[Brenda & Effie 01] - Never the Bride by Paul Magrs

Author:Paul Magrs [Magrs, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Headline Review
Published: 2006-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The next thing was the vigils. We were given walkie-talkies and told to sit and wait in the dark for unusual events. Effie and I were packed off to one of the book-lined rooms at the top of the house. Downstairs, the stars of the show were doing the same.

‘Is that one of those orbs of floating light?’ I asked. We were both perched on a saggy chaise-longue and I was squinting at what I thought might be a manifestation.

‘You’re just seeing stuff floating on your eye,’ said Effie.

We seemed to sit there for hours, all tense. After what seemed like a lifetime we started a conversation in whispers. I wondered what was happening to the Green family, and where they had travelled to.

‘Don’t you think they should have gone home?’ Effie said. I’d been given a little pen torch and swung it round to light her. She looked quite serious. ‘Are you crazy?’ I said. ‘You saw what Frank the detective was like. The Elders of their village must be horrible. Anyone would want to run away.’

Effie did her sucked-lemon face. ‘Don’t you think they’re better off with their own kind?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘They were coerced into staying there. What could be good about that?’

‘But they were . . . different. That girl had tentacles!’

‘So what? Should we lock them up? Hide them away?’

‘Perhaps,’ whispered Effie.

I made a loud noise of disgust, not trusting myself to use words. Eventually I said, ‘All the Greens want is an inconspicuous life in the real world. That’s all anyone wants, isn’t it?’

Effie shrugged and we fell quiet again. The tall old house creaked and settled around us. We’d both lost sight of what we were meant to be doing. My heart was pounding - with anger, rather than fear. ‘The Greens were held back by their Elders, who thought that people outside of their village would never accept them. But . . . in the hundred years or so since the invasion, the world has become a better, more tolerant place, hasn’t it? And the Greens think it will accept them for who they are.’

‘Do you think so?’ Effie asked. ‘A girl with tentacles? A boy with a third eye?’

I remembered my conversation with Katherine Green, just before the family left. It had been along just these lines, and she had caught me unawares when she asked, ‘This outside world accepts you, Brenda, does it not?’

I looked at her in shock. ‘Pardon?’

She apologised swiftly. ‘Forgive me,’ she said. ‘Forgive me for noticing . . . but you aren’t quite a natural woman, are you?’

During that week the Greens and I had lived in close proximity. Katherine had seen me without my wig, glorious in all my scars. I was dumbfounded and scared by her quiet voice, but I met her eye. She looked shocked, still, by what had transpired in my living room, and that her daughter had turned murderess to keep the family free. I believed I could trust her with one of my own secrets.

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