by Laura Wood
“Maybe you’re right,” he says finally, with practised nonchalance, though his voice is hoarse.
And that’s it. I want to punch him on the nose and I want to kiss him senseless. I’ve done both and, at the moment, I’m not sure which one would be more satisfying.
He puts a hand to my cheek. “I didn’t mean to break the rules,” he whispers. “But I couldn’t help it.”
And then, just like that, he’s gone.
CHAPTER FORTY
As I stand on the deck of the boat I watch the white cliffs of Dover come into view with mingled emotions. I’m not the same girl who left England, who turned her back on those same cliffs and experienced her first taste of freedom. My heart is battered, bruised, not quite as open as it was before. I managed to acquire all that experience I so badly wanted, I think, with a rueful grimace. It’s funny how much older I feel than just a couple of short months ago. How one summer can change a person so dramatically.
I wouldn’t take it back, though. Even the sharp pain in my heart that tells me I’m alive, more alive than I have ever been.
My uncle is somewhere below deck, fawning over Lady Bowling. I wonder what will happen now, if he will change again, become something else to please someone else. He’s inconstant, I realize, turning with the tide.
I clamber up on to the rail, and it’s easy, thanks to my trousers. I left my old clothes behind me at the villa, along with the girl who used to wear them. I’m stronger now. I know what I want and I know how to get it. I am going to squeeze every last drop of joy out of the life that I have. I’m not going to make myself less than I am.
These are the tangible outcomes of my experiment, outcomes that stretch beyond Ben and me. In my bag is a notebook that contains several lists – there are lists of birds I have seen, there are lists of kisses that Ben and I shared, and there’s the list of things I want to do when I get home.
“What’s that in your hand?” Hero asks, coming to stand beside me at the rail.
The flower had been sitting on top of my suitcase before we left. I hold it now, gently, between my fingers, while the wind tangles around me. Its delicate white petals, unfurled like a star, are velvety-soft to the touch. The scent of it is heady, intoxicating.
I don’t know where it came from, but I know who it came from.
“Gardenia jasminoides,” I reply.
“What does that mean?” Hero wrinkles her brow.
“It means love,” I say, and I let go, watching the gardenia dance across the water.
Epilogue: England
July, 1937
I know you of old.
– Much Ado about Nothing, Act I, Scene 1
“We have guests arriving,” my uncle says, coming into the room with a telegram in his hands. “Including some old friends.”
“Oh?” I say, lifting my eyes rather grudgingly from my textbook. It may be the summer break, but that’s no excuse for falling behind on my studies. Mother and Father used all the emotional blackmail at their disposal to get me to visit Leo and Hero in Suffolk for a couple of weeks, but as I told them, the examination period at Oxford is not something to be taken lightly.
At least it means I will escape their matchmaking efforts – I hear poor Cuthbert Astley is due a visit, and my parents still find the idea of him a compelling one. If I had hoped that my scholarship to study medicine would quell their urges to interfere, then that hope was rather swiftly revealed to be a naive one. After all, as the saying goes, a leopard can’t change its spots. (Though, of course, a leopard’s spots do change significantly as it matures into adulthood.) I might have changed that summer, but my parents hadn’t, and they’re still very much a work in progress.
Still, it is certainly easier to bear now that I have a life of my own – one not confined to the draughty hallways at Langton.
And last week I overheard Mother talking to the vicar.
“Of course, Beatrice is practically a doctor,” she said. “Top of her class.” The words, carefully casual as they were, betrayed a tremor of pride that left me stunned.
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” was the vicar’s sour rejoinder.
“Who are the guests?” Hero leaps to her feet, dancing excitedly towards her father. In moments like this she still seems so young, and despite her eighteen years I see my little cousin, the one who asked over and over for the tale of the toad.
Perhaps her youthfulness is down to the way Leo dotes on her. Thankfully, his association with Lady Frances Bowling lasted a scant few months, and after a – mercifully brief – flirtation with Moseley’s British Union of Fascists, Leo seems to have given in to a happy bachelorhood, devoting his attention to his daughter.
“An old army friend of mine, Peter – and his brother John,” Leo says.
Hero’s nose wrinkles. “I don’t know them,” she says.
“Peter did meet you as a baby,” Leo says. “But it wasn’t them I was referring to. They’re bringing a group of youngsters with them who have been out fighting in Spain.”
“Oh?” I lift my eyes. “It will be interesting to hear how things are going over there. I’m glad that there are people who have enough conviction to actually do something.”
“Yes. Terrible, all these fascists. Not the thing at all,” Leo agrees fervently, and I smile faintly. “Though I’m not sure about these young people getting tangled up in things that don’t concern them.”
“Oh! If I were a man, then that’s where I’d be,” I say with certainty.
Leo looks vaguely horrified by this statement.
“But who are they?” Hero asks, regaining his attention. “You said they were old friends.”
“Daresay you might not remember them,” Leo says, “but you met them years ago when we, ah, lived in Italy. Artist chaps.”
The book drops from my nerveless fingers and hits the floor with a thud. I bend to pick it up, hoping to conceal my confusion.
