Chapter 4

Lucy's Lie

Lily woke up suddenly on the thirtieth of January. It was her birthday. She was ten now. She sat up crossing her legs under her bed covers and listened to hear if any of her family was awake. It was a rule in their house that you weren't allowed to go downstairs on your birthday without everyone else being there. This meant that presents couldn't be unwrapped or the cake be seen without her parents being there.

Having decided that no one else was awake, Lily climbed out of bed and tiptoed, still in her nightie, into her sister's bedroom.

'Tuney, Tuney, wake up.' She half whispered to her sister.

'Lily' was her mumbled reply.

'Come on Tuney. It's my birthday.'

'Urrg, fine then.' And Petunia sat up in bed.

The two girls then crept down the corridor to their parent's room.

'Wake up! Wake up!' Lily flung open the door and bounced into the room. Mr and Mrs Evans were already awake and sitting up in bed. Lily clambered onto the covers kneeling up but still bouncing, Petunia hung back in the doorway.

'Please can we go downstairs now,' Lily begged

'And why would you want to do that?' her father asked hardly concealing his grin. Lily stuck her tongue out at him and turned her pleading face to her mother.

'Fine then, of you jump.' Her mother conceded lifting up the bedcovers causing Lily to role backwards to the end of the bed. But Lily was too excited to compline and bounced of the bed over to her sister. Grabbing Tuney's hand Lily exited the room followed slowly by her parents.

At the top of the stairs Petunia managed to shake of her little sister, who then proceeded to leap down the stairs two at a time landing cat like on the floor at the bottom and run to the dining room door stopping briefly to call encouragements back to her following family.

The dining room was completely covered in decorations. Balloons were hung from the light fittings, colourful streamers were draped across the table and all the furnishings, the room looked so lively and colourful. The large pale oak table, placed in the centre of the room, was the most vibrant. Piled high across the table were all the presents Lily had received from her friends and classmates the previous weekend at her party, jungle book themed obviously. She had not yet been allowed to open these, mixed in with them were the presents from her grandparents, aunts and uncles and, best of all, her parents. Sitting in front of the brightly wrapped gifts was an amazing birthday cake surrounded by a selection of envelopes addressed to Lily.

The cake was a master piece, Lily had seen it at her party but it still looked amazing now. It was of cause Bagheera, in 3D. Her mother always made the girls homemade cakes, and as they had grown up these cakes had become more and more amazing. This was a Swiss role cake slightly curved around the edge of the plate with his head at one end, made from left overs from the body of the cat with the whole thing covered in thick black icing and the legs and tail sculpted from more icing.

Lily had no idea how to express her joy and excitement, she simply stood at the end of the room not wanting to move and spoil the picture and at the same time wanting to dive right in and see how many presents she could open before it was time to leave for school.

'So what did you get for your birthday?' Alex asked as they hung their coats and bags up in the cloakroom area in the classroom.

Lily grinned at him and started to describe the bicycle that her parents had bought for her. It was new, well new to her and it had been repainted so it looked new too, and the framework was all bright red. And her Aunt Katherine had given her a book that she was really excited to start reading, called 'The Hobbit' b Tolkien. But then by that time Matt walked into the classroom and she had to start from the beginning all again. But Matt was really excited about seeing her new bike and proposed going out, all four of them, for a bike ride, maybe down to the woods by the river or somewhere like that. So they agreed that they would ask their parents about it and ask Lucy if she would be able to join them.

That lunchtime they all met up in Lucy's classroom and they proposed the bike ride to her, while they shared out the cake that Lily's mum had put in her lunchbox for her and her friends. Lucy seemed keen to join them but asked if they could explore further up the river rather than simply stopping at the woods as they would all be traveling faster. The others agreed that that would be great fun.

That Saturday Matt and Lucy cycled around to Lily's house where she was waiting with her shiny new bike. Mrs Evans stood in the doorway to wave Lily off, just checking that the new bike fitted Lily.

'By Mum!' Lily called as they got to the end of the street before disappearing out of view.

'Stay safe and don't do anything stupid!' her mother called back casing the three of them to giggle

'We'll be fine!' came the reply, and then they were around the corner.

It took them ten minutes to cycle to Alex's house, rather than the usual fifteen it took to walk, so they arrived just as Alex was getting his bike out. After he had said goodbye to his parents the four children grabbed their bikes and were off.

Alex lived quite close to the river so it wasn't long before they reached the small cops of trees that had been their original destination.

'Lucy, you were right,' Alex called to her as they passed the trees, 'the woods were too close.'

'Now we can do some proper exploring!' Alex shouted in his excitement. The others grinned at each other and started peddling faster their exhilaration almost a visible force pushing them forwards.

