Andie's Moon
Authors: Linda Newbery
About
The Historical House
This series is a unique collaboration between three award-winning authors, Adèle Geras, Linda Newbery and Ann Turnbull, all writing about one very special house and the extraordinary young women who have lived there throughout history.
Adèle Geras
Lizzie’s Wish
Cecily’s Portrait
Linda Newbery
Polly’s March
Andie’s Moon
Ann Turnbull
Josie Under Fire
Mary Ann & Miss Mozart
About this book
Andie dreams of becoming an artist. Her best paintings are inspired by the moon and she’s excited about the first moon landing. But she’s also worried it may lose its magic once man has set foot there.
She loves staying in Chelsea, with the fashion, music and art galleries along the trendy King’s Road. There’s even a real artist living in the flat downstairs. Could Andie’s paintings be good enough to win his approval?
An irresistible novel set against the vivid backdrop of one of the most thrilling moments in modern history.
To Ann and Adèle, with love.
Special thanks to Dorothy Hopkins and to John Liffen of the Science Museum, and of course to Megan Larkin, who started it all off.
Floor plans of 6 Chelsea Walk in 1969
Download the floor plan from
Andie’s Moon
at the Usborne Quicklinks website
Contents
Floor plans of 6 Chelsea Walk in 1969
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
East of the Sun, West of the Moon
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter One
Fly me to the Moon
Andie didn’t know where she was – only that something had woken her, and she was staring into darkness.
She sat up, clutching her pillow. The room came into focus: dark shapes of wardrobe and chest of drawers; tall, light rectangles of curtained windows. It wasn’t her own bedroom, cluttered and square, with its one small window where the street light shone in; this was a much larger space. From the other bed, farthest from the door, came soft steady breathing.
Of course. She was in the Chelsea flat – this strange new place that seemed so grand and spacious. This was her first night in the room she and Prune were to share, the bedroom that was really Anne Rutherford’s. The door to the hall was open, but there were no lights on, so Mum and Dad must have gone to bed too. Andie pummelled her pillow into a comfortable hollow, rolled over and settled for sleep – then heard, again, the sound that had got into her dream and woken her. Across the ceiling, directly above her bed, creaked the slow tread of feet.
She sat up and groped for the switch of her bedside lamp.
“Prune!” she called softly. “
Prune!
There’s a burglar or something!”
Prune was a heavy sleeper. Andie had to cross the carpet and shake her by the shoulder before she stirred, and by that time the creaking had stopped.
“Wassamatter?” Prune muttered.
“There’s someone creeping about!”
“What? Mmm.
You
are.” Prune propped herself on one elbow and pushed her hair out of her eyes.
“No, listen! There’s someone on the floor above – I heard footsteps.”
“P’raps someone lives up there. Or you were dreaming. Go back to sleep.”
Rolling over to face the wall, Prune tugged the sheet up to her ears. Andie climbed back into bed, and looked at her watch. Ten past midnight. Not a sound from above now; maybe she’d only imagined the footsteps. She clicked off the lamp, and lay staring up at the high ceiling, wondering what was beyond it.
That man from downstairs, Patrick, who’d shown them round, had said something about attic rooms where servants used to live, but he hadn’t mentioned anyone living there
now.
Why would someone be creeping around the attic at midnight?
Andie felt a shiver of excitement run through her. This was so different from home, which, in comparison to Number Six, Chelsea Walk, seemed very dull – a brick semi, identical to all the others nearby. This house was
old –
built in seventeen hundred and something. Who would even know how many people had lived here, over the years? It had been a big family house, Patrick had told them, before it was divided into flats. Imagine, one family having this whole huge place to themselves! They must have been incredibly rich. When Andie thought of all the different people who must have walked up and down the stairs and moved through these rooms and slept in the house and breathed its air, she felt dizzy. It was like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, back into history. She was vague about the details, but she imagined a procession of people, their clothes and faces and hair getting more and more old-fashioned, all the way back to seventeen-hundred-and-whatever-it-was. They crowded into her mind, in black-and-white photographs at first, then portraits in oval frames.
Not only did this house have three floors, each one a separate flat, but it had the attic and a cellar as well – making it, Andie thought, a five-storey house, really. As soon as Patrick mentioned the attic, she’d pictured herself sitting up there with her paints and an easel. She hadn’t
got
an easel, but to be the kind of painter who sat in an attic, she’d need to get one somehow. If it was a bit sparse up there, just bare boards, so much the better. That would make her feel like a proper artist.
But the noise. The footsteps.
What if something awful had happened here, and someone was prowling about the attic at night, unhappy, or seeking revenge?
No. Andie didn’t believe in ghosts. She definitely didn’t.
She pushed back her bedclothes and swung her feet to the carpet. Careful not to wake Prune again, she tiptoed to the window and looked out. She could hear traffic, along the Embankment, and over the nearby bridge; through the foliage of the trees that fronted Chelsea Walk she saw the glow of street lamps, and, beyond, the glimmer of water that was the River Thames. At home in Slough, in their cul-de-sac, the nights were quiet apart from the odd late car returning home, but Andie supposed that London never slept. There was a hum of busyness, even at this late hour.
And above it all hung the moon, the full moon, cool and silver, the same moon that Andie saw when she looked up from her own garden at home.
Wasn’t there a saying, she thought, about it being unlucky to look at the moon through glass? Or was it only looking at the
new
moon through glass? Not wanting to bring bad luck, not on the first night of her stay in London, she pushed up the lower pane of the sash window and kneeled on the floor, her elbows on the sill. Now she could gaze as much as she wanted, with the night air fresh on her face.