by Liz Kessler
I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to get to know him! “It’s OK,” I said. “I’m always having to apologize for my parents, too.”
As if on cue, Mom appeared in front of us with a couple of battered-looking novels in her arms. “Ooh,” she said, glancing over at a counter she hadn’t noticed. “I’ll just check out the Climates and Ecology section, and then we’d better get going. Your dad’ll be wondering where we are.”
Robyn and I dragged ourselves out of the beanbags and joined Mom at the register.
Robyn’s dad put the books in a paper bag. “So, you’re here for the week?” he asked without looking up, as though he knew he should be polite but couldn’t be bothered to do it properly.
“Yes.” Mom beamed in her usual oblivious way. “We’re staying just down the road from here. Forest Reach,” she said. “It’s such a pretty little cottage. Do you know it?”
Robyn’s dad froze. He opened his mouth to reply but stopped. The register stood open, like his mouth.
For a moment, Robyn looked shocked, too. Then she hurried to join him behind the counter. She took Mom’s change out of his hand and passed it to her, closed the register, and slipped her hand into her dad’s.
He looked down at Robyn, staring at her as though he was trying to see something, as though he was lost and she was his only way out.
“Philippa and her parents are on vacation,” she said, trying to bring him back into the moment, remind him where he was. “They were thinking of going out walking this week, weren’t you?” she said, glancing at me, her face half apologetic, half pleading.
“We thought we’d go to the stone circle, and maybe go swimming one day,” I replied, hoping I wasn’t going to say the wrong thing. What was the matter with him?
Her dad looked at me for a moment. And then, as quickly as it had come, the moment snapped away. “Of course, of course. Lovely,” he said. “Tidehill Rocks?”
“That’s right,” Mom said. “Do you know them?”
Robyn’s dad coughed and shook himself. “Good choice,” he said. “And there are some nice forest walks, too. Especially this time of year.” I noticed him grip Robyn’s hand as he spoke.
“Robyn mentioned sculpture trails,” I said.
“Ooh, that sounds nice,” Mom chirped. “Hey, that’s a thought. Robyn, would you like to come with us?” She glanced at Robyn’s dad. “I mean, if she — if you don’t mind.”
“Mom, I’m sure Robyn doesn’t want to —”
“Can I?” Robyn asked, looking up at her dad. “I mean, it’s OK if you need me. I’m happy to stay here if you want me to help.”
He shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said gently.
He looked across at me and Mom as if he’d just remembered we were there. “Robyn told me she met you yesterday,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say hello properly. I’m Martin Fairweather.” He held out a hand to Mom.
Mom doesn’t really do handshaking. Too formal for her, but she reached across and gave his hand a floppy wobble, anyway. “Jenny Fisher,” she said with a warm smile.
It seemed we’d all decided to pretend to go along with the idea that he hadn’t had the chance to say hello yesterday, rather than acknowledge the fact that we all saw him scream his head off at Robyn, flatly refuse to set foot in the shop, and then drag her home.
Robyn’s dad turned to me, then back to Mom. “You promise you’ll look after her?”
“Of course we will,” Mom said. She grabbed a pen from the counter and tore the edge off her paper bag. Scribbling a number down, she shoved it across to him. “Look, here’s my cell. If you need anything or want to check anything, just call.”
“Dad, I’ll be fine,” Robyn said.
“It’d be nice to have a guide who knows her way around the forest,” Mom said, smiling at Robyn.
Wouldn’t it just? I thought, shivering as I remembered my last experience there and wondered for a second if I was really ready to face it again.
Mr. Fairweather gave Robyn’s hand a squeeze. “Go on, then. Be careful,” he said. “Don’t stray from the paths.” He took Robyn’s face in his hands, looking into her eyes. “You hear me?” he said somberly. “You know what I mean.”
Robyn nodded. “I won’t, Dad. I promise.”
Their eyes locked in a secret deal. What was that about?
