The Mixed-Up Summer of Lily McLean

by Lindsay Littleson

  “Yeah, good plan,” she replies, her wheels wobbling madly when she turns her head to speak to me. “Race you there.”

  I groan, and try and keep up with her, but she is scarily indifferent to other road users and I can’t follow her without risking my life. We are cycling uphill when Aisha suddenly veers out into the centre of the road on a blind bend. A car is coming in the other direction. There’s a screech of brakes and a crunching of tyres on gravel as the car swerves into the verge to avoid her. Aisha teeters and tumbles off the bike in a weird slow motion fall. Her bike lies on the gravel, its back wheel spinning.

  The driver leaps from his car and runs over, his face white.

  “Is she ok? Is she ok?” he asks repeatedly. “She was right in the middle of the bloomin’ road!”

  I have already abandoned my bike and now I run across the road to where Aisha is lying on her back on the grassy verge. As I approach, she stands up, rubs the grass and gravel off her knees and hops over to where her bike is lying.

  “Is it damaged?” she asks anxiously. The car driver looks as if he is about to combust.

  “You stupid girl!” he yells. “You could’ve been killed! Until you learn to ride that thing properly, keep off the bloomin’ roads!”

  Aisha looks at him calmly.

  “There’s no need to shout,” she says reproachfully, her big chocolate-brown eyes glistening with tears. “I’m sorry I gave you a fright. I had to swerve to avoid hitting a wee rabbit that had run out on the road.”

  I stare at her, amazed. I thought I could tell a lie fairly well when necessary, but Aisha is exceptionally good at it. But why put yourself in a situation where you have to lie to get yourself out of trouble? Why not just avoid the trouble in the first place?

  The driver is completely taken in and backs down immediately. He checks that she is unhurt and the bike undamaged and then goes on his way.

  Aisha grins at me as she wipes at her knee with a tissue. The blood is trickling from a graze on to her stripy socks.

  “Yikes, that was close. Think we’d better be a bit more careful, don’t you? No more racing, Lily!”

  I resent the suggestion that she fell off her bike because we were racing. The accident was all her own fault. She must know that. At this point I think she realises I’m annoyed with her.

  “Oh cheer up, Lil!” she calls, getting back on her bike and wobbling up the hill. “Last one to the café buys the ice cream!”

  I get on my bike and follow, my feet pedalling hard, enjoying the speed as I crest the hill and zip down the other side towards Fintry Bay café.

  ***

  We sit on the wide grass verge, licking ice lollies (which I had to buy). The café is busy, mainly due to the arrival of a crowd of people wearing fancy dress on a charity cycle ride around the island. They shake their bucket in our direction, but I just smile and shake my head. My holiday funds are very limited.

  “I can’t afford to give to charity, either,” says Aisha glumly. “My family are so poor, we are virtually scavenging in skips.”

  I can’t tell if she is joking or not, so don’t reply. Aisha keeps talking. She could give my gran a run for her money, but I don’t mind. It means I don’t have to try too hard and there are no awkward silences.

  “I’m thinking of setting up my own charity. I could build a website, describe myself as a poor, destitute orphan and accept donations by debit card or Paypal. I’ll call it ‘Action for Aisha’, or something.”

  “I’m not sure that’s exactly legal,” I say, a bit primly. Aisha ignores me.

  “We are so squashed in our flat, too,” she continues, self pityingly. “Now that Imran has to have his own bedroom for ‘studying’, I’ve got to share with my wee brother, Aziz, and he’s a total ned. You’ll never guess what he did to me last week!”

  “What did he do?” I ask curiously, wondering if her wee brother could possibly be as gruesome as my two.

  “He went into my underwear drawer, which is bad enough,” says Aisha, and I think of my own underwear drawer, with my lovely new bra tucked at the back. I would have a fit if Bronx and Hudson went in there. Come to think of it, they’re probably raking through the drawer right now, taking my bra out and using it as a hammock for their action figures. “But worse than that,” she continues. “Aziz took out my top-secret diary and broke the lock. Then he leafed through the whole book until he found a part he could actually read, which was amazing, as he’s thick as a brick. And then the wee swine showed it to my mum.”

