Olivia, Invisible by Stephanie Burgis

Author:Stephanie Burgis [Burgis, Stephanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Five Fathoms Press

It was an hour later, when everyone else was gone—after all the final panics of favorite fans mislaid and essential Archie-toys remembered only just in time—that Olivia stood once more in the morning room with her grandmother, braced for her to lay down judgement for their first meeting that day.

Her grandmother looked down at her with an unreadable expression. “Your mother was terribly worried about how I would behave with you, you know.”

“I know,” Olivia mumbled. She scuffed at the rug with the toe of one shoe. “She was worried about how I’d behave with you, as well.”

“Hmmph.” Grandmother Stephenson sniffed. “Did you know that I nearly had palpitations over your mother’s behavior when she was a girl?”

Olivia nodded. “That’s what Aunt Angeline said.”

“Oh, did she?” Grandmother’s eyebrows rose forbiddingly. “Well, perhaps she’s forgotten some of her own past behavior. However, that’s beside the point. Do you know what I think, young Olivia?”

She leaned closer.

Bravely, Olivia met her gaze. “No, ma’am.”

“I think,” said her terrifyingly proper grandmother, “that I’ve spent quite enough of my lifetime looking after everyone in this family and fighting to restrain wild, unruly girls for their own good. I am far too old to be responsible for it any longer. Your wildness is your own mother’s concern, thank goodness. I am only here for a week. Therefore…”

Her lips curved into a tiny, mischievous smile. “Shall we make a bargain, the two of us? For the rest of this week, any time you feel the need to do something particularly shocking, we’ll simply pretend you were invisible for it. If I feel the need to do anything shocking myself…well, then, exactly the same shall be true, in reverse. And neither of us will have any complaints to report to your mother at the end of it. Agreed?”

“Oh, yes.” Olivia’s lips curved into a delighted smirk. “I do agree!”

The week passed remarkably pleasantly after all.

Olivia soon discovered that when Grandmother Stephenson felt like being invisible, she would drink a very small glass of port from Papa’s favorite bottle whilst reading one of the half a dozen terribly shocking French novels that Clarissa had hidden underneath her mattress. Grandmother had unearthed them all on her very first day in residence.

Occasionally, she would let out a snort of amusement or disbelief…and then immediately flip to the next page to see exactly what happened next.

On the second day of the visit, when Olivia accidentally exploded a vase of flowers on a side table while thinking about how much she missed Archie, she froze in instinctive panic at the mess…but Grandmother Stephenson didn’t even look up from her book as she spoke.

“Isn’t it fortunate,” she said, “that those flowers were invisible, too?”

On the third day, they discovered that Grandmother quite enjoyed having Olivia read her some of the exciting adventure stories from Olivia’s own shelves. As Grandmother listened, she lay back in entirely unladylike disorder, with her shoes lying abandoned on the rug beside her and her stockinged feet propped upon the arm of her sofa.

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