Cecelia Ahern: Girl in the Mirror

CECELIA AHERN

Girl in the Mirror

JULY 1992

‘Grellie, Grellie, I’m here.’ Lila knocked on the door, excitedly. She hopped from one foot to the other and felt her white cotton sock slip from above her knee and tickle her skin as it slithered down to rest in an exhausted heap around her ankle, like a drunken fireman down a pole. She pulled her underwear out from between her cheeks, blew her feathery hair, which was stuck to her wet lips, and rapped again on the door with her now red knuckles.

‘Why do you call her Grellie?’ the little girl beside her finally spoke up. Her voice was tiny beside the gigantic front door. She noticed that and moved closer to Lila for safety. Protection against what she wasn’t sure.

The front garden they had walked through was a jungle; untamed and unkempt, not like Sarah’s garden at all, where their gardener came every two weeks to make sure everything was symmetrical and perfect, and winked at her whenever he saw her at the window. She would marry him if she was old enough. But this garden was different. She felt she’d have gotten lost for ever if she’d stepped off the randomly placed flagstones that led to the front door. The deep-scented wild flowers stretched above her, all nosy to see inside the house as though they were fighting for space. The trees’ branches arched out and contorted in such disturbing angles they made Sarah shudder.

‘Grellie,’ Lila rapped again, impatiently.

‘Stop calling her that,’ Sarah said, nervously then. ‘Why do you keep calling her that?’

Lila finally picked up on her nerves and stopped jittering to look at her curiously. She became defensive, her eyes narrowed. ‘She’s my grandma Ellie. I call her Grellie.’

‘Oh. Well maybe she’s not here. Maybe we should just go.’

Sensing an opportunity to leave, Sarah quickly spun around and prepared to step onto the first mouldy flagstone, but her pulse quickened again when she heard the bolt of the giant door slide back and creak so loud it was as though they’d awakened a sleeping giant from a hundred-year slumber.

‘Grellie!’ Lila yelped excitedly, and Sarah said a silent goodbye to the front gate for now.

Lila was embraced warmly by a grey-haired woman. The front of her hair was pure white and it was pinned back in a bun. She had a cane in her hand, which was behind Lila’s back as she squeezed her. The hug looked warm. Inviting. Sarah’s nerves dissolved a little.

‘Well aren’t you an impatient little thing today?’ Ellie laughed and peeled herself away from her grand daughter. ‘I was down the back of the garden, weeding, I could hear you all the way.’

‘I thought you weren’t here, I thought you’d forgotten,’ Lila said breathlessly.

‘Of course I hadn’t forgotten. How could I forget I’d be meeting your very special friend today. I’ve been excited to meet her all day.’

Sarah smiled, her cheeks pinked.

Ellie’s voice was hard, and she spoke as if something was catching in her throat, something trapped in there.

Sarah couldn’t help herself listening to that trapped something. She cleared her throat.

Ellie looked directly at her. Sarah smiled.

‘This is Sarah,’ Lila said proudly. ‘Sarah, this is Grellie.’

Sarah didn’t know whether to smile or not. She did.

‘Hi.’ Her voice was tiny again.

‘Well hello, Sarah, you’re very welcome. Why don’t you both come in out of the chill and see what I’ve prepared for you.’ She turned and went into the house. Lila disappeared after her, hopping up and down with excitement.

‘Did you make your fairy cakes? With the pink icing? Did you put the marshmallow on the cake? Did you make the cake? Did you make your strawberry jam? I told Sarah you make your own and she didn’t believe me. Did you make some for the scones? Do the scones have fruit? I’d love clotted cream with them if you did.’

Lila gabbered on and on in a giddy hysteria while Sarah stood outside the front door listening to the crash of the waves against the steep cliffs below. It was a beautiful sunny day. It was July and school had just finished for the summer and everyone had been excited. Class had been taken outside and all they’d done was read a story and then had a party on the grass. On the journey to Ellie’s house everybody’s car windows had been open and Sarah had listened to the mix of music and chat drift out the windows and fuse in the sky to confuse the passing birds.

But here was different. Here it felt cold.

Sarah looked at the gate again; she’d left it slightly open. A gap large enough for a ginger cat to creep in. As though sensing her gaze, it stopped, arched its back and looked at her. They both stayed like that for a while.

‘Sarah, where are you?’

Sarah snapped to attention.

‘There you are.’ Lila appeared at the front door. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I was just …’ Tell her, tell her you want to leave.

‘Oh that’s Gingersnap. Grellie!’ Lila shouted at the top of her lungs.

‘I’m not deaf, my dear!’ Ellie called back.

‘Gingersnap is back!’

She heard Grellie call something back but didn’t know what she said but heard the something in her throat.

Sarah cleared hers again.

‘Come on, wait till you see,’ Lila said, eyes bright. She grabbed Sarah’s hand and pulled her inside and they both laughed as Sarah allowed herself to be tugged. The entrance hall was large. Its vastness severed Sarah’s laughter and made her stop suddenly in her tracks and, in turn, stopped Lila. Sarah looked around. There was a fireplace in the hallway. A chandelier. Dusty, a web or two draped from one candelabra to another, which occasionally shimmered when the sunlight hit it. The floorboards were worn, chipped and uneven, and creaked beneath even the lightest tiptoe. It was clear to see what they once looked like from the edges of the room. A polished border. Above the dark wooden fireplace stood two lonely candlesticks devoid of candles. And above them a black sheet was draped over something to reveal only its brass frame.

‘What’s the picture of?’ Sarah asked, uncertainty returning to her.

‘What picture?’ Lila asked confused.

‘The one above the fireplace.’

‘That’s not a picture, it’s a black sheet,’ Lila said, as though Sarah were mad.

‘What’s beneath the sheet?’

Lila grabbed her hand and pulled her again.

‘A mirror. Grellie doesn’t like mirrors. Come on, let me show you around. We can have loads of adventures.’