Sequin and Stitch Page 3
Mum folds my hair behind my ear and tucks Stitch in closer to me.
“Listen, you …” Mum says. “We’ve got an actual real‑life princess coming to our home. How many of your friends can say that?” She goes out of the room and I cling to Stitch. Eventually I drift off to sleep.
Chapter 13
I dream of a princess that night. She had everything a princess could possibly want – even a bedroom in the highest room in her grand castle. She thought her princess life couldn’t get any more princess‑ish, but then she met her prince charming. They fell in love. And they were soon to be wed.
The king and queen were very excited. They got the world’s best wedding planners in to arrange the event. They had the best twinkling wedding rings made, the prince had his suit tailored, the bridesmaids had their dresses fitted and the flowers were all sorted. But there was one thing they could not find.
The perfect wedding dress.
Designers were flown in from all over the world to measure the princess and show her their grand visions for her dress. But they were just never quite right.
Each dress was too dark, too bright, too itchy, too silky, too swishy, too posh, too relaxed, too short, too long, too loose, too tight, too busy, too simple, too crazy or too boring.
The princess was tempted to get married in her cosy ice‑cream onesie – at least it was comfortable.
One day the princess was in town getting her nails manicured and feeling rather deflated as she still didn’t have a dress to get married in. Then she spotted the strangest thing she’d ever seen.
A flash of colour in the shape of a ladder.
Rung after rung made of every fabric hanging from the block of flats opposite.
The material was twisted and knotted – rags and scraps were braided and plaited. It was like a long friendship bracelet, dangling out of the sky …
“Sorry,” the princess said to the nail technician as she got up. “I just need to …”
“Where are you going, Princess?” the technician asked. “Your nails … they’re still wet! I haven’t finished – they’ll smudge.”
The princess walked out of the nail bar as if locked in some strange trance. She began to climb the ladder of beautiful fabric, like she was hypnotised.
Floor one, two, three …
“PRINCESS!” shouted her security guards. “GET DOWN FROM THERE! IT’S VERY DANGEROUS!”
But the princess ignored them and kept climbing up the ladder.
The howling sound of sirens rang out.
But the princess kept climbing.
Floor four, five, six …
The princess was getting high now and the wind blew in her hair. A crowd began to watch.
“What is she doing?” someone asked.
“Has the princess lost her mind?” another said.
“Who even lives all the way up there?”
“What could the princess possibly want from a big ugly grey building like that?”
The people below the princess looked tiny to her, like lost pinheads on the carpet.
Floor seven, eight, nine …
News reporters began to gather.
An emergency helicopter chugged overhead and a tinny voice from a megaphone shouted, “PRINCESS, PLEASE COME DOWN FROM THE LADDER. YOU ARE PUTTING YOUR LIFE IN DANGER. WE ARE COMING TO GET YOU.”
But the princess kept climbing all the way up the block of flats. At the twelfth floor, she politely knocked on the window and clambered in.
Inside, all was silent. Apart from the princess’s beating heart.
WOW.
Never in her life had the princess seen beauty like it. Costume after costume, dress after dress, suit after suit. They were all so majestic and spectacular that tears came to her eyes.
And there, sitting on the sofa, happily stitching away, was Mum.
It was as if she’d been waiting for the princess to pay her a visit.
The princess gazed at the dresses, totally mesmerised.
“May I?” she asked as her fingers tingled.
“Please do,” said Mum.
By now a big crowd had gathered on the road beneath the block of flats. This included the prince, who was sweating – it was a pretty stressful situation for him. His future in‑laws, the king and queen, were clinging to one another in fear. Everybody was very worried. Where had the princess gone? Had she been kidnapped?
And who owned this strange ladder in the sky?
Eventually, the princess emerged from the window wearing the most wondrous wedding gown anybody had ever seen! It was so stunning it nearly blinded people with its beauty.
It was a work of ART.
The princess started to climb back down the ladder, calling out, “I have met my seamstress, the most talented dressmaker in the whole world … Sequin and Stitch’s mum!”
Our mum appeared at the window. And the crowd went wild. The king and queen cried with joy and clapped their hands. And the prince wept and blew kisses up to his beautiful future wife at the window.
“Your flat is a palace! You look so beautiful, Princess!” the prince said.