  “Oh that’s bad,” I sympathised. “What a wee toad.”

  “Yes, he is, but that isn’t the worst part. The part he showed Mum was written when I was very angry with her. I wrote: ‘Mum’s a total cow because she won’t tell me when Dad’s coming back and I wish she was dead.’ I’m not proud of writing that, but everybody says things they don’t mean when they’re angry.”

  I shudder in sympathy. Her brother does sound like a fiend. But it seems that writing down stuff like that in a diary, or anywhere else, is a pretty dumb thing to do. If you don’t want your secrets broadcast, then the only safe place for them is in your own head. Not that people keep secrets any more. Everyone goes on the Jeremy Kyle show and tells the whole world their problems. Everyone except me, that is. I’m keeping my secret to myself. I don’t want the whole world creasing itself laughing at ‘The Girl Who Thinks She’s Being Haunted!’

  Aisha is in full flow now.

  “Having to share a room with Aziz is a total breach of my human rights. It’s cruel and unusual punishment. I should sue my mum!”

  “Hey, you’re lucky. I have to share with two wee brothers!” I interrupt, suddenly keen to get a word in edgeways. “And my big sister has turned into Godzilla overnight. One day she was perfectly normal and pleasant, the next, a monster.”

  A monster who gave you a fiver to spend when she has hardly any money of her own, I think guiltily.

  We lick our ice lollies and sympathise with each other’s bad luck. I tell her that my dad is dead, which usually trumps anyone else’s sob story, but Aisha has her own tale to tell.

  “My dad has vanished,” she says, tears in her big brown eyes. I don’t know if she’s telling the truth or if this is another fairy story, and I think of Rowan, who I can always trust to tell me the truth.

  “Dad went to Pakistan nearly three months ago. He said he was going away on business but I’m worried that he isn’t coming back,” says Aisha sadly. “And the awful thing is, my mum doesn’t seem that bothered. She won’t tell me what’s going on, or when, or even if Dad is coming home. I’m really scared that he’s decided he prefers living over there. He and Mum did argue a lot.”

  She puts her face in her hands, and I put my arm awkwardly round her shoulder and pat her on the back.

  “I’m sure he’ll turn up soon, Aisha,” I say, trying to sound confident. “He probably just needs some space or something, what with your flat being so crowded.”

  “Space away from me, probably,” sobs Aisha.

  I keep patting her shoulder, hoping that I am doing and saying the right things. I always want to leave the room when people get upset or angry, but I’m outside in the open air and there’s no hall cupboard here for me to go and hide in. We are clearly very different, Aisha and me.

  I deal with sadness by closing down and keeping quiet, not by sharing my worries with people, never mind people I hardly know.

  But there is something very likeable and approachable about Aisha. She is easy to talk to and I have told her a lot about myself today, much more than I usually would. It’s somehow easy to be honest with her. Maybe because I don’t really know her very well and probably won’t see her again after this week.

  Of course, I haven’t mentioned the ghost. There’s a big difference between telling a new friend some basic stuff about yourself and giving away secrets that make them think you’re a crazy person. Anyway, Aisha would probably just say that she’s being haunted too, and her ghost is far sc
arier than my ghost.

  “So, Lily. You look as if you’re about the same age as me. Are you starting high school in August too?” asks Aisha.

  I nod, my smile dissolving. “I’m going to Largs Academy. I’m not really looking forward to it,” I admit. “Our class went up on the induction days and I found the school a bit big and daunting. And some of the teachers seem quite strict.”

  “I didn’t make it to the induction days. I was off ill with the stupid chicken pox. Imagine getting chicken pox at my age. It was Aziz’s fault, cos he gave it to me. It was so embarrassing. I had hideous scabs everywhere, like a plague victim,” says Aisha, standing up and doing a zombie walk across the grass.

  “Where is the secondary school on Cumbrae?” I ask curiously.

  Aisha laughs. “There isn’t one, you dope. There aren’t nearly enough kids. I’ll have to get the ferry over every day to Largs Academy. We’ll be at the same school! Won’t that be excellent?”

  I don’t speak for a moment, trying to digest this new information. And then I smile widely.

