by Julia Green
‘Shall we go somewhere else, then?’ Seb says. He leans forward and kisses me. ‘If you could choose to be anywhere, in the whole world, where would you choose?’
‘I don’t know. An island, somewhere hot?’
It starts as a game. We take turns, thinking of places.
‘The Outer Hebrides, in an unusually hot sunny summer, on a beach of white sand.’
‘Antarctica. The last wilderness.’
‘Under the sea. That’s supposed to be the last wilderness, isn’t it?’
‘Actually,’ I say, ‘where I’d really like to be is in the middle of a wood, away from any houses or people. Surrounded by really old trees all covered in silvery lichen. And it’s just starting to snow.’
Seb glances at the window, as if he thinks I mean it really is snowing.
I laugh. ‘I’m just imagining it,’ I say. ‘We’re in this wood, and the first flakes are spinning down from the leaden sky. Soon everything will be covered in a carpet of white, and a deep silence will descend, all except for the sound of snow sliding down branches, a sort of shushing sound.’
‘You’re bonkers!’ Seb leans across the table and kisses me. ‘Lyrical, but crazy.’
He tastes of coffee. And cinnamon.
‘The best writers are,’ I say. ‘Like Blake. Or Emily Dickinson.’
‘I didn’t know you wanted to be a writer,’ Seb says. ‘I thought you were a photographer.’
‘Why do I have to be just one thing?’ I say.
We’re both quiet, walking back across town to the place Seb’s parked the car, near the children’s play area. We go past the edge of the boating pond, where the ducks are sleeping with their heads tucked tight into their feathery backs. We pass the swings and the roundabout and the skate park. It’s eerie, with no one there. We take a short cut across the grass. It’s stiff with frost. Somewhere, a dog barks.
‘I wish we had Mattie with us,’ I say.
‘We could go and see her.’
‘What, now? It’ll be all locked up!’
‘We could go and look over the wall. See her in her pen. If she’s in a pen?’
‘They’ll have guard dogs!’
‘What, stray ones? German shepherd rescue dogs.’
‘Rottweilers, probably. Or Staffordshire bull terriers.’
‘Scary.’
‘I’d rather go in the daytime. We could take Mattie out for a walk.’
‘We could kidnap her. Steal her away and hide her somewhere.’
‘Dognap.’
‘What?’
‘Not kidnap: dognap.’
‘Oh. Dognap sounds like a kind of sleep.’
‘That’s catnap.’
‘A dognap would be noisier. More smelly. Lots of grunting and snoring and dreaming.’
‘Mattie used to dream. Her legs would kick out, and her ears twitch, and she’d make little whimpering noises.’
‘We’ll go after school one day, shall we? Or at the weekend? Unless you’re still working.’
‘We finish on Friday.’
‘Saturday, then?’
We wipe the thin film of ice from the windscreen. Seb draws my initials in the frost.
‘I thought I might have upset you, last time,’ I say.
‘No. Well, you did, but you were right.’
‘Really?’
‘Come here, you.’
He kisses me under the orange street light. When I close my eyes, I see orange stars.
‘You could at least have phoned,’ Dad says the minute I walk through the door. ‘You knew we’d be worried.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Where’ve you been all this time?’
‘School, work, then a cafe. Then I had to get back here, which is miles and takes ages, Dad. As you know. Anyway, where’s everyone else?’
‘Kat’s at a friend’s house, and Cassy’s in the shower.’
‘Which friend?’
‘Mara. Her and lots of her old school friends. Tea?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Did that boy give you a lift home?’
‘Yes. So?’
Dad doesn’t answer. He fills the kettle and then he makes me a sandwich, without me even asking. He drops the knife and fumbles about as if he’s nervous. He puts the plate and my tea next to me on the sofa. Finally he clears his throat.
‘Em, there’s something I want to tell you.’
‘Don’t bother,’ I say. ‘I already know.’
Dad stares at the telly, which isn’t even on.
‘You and Cassy are having a baby.’ I say it in a silly sing-song voice.
