Angel Kiss - Laura Jane Cassidy [60]
‘Maybe not,’ I said.
‘Jacki, this kid could be the next Kandinsky.’
‘I don’t think it would go down too well with the parents,’ I pointed out.
‘Yeah, Mary would kill me.’ He gave the last two rosettes to a painting of a little cottage and a collage of a bowl of fruit.
We sat down at the kiddie-sized tables and I started to doodle on one of the blank pages with a crayon. The tent began to fill up with little kids. Most of them were too young to even understand the concept of a competition. One child came over to the table and started to chew on a crayon. I hoped he wasn’t going to choke on it.
Suddenly a little girl’s scream echoed through the tent. ‘Maaaaam! I got FIRST!’
‘You’ve got a great little artist there,’ said Colin to her mother.
The little girl had light blonde hair that fell down her back and when she turned round to face her mother, with her finger still pointing straight at the rosette, I recognized her immediately.
Miss Jane had a bag
And a mouse was in it.
She opened the bag;
He was out in a minute.
We headed back out to the stage to catch the result of the pageant. Sarah had won. Her acceptance speech was short and not too boring; she must have rehearsed it, yet she made it seem as if she was so shocked to win. Shortly afterwards Rita phoned me to tell me I’d won the doll! I was delighted – it’s always exciting to win something. By six o’clock the stalls were packing up, and everyone was getting ready for the performance by the Avarna Céilí Band. Colin had persuaded Emily to go on the carousel with him and I sat on the steps of the funhouse. I held the doll in my hands. The name Jane seemed to suit her. I used to find porcelain dolls a little creepy when I was younger … the way their eyes stared … But this one felt different. She had gentle green eyes, black hair and wore a pretty peach dress.
It began to drizzle, so I put the doll into my patchwork bag and went inside to shelter.
Typical funfair music played in the background as I walked around inside the funhouse. I seemed to be the only person there. There was no sound except for the music. It looped over and over, the whole thing consisting of just eight bars. It wrecked my head. The funhouse was divided into rooms, and you moved from one to the next through circular doorways. The first room was full of distorted mirrors. In the first mirror I was tall and leggy, towering over my actual self, and in the second mirror I was twice my width and half my height, my head crushed down into my body, so I had no neck. And in the next one half my face bulged out, as if a giant bump had swelled up on my forehead. I wished Colin was with me; we would have had a great laugh.
The next room was a pit of multicoloured balls, and I had to drag my feet through them to get out. In the room after that there were different-coloured revolving circles on the floor. The funhouse was quite dark, the walls illuminated by twinkling gold lights. It had an eerie quality and I wondered if Jane would appear. It was dark and claustrophobic, like the forest and the back of the café. It made sense that she’d pick here. If she came back, I’d try to get a closer look at her … find out what she looked like. Maybe this was what she wanted … Maybe this was where I was supposed to end up. I took a step back and whispered. ‘I’m listening.’
A loud voice startled me. It was coming from outside. It was a man, yelling and cursing angrily.
‘I can’t believe you did that!’ The voice was familiar. I realized it was Des. A sliver of light snuck in through a gap in the back wall. I bent down and peeked through it. Des was standing beside the generator, next to Chris.
‘I didn’t mean to!’ said Chris, his voice shaking. Chris bent down and started to wind up a length of wire, but Des snatched it from him.
‘Just leave it alone. Leave the wires. And turn that switch off!’ Des was frighteningly angry. I’d never heard him raise his voice. I watched him inspect the generator while Chris shuffled about awkwardly. It was frightening to hear such venom and anger in his voice