And everybody was saying “Thank you!” to Mum.
And everybody was taking photos of Mum.
And everybody knew Mum’s name.
And Teegan from school was there.
And Fatima.
And Olivia.
And they said, “Sorry we didn’t believe you, Sequin.”
And I said, “It’s OK. Not everybody believes in magic until they actually see it.”
And then I felt warmth all around me—
“SEQUIN! SEQUIN! WAKE UP … WAKE UP! SEQUIN! SEQUIN! IT’S OUR BLOCK … SEQUIN, IT’S ON FIRE!”
Chapter 14
There’s panic in Mum’s voice. Horrible panic. She rips me out of bed. I feel her pulsing heartbeat on my hand, drumming out of her chest.
“We’ve got to get out,” Mum cries. “I’ve got you. It’s going to be OK, Sequin, but it’ll be a tiny bit scary before that, OK?”
I nod.
“Now, you need to stay with me the entire time and do everything I tell you to do,” Mum says. “OK? Promise?”
I promise.
“Where’s Stitch?” I croak sleepily.
He must be outside.
I can’t see. I bury my head further into Mum. I don’t want to see. There is smoke everywhere – big black charcoal circles of swirling hoops. It’s so dark, with new horrible shadows leaping all around. I can hear the roaring flames whispering in my ears. I’m scared. I’m so so scared.
It feels hot and close as we move out of the flat.
It’s a fire.
Our home.
Our palace is on fire.
I don’t want to look.
We run out into the stairwell …
I hear the blaring shrills of Primrose Mansions’ fire alarm. Our neighbours are also flowing into the stairwell in their pyjamas. They’re panicking, screaming, shouting and running about, desperately trying to escape. Sprinklers hiss around us.
Where’s Stitch?
“Where’s Stitch?” I scream. “MUM, WHERE’S STITCH?”
A man is shouting, “DON’T USE THE LIFT!”
And Mum begins to run down the cold hard concrete steps with her bare feet slapping the ground. She won’t let me go. She won’t put me down.
She is holding on to me so tight and I am so scared and I keep screaming, “What about Stitch? WHERE IS HE? MUM? WHERE’S STITCH?”
And she keeps telling me not to worry. She keeps saying that everything will be OK. She keeps saying that she loves me very much. She says she loves me very much. She says she loves me.
But … Stitch.
Don’t you love Stitch? Mum?
What about Stitch?
Chapter 15
We clamber down, down, down, down the stairs. I am gripping the banister, desperately trying to make Mum go back.
She is shouting, “LET GO!”
“PLEASE, PLEASE, MUM
, PLEASE …”
People are tripping up and falling around me. It’s all so hot and fast. I feel sick. I am screaming for my baby brother’s life but nobody is listening. Everybody is too busy listening to their own screams.
WHY IS NOBODY LISTENING?
And then suddenly we are out of the building and away from its licking flames.
Mum falls to her knees on the fresh green grass, panting with relief …
And people wrap me in a blanket and take me away to check for injuries.
I don’t want to be taken.
I just want Stitch.
Mum runs to me and is holding me and gripping my face and kissing me and crying.
“Please … please, Mum,” I say. “Tell them to go back inside and get Stitch. Mum, if you don’t … he’ll burn.”
“Sequin, it’s time to let him go.”
“Mum, I can’t, Mum! You can’t leave him, you can’t, Mum. Please.”
Two firefighters run over. “Somebody said they heard your daughter screaming for her baby brother,” one of them says. “Is there a baby still in the flat?”
I look to Mum as tears roll down my cheeks.
Chapter 16
And then out he comes.
Moany Bony Mr Tony, coughing and spluttering his way towards us.
I BET IT WAS HIS FAULT THAT THE WHOLE BLOCK WENT ON FIRE! HIM AND HIS SMOKING! HE LIED TO US THAT HE WOULDN’T SMOKE, BUT HE DID. I KNOW IT.
“Sequin … you’re OK!” Moany Bony Mr Tony gasps, and he puts a bony arm around me.
And from inside his stinky rotten coat he brings out a floppy, well‑loved worn rag doll. It’s made of odd ends and scraps. Rags and fabrics. Wool hair. Button eyes and a strip of velvet for a smile.
