out of sight behind one of the pillars, to listen. As usual, Mr Enderby tried to keep the peace.

  ‘It might have been a misunderstanding. That’s always possible.’

  ‘Oh, really!’ snapped Miss Ferguson. ‘It’s perfectly obvious that that Pierce girl is malevolent by nature.’

  Julius looked up from the spelling book he was pretending to study.

  ‘Are you talking about Tulip?’

  Mrs Pettifer couldn’t order Miss Ferguson to be quiet. Instead, she sent Julius out of the lounge.

  ‘Off you go, dear. I’m sure you can’t be doing your homework properly here.’

  Julius trailed away, probably glad of the excuse to give up on his spellings. I expect Mrs Pettifer glanced round to check I wasn’t listening, either. But I was well hidden. So by the time that Mum came over to have a few words with them before dinner, the three had started up again.

  ‘I was just telling Mrs Pettifer,’ said Miss Ferguson,’that part of the problem for children today is that they hear far too many people like herself telling them they understand all their problems, and not enough like me stating quite openly that some of their behaviour is downright evil.’

  Old Mr Hearns had kept dead quiet up till then. He’d probably been hoping that this discussion would die away, and he’d be asked to play the piano, as usual. But now he got irritated, and spoke up.

  ‘Oh, I see! They’re bad seeds, are they? Spawn of the devil?’

  She missed his sarcasm entirely.

  ‘That’s right!’ she said. ‘And when I was a girl, these things were made perfectly clear to us. We even had to learn a little poem. “Satan is glad when I am bad.”’

  ‘Oh, I know that one!’

  This was Mr Scott Henderson, who winked at me as he strolled in behind George, who was carrying a tray of drinks from the bar. Rumbled, I stepped out from behind the pillar. But no one noticed me. They were still busy looking at Mr Scott Henderson, who had clasped his hands together, and started declaiming:

  ‘ “Satan is glad

  When I am bad

  And hopes that I

  With him shall lie

  In fire and chains

  And awful pains.” ’

  ‘Hardly a poem,’ Mr Hearns muttered critically. But Mum took the chance to stop the argument in its tracks by starting a small storm of clapping. Mr Scott Henderson took a bow. And after a ‘please break it up’ eye-signal from Mum, George made a point of giving everyone the wrong drinks. In the confusion that followed, Mum leaned over the arm of Mr Hearns’s chair, and said softly:

  ‘I think a tune would be nice now, don’t you?’

  Gratefully, he rose and launched into what I’ve often heard Mum call ‘that awful stale medley of his’. Mum kept the smile fixed on her face, and nodded to the music. And she was still determinedly humming ‘Bye-Bye Blackbird’ when the grandfather clock took to striking its arthritic half hour, and all of them finally prised themselves out of their armchairs and off their sofas, and wandered across the lobby, into the dining room.

  Mum’s bright look crumpled like a dead balloon. Leaning her head against the chair back, she closed her eyes. I thought she might call me over to talk about the visit from the police, and what I’d said about Tulip’s father. But, within seconds, the telephone outside was ringing again. She waited and waited. And when it was obvious that none of the staff was close enough to take it, she sighed and levered herself to her feet.

  A few moments later, she was gone.

  5

  She wouldn’t let the guests get into fights. But upstairs she and Dad went at it hammer and tongs.

  ‘Miss Ferguson’s quite right. Tulip is downright evil.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing you right, Emma.You know those old biddies down there are light years from knowing the first thing about children. No one is born evil. No one. And especially not Tulip.’

  Mum turned away to tip stale flower water in the sink, and run in fresh.

  ‘I don’t know how else you’d explain something so horrible.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so silly. You know as well as I do that Tulip’s had such a rotten start in life that it’s hardly a surprise she’s insensitive to other people’s feelings.’

  ‘There’s a bit more to this than being insensitive!’ snapped Mum, slamming the vase back on the table.

  He reached out to steady it.

  ‘You know what I mean. To really know right from wrong you need a certain emotional sympathy. And you only learn that from being treated properly yourself.’

  ‘Tulip’s not stupid. Tulip knows the rules.’

  ‘Why should she think rules matter? Her father’s are vindictive and wilful, and sometimes it must seem to her that, whatever she does, she gets punished. So why should she bother about rules?’

  I had to keep myself from turning round. I’d no idea, before this argument, that they knew so much about Tulip.