“Right. OK, then,” Mr. Fairweather said. “And make sure you do whatever Mr. and Mrs. Fisher say.”
“I will!” Robyn called. Then she ran to the back of the shop. “I’ll just get my things,” she said. “Meet you outside your house in ten minutes?”
“Great,” I said.
Mom and I headed back to the grocery store to buy an extra sandwich for Robyn, then walked home arm in arm, singing “Here Comes the Sun.” Mom said it might help guarantee a good afternoon. As far as I was concerned, the fact that Robyn was coming with us had already done that.
“It was nice that your dad let you come out with us,” I said as we walked through the woods, kicking up cornflakey bundles of leaves with every step.
Mom and Dad were up ahead, studying a guide to the forest trails that Mom had picked up at the store. Turned out it was easy to find your way if you just looked out for the colored way-markers. We were doing the red path; it was about four miles long, with twenty sculptures along the way. I had no intention of stepping a single inch off the path!
“He’s not normally like he was yesterday, you know,” Robyn said.
I kicked a huge pile of leaves; they crinkled and crackled as I tossed them in the air, trying to think of a response.
“He’s just a bit overprotective,” she added before I’d managed to think of a reply.
Overprotective seemed a very generous way to describe the ogre who’d stood shouting on the doorstep of the pottery shop yesterday. I was trying to think of a polite way to say that when Robyn changed the subject. She had a way of doing that. Like she’d say something real and meaningful, then shut the door immediately, and I didn’t know how to get in again.
“Look.” She pointed down the hill. “Sheep!” I followed where she was pointing. Four wooden sheep sculptures stood, fat and chunky, bent over as if grazing on the forest floor.
“They’re great!”
“And look up there.” Robyn pointed above us. An enormous beehive, almost the same size as me, sat on a branch in one of the trees.
As we walked, Robyn pointed out the other sculptures. Mom spotted a few, too, jumping up excitedly and squealing at the top of her voice as though she’d just discovered Antarctica. They fitted into the forest so neatly you could look straight past most of them without realizing. And yet once you’d noticed a sculpture, you wondered how you could have missed it in the first place.
They were so random. A wild boar standing on a fence, a kite tangled in a tree, three giant dragonflies sitting on a chair. But there was something about every sculpture that felt utterly natural, too; it was as though each one was as much a part of the forest as the trees and the birds.
That was when I realized. The house I’d seen that morning — it must have been one of the sculptures!
“Where’s the one of the house?” I asked.
Robyn looked at me blankly.
“The — the house. It’s like a fairy-tale house, out of Hansel and Gretel or something.” We’d caught up with Mom and Dad, and I grabbed the guide from Mom. “Hang on — I’ll check,” I said, scanning the list of sculptures for one that sounded like it could be the house.
Robyn looked over my shoulder. “I can’t think of one like that,” she said.
There was nothing in the guide that fitted. “Are they all listed here?”
“I think so. I’m not sure. What was it like?”
“Weird. Spooky! The kind of house where a magical, creepy character out of some horror film might live. They’d lure you in with sweets and promises, and once inside, you’d be trapped forever.”
Robyn laughed. “You sure you didn�
�t dream it?” she asked.
Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. I wasn’t sure of anything. I couldn’t even really remember why I’d found the house so scary. It probably had more to do with the fact that I’d been lost and alone in the forest than anything else.
I passed the leaflet back to Mom, and we continued walking. “You know when you were little and you drew pictures of a house? It’s like that. Cute and square and kind of perfect. But it’s got a path,” I said with a shiver. “A really creepy path with things on it.”
Robyn stopped walking. “Oh! Nets and webs and cocoons?”
I shivered. So it was real. It did exist. I hadn’t imagined it! “That’s the one,” I said.
“That’s not a sculpture!” she exclaimed.
“It’s not? What is it, then?”
“That’s Annie’s house!”
“Annie lives in that strange house in the middle of the forest?” I said as we made our way along the path. “That’s a little weird, isn’t it?”