He looks hurt. I don’t care.
‘Did Kat tell you?’
‘Yes.’
‘She was supposed to wait.’
‘Well, she didn’t. What difference does it make?’
‘Are you – what – I mean . . .’
‘What?’
‘Cassy is very happy. WE are very happy,’ Dad says.
‘That’s all right, then.’
‘You’re not making this very easy,’ Dad says. ‘Don’t be like this, Em.’
‘Like what?’
‘Cross and unhelpful.’
‘What did you expect?’
‘I thought you might be pleased. Excited, even. Happy for me and Cassy.’
‘You thought wrong, then.’
It’s too late to take the words back. Later, when Cassy comes back from her shower, I hear their low voices, urgent and anxious, whispering to each other. I feel bad for hurting Dad. A bit bad, anyway.
I peer out of the oblong slit of window into the darkness. I think for a moment about Bob, stuck in his isolation room, in the hospital with its windows all lit up like a ferry sailing into the night. I imagine Mattie curled in a corner of her horrible pen in the dogs’ home, alone and afraid. I wait for Seb to send me a goodnight text. I wait and wait. Finally I send one to him, instead, and he answers straight away.
Thinking of you. Love you.
I stare at it for a long, long time.
13
Seb meets me at the top of the lane on Saturday afternoon. I climb in the car and lean over to kiss him.
‘Mmm. You smell nice,’ he says. ‘Your hair.’
‘Cassy’s drawn us a map of how to get there,’ I say. I spread it out on my lap.
‘You two are speaking again, then.’
‘Yes. It’s all calmed down a bit. Kat’s been staying over at Mara’s. I’ve been making an effort to be nice.’
The reception area at the dogs’ home is crowded with people. Seb can hardly believe his eyes. This is all new to him. ‘A queue? To take a mangy dog for a walk?’
‘Got some identity?’ the woman at the desk asks me. I show her my school student card, to prove I’m me, and over sixteen.
She prints me off a name tag, and puts it into a plastic cover.
‘Clip that on your coat,’ she says, ‘then join the queue.’
‘It’s like a top security prison!’ Seb says. ‘Ridiculous! They’re stray dogs, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Shh! We’ll lose our licence if we mess about.’
It’s our turn. A girl leads us through a door to the dog cages outside. There’s a terrible din of barking dogs and the smell is disgusting.
Mattie’s ears prick up when she sees me. She stands up, legs trembling. She looks even thinner than before.
‘Hey, Mattie!’ I call. ‘It’s me.’
‘You must keep her on the lead the whole time,’ the girl says. ‘And take a bag for any dog mess. You must clear it up and put it in the bins near the gate.’
Seb grins at me. ‘That’ll be your job.’
The girl clips the lead on to Mattie’s collar and hands it to me. ‘She’s very good, this one. Sweet-natured. She doesn’t pull.’
‘I know,’ I say.
People with dogs straining at the leash are heading off over the field next to the home, so Seb and me go the other way. On the other side of the road we fin
d a stile, and a footpath sign, so we head down there. Mattie doesn’t want to climb the stile, so we lift her over between us. Her heart beats fast and hot against my hand.
‘She’s scared, poor thing.’
‘She’s too thin. She’s pining for Bob.’
‘We should have brought her something to eat.’
Mattie’s the kind of dog that needs to run and run. It’s cruel to keep her on the end of a short lead. So, once we’re well away from the road we unclip her. She trots between us. Her confidence comes back after a while and she runs ahead. She keeps coming back, though, as if to check we’re still with her. We stroke her head and she nuzzles my hand with her nose.
The path goes along next to a stone wall, and then there’s another stile, and we’re at the edge of woodland. A sign says: National Trust. No fires, no overnight camping. Please take your litter home. The path gets muddier, and overgrown with brambles, but we keep going and after a bit it opens out and we’re in a proper old wood, with thick, twisted vines hanging down from the bare-boned trees, and ivy and all sorts. The ground is marshy and damp underfoot. Mattie runs and barks and then skitters around, chasing imaginary rabbits into the undergrowth, burrowing and digging and making the piles of old leaves flurry and fly up. She disappears for a while and I start to worry.
