In a thousand different.., p.1
In a Thousand Different Ways, page 1
IN A THOUSAND DIFFERENT WAYS
Cecelia Ahern
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023
Copyright © Greenlight Go Ltd 2023
Jacket design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2023
Jacket photograph © Elle Moss/ Arcangel Images
Cecelia Ahern asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008194970
eBook Edition © February 2023 ISBN: 9780008194994
Version: 2023-03-14
Dedication
For Blossom
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Blue
Rust
Green
Rose Gold
White
Acknowledgements
Keep Reading …
About the Author
Also by Cecelia Ahern
About the Publisher
blue
I MARCH TO THE BEAT of the uneaten apple clunking from side to side in my lunch box. Roll, thump, roll, thump. It’s been in my school bag since Monday, it makes my lunch look healthy, but it stays there for the week, taking hits and getting more bruised by the day. My little brother Ollie trudges along behind me, head down, occasionally kicking stones that dare to block his path. Our house comes into view and I slow; school is too far away in the morning, not far enough away in the afternoon.
I study her bedroom window. Curtains drawn messily, like they’ve been pulled roughly and some clips have separated from the rings, leaving gaping holes at the top. The Gangulys next door have tied-back curtains, really fancy, like the ones you draw when you’re little and think that’s how a house should look. Their front garden is a neat lawn; pretty, colourful flowers around the edges with a red gate that matches the paint around the windows. Not like ours.
Our grass needs cutting, it reaches above the garden wall like it’s desperate to see over the top, maybe escape, but at least the jungle hides some of the overflowing bins. Putting the bins out and cutting the grass was Dad’s job.
I push our screechy rickety gate open, past the foul-smelling bins to the blue door, the brass 7 of the 47 slightly crooked. I pick up the warm milk on the step and bring it inside. It’s nearly 3 p.m. but the house is quiet and dark and smells of stale morning. The kitchen table is decorated in sugar trails, our cereal bowls are in the sink, soggy cornflakes floating in sugary yellow milk. Chairs are pulled at odd angles from the table, the scene frozen from 8.30 a.m.
Ollie throws his school bag on the floor and falls to his knees at the playbox that’s filled with mostly broken wheel-less cars from my big brother Hugh and my decapitated dolls with no limbs. He plays with his soldiers and wrestlers, making quiet boom-bash-bosh noises with his lips as they pick up on a battle where they left off. I’ve never known a child to whisper when they’re playing, but he rarely speaks, is always just there, waiting, like the grass and the bins; silently growing and overflowing.
I place my schoolbag by the chair at the kitchen table where I’ll do my homework. I wipe the table and scrape the hardened cornflakes stuck to the edges of the bowls before stacking them in the dishwasher. I pull the curtains open; the grey daylight reveals the dust particles floating in the air. I watch them hover, ear cocked to the silence. My brother Hugh will be home soon. He’s older and finishes school at four. Everything is always okay when he’s home. But he’s not here now. A pulsating throb in my temple like Morse code tries to tell me something. Nothing is different, but something feels wrong.
I tentatively peer upstairs, afraid of what I’ll find. On the top step of the staircase our usually brown carpet looks blue. It looks like ground fog, low and still, resting at the top of the steps. I sniff to see if it’s smoke, but it’s odourless. I step onto the bottom stair, and the blue cloud slowly moves towards me. Ollie pauses play to watch me. It’s an unspoken rule that we don’t go upstairs when she’s sleeping.
‘Go outside,’ I say.
He obeys, then I run upstairs through the blue, moving so fast I send it swirling upward in wisps. The blue hue gushes from under her door like there’s a smoke machine inside. My heart is pounding as I place my hand on the door handle. She doesn’t like to be disturbed. She has trouble sleeping, so when she’s sleeping you don’t wake her up. When she’s sleeping you’re happy she’s sleeping, but this isn’t any normal day.
I push the door open. The room is completely blue, covered in this odd dawn light. It causes a pain at the back of my eyeballs. I look around for the source of the light, maybe a new device to soothe her to sleep, but I can’t find it, plus it’s not calming. It feels thick, like I’m stuck in it and it’s cold. In an instant I feel so sad, so alone, empty and spiritless, as if I want to surrender, lie down and die right there.
I see her shape beneath the duvet; she’s on her side facing the drawn curtains, little pockets of grey light coming through the parts that have been pulled down from the rings. I walk quietly around to her side, her hair is over her face, lank and greasy. With trembling fingers I gently brush her hair back from her face.
‘999, please state your emergency.’
‘She’s blue. She’s … she’s … blue.’
‘Who am I speaking with?’
‘Her face … her arms … b-b-blue.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Alice Kelly.’
‘Okay, Alice, what’s your address?’
‘She’s blue, she’s all blue.’
‘Can you tell me your address, honey?’
‘Briarswood Road. Finglas. The 47 is crooked.’