  Aisha is a bit strange and a bit wild, but she is definitely not boring. Secondary school is suddenly a more exciting prospect.

  I hope Rowan and David make it over on Friday so they can meet her and that they’ll get on with each other. It’s always a bit tense trying to mix old friends and new ones.

  Chapter 11

  Potentially life-changing events:

  I decide on my future career.

  Aisha and I fall out.

  The caravan is hit by a tsunami. (Well, nearly.)

  The next few days whizz by, and I love every minute. Aisha has to go to school, of course, but during the day I am happy to hang around the campsite with Gran or explore the island on my own, a pair of borrowed binoculars slung round my neck and carrying a ridiculous-looking, but very useful, fishing net. I’m seriously considering a future career as a marine biologist. Farland Point has some amazing rock pools full of seaweed, barnacles, limpets and tiny crustaceans. I spend hours training my binoculars on groups of oystercatchers and curlews feeding on the beach. I sketch the birds in my red leather notebook and am pretty pleased with the results. Maybe I’ll write and illustrate books about nature when I grow up instead.

  This gives me plenty of time to write in my journal. I make lots of useful lists and also write a scary sci-fi story about shape-changing aliens, modelled on Bronx and Hudson of course, though my fictional aliens aren’t nearly as weird.

  There’s a little shelf of old paperbacks in the caravan and I sneak some to read, ones that I’m guessing Mrs McKenzie would say are ‘inappropriate’. The rude bits are quite interesting but there’s a lot of boring nonsense to wade through before you get to them, so I have to do a lot of skimming and scanning.

  At four o’clock every day I meet Aisha in the Ritz café and we sit at the Formica tables and eat ice cream or drink hot chocolate, depending on the weather, which is a bit mixed-up. She is always beautifully dressed in bright, designer-type clothes, and I figure that the whole ‘scavenging out of skips’ story is another of her inventions. She never brings any friends from school, and always looks delighted to see me. I wonder if perhaps Aisha is a bit lonely. Maybe all her storytelling and exaggeration gets on the other kids’ nerves.

  But I find her easy company, always full of chat. She tells me funny stories about the kids in her class or about the locals who walk past the café window and she always manages to make me laugh.

  “See, that guy there,” she whispers, covering her mouth with her hand, and pointing a bit too obviously at a gangly teenager who is shuffling past the window. “He’s madly in love with the girl who works in the kitchens at the hotel. She thinks he’s a total loser, and when he asked her out she said no. One night, he went and stood with a guitar outside the window of the hotel kitchen and sang her love songs. Imran says it was so bad, the customers all begged him to shut up, but he kept on and on. Anyway, this dog was trotting past and couldn’t stand the noise either, so it bit the guy on the bum. And while the boy was hopping about in agony, a seagull pooped right in his hair. He had to go to the hospital for a tetanus injection. That’s why he’s walking a bit strangely. And the girl from the kitchens still won’t go out with him, even after all that.”

  I burst out laughing, and then feel a bit mean. “Was that a true story, Aisha?” I ask doubtfully.

  “All my stories are true,” she insists, looking at me reproachfully with her big brown eyes, but I know by now what she’s like.

  Every day, after our snack in the café, we head off on a mini-adventure. On Monday afternoon we go clambering across some of the rocks on the seashore. It’s low tide, so I feel I’m not breaking any promises.

  “I dare you to jump from that rock to this one!” shouts Aisha, while I’m happily peering into a deep little pool, hoping I might see a starfish or an anemone.

  I accept the dare, which is a silly move because the rock I land on is treacherously slimy with seaweed.

  “Help!” I squeal as my feet slide from under me.

  One foot skids straight into a pool of brackish water. The other becomes wedged in a narrow crevice. I get a bit panicky for a moment, imagining that this might be how I die, trapped in the rocks as the tide brings the sea ever closer. But I tug hard, and my foot slides out, minus my shoe, which I have to retrieve with a long piece of driftwood. Aisha laughs as I squelch over to show her my bruised ankle.

  There seems to be an element of danger in whatever we do. But despite my wet feet and sore ankle, the climbing is good fun and it’s a beautiful sunny day. The sun glints on the blue water as dozens of small boats bob around in the bay.

