A Hole in the World Read online

  First published 2011.

  Copyright © 2011 Sophie Robbins

  All rights reserved.

  To my parents, who never fail to impress upon me that I can be whatever I wish to be, to Ben who reads every single thing I write no matter what, loves it all, likes my nutty ideas as much as I do and single-handedly prevents my ego from fitting in doors, to Purple who was there while I was wishing death upon this novel as I attempted to finish it and stopped me from giving up and burning it and, of course, always to Abby who has supported me from the get-go and reads even the crappiest of my work.

  Part 1

  One

  When Julia Western was seven, pushing eight, she swore she wouldn’t turn into her mother: the lady who took her daughter shopping with her on a Saturday morning and stopped to talk outside of the supermarket for an hour as Julia quietly died of boredom in the background.

  No, she’d never turn into her mother, she’d thought.

  And yet, she did. She has the same blonde hair, tied back in a pigtail, the same lack of makeup, the same determination to get the shopping done, get home to cook lunch and get ready for work that evening. Everything is the same, right down to the little pink dress she’s dressed her daughter, Bianca, in, which mimics the one her mother had her in years before, as she drags her out shopping.

  One day, she’ll realise this. That’s just not going to be today.

  They step out of the supermarket into the bright summer sunlight and Julia switches her phone between her ears, nattering on about her latest project at work, all but ignoring her daughter whose hand she holds on to as they navigate the early morning shoppers. Her daughter, Bianca, is four, heading fast towards five and her first day at school, with her dad’s black hair and her mother’s blue eyes and an innate annoyance with anything that keeps her away from home and her toys for too long.

  Julia pushes her daughter’s hat down more firmly onto her head, even though the girl’s hair causes it to spring back up in defiance and, instead of staying down by her ears, perch there on her head as though about to fall straight off. ‘We need to get your hair done,’ Julia mutters. ‘Come on.’ She smiles, bag in the same hand as her daughter’s small one as she tows her daughter off down the street.

  ‘Julia?!’ a high-pitched voice squeals and Julia turns around, muttering a hasty goodbye to the person on the other end of the line and hanging up her phone, to see a woman she hasn’t seen for a while come running across the road towards her, four inch heels threatening to knock her down and cause her to fall into the road. Somehow, due to some miracle, the woman makes it across in one piece and greets Julia with a large, perfume-scented hug, which Bianca can smell from four feet away.

  ‘Maggie, I haven’t seen you in ages,’ squeals Julia, happily. ‘How have you been?’

  *

  Fifteen minutes later and Bianca’s bored. The kind of bored that only applies to kids with nothing to do, standing on a street corner. She sighs, scuffing her heels against the ground and watching her mother and her mother’s friend talking, animatedly, about old school days. She’s tried nagging, tried tugging on arms and sleeves, tried threatening to leave and tried being very quiet and seeing if her mother will notice she’s ‘gone’ (which she didn’t), but nothing works and to top it off she can barely understand a word they’re saying to each other, talking so fast the words are a blur. Her boredom deepens and she starts to wander away. Julia doesn’t even notice, her attention all wrapped up in Maggie.

  There’s a wall running around the corner of the street they’re on; tall and insurmountable, reaching far above Bianca’s head, towards the sky. It’s made of large, dark grey bricks, some old and chipped in places. Her mother told her once that it surrounded a house but Bianca can’t see a house, only the smaller wall running around the edge of the bigger one, starting off at step-height and getting progressively bigger around the corner. It looks like fun to walk across, so she climbs on the end.

  Bianca balances with one hand stretched outwards and the other hand on the brick wall as she walks around. She steps up onto the wall, half a foot off the ground then one... two... three and she’s approaching the corner now. Four feet off the ground. Five. She’s high up and when she looks down she feels a sense of excitement. After a moment of staring down from what seems to her a dizzying height, the turns the corner and her hand slips inside a gap in the wall, right on the corner and disguised by the turn.

  She pauses, for a moment, and glances back at her mother. ‘Mum, can we go?’ she calls over to her, extending each vowel that allows it.

