by Julia Green
‘Oh, Kat!’ I hug her.
‘He phoned today. I’m going up there on Boxing Day,’ she says.
I make a sad face. ‘You’ve hardly been here and you’re off again!’
‘That’s life!’ She grins. ‘You’ll survive! Anyway, you’ve got Seb, now.’
‘What can I give him for Christmas? He just told me he’s got me a present.’
‘What is it?’
‘He didn’t tell me that, stupid! It’s a secret.’
‘You should give him something special, not something you just go and buy. Make him something. I don’t know, a cake? Sew him something?’
‘I can’t sew!’
‘A photograph, then. Give him one of your lovely photos. A black and white one, in a frame.’
We look at all the photos in my scrapbook, and then start going through all the hundreds of digital ones on the computer.
Kat gets bored after a while. ‘You choose,’ she says. ‘You don’t need me to help. It’s a good idea, though, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. You are brilliant. My best, most favourite sister in the world.’
‘Your only sister,’ she starts to say, only she stops, suddenly, and looks at me. ‘Oh my God.’ Her hand goes to her mouth. ‘You know what I’m thinking?’
‘Yes.’
In six months’ time. A new sister.
‘It might be a boy, of course,’ she says.
‘Would that be better or worse?’
‘Worse. Can’t you imagine? Dad, with a boy? The only son and heir. All that.’
‘He wouldn’t be like that.’
‘No?’
‘Cassy wouldn’t let him,’ I say.
‘Anyway, I won’t be around to see. I’m going to make sure of that.’
14
I’m waiting for him in the lay-by, at four in the afternoon, the earliest we can each get away from our families.
‘Hop in!’ Seb says.
He puts his arm round me. I breathe in the warm smell of his hair, his skin.
‘Happy Chr—’ I’m about to say, but Seb puts his finger on my lips. ‘Wait,’ he says. ‘Save it for when we get there.’
‘Where?’
‘Wait and see.’
I sit with his present on my lap, all beautifully wrapped up in layers of blue coloured tissue with little gold stars between each layer, and thin gold silk ribbon tied round in a bow.
He doesn’t drive us to his house, like I expected. He goes left, towards town, and then up the hill towards the dogs’ home, and for a second my heart feels heavy, because I can’t bear to see Mattie’s sad face today. But he drives past the entrance, and parks a little bit down the road, not far from Rainbow Wood Farm.
‘Will you be warm enough?’ Seb asks. ‘I brought an extra scarf in case.’ He rummages around on the back seat and lugs out a bag full of stuff. ‘Stop looking. It’s got to be a surprise.’
The air hits us: frost-cold. It’s madness to set out on walk at this time of day, in the middle of winter. We climb over the stile and go down the same footpath we took before.
Seb stops in front of me. His breath makes smoke clouds in the frosty air. ‘Now close your eyes,’ he orders me. ‘Keep them tight shut. Promise?’ He takes my hand and leads me off the path. I’ve already guessed where we’re going, but I don’t say.
My feet trip and stumble on unseen bits of log and twigs and uneven ground. I start to laugh.
‘Don’t open your eyes yet!’ He ties the spare scarf round my face, so I can’t cheat. ‘Now stand still. Wait there.’
His footsteps crunch over dead leaves, gradually getting further away. It’s odd, standing alone and blindfolded like that. Little by little, I hear other sounds: my own breathing, and a bird scratching about; a rook or crow caws from high in some tree. Closer, a smaller bird makes a chit-chit-chit sound.
‘Hear that? It’s a wren.’
Seb’s voice startles me. I haven’t heard him creeping back.
‘Now walk forward again, about twenty steps, straight ahead, then stop.’
I count the twenty steps and wait.
He unwinds the scarf. ‘Now look!’
Just in front of me in the centre of the clearing in the trees stands a tiny real Christmas tree in a pot. He’s decorated it with angel-hair and tiny glass baubles, all different colours, and instead of a star at the top there is a heart, stitched out of white felt with a heart-shaped mirror in the middle. Underneath the tree is a brown parcel tied up with string.
‘It’s magical,’ I say. I can hardly believe Seb has done all this for me.