“Klaus?” Hero squeals delighted.
“That’s the fellow.” Leo beams. “And another.” He consults the telegraph.
“Signor Benedick, perhaps,” I say, my voice perfectly calm.
“Ben!” Leo exclaims. “That’s it. They’ll be here any minute as it happens. Seems the boy at the post office took his time about bringing this over.”
With comedic promptness, a horn sounds outside. “Ah!” Leo jumps to his feet. “Here already.” And he leads the way through the house towards the front door and the crunching gravel driveway, Hero and I following behind.
From the shadow of the doorway, I watch as the doors on the two cars open and several men spill out. Among them I spy Klaus, still dashingly handsome, though his face is more serious than I remember, and then – the last to emerge – there is Ben.
My heart is thumping so loudly that I can’t hear what they are saying. I study Ben closely. The golden hair, the clear blue eyes crinkling in laughter. He seems taller than in my memories and he’s definitely thinner. His face is tanned, his clothes – even by his standards – are exceedingly worn. There is something different about his face – it has sharpened. A man’s face, perhaps, not a boy’s. He’s saying something now, something that makes them all laugh, before he is cut off by Hero flinging herself down the steps and into Klaus’s arms.
I step into the sunshine. “I wonder why you’re still talking, Ben,” I say, proud that my voice contains not a single tremor of emotion. “It seems nobody is listening.”
His eyes snap up to meet mine and it’s as if the past four years fall away in an instant. “Hello, Bea,” he says softly, moving towards me. “Why so disdainful?” The look he gives me is a challenge.
“Why not?” I ask, lightly. “When there’s so much to be disdainful of.” I run my eyes lazily over his body, finally meeting his gaze.
I don’t know how long we look at each other, but a tingle of bone-deep recognition spreads through me. Slowly, Ben begins to smile, a glitter of appreciation in his eyes.
I feel an answ
ering smile on my lips.
Oh yes, I think. This is going to be fun.
The End
of the Beginning
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I have a lot of reasons to be thankful and a lot of people to thank for making the book that you are holding in your hands. It’s still staggering to me that something can go from a slightly vague, tingling idea in my brain to a beautiful, real, tangible book, and there’s just no way it would happen without a whole team of people.
My agent, Louise Lamont, should really get the credit for this one. It makes so much sense that after years of sending each other gifs and pictures from Much Ado to commemorate and celebrate different milestones, we would make this joyful book together. Thank you so much for everything you do, thank you for making my job so fun, and thank you for not making me put in more fascism. *Benedick dancing in the fountain image*
To my editor, Gen Herr, thank you as always for being a friend, an encouragement, and the person I trust the most. Thank you for taking the tangled, unfinished mess that was the first draft of this book and helping me to make something I love. I could not have done this one with anyone else; it’s your book too.
Thank you to so many others at Scholastic for their hard work and for just generally being so supportive and sweetly enthusiastic about my work that it kept me going. In particular, thanks to Harriet Dunlea, Kate Graham, Emma Jobling and Pete Matthews for all their hard work. Thank you to Sophie Cashell, Lauren Molyneux, Lauren Fortune and Sam Smith for cheering me on when I really needed it. Thank you to Jamie and Yehrin for joining forces again to make something so beautiful. I couldn’t ask for a better team.
Thank you so much to the incredible readers, bloggers and authors who have supported me over the last couple of years in ways that make me feel quite teary. I so appreciate you all. Special thanks to Amy McCaw, Chelle Toy, Jo Clarke, Liam (@notsotweets) and Claire (@thechesilbeach) for the unfailing Twitter support – where would I be without you?! To human sunbeams Alice Broadway, Melissa Cox, Lauren James, Katherine Woodfine, Maggie Harcourt, Laini Taylor, Ella Risbridger, Lucy Powrie and Lucy Strange, thank you, thank you, thank you for being so generous with me – I respect your opinions hugely and your words about my first journey into YA meant everything and made this book possible.
Thank you to my friends and family for their unfailing support. My mum and dad continue to be the model for proud, supportive parents and I would be lost without them. When this book comes out it will be only a couple of weeks before I gain a new sister, and I couldn’t be happier that my little brother found his person. I love you both! Special thanks have to go to Mary Addyman, who brings joy and laughter and cake into my life whenever I need it most. Biggest, best thanks of all to Paul. This book is special for lots of reasons, but partly because Much Ado was something we had in common from the beginning. This one is yours, because I really do love nothing in the world so well as you.
And finally, thank you very, very much to my (future) close personal friends, Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh. When I was sixteen I watched your adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing and it opened up a completely new world. You made Shakespeare come alive for me and in doing that you changed my life.
Laura Wood is the winner of the Montegrappa Scholastic Prize for New Children’s Writing. She has a PhD from the University of Warwick studying the figure of the reader in nineteenth century literature. She is also the author of the A Sky Painted Gold, Vote for Effie and the Poppy Pym series.
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Scholastic Children’s Books
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First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2019
This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2019
Text copyright © Laura Wood, 2019
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eISBN 978 1407 19478 3
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