A mile further along the road the river curved away to the left but a small track lead off towards the river and they decided to explore along the track and stay close to the river. As they had guessed the track did not cross the river but follow up someway on the right hand side of it. Soon the track opened out and became grassy, but with all the rain they had recently had there were many puddles and muddy spots that had to be avoided so the pace slowed down. At least the girls avoided the puddles. Matt and Alex relied on their mudguards and waterproof coats to keep them reasonably dry and clean as they plunged from one muddy puddle to the next.

Eventually the track came to a run down, unused barn. Jumping off their bikes they lent them against the wall on the inside and explored the darkness. Looking up they could see the holes where the beams would have once gone across holding up the hay loft over one half of the empty building. At the back of the barn they found several large stones that had been pushed up against the back wall. It wasn't too dark here but sitting down they discovered that they couldn't be seen from the entrance. Matt took of his rucksack and began searching inside it. He brought out several squashed sandwiches, a water bottle (which turned out to be filled with lemonade) and a large bar of chocolate.

'Good enough for a picnic.' He said as he handed the food around. Alex laughed but did comment that really it should have been ginger beer rather than lemonade to make it a real Enid Blyton adventure.

'Yes!' Lily exclaimed, 'We could be the famous five!'

'I'm Anne.' Lucy chimed in,

'And Lily can be George,' said Matt

'Oh, Alex you should have brought your dog' Lily said

'Yeah, Dempsey would have made a great Timmy.' Alex groaned

'You'll have to bring him next time we go on an adventure.' Matt said, and Alex promised.

With that all settled and all the lunch eaten they pushed their bikes out of the deserted barn and set of riding again. Lucy seemed tired or maybe slightly upset about something and was lagging along at the back. At this point the track they were following was following the river very closely and often was right along the riverbank. Although they had been cycling for someway up river, it was still wide and reasonably fast flowing at some points and much cleaner than it was close into the city.

After another hour of cycling Matt, who was in the lead, turned around on his saddle to check with the others whether they wanted to carry on or to turn around and head back, but no sound passed his lips apart from a sought of muffled yelp. The look on his face caused the others to stop suddenly and turn as well.

Lucy had somehow fallen off her bike and had landed in the middle of the river. In summer the others would have still been concerned but laughed it off as she would have really been fine. But this was the middle of winter. The river was freezing cold.

Lily, closest to Lucy, dropped her bike and ran to try to get level with her. The boys quickly followed screaming her name.

'Lucy! Lucy!' but the girl in the river made no reply the shock plane on her face and in her wide eyes. The current dragged her into the middle of the river, sweeping her further and further from her friends.

'Swim Lucy!' Matt yelled at the top of his voice.

'Come on, Lucy Swim!' Alex joined in, an at last she began to move, but her pitiful effort made no impact on the current.

'Grab that tree!' Lily suddenly yelled as her friend was swept under the trailing branches of a weeping willow. But Lucy never got the chance to respond to the command because as soon as the words had left Lily's mouth the tree itself responded. The branches that were close to Lucy suddenly coiled themselves around her body and swept her through the water to the river bank.

Everyone stopped moving. They all looked at Lily in shock and amazement. As the tree unwound itself from Lucy she suddenly jumped up. Dripping wet and freezing cold, she marched up to Lily yelling at the top of her voice.

'What did you do! You freak! Everyone knows your weird and you do weird stuff but do not do your freaky stuff on me!' Lucy then marched off up to her bike, jumped on it and started peddling away as fast as she could.

'But you saved her life?!' Alex sad after a moment's pause as the three of them took in what happened.

'Did you do that?' Matt asked

'I … I … I don't know. Maybe… I … I think so.' Lily stuttered out. Shocked by her friend's violent reaction.

'I'm going to make sure Lucy's alright!' Matt called as he ran to get his bike.

As Matt rode past them Lily sank to the ground. Alex came over and sat next to her on the river bank.

'Are you alright?' he asked after a few minutes. He looked up at Lily and saw that tears were running down her cheeks. Awkwardly he shuffled closer to her and placed his arm around her shoulders. 'She's just in shock, you know. Lucy didn't mean all that stuff. Honesty. On Monday, you'll see.' He comforted her.

'I'm sorry.' Lily sobbed her head resting on his shoulder.

'Sorry for what?' he asked gently.

'All this. It's all my fault.' She generalised melodramatically trough her sobs.

'Don't be silly.' He replied but this only brought on even more sobs.

'Lily?'

'What's everyone going to say?'

'Lily! Right, come on I'm taking you home.'

But Lily was in no state to ride her bike so they ended up pushing them most of the way back. Alex, a good as his word, walked Lily right back to her door. And tried to explain what had happened to them, but Mrs Evans didn't seem to understand everything. Lily was no longer crying but she still looked in a state and was rushed inside to warm up again. Alex was thanked and asked if he wanted walking home, but he declined explaining that he had his bike and would be fine.

