The Astonishing Return of Norah Wells Read Online Free

Noble asks.
    Ella looks up. ‘My test?’
    â€˜Your maths re-sit, Ella.’
    Ella bites her lip. ‘Oh – yes. I’ve been revising all week.’ If Ella goes home now she’ll miss the test, but tests don’t matter. Nothing matters now that Mum’s home. And Mum won’t mind her missing some school. When Ella was little, she’d take her out for special occasions. She’d call up school and put on a serious voice and say,
Yes, poor Ella has a temperature,
and she’d wink at her at the same time and then they’d go and build a snowman in Holdingwell Park or take the train to London to see the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum.
School’s not the only place you get an education,
Mum said.
She’s the coolest mum in the world,
Ella’s friends chorused.
    But they didn’t need to say it: Ella knew that Mum was the coolest – and the best – mum in the world.
    The bell rings. The class files out. Ella joins the throng of bodies pushing down the corridor and then ducks out through a side door.

Willa
    â€˜Willa? Willa?’
    Willa picks up her orange pencil and colours in the doorstep woman’s hair. It’s the same crayon she uses for her own hair and Mrs Fox’s fur. Ella’s hair is red too, but it’s a lighter, blonder red, a bit like someone got a splodge of yellow paint (Dad’s hair) and some red paint (Willa’s hair) and mixed it all together. Mummy calls Willa’s hair copper. She says it’s the most beautiful colour in the world, and not to let anyone tell her otherwise.
    â€˜Willa? Are you listening?’
    Willa hears her name being called but it sounds like it’s coming from the end of a long, long tunnel. Plus, it’s usually safer not to answer because sometimes the voices don’t come from the outside, where everyone else can hear them, but from one of the stories in her head – and if Willa talks back to them the boys and girls in her class roll their eyes and whisper.
    A hand with a thick gold wedding ring lands on her picture. Willa looks up.
    â€˜It’s break time,’ says Mr Mann.
    Mr Mann is married to a man. He was Ella’s teacher too.
    Willa looks around the empty classroom.
    â€˜You can finish the picture later – I’ll keep it safe for you in my drawer.’
    Mr Mann knows that sometimes the other girls take Willa’s pictures and pin them up on the wall and laugh at them.
    You need to defend yourself,
says Ella.
You need to say mean things back. Show them that you’re not scared.
But Willa can never think of mean things to say back. Plus, Mummy says that, more often than not, mean people are sad people and that we should feel sorry for them. When Willa explained this theory to Ella, Ella said that it was that kind of thinking that made people walk all over Mummy. Willa didn’t think it was fair that the only choices available were (a) being mean, or (b) being walked over.
    Willa scratches her scar. She’d like to finish the picture now, while she still remembers the doorstep woman’s face and her clothes and her trumpet case and her wheelie suitcase. The woman makes her think of the zillions of pictures of Auntie Norah on Ella’s bedroom wall. Auntie Norah used to live with Ella and Mummy and Daddy before Willa was born, but now she lives in Australia and can’t afford to come and visit because the plane’s really expensive. Maybe she’s saved up and come over on holiday as a surprise for Ella. Ella’s always going on about Auntie Norah and how much she loves her and how much Auntie Norah loves her back and how alike they are. If the doorstep lady is Auntie Norah, Willa could give her the picture as a gift and then maybe she’d love Willa as much as she loves Ella.
    There’s just one thing that doesn’t add up: if the doorstep woman
is
Auntie Norah, why didn’t Ella say hello and give her a hug?
    Willa