The Wardrobe and the Diamond Palace

Chapter 1 – Granny

The smell always hit me when I first walked into the lobby.  It was made up of wee, cabbages and Parma violets, all mixed with that peculiar sweet old-lady smell people seem to get given when they retire from work along with the carriage clock and the department-store vouchers.  It grew stronger as I went up in the lift and down the corridor to flat 327.  After that, I stopped noticing the smells except those ones unique to my granny's flat itself: Murray Mints, pine-scented furniture polish and pot pourri.

There was a little brass door-knocker in the shape of a squirrel; the tail was the bit you knocked.  My granny would always be standing just inside the doorway waiting because it took her just the same length of time to get to the door from her chair as it took me to get all the way up seven floors in the lift and along the corridor.

She was my great-grandmother but I called her granny because my mum did; I thought it was her name.  I visited her every Wednesday straight from Brownies and my mum collected me afterwards.  She lived in a flat filled with flower fairies on plates stuck to the wall like pictures instead of on the table for eating from.  Some Wednesdays we would bake cakes or look at old photos or just watch TV, and some Wednesdays we would look at my granny's treasures.  There was a charm bracelet with a padlock and a donkey and a star; there was a turtle brooch set with blue and green stones; there were earrings and pearl necklaces and bracelets and scarf-pins.  There was also granny's Diamond.  

Granny's Diamond was not very big compared to the diamonds I'd seen in the Tower of London belonging to the Queen.  But it was still very sparkly.  It had fallen out, granny said, of a necklace, which she'd since lost.  When you held it up to the light and squinted through it you could see every colour in the world.  "Real diamonds," granny explained, "can cut glass."

"Then this Diamond can cut glass, can't it?"

"Of course."

It was the only thing I wanted, when my granny died.  My mum tried to persuade me to take the turtle, but I wouldn't be swayed from the Diamond.  I knew it was worth more than everything else put together.  

I used to take it into the garden and look through it to see if I could see fairies.  I don't know where I'd got the idea from that you could only see fairies through a diamond.  Maybe a book.

I was distraught when I lost the Diamond in the patch of nettles down the end of our garden where it backed onto the allotment.  It had seemed the most likely place to find fairies, but the Diamond was gone.  I looked in the garden for days; my hands covered in nettle rash until my mum made me wear the gardening gloves.  I couldn't find the Diamond anywhere.  My whole family helped me look.  They thought I wanted it because it reminded me of Granny, and that was true, but it was so much more special and valuable than just that.  Even after they gave up looking I carried on.

Chapter 2 – Robbers

The security chain was on the inside of the door when my mum brought us home from school that day, so she couldn't open it.  My mum knew what it meant straight away but me and my sister didn't understand.  In the end our neighbour put his shoulder to the door and opened it. He told us to wait outside while he phoned the police.

We had been burgled, my mum explained.  Bad men had come to take things so they could sell them, probably for drugs, which were things that bad men took to make them feel happy.  They had emptied all the drawers all over the floor and pulled everything out of the cupboards.  They had smashed the back window.

It didn't look like they'd come to take things.  It looked like what my sister had done to our bedroom when she lost her lucky strawberry-smelling ladybird rubber.  It looked, to me, like they had been searching for something.  I knew they had really come for the Diamond, even if they had taken other things as well.  I didn't even need to do my nightly search in the back garden when the police had finished.  I knew the Diamond would be gone.

Two nights later, in my messed up bedroom still smeared with fingerprint dust, crying and too scared to sleep in case the robbers came back, I had an idea.  It was late at night when I crept downstairs and switched on the kitchen radio.  It took an enormous feat of bravery; the robbers could have been under my bed, waiting to grab at my ankles when I got up; they could have been laying in wait downstairs.  There was nothing but static at first as I twirled the radio dial then, out of the static, I thought I heard a voice.  The diamond spoke to me through the radio.  "Police," it said, "have today made a major breakthrough in the war against crime.  They have uncovered a lock-up garage in Seaforth Street containing stolen jewellery worth in excess of two million pounds.  The robbers themselves have so far evaded capture."