‘Let’s follow where she went,’ I say.
Under the bigger trees the ground is much drier.
‘Beech and oak and hazel, mostly,’ Seb says. ‘Mixed deciduous woodland.’
I pull a face. ‘Show-off.’
He grabs me and wrestles me to the ground. We stay there, lying together on the piles of damp leaves, and stare up at the patches of sky between the bare branches. In the west it’s turning a pinky orange as the sun goes down.
‘If something happened to all the human beings,’ Seb says, ‘in a very short time, England would be covered in trees again, like it used to be. One huge forest.’
‘You say that as if it would be good,’ I say.
‘I like thinking about it,’ Seb says. ‘That we’re not very important, really. If we mess up the world, it will just recover. Nature will, I mean. There just won’t be any people to see it.’
‘So global warming and climate change doesn’t matter?’
‘Of course it matters! It will mean horrible things for millions of people. But the planet will adapt and recover. The earth will go on living.’
I think about that.
Seb rolls over and puts his face against mine. ‘You’re cold,’ he says.
‘Better warm me up, then.’
He holds me tight. His hair tickles my face. He traces the line of my lips with his finger.
‘You realise we’ve found a wood for you,’ Seb says. ‘Now all we need is snow.’
‘The sky’s too clear. It’s not cold enough. It’s probably never going to snow again in England!’
‘Can you remember it properly snowing, ever? When you were little?’
‘Once, maybe. I used to love stories where it snowed.’
‘Narnia.’
‘Yes. And The Snow Queen. Kat read that to me. It was in this book . . . one our mother left behind.’
‘Your real mother.’
‘Yes. Francesca.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She ran away. I don’t really know what happened, exactly. Just what Kat told me, when we were little. Dad used to get too upset when we asked about her. So we stopped asking questions.’
‘How old were you, when she left?’
‘I was two. Kat was four.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘No idea.’
‘She doesn’t write, or phone, or anything?’
‘Nothing. Never has.’
Seb thinks about that for a while. ‘We should find her. Track her down.’
‘That’s what Rachel says. Kat’s dead against it. I’ve looked her name up before, but I didn’t find anyone that might be her.’
Mattie comes snuffling up. We’ve almost forgotten about her. She curls up close to me and Seb, and the three of us lie there for a little longer, just resting and being close, like it’s a comfort to all three of us.
I get my camera out to take some photographs. The bare bones of the tree branches against the sunset sky. Mattie curled up next to Seb: the texture of her wiry fur against Seb’s woollen coat, close-up. Seb stretching his arms out, lying on a bed of leaves.
Taking photographs helps me to see things properly, and to remember them. I know we’ll come back here. In the summer it will be beautiful: sheltered and private under a thick canopy of leaves. It can be our special place. If we’re still together, that is, Seb and me.
I like to think we will be.
I haven’t ever felt like this about anyone before.
It’s getting dark. As the light goes, the temperature drops too. My hands and toes are freezing. I put the camera back in my bag.
‘Come on, then,’ I say. I haul Seb up. ‘Home time, Mattie.’
We follow her to begin with, thinking she’ll lead us back to the path. She does, except after a while we work out it’s a different footpath and we seem to be going downhill, instead of up. We stop to get our bearings, but we can’t see anything much now it’s dark.
‘We’re lost,’ Seb says.
‘The footpath must go somewhere. Let’s just follow it up the hill.’
It twists and turns and we’re about to stop again and rethink when we stumble across a stretch of stone wall.
‘There was a wall like this before,’ Seb says. ‘Near that stile, where we started off. Let’s follow it along.’
I’m beginning to feel weary. We’ve walked miles. My feet are wet through even in boots. Seb holds my hand, and Mattie trots behind. Eventually we come to a cluster of stone buildings. Some sort of farm. A cobbled courtyard. A stone archway, and beyond it, a street light. But first there’s a high wire fence, and a field with dark shapes in it.