'So not such a good day for a test run of your new bike.' Lily's father joked as he tucked her into bed that night. Lily hiccupped and gave a slight sob in reply. Her father chuckled, hugged her and kissed her good night, sure that come Monday it would all be fine.

They could have not been more wrong.

Lily, Matt and Alex didn't get a chance to find Lucy before afternoon playtime. Normally they would have met up with her at morning brake and lunch time, but no one seemed to know where she was. Matt had asked some of Lucy's new friends from her class if they knew where she was but they had replied that they weren't allowed to tell him.

By the end of lunch they were all worried about her, and everyone from the other class in their year were giving Lily dark looks.

They found her eventually at afternoon brake hiding behind the yea four classrooms. She was with two of her new friends from her class. Lucy seemed really upset and the other two girls were comforting her.

'Lucy, we were worried about you. Where have you been?' Lily called rushing towards her. But this seemed to be a mistake.

'Stay away from me!' Lucy called out in sudden panic, her new friends stood in front of her, protecting Lucy from the others.

'Lucy, what happened?' asked Matt

'Don't act dumb,' was the muffled reply, 'you were there when she did it.'

'When who did what?'

'When that freak tried to drown me!'

'What?' put in Alex, 'No one tried to drown you!'

'Yes she did! She waited until I was at the back so none of you would notice, and then She used her freak powers to push me down into the river and then petrify me so I couldn't possibly move, so I couldn't swim to the bank and save myself. She wanted to drown me! And then its only because you looked around, Matt, that you noticed what was happening and then She had to pretend that it was an accident and called out for me to grab onto the tree which I tried to do but then she made the tree move and try and hold me under the surface of the freezing water but her concentration was broken by you two trying to help me and I managed to struggle my way out of the tree's grasp and swim to the bank. And then She covered her tracks because by the time that I had cycled home I was completely dry, I hadn't even caught a cold, and my own mother didn't believe that I had even got wet, let alone nearly been drowned, on purpose, by that freak!' Lucy then fell into hysterical cries and her new friends quickly fell into comforting her.

'Don't worry we won't let her get to you,'

'We'll protect you from that awful girl.'

'What!' Lily almost screamed Matt an Alex also held indignant looks on their faces. Lucy took a shuddering breath but before she could make her accusation Lily had stormed off the tears in her eyes threatening to overflow.

Alex immediately tore after her, but Matt hesitated. He seemed unsure of who to comfort for a moment. Then with a scathing look towards Lucy he ran after his friends.

He found Lily sat on the steps in front of their year five classroom crying for all she was worth. Alex was sitting on the step next to her trying to reassure her that she wasn't a freak and Lucy was just being horrible but she would come around. Matt doubted that Lucy would change her mind; she really could be quite stubborn. He decided not to mention it as he sat down on the other side of his weeping friend.

It didn't take long before the teacher on duty noticed that Lily was crying. The boys tried to explain what had happened, Lily was in no state to talk, but the teacher struggled to understand the whole situation. He did, nevertheless, promise to go and speak to Lucy and the boys were sure that he would see right through Lucy's lies.

They didn't see Lucy for several months after the incident; however they were well informed of what she was doing. Although she had not managed to convince the teachers of her story, somehow she had managed to persuade many of the students that her tale was true. These pupils would shy away from Lily as soon as they noticed her, and repeat and remodel the original story amongst themselves.

It took months for Lily not to burst into tears every time someone called her a freak. And that was way too often. Alex and Matt barely knew what to do, both caught between the immense army of pupils backing Lucy's fabricated tale and their friend. Both of them decided that Lily was almost defiantly the victim in this situation, however Lucy played it. They tried everything they could think of but nothing seemed to work. They quickly found themselves with a thinner and thinner backing of people, until they discovered that the three of them alone in their year believed what really happened that fateful Saturday.

As March drew to a close and April began, Lily Alex and Matt were amazed that Lucy had managed to keep her episode topical. By this stage the boys had managed to convince Lily to see the funny side of it, and when Kimberly Barrette suddenly backed away from Lily, her fingers making the sign of the cross Lily couldn't help but burst out laughing.

The three of them then took to musing over the different versions of the story they had recently heard. By the last week before the Easter holidays the favourite story was that Lily had jumped into the ice covered river after Lucy but had failed to be able to break the ice (as Lucy had managed to land on the thickest part of the ice). Alex claimed that he didn't enjoy this version of the story because there was no gigantic waterfall in it for them both to fall down. But Lily said that she liked that it had much less magic in it than the original tale that Lucy had spread.

'Was it magic or just freakish powers?' Matt asked as they walked up the steps at the end of the day.

'I think it was freakish powers, cause she really wanted everyone to call you a freak.' Alex said.