‘I’ll send an ambulance right away. Who are you talking about Alice? Who is blue?’
‘Lily Kelly.’
‘Is that your mum?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you with her now?’
I shake my head.
‘Alice, are you with your mum now?’
‘No.’
‘Can you go to her for me?’
I shake my head.
‘How old are you, Alice?’
‘Eight.’
‘Okay. Did your mum have an accident, Alice?’
‘I don’t know, I just got home from school.’
‘And where is your mum now?’
‘In bed. She’s blue.’
‘Can you go to your mum for me, Alice?’
I shake my head a final time and hang up.
There’s banging on the front door. I can’t move. I’m trembling. I put my head down between my knees and hug my legs. The doorbell rings a few times. Banging again and then I hear footsteps, up the stairs. My bedroom door opens, I hold my breath, then there’s silence and they leave. They try the next room. Her room.
A knock first, then footsteps. Then—
Screaming. Her screaming?
I block my ears and squeeze my eyes shut, shove my face closer into my knees. I can smell the grass from the stains on my knees from when Hajra rugby tackled me to the ground at playtime. I breathe it in, shuddering, unable to get enough air into my tight chest. The screaming stops and I hear talking. Raised voices. I stay as still as I can. Someone stays in there murmuring while somebody else goes downstairs. It feels like a long time, I was never good at playing hide and seek, would always need to run for a wee. My bladder’s full now, threatening to overflow. The footsteps are on the stairs again and my door opens.
‘Alice,’ a woman says, not angrily. ‘Alice, are you in here?’
She comes further into the room.
‘My name is Louise, I’m a paramedic. I’m with the ambulance you called for.’
I can’t move. If she opens the door then I’m afraid the blue will get me, it must be all over the house now. I took off my shoes to get rid of the blue but some of it got on my hand from when I touched her hair. I hold it upright and away from my body as if it’s gushing blood. I don’t want it to rub off on anything else, but if she’s a paramedic maybe she can help.
‘In here,’ I say.
The wardrobe door opens and I’m bathed in daylight.
A friendly face comes down low. She’s dressed in green and luminous yellow.
‘Hello in there.’
I peer out to my bedroom, confused. I’d imagined the blue had spread all over the house, rolled around like hot lava. I was happy Ollie was outside. But there’s no blue.
‘Hi.’
‘Want to come out? Your mum is worried about you. She’s fine, but she got a fright when she saw us in her bedroom. That’s what all the yelling was about. She was asleep. Want to tell us why you called?’
‘The blue,’ I say, confused.
‘What blue?’
I look at my hand. She thinks I’m offering it to her and she takes it. She has the blue on her now and she doesn’t even notice.
‘Come on out and we’ll talk about it,’ she says, guiding me out. We sit on the bed. ‘Here, let’s wrap you up.’
She pulls my duvet up and wraps it around my shoulders.
‘Ollie’s grand, he’s downstairs playing wrestlers with Tommy, my partner. Kicking his arse, actually.’ She smiles.
I relax a little.
‘Your mum said she had trouble sleeping last night, so she went to bed today while you were at school. She didn’t hear you come in.’
I can hear her giving out downstairs. I’m afraid now for different reasons. How dare you this, how dare you that. Louise looks at the door, hearing it too.
‘Is your dad at work?’
I shrug.
‘You don’t know where he is?’
‘He doesn’t live here. We don’t see him anymore.’
‘Do you walk home every day on your own?’
‘With Ollie. I collect him at the gate and we walk together.’
‘Good girl. And does Mum wait for you here?’
I nod. Sometimes.
Another look at the door, just to check, but we know she’s not there because we can hear her shouting downstairs. It’s not just playing wrestlers that’s smashing Tommy.
‘Does your mum have trouble sleeping?’
I shrug.
‘Where she has to lie down in the daytime.’
I nod.
‘And you were worried about her?’
‘She was blue.’
‘Ah, I see,’ as if it finally makes sense to her. ‘When did Dad leave?’
‘A while ago.’
‘So she’s been feeling blue since Dad left,’ she says gently.
It’s not a question so I don’t answer her. The way she is didn’t happen after he left, it’s why he left. He said he couldn’t live with her anymore, that she needed help. But I don’t say that out loud.
‘Well, you were right to call us.’
I wasn’t though. I can tell from Lily’s face when Louise brings me downstairs that I’m in trouble. I don’t want them to leave, with her this angry at me, but they do leave, waving goodbye and taking their happy cheery voices and my security away with them. I wish Hugh would walk in the door now; maybe he has football after school which means it’ll be after dinner, hours away.
Lily watches from the window as the ambulance drives away, pulling the belt of her robe around her waist so tight it looks like she’s going to cut herself in half. As soon as the ambulance has disappeared down the road, and the neighbours stop staring, she turns around, comes at me and smacks me across the head.