Chapter 3 – The Hide-out

Seaforth Street was in the same road as the church where I did Brownies.  I saw the garage when Lindsey's mum drove us there from school, all taped off by the police.  I walked to the church door with Lindsey, but when her mum drove away I didn't go into Brownies.  I ran back to the police tape, instead and slipped underneath it.  The policeman there was reading the newspaper and didn't even see me go past.  I was unimpressed.  What if I'd been a robber?

Of course, when I got to the garage it was locked.  The enormous door was pulled down and stuck fast.  I pulled it but it wouldn't budge.  I walked round the side of the building, around to the back where there was a scrubby bit of wasteland with some abandoned cars, and I found a small door set in the wall.  The door was only about my height.  It opened.  I stepped through the door, into the darkness.

"Now then," a voice from behind me said, "you are going to be very quiet."

A warm rough hand smelling of petrol covered my mouth and nose before I had time to think.  I was lifted off my feet and swung through the air.  A mouldy grey blanket was put over my head.  I was carried some distance.  I didn't have enough air to yell or scream, even if I hadn't been too terrified to move a single centimetre.  I was dropped, after a while, onto a hard surface.  A door slammed, an engine started.  I was bounced along in rough jolts, flung about in the back of a van with a load of other stuff, for probably an hour.

I managed to extract myself from the blanket just as the van stopped.  The side door of the van was slid open by a pair of big, rough looking men.  They called me some bad names and told me I'd caused problems for them.

We were at a small stone house in the middle of nowhere.  I was lifted out of the back of the van like I was a sack of potatoes, which is something people say only potatoes are heavy and I was being chucked about like I weighed nothing.  I was pulled into the house.

"I can walk, you know," I said, sick of being dragged around.

"You'd better pray you stay that way, then.  Not that praying'll do you any good."

I was shoved into a small, empty room with no carpet or wallpaper.  There was an empty wine bottle in the corner.  I was glad I'd kept hold of the blanket.

"Now stay here and keep quiet," the robber said.

"Where's my Diamond?"  I asked, close to tears again.  You wouldn't think I had any tears left inside me.

"Hah, diamond.  You'll never be seeing any diamonds, not where you're going."

The robber gave me a drink which tasted like cough medicine.  I fell asleep.

Chapter 4 – Escape

When I woke up there were knots around my arms and legs.   For a night and a day I stayed in that room.  At first I could see voices and hear colours in the walls, but that wore off and then it was quite boring.  My head hurt and I felt dizzy.  The blanket was not enough to keep me warm.  There was no food.  There was a small metal grille high up near the ceiling which let in daylight.  When the footsteps went past, the door slammed and the van engine started up, spluttering, it was getting dark again.  I waited another ten minutes or more but there was no noise.

"Magic Diamond," I whispered, "Magic Diamond, set me free."  "Please."  I added, remembering to be polite.  The Diamond didn't answer.

I jumped over to the door like I was in the three-legged race only there was only one of me.  The door opened straight away.  It wasn't even locked.

I hopped along a bare corridor into a bare, old-fashioned kitchen.  I was hungry.   I found a bag of peanuts which I couldn't open and then I found a knife.  I used the knife very carefully to open the peanuts and ate them, thinking how lucky it was that I wasn't Lindsey who swells up like a Satsuma when she eats peanuts.  Then I used the knife to very carefully cut off the knots from my hands and feet.  Then I put the knife away carefully in the drawer and drank some water from the tap.

I was trying to unlock the front door using a paperclip when the robbers came back.  I didn't hear them coming because I was concentrating.  They almost knocked me over when they opened the door.  The first man had a box in his hands.

"What the?" he said.  I started to run away from him.  Another man pushed past him and started to come after me.  I tripped and fell, landing crash with my head knocking a lump out of the wall.  Someone turned off a massive light-switch and the world went dark.

Chapter 5 – Wardrobe power

"I'll take you to see the wardrobe," the Diamond said in my head.  "It will be an adventure."  I didn't know whether I was awake or asleep but I agreed.  I went to see the wardrobe.  He was a tall oaken wardrobe with a bow-tie and a moustache.

