What I Did In My Christmas Holidays - By Sally Sparrow. Written by Steven Moffat. Illustrated by Martin Geraghty.
I looked closer, trying to work out if it was a trick, and noticed something else. More words, written just under those ones, but still covered by the wallpaper. Well, I thought, I'd already ruined it so I had nothing to lose. As carefully as I could, I tore off another strip. Beneath the words was just a date. 24/12/85.
Twenty years ago, someone in this room, asked for my help. Eight years before I was even born!
***
'Christmas Eve, 1985? Sorry love, I don't really remember.' My Aunt was frowning at me across the dinner table, trying to think.
'Can you really try, please? It's ever so important. Maybe you had guests, or friends staying or something? Maybe in my room.'
'Well we always had Christmas parties, when your uncle was still alive.'
'He is still alive, he's living in Stoke with Neville.'
'You could check in the shed.'
'Why would he be in the shed, Auntie, he's very happy with -'
'For the photographs.' She was looking at me, all severe now. 'If we had a party we always had photographs. I always keep photographs, I'll have a look around.'
'Thanks, Auntie!'
'What does it matter though? Why so interested?'
I nearly told her, but I knew she'd laugh. Because really, if you think about it, there was only one explanation. Coincidence. There must have been another Sally in the family I'd never heard about, and whoever had written that on the wall twenty years ago, they hadn't meant me, they'd meant her. They'd meant that mysterious other Sally from twenty years ago. I wondered what she
was like. I wondered where she was now, and if her hair was frizzy. And I wondered most of all why she'd been kept a dark secret all these many years. Perhaps she'd been horribly murdered for Deadly Reasons!
As I was about to go to bed, I looked hard at my Aunt - the way I do when I'm warning adults not to lie to me - and asked, 'There was another Sally Sparrow, wasn't there, Auntie? I'm not the first, am I?'
My Aunt looked at me really oddly for a moment. I half expected her to stagger back against the mantelpiece, all pale and clutching at her bosom, and ask in quivery tones how I had uncovered the family secret and have terrible rending sobs. But no, she just laughed and said
'No, of course not! One Sally Sparrow is quite enough. Now off to bed with you!'
I lay in my bed but I couldn't sleep! There had to be another Sally, there just had to be. Otherwise someone from twenty years ago was trying to talk to me from under the wallpaper and that was just stupid!
When my Aunt came in to kiss me goodnight (I always pretend to be asleep but I never am) I heard her put something on my bedside table. As soon as I heard her bedroom door close, I jumped and switched the light on! Maybe this was it! Maybe this was her dark confession - the truth about the other Sally Sparrow, and her Dreadful Fate. Sitting on my bedside table was a box. I gasped horrendously! I wondered how big a box would have to be to contain human remains! I narrowed my eyes shrewdly (and also bravely) and looked at the label on the lid (though I did think labelling murdered human remains would be a bit of an obvious mistake).
The label said 'Photographs 1985'.
The Christmas party ones were right at the bottom, and took me ages to find. They were just the usual kind, lots of people grinning and drinking, and wearing paper hats. My fat Aunt was there, still with Uncle Hugh, and my Mum and Dad too looking all shiny and thin. And then I saw it! My eyebrows raised in perplexity again, slightly higher this time. Because standing right in the middle of one of the photographs was a man with a leather jacket and enormous ears. He was in the middle of a line of grown-ups laughing and dancing, but he was looking right at the camera and holding up a piece of paper like a sign. And on the sign it said 'Help me, Sally Sparrow!'