Hugh and Ollie are already having breakfast when I go downstairs. After the drama of yesterday I was exhausted and slept late. I still feel half-asleep. I pause at the bottom of the stairs.
There are colours around Hugh and Ollie.
‘What?’ Hugh asks, his voice muffled with toast in his mouth, while he puts his shoe up on the chair to tie his laces.
My breath catches in my throat, for a moment, I can’t breathe. But then the air comes again.
‘Is it the blue again?’
I shake my head. I’d confided in him about the colour in her room yesterday. He didn’t laugh or call me a freak, he’d taken me seriously, but he didn’t have any answers.
‘Then what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
He watches me for a while then gets back to tying his shoelaces.
‘Toast?’ he asks.
‘Yeah.’
I force myself to eat, heart pounding, trying not to look at the two of them, but it’s difficult because my eyes keep being drawn to them. I watch them, like I’m seeing them for the first time, two exotic creatures glowing in the grey kitchen.
She’s in the kitchen with two women from Social who’ve called around unexpectedly. Hugh, Ollie and I are in the TV room with Mrs Ganguly, our next-door neighbour with the tidy garden and perfect curtains. The double doors are closed between us and the kitchen, but we can kind of hear what they’re saying and see them moving around through the swirly glass on the doors like they’re alien blobs. Even though I can hear the words I don’t really understand what they’re saying. Adult sentences; same words, different order.
‘Did you call them?’ Mrs Ganguly asks.
‘No. Alice called an ambulance a few days ago,’ Hugh says, rescuing me, like he always does, cheerily. ‘She thought Mum was sick. I’d say these two are just following up to make sure everything’s okay.’
Mrs Ganguly narrows her eyes, assessing the new information. ‘You can’t mess around with these people. If they think something’s wrong, they’ll take you away from her, they’ll split the three of you up. Send you to different houses.’
Ollie looks up from the floor, his wrestlers frozen mid-attack.
I don’t know why she’s so angry. Maybe because she’s been forced to keep an eye on us while the people are talking, and she has the chicken biryani on because it’s biryani night, and she needs to get back to check it before it burns and Mr Ganguly won’t be happy. She only came over to give out about the stinky bins and the grass, and they were having an argument when the women arrived and asked if she’d mind keeping an eye on us while they talked to her. Mr Ganguly is nice, he smiles and talks to everyone, but Mrs Ganguly always has her face twisted up, angry, like she doesn’t trust anyone.
I look at Hugh, afraid. I don’t mind being taken away from Lily, but I don’t want us three to get split up. If we do, it’ll all be my fault for calling the ambulance.
‘Don’t worry, nobody’s splitting us up,’ Hugh says cheerily, with a wink.
In the kitchen Lily starts to shout and Mrs Ganguly turns EastEnders up. I can’t hear what they’re saying in the kitchen anymore but that’s okay because it means Mrs Ganguly can’t hear what me and Hugh are saying anymore either.
‘Have you seen blue on her since Monday?’ he asks.
I nod, looking down at my shoes, my laces suddenly interesting. I can barely look at her, can’t stand to be in the same room as her. Though that’s nothing new but what is new is when I’m too close to the colour around her I start to feel differently and I don’t like it.
‘Why didn’t you say?’
I shrug.
‘Can you see blue around me?’ he asks.
I shake my head. ‘It’s a different colour.’
He’d been joking so he’s surprised by my response. ‘Really? What colour am I?’
I’m not afraid to look at him, to study his colour. His doesn’t scare me, it doesn’t try to cling to me, it doesn’t follow me around the room like hers does, as if it’s a big net trying to catch me and pull me in.
‘Pink,’ I say.
‘Pink?!’ He wrinkles his nose.
Ollie, who I didn’t think was listening, laughs.
‘Yuck, Ollie, pink is for girls,’ Hugh says, and Ollie laughs. It’s so rare to hear him laugh, he’s so solemn and serious all the time, only Hugh could do it.
The chairs scrape against the floor in the kitchen as they stand up and whatever it is comes to an end.
‘They’ll probably want to speak to us next,’ Hugh says, looking a little more serious than usual. ‘Maybe don’t mention the colour thing to them.’
At first it’s just the people I live with and every morning I wonder what colours will greet me. Usually for Hugh it’s the same colour: a pink warm colour that floats around him like a faint haze. Like the cigarette smoke that sits in the air after she has smoked. His colour is calm, easy, happy, caring, and it stays close to him on different parts of his body, following him wherever he moves, like it’s magnetically attached.
Sometimes, when I get over the fear of what’s happening to me, I see its beauty. Like a pink sky at night or a pink sunrise.
Hugh catches me looking at him.
‘What colour now?’ he’ll say easily, not freaked out.
‘Pink again.’
He smiles, it always amuses him.
‘Let me know when it’s something buff and strong like black, or blue, or …’ he thinks, ‘or red.’ He flexes his muscles and strains so hard his face turns red and a vein nearly explodes in his neck.