Robyn lifted a shoulder in a semi-shrug. “I don’t know. She’s always lived there, so it seems normal to me. She says she likes seeing lots of people in the mornings at the shop, but she always closes up by lunchtime and spends the rest of her time at home. She likes to be able to escape.”
“But all that stuff outside her house — it’s kind of spooky.”
“She says it’s just nature, and everything in nature has a role in creating the beautiful world we live in.”
“Sounds like the kind of thing my mom might come up with,” I said, although for a split second, I wondered if it was more the kind of thing Daisy might say. Fairy godmothers always come from nature, and they’re here to do good — so perhaps the spiderwebs and the coffinlike cocoons weren’t as menacing as they looked. They might all be fairy godmothers in disguise!
Yeah, right. Imagination on overdrive again!
Just then, Mom turned up between us. “Girls, look — let’s eat!” she said, linking an arm with each of us and skipping toward a café that was just ahead.
She and Dad went inside to get some coffee, leaving Robyn and me outside on our own. We sat down at one of the wooden tables.
I passed a bag of salt-and-vinegar chips to Robyn, and she opened them and munched slowly. There were so many things I wanted to ask her about. The more I talked to her, the more full of surprises she seemed to be.
“Go on, ask me,” she said without looking up. She opened her sandwich and spread a line of chips inside. “I know you want to.”
“You’re right,” I said, secretly pleased that she’d done the mind-reading thing. “I just don’t know where to begin.”
Robyn looked up. Her eyes were heavy and dark. “Shall I start with my dad?”
I nodded and looked down at my lunch. I wanted to do the thing she’d just done with her chips, but I didn’t want her to think I was copying, so I just took a bite out of my sandwich and tried to chew quietly.
“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, I hardly know you.”
“So why are you?” I asked.
She thought for a moment. “You’re different from the other girls I know. I just feel like I can talk to you, like I can trust you.”
“You can,” I said, realizing that perhaps being different from everyone else can be a good thing sometimes.
She paused, then seemed to make up her mind.
“OK. The reason my dad got all weird earlier was because of where you’re staying,” she said. I kept chewing and waited for her to continue.
“We used to live there,” she said, so quietly it was almost a whisper; it could almost have been the wind whistling softly past us. “But then we couldn’t bear to stay there any longer, surrounded by memories. So Dad sold it, and we moved into the apartment.” She paused a beat before adding, “After my mom died.”
“Oh, Robyn,” I said. “I didn’t know. I’m — gosh, how awful.” I stammered. I didn’t have a clue what to say.
Robyn waved a hand and tried to smile. “It’s OK,” she said. “It was nearly a year ago. A year ago on Saturday, in fact.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said, feeling stupid and inadequate.
“My dad took it really badly. I mean, I did too. At first it was just so awful. I was a wreck — but then something changed. I don’t know why, really. It was practically overnight. I guess I just kind of switched off.” She glanced up at me. “I feel guilty about it sometimes. I think I should be more upset, more like I was at the beginning. I just can’t cry — I haven’t cried since just after it happened. But it feels like the tears are still there; it’s like they’re kind of stuck inside me. Does that make sense?”
I nodded. It did make sense. It explained what I’d seen in her eyes. A line of tears just behind her eyelids, like an army that wouldn’t advance but wouldn’t let you get past, either.
Robyn shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you what my dad used to be like,” she said with a rueful laugh. “He was always smiling, like my mom. Just being around them made everything feel warm and safe. I never knew anything bad could happen. D’you know what I mean?”
“Yeah,” I replied, glancing over at my parents. Mom had a piece of cake on her plate, and as I looked over, Dad pointed at something on the ceiling. The second Mom looked up, he stole a bite of her cake. Mom squealed and tickled him in reply, the pair of them giggling like kids. “I know exactly what you mean,” I said.
Until this year, when Charlotte had moved away and Daisy had done her assignment and left, I’d never really known anything bad could happen, either. Anything that involved losing someone.