It’s Stitch.
I want to hug him but I can’t bring myself to.
He doesn’t look the same to me any more.
The firefighters look confused.
And it all becomes real.
Chapter 17
Mum hugs Tony hard.
“That is the kindest thing anybody has ever done for us …” she says.
Mum pauses, and then she speaks again. “When I was pregnant with Sequin, I was actually pregnant with twins – a boy and a girl.” She looks at me and smiles but tears fall and her voice breaks. “The boy was born first, four minutes before Sequin. But he didn’t make it … he died.”
I can’t stand looking at Mum when she’s sad, so I look at Tony instead.
“Sequin always wanted a sibling,” Mum went on. “And so when she was old enough to understand about her brother, I told her about him. I told her that she would always have a sibling … and we made Stitch. It sounds so stupid.” Mum shakes her head, sobbing. “I can’t believe you risked your life, Tony … Did you think Stitch was … real?”
“No,” Tony says, “but I knew that the love Sequin felt for Stitch was.”
Chapter 18
The giant’s remote control is not grey and still any more but wild and angry. Red and yellow and orange flames are eating Primrose Mansions alive. There is black smoke circling into the night sky. Firefighters in oversized waxy jackets and hard hats are trying to kill the fire with hosepipes, as if they are blasting a monster with laser guns.
The heat is too much. We are safe outside but the flames are roasting our skin.
Teasing our hair like feathers.
And the smell.
It hits the back of our throats.
It makes us cough and choke.
It’s the smell of burning.
And when the fire is gone, there is smoke.
Ash.
Dust.
Memories.
I find myself clinging to Stitch tight.
“Everything we had was in that flat,” Mum says, sounding numb. “Now the princess won’t have a dress. I won’t have a job. We don’t have a home … We have nothing.”
I look at my mum.
She is here, forced outside her prison as our palace burns down.
Perhaps we are more alike than I even realised.
The stitches are cut.
If she can let go …
Then I have to do the same.
It’s time to say goodbye.
I breathe Stitch’s familiar smell in for the last time.
I love you, Stitch.
And then … I unravel him. I unpick him, seam after seam, stitch after stitch.
I pull him apart.
And in the centre of his chest with the stuffing and fluff is a single sewing needle, exactly where his heart would be.
“No, Mum,” I tell her. “We have everything we need right here. I am stitched to you. And I always will be. You made me, remember? We only need each other … and this.”
And I place the needle in her hand.
Chapter 19
The fire was on the news.
It turned out it was caused by a dodgy broken fan on a fridge on the ninth floor. Nothing to do with Moany Bony Mr Tony, who hasn’t smoked one single cigarette since the fire.
“I saw you in the paper, Sequin,” Teegan says. She’s skipping over with a fake plastic grin on her face. “I can’t believe you got to meet the princess. Did you really get to go to the palace?”
“Yes,” I reply.
“Is it true that the princess’s wedding dress burned in the fire?”
“Yes.”
“Is it true that your mum made the princess an ice‑cream onesie to wear as she walked down the aisle instead?”
“Ha ha. Yes.”
“Wow, that’s so cool. Is it true the princess is going to employ your mum full time to make all of her clothes?”
“Yep.”
“Did she make that dress for you that you had on in the paper? It was so cool!”
“Yep.”
“Woah! Can your mum make me a dress?”
“She could,” I say. “My mum can make anything she wants.”
Teegan’s face lights up.
“It’s just that she only makes clothes for princesses, you see?” I add. “Sorry about that, Teegan.”
“But … you’re not a princess,” Teegan says.
“Yes, I am. My palace might have burned down … but I didn’t.”
And Teegan’s jaw drops and she watches me run towards my mum. She’s standing on the other side of the road, the wind in her hair making it fly like ribbons.
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Copyright
First published in 2020 in Great Britain by
Barrington Stoke Ltd
18 Walker Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7LP
This ebook edition first published in 2020
www.barringtonstoke.co.uk
Text © 2020 Laura Dockrill
Illustrations © 2020 Sara Ogilvie
The moral right of Laura Dockrill and Sara Ogilvie to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in any part in any form without the written permission of the publisher
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library upon request
eISBN: 978–1–78112–989–0
Laura Dockrill, Sequin and Stitch
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