‘Your mother,’ she says, swinging across the page and dropping heavily onto a tuffet. At least you think it’s a tuffet. You’ve never been that sure about tuffets. ‘She has her own problems.’
You grip the book, stupefied by this sudden magic. You’re still sniffling. Your chest is all wrung out but you’d still be crying if she hadn’t started moving. Now, she is still. Her bonnet flops down over her eyes, leaving only that nub of a chin.
You have always wanted to be her, which is to say, cute. Adorable. Your family also seems to want this. You have a Nan-nan who gives you corduroy pinafores and hats with little ducks on them but you are a child of elbows and hot tears. You can’t be fixed. Your mother even admitted as much when, exasperated, she’d patted your back and said, ‘Those girls? Really? They’re just going to grow up to be hairdressers anyway.’
As in: You’re the wrong kind of different.
As in: Give up, sweetheart. You’ll never fit.
The Holly Hobbie girl leans forward. ‘Now listen,’ she says. ‘Your mother is a mess. She didn’t mean it. Or she did. But she’s wrong. You get me?’
You have only one answer to this riddle. ‘They’re not going to be hairdressers?’
The Holly Hobbie girl clicks her tongue. ‘What did she ever have against hairdressers anyway? Like they’re all unhappy or something? Truly, kid. Your mother is batshit. Next level. Her own bloody dog-and-pony show. Forget about the hairdressers already.’
This is hard to follow and anyway, you are still thinking about Amanda Everton and Brooke Huntingdale and how you might still get them to like you now the Caramello Koala plan has failed. But it’s hard to think like this, with the Holly Hobbie girl all alive.
You never saw her move before, or talk. The Illustrated Treasury of Holly Hobbie has always been your favourite book, the one you open when you’re upset and want the world to be pretty and nice, just for a bit. You didn’t know she was actually in there. But she thinks you’re stupid too and your bottom lip does that thing again.
‘Stop it! Stop crying. Kid, please. I’m really trying here.’ She can’t look at you. Turns her head into her pink puffy sleeve, then picks at the flounces of her skirt. ‘I feel like a bloody toilet-roll princess in this get up,’ she mutters. ‘They promised to send me somewhere I’d get noticed but wow, pantaloons. Fuckers could have warned me. I haven’t had this much lace up my snatch since—’
You see her face clearly now: those apple cheeks and wide stunned eyes. Her mouth stays open a long time. Then she swallows.
‘I shouldn’t have come back,’ she says slowly. ‘Look, I’m sorry and everything.’ But she doesn’t say it like a proper sorry. She says it like Amanda does. I’m sorry I can’t eat that. I’m sorry but it sort of smells. Amanda had drawn back then, refusing to even touch the melted chocolate in its wrapper.
The Holly Hobbie girl shakes her head. Her plaits bounce against her shoulders. ‘I only wanted to make things easier for you,’ she says. ‘Save you some time. But kid, you’ve got so much to learn. You really do.’
‘Nan-nan has a toilet-roll princess,’ you whisper, because it’s true.
The girl in the book smiles a little. ‘Yeah,’ she says, and her face goes dreamy. ‘She’d go ballistic if you even moved an arm. You remember? Didn’t want anyone to damage it. Like it was even a real Barbie.’
You wipe your nose on your sleeve, feeling a little bolder. You’re finally talking about something you know about. ‘It’s fake,’ you say. ‘I checked.’
‘Huh I remember!’ She looks at you properly then. ‘You’re smarter than they tell you,’ she says. ‘Don’t forget it. You use that brain of yours and you don’t let anyone dump their shit on you, okay. Not Miss Amanda Chickenshit, always too bloody scared of Brooke to think for herself. Not your mother with her hoity toity class bullshit either. She just wants you out of here. She loves you fierce. Too much, sometimes. And not Nan-nan and her gold-plated crap about proper little girls. None of it’s got anything to do with you. You’re good how you are.’
It’s your turn to let your mouth hang open then because how does she know so much about your life? But maybe that’s how books work. Maybe when the characters got inside your head, you also got in theirs? It made a kind of sense. And as much as she scares you, she’s still Holly Hobbie from your absolute favouritest book and she is pretty and sort of nice. So you nod.
‘Really? You get me?’
‘I get you.’
Because you want to make her happy. More than Amanda, more than your mother even. In this moment, she is the only one who matters. And it makes you laugh then, to see her so excited, to see her tapping her hand against her skirt. The restless energy of her. Not a proper girl at all.
‘Bloody hell,’ she says, grinning up at you out of the book, her whole face open. ‘Maybe there’s hope for us yet.’