“Dad’s just never been the same. It feels like he’s not quite there most of the time. He hardly notices the world around him, and he doesn’t care about things like he used to. He wanders around the place like a ghost, he dresses like a bum, he doesn’t wash his hair, and he hardly makes an effort with the customers. It’s like he’s given up on everything.”
“Except you,” I said.
“Well, yes, I guess. But everything else — it’s just a mess. The shop’s in chaos. I’ve even started trying to help with the accounts now. He doesn’t notice it all building up around him, and it worries me. It’s getting out of control.”
“Can you talk to him about it?”
Robyn shook her head. “He won’t. He’s so stubborn. He doesn’t go out, doesn’t see anyone socially. I’m the only person he talks to at all, and even then — well, there are certain things we never talk about.”
“Your mom?”
She nodded. “It’s like he just can’t. And neither can I. We both spend all our time pretending it’s not there, acting as though there’s nothing wrong. And yet I know it’s the only thing either of us ever really thinks about.”
Robyn took a bite of her sandwich. “We both pretend life is OK; we act as though we’re coping, but I think both of us are surrounded by a black hole so big we can’t see beyond it. Sometimes I try. I ask him about Mom, or mention her name, or just want to look at photos or something. But he stops me. It’s as if he doesn’t dare even let me try to get across the blackness. I think he’s scared I’d fall into it and never get out.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“But lately, I’ve started to feel different again. I think it’s because it’s coming up to a year now. I’ve started having bad dreams again. Not as bad as before. Not yet, but I know they’re coming — and Dad does, too. They’ve been getting worse each night. That’s why he’s even more protective than usual at the moment.”
Listening to her made me feel so sad, and I wished I could say something to make her feel better. I searched every corner of my brain for something. Anything.
“I wish I could help,” I said feebly.
Robyn twisted her mouth into an attempt at a smile. “Thanks,” she said. “But you can’t. No one can. My mom used to tell me a story about that. ‘The Boy and the Butterfly,’ it was called
.”
“Tell me,” I said, putting down my chips and folding my arms.
“You want to hear the story?”
I nodded.
Robyn’s eyes went all dreamy and far away. Then she smiled. “OK. So, a young boy was running through a garden when he saw a tiny chrysalis on the path. He stopped to look at it and ended up watching it and waiting for hours.”
“What was he waiting for?” I asked.
“He wanted to see it turn into a butterfly. Nothing happened, so he took it home to keep an eye on it. After a few days, the chrysalis quivered! He saw a small opening appear.”
“In the chrysalis?”
“It was the size of a dot! But it got bigger. And then he saw something. The butterfly — trying to get out. It was pushing frantically against the surface, as though it was desperate to break free.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. It couldn’t get out. After a bit, the butterfly stopped even trying. It seemed to have given up.” Robyn’s eyes widened as she went on. “So the boy had an idea how he could help. He got some scissors and cut the chrysalis open. And then he waited for the butterfly to spread its wings and fly away. But it didn’t. It didn’t go anywhere. It couldn’t fly at all. The next day at school, he told his teacher what had happened, hoping she could help. She told him that he’d done more harm than good.”
“Why?”
“Because the butterfly needed the struggle in order to build up the strength to fill its wings with power. That’s how it works. Without that struggle, the butterfly would never fly.”
Robyn fell silent. I wanted to respond, show her I understood, but before I had the chance to say anything, Mom and Dad were back at the table with a tray full of desserts.
“Cheesecake, butterscotch pudding, key lime pie, and a chocolate brownie!” Dad announced with a wide grin. “Who’s having what? Or shall I just cut each one into four?”
“Minus your share of the cheesecake,” Mom said, pinching his cheek. “Seeing as you already sneaked it in the line.”
“I don’t care what I have,” I said, wishing they’d stayed away longer. I wanted to keep talking to Robyn on our own. I wanted to talk about the boy and the butterfly. I wanted her to know that even though I understood what it meant, if there was a way I could take some of her sadness away without clipping her wings, I’d want to try.