  ‘Why should she bother? Because she’s bright enough to see that if enough people like her go round doing exactly what they want, everyone’s miserable.
’

  ‘If you’ve been brought up as if your feelings don’t matter, you probably assume other people’s don’t matter much either.’

  In the corner, Julius’s computer game chattered to its climax. Mum’s voice rose above it.

  ‘Don’t kid yourself, George! Tulip knows perfectly well how much other people’s feelings matter.And that’s exactly why she does these things. That’s the amusement she gets from them. Why else would she do it?’

  Dad couldn’t think of an answer. He just shrugged. And then, reluctant to give up his defence of Tulip, he said:

  ‘Well, you only have to pick up a paper to read about kids a lot younger doing worse.’

  To prove his point, he read Mum a paragraph from the Chronicle lying on the table about the murder of a boy in Elvenwater where the police were quite sure that the killer was no older than the victim. I don’t remember the details. Something to do with footprints, and a squabble overheard by somebody pegging out washing, and too many people noticing two young people going down the path, only one coming back. I do remember the police were certain. The one they were looking for was even younger than me.

  Mum listened, but she wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Children with violent tempers, I can understand,’ she said. ‘Even children with too few brains to realize how dangerous a game is getting. But Tulip’s visits to the Brackenburys are out of another box entirely. They’re not just bad. They’re different. And that’s what evil is. Something different.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as evil. You know that.’

  And round and round they went, round and round, while I leaned over Julius’s shoulder, and pretended to be absorbed in his fast-rising score. Mum had barely begun on the vase on the side table before Dad was arguing with her again.

  ‘Look, Emma. Even professionals come across the odd child they just can’t stand. The child they can’t help thinking is deeply, deeply mean inside. And then what usually happens is that they meet the parents. And they begin to think, “Poor little brute. No wonder the child’s such a horror.’ ”

  ‘Oh, right!’ scoffed Mum. ‘Then I’ve got a brilliant idea. Why don’t you take Mr and Mrs Pierce round to meet Mrs Brackenbury? Then she can start feeling sorry for Tulip.’

  That shut Dad up.

  ‘See?’ Mum said, and walked past him into the bathroom, carrying the misting spray. She made a point of letting the door close behind her.

  The buzzer from downstairs rang twice.

  Dad pushed himself up from the table. Seeing me watching, he pushed the newspaper over the table towards me, and said darkly:

  ‘Good thing that Tulip has an alibi!’

  It was a joke. But what he didn’t know was that, after the paper came, I’d spent a good half hour kneeling on the chest in the passage, scouring the map for Elvenwater, checking the scale, and doing the calculation over and over, till I was absolutely sure.

  6

  And it wasn’t the first time, either. Ever since the blaze at the chicken farm, I’d scoured the evening paper every night. As I came in from school, Dad would lift his head from the computer, or turn from the rack of numbered room keys.

  ‘Be an angel, Natalie. Take round the papers.’

  I’d scoop the pile of Chronicles into my arms. And round I’d go. Slap, slap. One on every second sofa. Slap. Three on the menu table. Two in the bar. Two in the coffee room. All the rest in the lounge.

  Except for the one I took up to my bedroom. I read the whole thing. Thefts. Beatings. Vandalism. I’d dutifully turn each page. FIRE INJURES HOMELESS MAN. The usual thing.They must print stories like it ten times a week. A garbled account from someone passing by of how he smelled the smoke and saw the flames. And, just above, a picture of a burnt-out shed. I’d try to tell myself a drunk tramp nearly died in a fire, and that was that. Just because Tulip lit fires, it didn’t follow that she started this one.

  But still she’d be my chief suspect. Sometimes I’d be so convinced that it was her, I’d have to stop and read the report again. Only then would I see the words ‘Wednesday lunchtime’ and remind myself that I’d seen her flouncing into detention at that time. ‘The suspect was male,’ I’d notice on second reading. ‘The suspect is six feet tall.’

  And who were they, anyway, these people who filled up the pages of the Chronicle, night after night? Were they all like Tulip, living life as one game after another? Tire of one, and move on to another even harder and more dangerous? They couldn’t all have fathers as vile and bullying as Mr Pierce, and mothers too feeble to protect them. Surely there weren’t that many horrid people in the world. And, if there were, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on buses any more, or walk down streets, for fear of bumping into them.

  Dad found me in the passage once too often.

  ‘Quite the little cartographer,’ he said as he passed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Maps,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Each time I see you these days, you’re kneeling on that chest, studying the map.’