'Yeah,' Lily agreed, 'the magic came later.' Then she suddenly stopped recognising someone waiting at the top of the steps.

'You owe me a conversation.' She suddenly accused.

'What?' said the boy, he was tall and sporty defiantly older than the three of them with a dark mop of hair on his head.

'I'm Petunia's sister.' Lily said as if that explained everything.

'Oh,' he said 'did this conversation have a topic?'

Lily rolled her eyes 'Severus Snape I believe.'

'Who is this Lily?' Alex asked bemused

'Oh, sorry, this is Tom Derk he fancies my sister, and these are my friends Matt and Alex.' Lily explained smiling coyly up at Tom.

All slightly bemused at the situation the three boys greeted each other.

'So, what brings you hear Tom?' Lily asked as if she had no inkling of why he would be here.

'I'm collecting my sister from school.' He replied curtly, as if trying to terminate the conversation as quickly as possible.

'But you don't usually.' Lilly pointed out, 'She normally walks home on her own or with her friends.'

'Yes,' Tom agreed, 'But I'm not at school this week, because we get longer holidays at my school, so I can walk her home.'

'So on the way you could tell me about Severus Snape.' Said Lily

'Or not.'

'But you have to wait for your sister to come out of school and then walk home with her and it's almost the same way as to my house.' Lily rationalised.

'Why are you so obsessed by him anyway?' Tom threw at her suddenly. 'Are you in love with him?'

'No that's you and my sister, and I might tell you that if you tell me about Snape.' She cut in

'Fine, if you're not going to drop it.' Tom sneered, but he looked more exasperated with the subject and impatient to be free of Lily. 'He lives on Spinners End with his parents.'

'Where about?' Lily questioned,

'Err, half way down, I don't know the number, but it's the really shabby one. I think his father's a drunk or something.' Tom replied looking like he'd rather be anywhere else.

'And…'

'He's a weirdo.'

'And… come on I know you know loads about him, just spill.' It was Lily's turn to become annoyed.

'Fine. His parent argue all the time, I don't know what about, their just really noisy, and he spends ages on his own in his back garden talking to himself. He talks nonsense most of the time, like made up words, especially when his parents are rowing. I think his dad's an alcoholic or something.'

'The nonsense words bit, what else does he do when he's saying the words?' Lily questioned

'Emm, sometimes he holds a stick when he says them, and points it at stuff. And he always looks really grumpy when he does it.' Tom answered confused.

'And why's he not at this school?' Lily asked

'I think he's home schooled. But I've heard him talk about school with his mum I don't know.'

How do you know all this stuff?' Alex suddenly asked

Tom rolled his eyes, however it didn't quite come off as he blushed at the same time. 'One of my friends garden backs onto his, he knows loads of weird stuff about the Snape's.'

'Thanks,' Lily said grinning up at Tom Dirk, she turned on her heal and left him on his own again, Matt and Alex following after her.

When they had crossed the road and got out of earshot of Tom Derk the boys rounded on Lily.

'What and who was that?' Alex asked

'I said he fancies my sister, I met him before Christmas and he asked me about Tuney and said that in return he'd tell me about Severus Snape.'

'You can't just talk to random people Lily! Stranger danger and all that!' Alex nearly exploded. 'He could have been anyone!'

'I said I'd seen him before…'

'I mean before! Who were you with when you talked to him'

Lily blushed 'Well, he said he was waiting for his sister and- no wait, I saw him before, at the beginning of summer and I was with my sister and she was talking to him. There.'

'I sought of know him too,' Matt put in, 'his sister Jessica is in the same year as my sister.'

'I still don't like him though,' Alex mumbled

'I promise not to talk to him again then,' said Lily exasperated, 'I didn't really want to talk to him, it's just I needed that information on Severus Snape.'

'Why do you want to know about Snape?' Matt asked,

'I met him over the summer and he said some stuff about me and I want to ask him how much he knows and what he thinks about it' Lily shrugged vaguely.

'That's really helpful and clear Lily.' Said Alex, 'I'm so glad you explained.'

'No, Alex, I don't know what I'm talking about. I promise I'll tell you everything as soon as I know. Honest.' She pleaded.

'Why won't you take us with you?' Matt asked, trying to find some middle ground.

'I don't think that'd work.' Lily tried to explain, 'You heard from Tom Derk, he's a bit strange and I don't think he'd want to talk to you.'

'What? What's so bad about us!' Alex practically roared.

'Alex please…' said Lily, trying to keep the tears in her eyes, 'I don't want to lose another friend over this.'

'Another friend?' asked Alex suddenly quietened by Lily's response, 'this has nothing to do with Lucy and all that stuff.'

Lily bit the inside of her cheek, 'I don't know. It might be.'

This chapter owes at least part of its existence to:

Harry Potter by J K Rowling

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

The Famous Five by Enid Blyton