Sisters - Michelle Frances Page 0,42

she was doing it except that there was nothing better to do. There it lay, close to her cheek. She didn’t bother opening it up; instead she stared at the picture on the front: a map.

Her mother came into the room.

‘What are you doing on the floor?’ asked Susanna, bustling over and holding out a hand, but Ellie refused to take it.

Susanna glanced down at the book. ‘Atlas,’ she read, ‘A journey around Europe’s Biggest, Tallest, Longest.’ She picked it up, flicked it open. ‘Ooh, Hungary. Home to the Danube, Europe’s second-longest river. Fun fact: the Danube passes through ten countries.’

Ellie was barely listening; she could still hear the playground joy filtering in through the patio doors.

Susanna turned to another page. ‘Spain,’ she read. ‘Home to the Alhambra, a royal palace.’

The word ‘palace’ filtered into Ellie’s consciousness. She liked palaces. And princesses.

‘The Sultana’s Garden, one of the oldest surviving Moorish gardens,’ read Susanna.

Hmm, though Ellie. A garden where they grow sultanas. She liked sultanas. More than raisins. They were squidgier.

‘Oh, and what’s this?’ said Susanna, moving her finger across the page. ‘The Vixía Herbeira cliffs. Six hundred and twenty-one metres high. Wow,’ she exclaimed, ‘it says here that’s nearly six times the height of the White Cliffs of Dover!’

Ellie didn’t know about the White Cliffs of Dover but her mother’s voice held enough excitement for her to sit up. She peered over at the book and Susanna turned it so the photograph was facing her. Ellie’s eyes widened; it was so high! She felt a flutter in her belly and pulled the book closer.

‘If you don’t go while alive, you must go after death, goes the saying,’ read Susanna.

‘What does that mean, Mummy?’

‘It’s probably a legend or something. It must mean it’s so good, you absolutely mustn’t miss it.’

Ellie nodded and thought for a moment. ‘One day, when I’m better, can I go there?’

‘Of course,’ said Susanna. ‘You can go wherever you like.’ Her mother handed her the book. ‘You keep on looking while I check the macaroni cheese.’

As Susanna left the room, Ellie looked back at the cliffs. The image stirred her again, something strong and powerful that she found hard to describe, but one thing she did know for certain was that she liked how it made her feel. And then it came to her. The feeling was escape.

She flicked through more pages, unable to read much of the text, but it mattered less now. It was the pictures that spoke to her, that transported her and took her away from her lonely place in the living room.

One day, Ellie thought, she would go to these places in this book. When the book was due back at the library, Ellie asked if they could keep it for longer. It was renewed. Again and again.

THIRTY

They drove through the heat of the middle of the day, the roof down as they stuck to the minor roads that jumped in and around the coast for much of the Côte d’Azur, skirting around Monaco, Nice, Cannes, places whose very names conjured up glamour and allure. In another time, it would have been the perfect adventure, cruising through some of the most beautiful places in France, except Abby and Ellie had to avoid the towns themselves, only occasionally getting a distant glimpse of shiny dense high-rises and luxury villas perched on cliffs. Between the towns they would travel along narrow roads lined with maquis, roads that would bend to dramatically reveal a hidden cove, flanked by palms and rocks, everything bathed in the bright Mediterranean light.

Ellie’s eyelids began to droop. She was feeling so sleepy; in fact, her whole body ached with fatigue. She forced her eyes open and, for a moment, the view of the coast on her left was partly missing. The sea appeared to suddenly cut off, right at the periphery of her field of vision. Alarmed, she blinked, but her sight stubbornly wouldn’t adjust. She closed her eyes, waited a few seconds, then slowly opened them. Gradually, as she kept her head very still, the images went back to normal. She sat still for a moment, unsettled.

‘Are you OK?’ asked Abby. ‘You look a bit pale.’

Ellie carefully shifted her gaze to her sister. ‘Yeah. Think so. Everything just got a bit weird there for a minute.’

‘Probably need some food,’ said Abby. ‘We’ll find a place to stop.’

‘We need to find help,’ said Ellie. ‘We can’t just keep on driving.’

‘I know but . . .’ Abby’s voice suddenly took on