  “Who needs the Mediterranean!” shouts Aisha, balanced precariously between two slippery rocks. “We’ve got Millport!”

  “Yup, it even has palm trees,” I agree. “It’s practically perfect.”

  As if to remind us that this is Scotland, not Spain, Tuesday is dreich and drizzly, so after hot chocolates in the Ritz, Aisha and I trawl the gift shops.

  “I’ve to get the boys some kind of weapon, preferably one of mass destruction,” I tell Aisha, so we head for the toy shop, hoping they will have something suitably lethal-looking.

  We find cheapish, powerful water guns, which will have to do, though I know they would have preferred pellet guns or air pistols. I also pick up a sweet little red-haired rag doll in a polka-dot dress, and decide to buy it for Summer, although it’s more expensive than I’d like.

  “She’ll love this,” I say, showing it to Aisha. “It actually looks a bit like her. Wee Summer’s got bright red hair and little beady eyes too.”

  “She sounds just darling,” mocks Aisha, and I nearly choke with laughter, and then feel a little pang, because I love my wee sister and miss seeing her beaming smile in the mornings.

  We amble along to the little craft shop at the Garrison. Aisha picks up a lemongrass candle and sticks it under my nose.

  “Smell that, it’s gorgeous. You could buy it for your mum.”

  “I’m a bit worried about it being a fire hazard. My mum wears a lot of floaty skirts and scarves. What if they catch fire when she’s lighting her candle?”

  “Lily, your mum is a grown woman. I’m sure she can cope with lighting a candle without you standing there with a fire extinguisher,” laughs Aisha. “You need to stop being so responsible all the time. You’re only eleven! Chill!”

  I smile and buy the candle.

  When we finish shopping, we spot the Waverley paddle steamer cruising by on its way to Rothesay. We run along the pier waving wildly at all the passengers. It’s an impressive sight with its towering red and black funnels and gleaming paintwork.

  “I’d like to steal the Waverley and sail away from here in it,” says Aisha wistfully. “I’d travel right round the world. I’d go to Pakistan and find my dad.”

  “The only snag with that plan,” I reply, “is that it doesn’t have sails. The Waverley’s steam powered.”


  “Oh, crush my dreams, why don’t you!” laughs Aisha, and she gives me a quick hug. I think we’re good for each other, Aisha and me.

  But the next day, it all goes a bit wrong.

  ***

  On Wednesday afternoon, while we are sitting in the café sharing a knickerbocker glory, Aisha brings up the subject of going out on Imran’s rowing boat. She starts to really push the idea hard.

  “Please come, Lily,” she moans. “Don’t be a spoilsport. It’s a lovely afternoon and the sea’s flat calm. It won’t be scary, I promise. You like bird watching, don’t you? And there are grey seals on the rocks.”

  When I refuse, she gets quite annoyed with me.

  “Why won’t you, Lily? Is it because you haven’t met my big brother yet? He’s fine, honestly. Nothing like Aziz. Come and see!”

  She grabs my hand and pulls me along the street. She doesn’t listen to my protests that it wouldn’t matter if her brother’s an actual halo-wearing saint, I still don’t want to go out in his boat. She pulls me through an open doorway and into a close. We head up the stairs to the first floor, where there is one highly-polished front door, with a brass letterbox. Aisha pushes open the door and yells.

  “Mum! I’ve brought my friend Lily home, so she can inspect us. Come and say hello!”

  A pleasant-looking lady, with eyes as dark as Aisha’s and greying hair swept into a bun, comes out of the kitchen to welcome me. She is followed by a small boy of about seven who glowers when he sees us.

  “Come in, Lily. Welcome!” smiles Aisha’s mum and she guides me into the living room. It’s a big, square room with high ceilings and one enormous bay window, with stunning views of the sea. There are squashy leather couches, a polished wood floor and thick woolly rugs. There’s a huge flat-screen television and even a piano. This isn’t the home of somebody poor, I think, a little resentfully. It’s nothing like my house.

  Aziz pulls babyishly at his mum’s skirt.