2nd part of Chapter 1 (read previous blog for first part)

'My panties fell down.  Dropped straight to my ankles and tripped me over.' Vanilla tensed. 'The anchovies surged nearer and nearer until they were slithering up my legs with those horrible big mouths snapping.'

'Nasty,' Fran sounded concerned.

Vanilla was on a roll. 'I'm cracking up,' she plunger her fingers into her temples. 'Can't you see what these dreams are doing to me?'

'I can that,' came a distinctly punctuated reply followed by, 'Now just look at this.' 

Vanilla stared in disbelief.  Fran was pulling at a thread on her gown.  Surely her companion should be giving her sympathy, barrows of it, like she would have done years ago, not making adjustments to disgusting items of clothing that were only fit for the rubbish bin.

'They're killing me!' Vanilla shouted.

But Fran would have none of it.  She broke the thread and sighed, 'Killing you?  Get away.  Dreams can't kill you.' Her voice dropped reassuringly, 'Anyway, Nilla, I'll be gone long afore you.  You mark my words.'

Her wizened exterior called Vanilla's bluff and an aggrieved silence followed.  It was interrupted by, 'What's this 'ere?' as Fran noticed the bottle on the bedside table.

Vanilla glared at it with reprehension. 'Doctors.  Doctors,' she despaired, seizing the opportunity for melodramatics. 'Are they the same the world over?  You put all your faith in them, believe everything they tell you and what happens?'  She made to pick up the bottle, but with the reflex action of a youngster, Fran got there first and scrutinized the label.

'Typical,' she said, taking a large breath and launching into a serious speech. 'You don't want no sleeping pills.  That's no answer.' Her face was as stern as her voice was deafening and she looked like a squat version of Bette Davis in a Fifties' horror movie.

At last, thought Vanilla, now we're getting somewhere. 'So, darling.  What is the answer?'

Fran's voice fell unexpectedly and she said, 'Them dreams is telling you something, plain and simple, and...'  But she went no further.  Her eyes dimmed and a great sadness flowed from her storybook of wrinkles.  As if in a hurry to obscure the pages, she made her way to the window and vanished between the floor length, tangerine velvet curtains, arousing more than a thimble of curiosity in Vanilla, who plumped her pillow and demanded: 'It's something from my past, isn't it?  And you know what it is.'

There was a silence.  A nothing.  A hidden Fran and an aching void.  There was no embarrassed cough, or quick change of conversation.  It was as if the air had died and from it an answer sprouted.  It seemed so obvious that Vanilla couldn't begin to think how she'd missed it.  Her heart beat so thunderously, she thought the whole neighbourhood would hear it.  Without further hesitation, she stated boldly: 'I was attacked by a mob of people dressed as anchovies when I was young, wasn't I?  I suppose they broke into the house when I was asleep and... and... That year you up and left.  That fateful year than on one ever mentions. That was when it happened, wasn't it?  I always knew Daddy blamed you for something.  I suppose he came home and found you trussed up in the cupboard.  Well, you'd have been no match for a gang of anchovies.  Did he fly into a rage?  What an ogre he was.  He could terrify a mountain.  I'm not surprised you left.  But tell me, Franny darling, was I badly beaten?  Did I nearly die from the dreaded attack?  Is that why I don't remember a thing?'

'Where have you got such an outrageous idea?' a voice boomed, clandestine in tangerine.

'It was a wild guess,' Vanilla lied; too ashamed to admit she thought it to be true. 'What else am I supposed to think?  I'm verging on insanity and I need to know why.'

Broken by frustration and embarrassment, she pretended to cry.  But still Fran stayed behind the curtains and Vanilla wondered if the insanity bit had hit a nerve.

She remembered her grandfather had done several strange things in the month before he died, like flushing his false teeth down the lavatory.  Could that be judged as insanity?  Perhaps he was a lunatic and Fran knew it.  Vanilla decided to exaggerate to provoke an admission, 'Grandpops had a mental breakdown,' she blurted. 'Soon after you left, the poor old boy ended up in St Anne's.  Ranted and raved day after day.  They had to put him in a strait jacket.' She notched up a gear into blackmail mode, 'It's time for the truth, otherwise I will assume madness runs in the family and end it all.'

A string of muffled sentences was followed by an indignant, 'You wicked girl.  You're making it up and don't you dare tell me you're not.'

Fran's uncanny way of detecting lies came to the fore - but things were different now - Vanilla was no longer a silly child who owned up when the pressure was on.  She was an adult on an even footing with her accuser.  Deceit and self-pity turned to anger and she was about to get out of bed and physically drag Fran out of her hiding place and fabricate proof of Grandpop's grim demise when a sorrowful voice wafted from the window.

'I know for certain you're not going mad.'

Vanilla's heart skipped a beat and seconds later Fran ploughed through the curtains with a tint of fuchsia marking her cheeks.

'It's time you saw Mr Elpreto,' she announced. 'He'll give you the answers.'

Confused, but relieved that details of Grandpop's death were no longer under scrutiny, Vanilla barked, 'Answers? Elpreto?'  She sat alert at the sound of such an interesting name and gathered the duvet about her chin.  Previous conversations forgotten, she imagined she was a child.  A little girl sitting agog, listening to that very special story that her nanny kept in her head.  It was about the Snozzle and she was waiting to find out if the Snozzle was a wicked wizard or a good goblin because he could be either, depending on the story.  Her eyes grew big, her voice fell away to a whisper and she said, 'Does he wear a cloak?'

Fran laughed, then folding plump arms over a saggy bosom, she said, 'Cloak?  Funny word that.  Cloak.  I've never seen him wearing one as such, but he is definitely cloaked in mystery.  He analyses dreams and has special ways of unlocking the sub... conscience, subconscienceness.'

'Subconscious,' helped Vanilla.

'That's what I said.  The subconscienceness.  I've known him a great many years and have recently taken the liberty of speaking with him on the telephone.  He's available for constult... constultitation at this very moment, but his schedule is tight.  He flies to Hels... slinki in three weeks.'

The errors passed.  Fran's mispronunciations could be annoying, but were best ignored.  Anyway, Vanilla was far too busy imagining herself reclining on a couch with Elpreto at her side to bother with language hiccups.  At last, she thought, the anchovy dreams will be unravelled.

But Fran's next suggestion came as a big shock, and if it wasn't for the fact that Vanilla was already in bed, she would most certainly have fainted.