“You’re perfectly safe,” he said, touching a knight. “The rigging’s well and truly tied down.”
“Did you used to be a sailor?”
He laughed again. Getting up, he lifted the stuffed parrot from where she sat on my desk, and placed her next to me on the bed. I had taken the glass dome off weeks ago, disappointed that it had come apart so easily, without the need for an ax. I pulled her to me and Dad tucked us into bed together, her beady eye glaring at him all the while he was doing it.
“Can’t I stay up for a bit longer?” I said, yawning. I didn’t want to be on my own, stranded at the highest point in the house while Dad was cozily anchored far below me. What if the roof got whipped right off and went whizzing away with me inside it?
“No, Roe, it’s very late.” Dad tucked me in and kissed me good-night, his stubbled beard tickling my skin. Monty jumped up too, somersaulting onto the duvet, tucking his paws beneath him.
After Dad had gone, I turned on my side, pulling Jasmine the parrot close for a cuddle, and saw that one of my pawns had been caught. It lay defeated on its side as if the wind had sneaked into the room and blown it over. I looked up at Dad’s little portrait of me and Monty, the picture within a picture stretching back for all eternity. It didn’t look as if the wind was blowing quite so ferociously in their world. In the half-light I thought I saw something else in the picture, a pair of eyes watching me, but then they were gone.
I woke up in the dark, hours later. The room was racked with noise. It felt like the whole house was swaying. Beneath the wind I thought I heard Monty scream, a pitiful thin wail, dissolving into a sob. I sat up. Monty was sound asleep beside me on the bed. The sound was coming from downstairs.
I got out of bed, clutching Monty to me unsteadily as the floor buffeted beneath us. We descended the steps carefully, clinging to the brickwork, the house quaking all around us. On the landing, the crying was different, ebbing and flowing through the house. I peeped into every room in turn, grateful for the cat’s warmth in my arms.
In each room the crying sounded different. In the drawing room there were huge, racking sobs; in the bathroom, quiet little whimpers. It was as if a ship full of sad ghosts had been blown through the village and landed, marooned in our house. It wasn’t a scary sound, but a sad one, and I came back to the landing heavy with sorrow. I sat down at the center of the noise, hugging Monty to me fiercely, and with a deep, unknown grief, I began to cry. I curled up on the floor, tears coating my face as I listened to the keening of the thousands of people all around me.
* * *
I awoke to Dad’s touch, stroking my forehead. I was lying on the landing, my bare feet frozen. A pale sun was beginning to peep round the edge of the window. Something looked different outside. I sat up, trying to work out what it was.
“It’s the poplars,” Dad murmured, following my gaze. “All of them have gone. Completely gone.” There was quiet surprise in his voice.
I looked again and he was right: where a line of tall trees had stood in the distance, now there was only sky. The beech tree in the garden was still standing, but it was like a giant octopus, its branches thrashing like tentacles in the sky.
The electricity was off. With mugs of sugary tea heated on a camping stove, we listened to the radio, waiting to hear if my school would be open. I really didn’t want to go. Some of the girls had cornered me in the toilets last week and demanded I take off my new shoes, before throwing them in the toilet and pulling the chain. I had told Dad, but he’d just laughed. “Japes,” he had said, his eyes twinkling.
The radio sounded crackly as if even the radio waves were being pounded by the wind. We both hooted with excitement when my school’s closure was announced.
I sat on the low window seat in the drawing room, watching the assault of the hurricane on the village. Not many people had dared to leave their houses, but those who did were walking at a peculiar angle, the wind lifting them on invisible wings.
Stacey turned up at lunchtime wearing her usual shorts and T-shirt, wind-hardened drizzle spattering the denim.
I pulled her inside, away from the beginnings of a hailstorm, and we ran up to my bedroom and knelt by the open window. Stacey put her arm out to try to catch the hail.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked her.
“What do you mean?”
“I haven’t seen you in ages.”
She brought her hand in and licked the little balls of ice from her palm, crunching thoughtfully. “I was at my gran’s house,” she said. “She says it gives my mum a rest. I’ll always come and find you when I get back.”
“Promise?”
“’Course. Here, this is better than a promise.” She put her hand out of the window again and kept it there until it was full of hailstones again.
“Shake hands,” she said, slapping her hand into mine without warning and shaking it vigorously. The cold stones crunched between our skin.
“Now we eat whatever’s in our hand.” She licked at her palm, slurping up the slush that had stuck there, indicating I should do the same. “It’s like blood brothers,” she said. “Snow Sisters.”
I looked at my palm. Most of the hail had stayed on her hands, but for a fine icy imprint covering my own. I put my tongue to it. It tasted cold and gritty.
“What’s this?” Stacey said, wiping her hand on her shorts and picking up a little picture on the windowsill.
“It’s Mary Mother-Of-God.”
It was a present from my mother. Except for the pinafore dress last summer, she had never sent me anything before.
The picture had arrived a few days earlier in an envelope addressed to me. I wondered if this was to be the start of a magical ritual: a gift from mother to daughter every few months.
But the letter that came with it was very short.
“Mary is the mother of all of us,” my mother had written, “and while you have this picture you will never be alone.”
Why does she think I’m alone? I had thought at the time, I have Dad.
I read and reread the letter often, running my fingers over the last two words, “love, Mum.” Her writing was very pretty. I had taken the picture into bed with me, hoping for comfort, but it had sharp, cold edges, and had ended up back on the windowsill.
“Is Mother-Of-God her surname?” Stacey said.
I nodded. I didn’t tell her who had given it to me. It felt nice to have a secret.
Stacey stood the little picture back on the sill. It was bright and colorful, with a silver frame. Mary Mother-Of-God was very pretty, and had a golden circular hat on her head.
“Is your school closed today too?” I asked.