The Imaginary (25 page)

The hunger was awful. It felt like his insides were hollow, like he was nothing but a great empty hole.

Swallowing her had destroyed him. They'd been together so long, she was a part of him and he was a part of her. Would he live without her?
Could
he live without her? He didn't know.

He couldn't recall the exact terms of the bargain he'd made. It had all been so long ago.

All he knew was the hunger.

Just
as the imaginaries needed to be believed in to go on, so he needed to eat that belief to keep himself going. He had lived so far beyond the ordinary lifetime that it was the only thing that sustained him any more. Oh, he liked the taste of a nice cup of tea, Earl Grey if you'd be so kind, but it passed straight through him. It was only the slick slippery slither of fresh imaginary that filled him up.

But eating
her
had been like eating his own hand. Once you start you find you're chewing on your wrist, and then your arm, and then your shoulder, and soon enough you've eaten yourself, and then in a final gulp you've vanished down your own throat. That was what it felt like.

The hunger was aching in him, burning. That and the loneliness. Everything he cared for, every
one
he cared for, everything he'd known was all long gone. And she had been the very last of it.

But he couldn't even remember her name.

That struck him as odd.

And then he couldn't remember. Couldn't remember. Couldn't remember.

The snakes had gone. When Mr Bunting had shrivelled and his girl had vanished, the snakes had just turned to smoke. The room smelt strange, gunpowdery and acrid, but at least, at last, it was over.

‘Excuse me,' Amanda's mum said, poking her head out of the door. ‘Is there a nurse about?'

She'd taken charge in the way the best adults do.

Fridge was sitting at the foot of the bed watching her with huge damp eyes. She'd helped Rudger to his feet, sat him in the chair beside the bed. As far as she could tell he wasn't badly hurt by all the fighting and all the other stuff that had been going on.

That had been odd, holding the arm of this boy she'd heard so much about, had shared a house with, but had never met before.
She
hadn't blinked though (there would be a time for wondering about all this later on). She had just helped him up and edged him towards the bed.

She had sat him down with Amanda and had looked at the shrivelled Mr Bunting. Something needed to be done about him. He was muttering, half-deaf, half-blind. A poor old man who was powerless, forgetful and, it seemed, at last, quite harmless.

When the nurse came Mrs Shuffleup just pointed at him.

‘I think he's lost,' she explained. ‘He doesn't seem to know where he is.'

‘Oh dear, love,' the nurse said. She turned to Mr Bunting. ‘What's your name, love?' She almost shouted the words, but kindly.

‘Uh?' said Mr Bunting.

‘Oh, come on then. Come with me, we'll see if we can't find out where you're meant to be. Get you back to bed, find you a cup of tea, eh? My name's Joan, love. You lean on me arm. Come on.'

‘Joan,' said Mr Bunting in a gasp, his eyes brightening. ‘Yes, that's…uh…that's it.'

‘That's what, love?' asked the nurse.

Mr Bunting looked at her blankly. Dimness had sunk across his face again.

‘Uh?'

‘Oh dear,' said the nurse. ‘You forgotten? Come on, love. It'll all be okay. Someone's probably looking for you, aren't they?'

The
nurse led Mr Bunting out of the room. He took small shuffling steps and held onto her arm.

When they were half out the door she turned to Amanda's mum and said, ‘I'm sorry about this, love. Poor old chap. It's easy to get confused sometimes, you take a wrong turn and all these corridors look the same. I hope he wasn't a bother. You two okay, really?'

Mrs Shuffleup looked around the room, smiled and said, ‘Yeah, I think we're all fine. Thank you for your help.'

A week later Amanda was fit enough to go home.

She sat in the back of the car with Rudger.

‘Oh, Lizzie,' Fridge said, half his words getting carried away on the wind, ‘when did you learn to drive?'

‘Get your head in the car, Fridge,' Amanda's mum said, laughing.

‘How come he gets to sit in the front seat?' asked Amanda, with only the slightest annoyance in her voice. ‘I'm the one with the broken arm. Shouldn't I get the special treatment?'

‘Darling,' her mum said over her shoulder. ‘Fridge hasn't been in a car before. He was a big coward when I was a little girl. He spent most of his time under the bed. He didn't like the noise of the engine.'

‘It's not that,' Fridge said. ‘I just used to get carsick.'

‘Uh oh,' said Rudger.

‘I'm all right now,' the dog barked. ‘Now that Lizzie's all grown up.'

‘Do you remember,' Mrs Shuffleup asked, ‘when we went on holiday? We went to Lyme Regis. We went fossilling and you found that bone the chef in the hotel had “lost” from the kitchen? You told me it was a dinosaur bone. It was only three days later, when Mum wondered what the smell was and looked under the bed, that I found out what it really was—'

‘Hang on,' Amanda said, interrupting with a finger in the air. (She'd been thinking.) ‘If Fridge wouldn't go in the car, how did he go on holiday with you?'

‘I just met them there,' Fridge replied. ‘It was easier that way.'

‘I met a dinosaur,' Rudger said nonchalantly. ‘It was a
Tyrannosaurus rex
called Snowflake.'

‘Ooh,' barked Fridge. ‘Me too. Me too.'

Grownups aren't meant to see everything, not always, not forever, and a few weeks later Amanda's mum missed Rudger at the breakfast table.

‘Is Rudger coming down, Amanda?'

‘
He's sat right there, Mum,' Amanda said.

‘Oh.' She felt embarrassed. ‘I'm sorry, Rudger,' she said to a patch of empty air exactly where Rudger wasn't sitting.

Fridge, who was half-asleep by the back door, looked up and said, ‘Lizzie, don't worry yourself. He's Amanda's Friend. You're not really meant to see him at all. Look, I'm still here.' He wagged his tail.

‘But even you look a bit thin, Fridge,' she said.

‘I'm just tired,' the dog replied.

School had begun again. Amanda had missed the first week and a bit, but the day came when even she thought she was well enough to return.

Amanda and her mum bumped into Julia Radiche and her mother at the school gates.

The two girls smiled politely and walked into school together.

‘Does Amanda still have that imaginary friend, Mrs Shuffleup?' Julia's mum asked.

‘What, Rudger?'

‘Yes that's right.'

‘How did you know about Rudger?' Mrs Shuffleup asked. She wasn't going to let on that he'd told them all about his adventures in the Radiche household.

‘My Julia mentioned him.' Mrs Radiche lowered her voice and looked around to make sure she wasn't overheard before going
on.
‘She had a funny turn during the holidays. Thought she had an imaginary friend too.'

‘Oh, that's nice,' Amanda's mum said, ruffling Fridge's head. ‘I think they're—'

‘It was just awful, Mrs Shuffleup,' Julia's mum said, ignoring her. ‘I was dreadfully worried. She was acting so oddly. It's not natural. I took her to see Dr Peterson at the hospital. He's a specialist, a child psychologist.' She half-whispered, half-mouthed the last two words, as if embarrassed by them. ‘He came highly recommended.'

‘You took Julia to a child psychologist?' Amanda's mum asked loudly.

‘Yes,' Mrs Radiche said, looking around guiltily. ‘And it was brilliant. The moment we got there, she was cured. Not a single hallucination from that day to this. Cured.'

‘How dreadful.'

‘I can give you his phone number if you like?'

‘I don't think so,' Amanda's mum said. ‘I think Amanda's doing fine.'

‘Hmm,' said Julia's mum.