  ‘Few more minutes,’ her mother replies. Julia doesn’t even look around, she just laughs and apologises for her daughter. She doesn’t see how high Bianca is, or how likely she is to fall.

  Bianca looks back into the hole. It’s big enough for her to step easily through, but she can’t see what’s inside it. She feels around, cautiously, old enough to know not to risk going in blind. It feels big enough inside, like she’s not going to get stuck or something, so she takes a deep, completely involuntary breath, and steps into the hole.

  Everything in front of her is black and she’s barely able to see a metre ahead for the gloom. She turns to look behind her and can see the exit of the hole there; a shaft of light coming straight into the gap she’s in now, and, convinced she can still get back, turns around to look inside the hole.

  As far as she can see – which isn’t much – she’s standing in a barely lit cave. It’s so dark she can only tell what it is by the beam of light illuminating the floor and a little of the stone walls around her. She walks further into the cave, slowly, slipping quietly through the tunnel she’s in and forwards. This leads into a second cave with about five tunnels leading out of it in all directions, a flaming torch burning between each stone entrance.

  She’s about to move forward and to explore further on when a sound stops her.

  The sound of a chain clanking against the floor.

  Her heart beating thunders in her ears as she takes a tentative step forward. ‘Hello?’ she calls out, fear gripping her as her voice echoes in the cave, through the tunnels and onwards into whatever lies ahead.

  ‘Someone help me!’ a distinctly female voice shouts from one of the tunnels. ‘Please!’

  ‘Hello?’ Bianca calls again.

  ‘Bianca!’ her mother’s voice comes from behind her, from the mouth of the cave. ‘Come out of there!’

  ‘Help me!’ the voice shouts again. There’s the sound of a chain rattling and the female voice screams in terror. Bianca stumbles backwards, hat falling from her head as she flees the cave, climbs straight out through the hole and leaps into her mother’s arms.

  Julia almost doesn’t catch her, not seeing the jump coming, but then her arms go around her daughter’s small body and she says, ‘How many times have I told you not to wander off? Are you okay?’

  Bianca nods against her mother’s shoulder.

  ‘We’re going home now.’ She drops Bianca to the ground and places a hand on her back, pushing her gently towards the nearest car. ‘Maggie’s going to give us a lift.’

  A couple of moments later, Bianca finds herself in the car, meeting her mother’s eyes when Julia twists around in the passenger seat and tells her, ‘Belt on.’

  Bianca fiddles with the seatbelt for a few minutes, not able to click it into place, and then it locks. Julia has already turned away, talking animatedly to Maggie who, to Bianca, looks like an old woman with skin like the crust of white bread.

  Bianca looks back towards the hole and shivers as the car pulls away. That was a scary place.

  Two

  Ten years later.

  Bianca Western looks out through the car window at the scenery s
hooting by. Houses, trees and other cars fly past as though jumping out of the way of the speeding vehicle. Which, she thinks, her father is driving way too fast.

  ‘I’m not saying we’re not glad to have you home, Bianca. We just wish the circumstances were better.’ Julia’s watching her in the precisely tilted passenger mirror. ‘We’ve missed you.’

  Bianca nods at her and goes back to looking through the window, her own form reflected back at herself in the glass, covering some of the scenery up. She’s fifteen now, with breasts threatening to get a little too big and blue eyes decorated in a little too much makeup to be appropriate at a girl’s boarding school, covering up how small they are and, hopefully, disguising the size of her nose.

  Having spent the last four years surrounded by girls that much hotter than she is, changing in locker rooms with skinny little stick figures with perfect little perky breasts and slender legs, she’s glad to be rid of that awful place. She didn’t even want to go there to begin with, but her parents thought it’d be a good idea to pack her off to maybe get a better education than she would at The Lodge. The fact that it also got her out of their hair was not lost on her.

  She wouldn’t class herself as a troublemaker, but in the four years she’d spent at St. Mary’s School for Girls she had managed to achieve a reputation as ‘average’: average grades, average looks, average personality. Her friend Angela was the trouble maker in the group and the reason she’d finally been set free.