‘If we can climb through,’ Seb says, ‘we can cut across to the road.’
The air smells different. It takes me a while to work out what the smell is. Pine. The dark shapes in the field are trees. It’s a nursery of trees: rows of them. We find a bit of fence where we can pull the wire apart enough to climb through. Mattie won’t come: she starts to whine.
‘I’ll pick her up,’ Seb says, ‘and you hold the wires. There might be farm dogs or something. We don’t want her to bark.’
We walk along the grass strips between the rows of trees. The pine smell is even stronger. The wind catches the pine needles and makes a whispering sound.
‘It’s a Christmas tree farm,’ Seb says. ‘Big business.’
‘I know where we are, then,’ I say. ‘It’s on Cassy’s map. Rainbow Wood Farm. We’ve come round in a big circle.’
‘We could take a tree back with us.’
‘That would be stealing!’
‘Just a tiny one that no one would miss?’
‘Better to leave them alive and growing.’
‘But they’ll cut them all, eventually. It’s just a cash crop. Like cut flowers.’
‘Except, it takes a tree years to grow. And a tree has a soul.’
‘A what?’
‘A soul. I know, you think that’s rubbish. Irrational nonsense. But it’s what I feel. So shut up.’
Seb laughs. ‘I never said a word.’
We’ve reached the other side of the field, and the edge of the courtyard. ‘Imagine coming up here and decorating all the little trees, in the field, while they are growing,’ I say. ‘That would be cool.’
Seb gives me that look, like I’ve gone totally bananas now.
‘It would be a good photograph,’ I say. ‘Imagine!’
Mattie stops, nose quivering, ears forward as if she’s heard something. Seb grabs my arm. ‘Shall we run for it?’ he says. ‘Across the courtyard, out on to the road, before anyone sees us?’
I’m giggling too much to run fast. Seb half drags m
e, and Mattie starts to bark, but we’re through the stone arch and on to the tarmac road before the barn door swings wide open and someone shouts out. We really run then.
The girl at the dogs’ home is cross with us for being so late back with Mattie.
‘She’s all cold and wet, too!’ she says.
‘She loved her walk,’ I say back. ‘And it’s much nicer for her than being shut in a wire cage all afternoon.’
It’s like I’m betraying Mattie, handing her over again to be locked up.
‘We’ll take her out again,’ Seb says as we cross the car park. ‘It was fun. Even getting lost was fun.’
‘What will you be doing for Christmas Day?’ he asks me when we’re driving home. ‘You could come to our house, if you like. Mum said. Meet the cousins and my aunties.’
‘Dad wouldn’t allow me. We have to be a family all together. We’re going out for the day as a treat. Cassy refuses to cook Christmas dinner in a caravan.’
‘I’ve got you a present,’ Seb says. ‘You could come over in the evening? Just for a little while? I’ll collect you.’
I smile, thinking about him, all the way down the lane and across the field to the caravan. It’s changed everything for me, meeting Seb.
Dad’s car isn’t there, but the lights are on in the caravan.
Kat’s home.
She’s lolling on the sofa in front of the telly.
‘Where’s Dad and Cass?’
‘Out with friends. A party or something.’
‘Are you going to be staying in?’
‘Yes. You?’
‘Yes.’
We have the best evening. We make pasta and sauce and eat it in front of rubbish telly, and we talk about Dan, and I tell her a bit about Seb.
‘Have you slept with him?’ she asks.
I blush. ‘No,’ I say. ‘In any case, it’s none of your business.’
‘Just be careful, that’s all,’ Kat says. ‘You know about contraception and everything, don’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘And don’t be in a hurry. It’s better if you wait. Like, be sure he’s the right person, really special.’
‘I know all that,’ I say. ‘Why are you telling me?’ I look at Kat’s face. Her eyes are brimming with tears.
‘I wish I’d waited,’ Kat says. ‘I wish my first time had been really special. I wish I’d waited for Dan.’