"What are your troubles?" the wardrobe asked.

"I had a bad dream, Mr Wardrobe."  I answered.  "I dreamt I was a little girl living with my mum and sister and that I went to school every day and Brownies on a Wednesday and I used to go and visit my granny but now she's dead.  I dreamt robbers stole the diamond I could use to see fairies and locked me in a cold empty house."

"That's a ridiculous dream.  It's over now, though.  Don't worry."

"How can it be over?"  I asked.  "Can you throw my bad dreams away?"

"This is a dream," the Wardrobe answered unhelpfully.  "Nor are we out of it.  Never mind any of that now.  Let's go to the Diamond Palace."

Chapter 6 – Diamond Palace

The Wardrobe stamped a stamp on the back of my hand in red ink in the shape of a diamond.  "Now you may enter the Diamond Palace," he told me.  I went through the wardrobe door.  A man inside in a dark suit wearing dark glasses and carrying a clipboard made a tick on his list and lifted up a red velvet rope.  I ducked underneath it and entered the Diamond Palace.

"Are there any beds in this place?"  I asked, because suddenly I felt very tired even though it was a dream.

"Oh yes," answered the Diamond on reception, "Hundreds.  What colour?"  

"Pink."  I remembered it was a dream, then, because I don't like pink when I'm awake.

The bed was very soft and comfortable even though it was pink and made of diamonds.  I stayed there for three years.  Not just the bed was pink; the walls were pink, the floor was pink, the curtains were pink and there was a pink joined-on bathroom.  I got pink food brought to me by room service Diamonds.  They brought sweets, mostly, but there were jellies and ice-creams and sausage rolls as well.  After three years, I said to myself, 'I want to go home but I've forgotten the way'.  I dialled zero and called down to reception.

"Hello," I said.  "I'm staying in room 327 and I'd like to go home."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible, madam," the receptionist Diamond told me.  "You see, no one goes out once they have come in."

"I miss my family."  I said, "I mean, I know they're not real, or I'm not real, or this isn't real, but I miss them anyway."

The receptionist Diamond heaved a big sigh like he'd heard it all a million times before.  I think he was a boy Diamond, but it's hard to tell.  "OK then," he said, "I'll send up a ring.   Rub it three times and you can see and hear your family."

I got scared then.  What if they had forgotten me?  What if they weren't real?  What if I wasn't real?

It was another three weeks before I got up the courage to rub the ring.

Chapter 7 – No Family

I sat in pink room 327 after the remains of my breakfast had been cleared away.  I'd had cereal because I was bored of sweets and my teeth hurt.   I sat on the bed because there wasn't a chair.  I put the ring on my finger and rubbed it three times.

Nothing happened.  

I rubbed it again.  Nothing.  I rubbed it thirty three times.  Again, nothing.  I took the ring off my finger and threw it against the wall, hard.  It made a tiny dent in the pink wallpaper.  No, wait.  Not pink.  It made a dent in the blue wallpaper with yellow butterflies, like the wallpaper I had in my bedroom at home.

Chapter 8 – Family again

I jumped out of the bed and went downstairs.  It was day-time and my family were just having breakfast.  

"You were sound asleep when I went up." my mum said, "so I thought I'd let you lie in.  You obviously needed it.  Were you having a nice dream?"

"I wasn't dreaming.  I was awake in Diamond land," I said.

"Never mind Diamond land.  Get your things together now or I'll be late for work.  It's alright for some, being off on holiday.  I should have been a teacher.  You're hardly ever at school."

"What are we going to do while you're at work?"  I asked.

"We had all this yesterday.  You're both going to granny's just for today, and you're going to be very good for her.  I know it's boring for you, but it's only one day.  Tomorrow Lindsey's mum is taking you and your sister is staying with her friend Sophie, then my mum and dad have got you for the rest of the week.  But after that I'm off work and we'll have some nice days out.  OK?"

"Granny?"  I asked.

"Yes, your granny."  My dad chipped in, "little old lady, false teeth.  Smells of pi... er, wee."

My mum thumped my dad round the head then but I didn't mind.  I was going to go and see the Diamond.