  Her mother’s gentle words of gladness at Bianca’s return are the first nice words she’s received for the past two days. Until now, the nicest she’s received are, ‘How could you be so stupid to burn down a library?’ Two days straight of being yelled at while her parents talked the school out of pressing arson charges and they hadn’t drawn breath long enough to hear her gentle pleas of innocence.

  She hadn’t burned down the library. Although, if she’d known it’d get her expelled and sent home, she would have.

  ‘I’ve missed home,’ she whispers. She vaguely catches the sight of her mother smiling at her in the mirror before she turns away again.

  She’s missed home. She’s missed her bed, her room, her Scotty, her life. Not her family. They, she can do without.

  The trip home after that seems to take less time once she drifts off to sleep in the backseat and, within what feels like minutes, she’s opening her eyes and being greeted with the sight of her home – a moderate sized red brick house – outside the car window. She’s smiling as she kicks open the door and climbs out, bag slung over her shoulder.

  Julia hugs her, then, as though she can’t believe her daughter is home. Bianca resists the urge to turn away. If Julia had wanted her home, she would have fetched her earlier, not left her to write emails explaining just how much she hated it there. Her father, Bryan, hasn’t hugged her yet, and continues in that stead as he pulls her bags of belongings from the boot of the car while her mother holds her. Bianca doesn’t miss the evil looks she receives as he does this and realises, with a sigh, that she’s still completely in the dog house for, according to him, throwing away a whole year’s tuition that cost so much he had to take a second job.

  She couldn’t care less. She’s just glad she’s home.

  Julia releases her from the hug and tries to move errant strands of Bianca’s hair from her face. The hair determinedly drops back down to tickle her nose, as if joining Bianca’s crusade to flip her mother off in every way possible. ‘You’re enrolled in The Lodge, starting Monday.’ Bianca vaguely wonders how she managed to arrange that so quickly. ‘And we haven’t done anything to your room, so...’

  The chant of ‘couldn’t care less’ in Bianca’s head is getting louder. ‘Mum,’ she says, loudly, effectively cutting her off. ‘I’ve been coming home every holiday... I know the drill by now.’

  ‘Right. Yes.’ Julia nods, distractedly. ‘Of course you do.’ She smiles and pats her daughter’s hair again. ‘Let’s go in then.’ She already has her work phone out, turning it on and checking the messages. Bianca is surprised it took her this long, and that it was turned off to begin with.

  ‘Actually...’ Bianca glances down the street at a small redbrick house a few doors down and across the road. ‘I was thinking I could go see Scotty...’ She gives her mum a sheepish grin, but Julia is already dialling her answer phone to listen to what’s probably a hundred messages. ‘I miss him and you’ve both seen me loads for the last two days!’ While you were yelling at me, she mentally adds.

  ‘Okay, but be back for tea,’ Julia says, distractedly. She holds out her daughter’s house key and Bianca takes it, gratefully. ‘I’m making lemon meringue pie for pudding. Your favourite. Just for you.’

  Bianca sighs. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she says. She doesn’t have the heart to tell her she hasn’t liked lemon-meringue pie since she was eleven.

  *

  Scotty, a slightly pimply, blonde-haired, green-eyed kid of about fifteen, looks up from working on his dad’s car as Bianca walks in. ‘Bloody hell! Am I seeing a ghost or are you home when it’s not even summer?’

  Bianca grins at him and readjusts the strap of the bag on her shoulder. ‘Nope, I’m home. For good, too! I got myself expelled thanks to a rather awesome display of arson! And I did it all to come home to you!’

  ‘Cool!’ Scotty moves the mat he’s sitting on slightly to the side so there’s room for her and she accepts the unspoken invitation, going over to join him.

  He already knew about the apparent arson– text messages were exchanged as soon as Bianca knew – so she can’t help but smile.

  ‘Whatcha up to?’ she questions, as she sits down, dropping her bag on the floor and eyeing Scotty inquisitively.