  ‘I was just checking something.’

  Suddenly he stopped, and put the television he was carrying down on the floor.

  ‘Room 302,’ he said. ‘Don’t let me forget.’Then he sat on the chest beside me and pushed my hair out of my eyes.

  ‘Is something worrying you, Natalie? Is there anything wrong?’

  Everyone has choices. I’d shied away from him time and again because, close to Tulip, I didn’t need him. Tulip’s touch was enough. But now she wasn’t there, I realized I’d been hiding from both my parents. I’d used the fact that they were busy, and Mum was so wrapped up in Julius, to slip away from them and keep them off me. And it had worked. If you’re a good girl, and dress neatly, and do your homework, no one will even notice you.You can leave a pretend person in your place to say ‘Good morning’, and pass the beans, and carry the dishes to the hatch. If they’re not looking, then they’ll never know.

  Or you can raise a hand to save yourself. Make sure they see you.

  ‘I was just looking at the map,’ I said. ‘To work out if it could be Tulip who stabbed that old lady on Thursday in Bridleford.’

  He turned to stare.

  ‘What?’

  I kept my voice steady.

  ‘But that lady was stabbed and robbed at three o’clock, the police say. And we didn’t finish with the school photo till after two-thirty. And Bridleford’s miles away’ I showed him, to scale, with my fingers. ‘And Tulip has no bike. So I reckon Tulip has an alibi.’

  He was still staring.

  ‘Is this what you’ve been doing each time I’ve seen you on this trunk?’

  I nodded.

  He shook his head in amazement.

  ‘But why on earth would you think it was Tulip?’

  ‘Well, tell me,’ I said. ‘Who are these people, if they’re not people like her?’

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘This is ridiculous. I know Tulip’s turning into a bit of a bad lot, but–’

  I interrupted him.

  ‘You were around at lunch.You heard Mrs Pettifer telling everyone what the policeman told his wife.’

  Dad looked irritated.

  ‘Gossip! Rubbishy gossip! These old biddies should keep their mouths shut.’

  But I knew he knew better.

  ‘ “It isn’t a home,” he told her. “That house is just a cold shell keeping the rain off three people. I was there half an hour,” he said. “And the only real life in there was that great big dog barking.”’

  Dad sighed.

  ‘Oh, dear. Poor Tulip.’

  That wasn’t going to wash. I turned on him accusingly.

  ‘And you knew that. You’ve known it years and years. That’s why you never let me go round there, even at the start. Even back then I heard you telling Mum it was –’ I imitated his stern voice. ‘ “No fit place for a child.’ ”

  ‘Well, then,’ he said rather smugly. ‘I was right.’

  ‘But Tulip was a child, wasn’t she? If you
were so sure I shouldn’t have been there, then Tulip shouldn’t have been there, either.’

  ‘Natalie, people can’t go round snatching children and giving them other homes just because their parents are awful.’

  ‘She shouldn’t have been left,’ I said stubbornly.

  He tried to take my hand.

  ‘You really mustn’t think that nobody tried. I know for a fact we weren’t the only ones to make a few warning phone calls. And both schools were always well aware of Tulip’s background. The Pierces have had social workers round there time and again.’

  So everybody was in it! Everyone knew!

  ‘So what was the matter?’ I asked sarcastically. ‘Wasn’t it bad enough?’

  He rose to his feet and looked down at me.

  ‘No,’ he said evenly after a moment. ‘It wasn’t bad enough. And I’m afraid that life’s a bit like that, Natalie. It has to be a whole lot worse than bad to count as unbearable. And, till it gets to that point, people are on their own.’

  I was disgusted. Utterly disgusted.

  ‘They’ve got to stick up for themselves, have they?’ I said scornfully. ‘Manage on their own?’

  He paused. Then,

  ‘Why not?’ His voice was still even. ‘You’ve heard Mrs Pettifer say it often enough. “Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future.” And you’ve even managed it yourself. Look at you. No more warnings on your report cards. No more lost hours after school. Better marks. Better habits. You’ve let down Tulip and you’ve saved yourself.’

  I wanted to scream at him, ‘Yes, but I’m not like you, am I? I’ve got no power to change things. You lot have.’

  But what would have been the point? He couldn’t afford to believe me. None of them could. That way, they’d have to feel as guilty as me.

  So I didn’t say anything. I just nodded at the television he’d left on the floor.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ I said. ‘You’re going to Room 302.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  He took the hint then, and he walked away.