In the apple house and in the other houses, of course the girls had long since been sleeping the sleep of the righteous, but Lotti and Louisa were still whispering. They were lying on Louisa’s bed, with the covers pulled over their heads so as not to disturb the others.
“There is so much to tell… And so much I want to know. Like what is Dad like when he’s angry? Mum is silent and seems rather sad. The other day, when she thought I couldn’t see her, she even cried. Mum teaches at a university, something literary, what does Dad do?” Lottie’s tongue loosened late at night. She found her sister quite appealing.
“Dad is never angry! We laugh a lot and he’s always joking. But really, always, about everything! And guess what, he designs computer games. I always test them first, it’s fun. We go somewhere every weekend. We even hitchhiked the other day! I love London, except it’s always so cold and wet. Although I do have a raincoat that makes me look like a character from ‘Among Us’. Do you know that game?”
“Yes, but Mum never lets me play it. She thinks tablets are bad for a nine-year-olds”.
“You should try it sometime…”” “After breakfast the next day, Jerome took the campers in a big bus to a large farm, and Blanche told them that today they would meet the horses. Louisa almost jumped out of her skin, but Lotti was a bit apprehensive.
“I’ve never been on a horse. They are so big and scary…”
“Calm down! They are the cutest animals in the world. Look!” Louisa took out a sugar cube to lured a pony, who was wandering over. The pony accepted the gift gratefully, even licking the little girl’s hand.
“Why do you have sugar cubes?”” asked Marie, surprised.
“I stole them from the kitchen at breakfast, but ssssh! Don’t tell anyone! I’ve got a few more, here, I’ll give some to you!” Louisa giggled.
The morning passed in a blur, and in the afternoon the group went to paint in a lavender field: Blanche brought huge canvases and acrylic paint.
“But where are the brushes?” asked Lotti.
“Nowhere. Today you will paint with your fingers!”
“Yay!” Louisa shouted. “Aren’t you happy about it?” she looked at her sister.
“Well… I’ll be covered in paint…”
“Of course, that’s the good thing about it!” Louisa had already reached for the tube of purple paint.” ““Hey! Don’t smear that on me! This is one of my favourite skirts!”
“Oh, Lotti! Do stop whining so much! It’s only paint! You said you like to paint! How do you paint at home? In an overall so that you don’t get dirty?” Marie laughed at Louisa’s joke, then put her green paint finger on her nose.
“See? My nose is green, I’m an elf!” She turned to Louisa and smeared some of the paint on her face. Louisa laughed and giggled.
“Come on, Lotti, be an elf too! It’s just paint, it’ll come off! Dad always says that a dirty child is a happy one!”
“And Mum always says that a good child keeps clean. Thanks, I don’t need any of your paint”. Lotti squeezed a tiny dab of yellow paint straight onto the canvas, her eyes searching for a suitable blob of grass to smear it with.
“The Princess and the pea! You are such a thing!”
“I’m not a thing, I just don’t want to get in trouble! Why can’t you understand that? And you’re loud all the time, and those pants are torn, and your hair is a mess again! I’m not picking on you.”
It is good that we have never met before! I don’t think I could have born such a boring goody-goody for nine years!”” “For the rest of the day, Louisa and Lotti did not say a word to each other. Even after lights out there was silence, no whispering. Neither of the girls could sleep until midnight, when exhaustion finally pushed them into their dreams. Then, just as the sky was clearing over the cottages…
“Lotti…, wake up!”” Louisa climbed onto the top bunk next to her sister and shook her. “I had a dream! I must tell you, let’s make up, then you can sulk again later!”
For a moment Lotti was confused and didn’t know where she was, being woken from such a strange dream by her sister.
“I had a dream too…”
Really? You can tell me, but I have to tell you this first. The two of us were in a huge, abandoned castle, looking for our parents, but they were nowhere to be found. Lotti cut in:
“There was a big staircase in the middle of a huge marble hall that led up to the attic. On either side were torches burning”
“Yes… but how did you know that?” Louisa’s eyes widened. “And we started up the stairs, you were shouting ‘Dad…’”
“And you said ‘Mum…’”” “Louisa continued, almost in a trance.
“And when we got up there, we found a trapdoor…”
“…with a brass handle the size of my arm. I was so scared, but you told us to open it up”.
“I pushed the doorknob, and we found ourselves in a strange room, which I knew was yours because there was a picture of a mother on the wall, and it was the tidiest I’d ever seen.”
“”No!”” cried Lotti, “”We ended up in your room, with a picture of you and Dad hanging on the wall, and it was a mess, everything was scattered all around!”
“Then, in a moment, we found ourselves in the garden…”
“Mum and Dad were there…”
“And we sat on a wide swing that hung from the sky, and Mum and Dad pushed us…”
“And we laughed. And then you woke me up”.
“I woke up there too. Lotti, that can only mean one thing”.
Lotti already knew what her sister was going to say, and she was a little scared. Just like in the dream.
“I want to get to know Mum, you want to get to know Dad. We look alike. The camp is over in five days. Let’s switch places”.
“But how will we be able to get back?”
“That’s a question of detail!”