  ‘Dad’s engine’s gone again,’ Scotty says, with a sigh, ‘and you know how it is... I’m the one that’s good with cars, so I’m the one that’s gotta fix it. Pass me the wrench?’

  Bianca passes him the wrench from beside her and he accepts it with a grin. ‘Glad to see that boarding school of yours hasn’t destroyed your ability to know the difference between a wrench and a spanner.’

  She grins back at him. ‘Nah, but now I know all about smoking and hard drugs.’

  He gives her a sharp look. ‘You better be kidding.’

  ‘’Course,’ she replies.

  ‘So, what did you use to burn down the library?’ Scotty enquires, after a moment of working on the car.

  ‘A few tin cans full o’ petrol and a biiiiig box of matches,’ Bianca replies, scraping her nail down the paintwork.

  Scotty bats her hand away and quickly makes sure she didn’t damage the paintjob. ‘Ah, always a good plan.’ Scotty wipes grease off his hands onto his jeans and looks at her. He appears to be visibly resisting the urge to apply the grease to her nose, but knows from experience where that leads them and it’s nowhere good. ‘Meet anyone nice this year?’

  ‘Couple of girls. They weren’t bad. If we’d had more internet access allotted I’d’ve written you a long email all about it, but I could barely even do my homework before I was being turfed off and I couldn’t afford the credit to text you much.’ She sighs. ‘I hated it there,’ she hisses.

  Scotty shrugs. ‘I hated you there, as well. I had no best friend! That just sucks, you know that, right?’

  She smiles at him. ‘Yup.’

  He stands up and offers her a grease-covered hand to pull herself up with, which she accepts, barely even noticing the muck. ‘So, apparently I’m going to The Lodge starting Monday,’ she says. She wipes her hands on her jeans, complacently.

  ‘Cool!’

  ‘You better not abandon me for other friends, though. ‘’Cause I’ll never forgive you.’

  He smiles as she pulls her bag back onto her shoulder. ‘I’m not going to abandon you,’ he says, with a smile and a touch of his hand on her arm. ‘I never would.’

  *

  ‘So, have you met anyone special?’ Bianca asks, gently, as she sits on Scotty’s bed, Xbox controller in her
hands as she tries, desperately, to knock pirates off their ship. She’s never been good at video games, especially pirate ones, much preferring to play with swords herself.

  The one good thing about St. Mary’s School for Lameasses: fencing.

  Scotty presses a button and she dies and promptly pouts at him. ‘No,’ he says, ignoring her with practiced ease. ‘Girls at my school are all stupid. Or lesbians. Sometimes both.’

  ‘Are ya sure they’re not just, I don’t know, not interested?’ She gives him a grin and it’s his turn to pout, which she ignores just as effortlessly.

  ‘It does my ego less harm to think they’re all stupid lesbians rather than just not interested. I like to think that if they were smart and/or straight they’d be crawling all over me.’ He stands up from his bed and reaches for two cans of pop, one of which he hands to Bianca with a smile.

  ‘What time you gotta be home for?’ he asks.

  ‘Tea,’ she replies, ‘which means I have at least one more hour to fail at this game. I think you could probably kill me another thousand times or so.’

  He grins at her. ‘Rematch it is, then.’

  *

  Bianca looks up from her tea, food half way into her mouth, and catches her brother’s speculative gaze.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘I wondered if you could burn my school down, too,’ he says, quietly.

  ‘I didn’t burn the school down, Topher,’ Bianca snaps. ‘It wasn’t me, it was Angela. She did it. I wasn’t even in the room. She just used my lighter.’

  ‘Why’d you have a lighter?’ Topher enquires.

  ‘Because, I like looking at flames.’ And because Melissa gave it to her. But she’s not going to tell the winner of Annoying Younger Brother 2010 that.

  ‘So, you burned the school down because you like flames, then?’

  ‘It wasn’t the school, it was the library, and I didn’t do it,’ she snaps again. ‘Get your facts straight, you little worm.’