‘Because you like trees,’ Seb says. ‘Your own special tree that’s still growing, in its pot, so you can plant it somewhere if you want. A wood or your garden at the new house or whatever.’
I put my present for Seb under the little tree. He takes a box of matches out of his pocket and tries to light the candles – real ones, like birthday-cake candles, which he’s fixed with fine wire on to the pine-needle branches – but they keep going out. We sit close together on the fallen log, and wrap the scarf round us, but it’s still freezing cold.
‘We should light a fire,’ Seb says.
‘Someone will see. Come and tell us off.’
‘Like who? No one will be around today!’
So we gather bits of fallen branch and twigs and pile it all up, and Seb gets it to light by lying down and blowing at it, from beneath, and fanning the tiny flame. And I think, this is the most perfect Christmas ever, Seb and me together like this.
‘Happy Christmas, Emily Woodman,’ Seb says, reaching for the parcel under the little tree.
‘It feels like a book,’ I say. I untie the string.
‘For your photographs,’ Seb says, ‘or for writing in. Or for both!’
The cover is blue and gold, and the endpapers are marbled, and the paper inside is blue, hand-made paper with bits of petal and flecks of gold thread woven into the paper itself.
‘It’s beautiful. Almost too beautiful to use!’
Seb unwraps his framed photographs from me. One is of Mattie, in black and white, and the other is the river, and a figure running. He peers at it.
‘Is it me?’
‘Yes!’
‘They’re good, Em. Really good. Thank you!’
He kisses me. We hold each other tight. We kiss some more.
The fire splutters and falters, the green wood hissing and spitting.
Frost sparkles on the dry leaves at our feet. The air smells of smoke, and ice.
‘Your nose is freezing!’
It’s hard to leave this magical place, but we’re both cold to the bone.
‘Come on, then,’ I say at last. ‘Let’s go back to your house. Just for a short time.’
We stamp out the last embers of the fire. Seb puts everything back into his bag. We carry the little tree between us.
We go back to join his family party, drinking homemade beer, and eating Christmas cake with thick white icing. His aunties and cousins are all there. We play silly games like charades, and for once I don’t mind too much.
Seb’s mum’s had too much to drink. She talks too fast, too much, her eyes all shiny and big. She sits on the arm of the chair next to me and leans into me. ‘He’s a changed boy,’ she says. ‘You’ve worked a little magic on him, Emmy darling. I knew all he needed was the love of a good woman!’
Seb comes over to rescue me. ‘Em’s got to get back soon,’ he tells her. ‘I need to take her home.’
We go via Moat House, to find a place for my tree. We leave it at the edge of the copse near the river, still with its baubles and candles. I put the heart in my pocket, to take home with me.
‘We’re going to Auntie Ruby’s for New Year. I can’t get out of it,’ Seb says when he drops me off at the lay-by. ‘I’ll see you when we get back, yes?’
I hug him tight.
‘Love you,’ Seb says.
‘Love you,’ I say.
I put the felt heart under my
pillow at bedtime. I smooth the empty pages of my new photograph-and-writing book. I start thinking about all the words that will fill it up, all the things that haven’t happened yet. My heart is full. It’s like I’m on the edge of something extraordinary, and I can hardly wait for it all to unfold.
Notebook 2 Blue and Gold
January to March
1
I’m sitting in the caravan, watching the rain slide down the windows. So far, it has rained every day since Boxing Day. The river at Moat House is swollen, a brown swirling torrent right up to the top of the banks, and Dad’s started worrying it’ll flood the house itself. But the house has stood there long enough, Cassy says. ‘Things are changing, though,’ Dad says. ‘The world’s changing fast, and the patterns of the weather are changing too. It never used to rain like this.’
The building work’s ground to a halt what with Christmas and New Year holidays and the rain. This week, Dad’s been going down there to try and get things moving again. We are all getting on each other’s nerves, cooped up in this stupid caravan in the middle of a sodden field. Kat’s still in London.
I check my emails for the millionth time. Nothing new. No texts from Seb, either. I can’t understand it.
‘Shall we do something, you and me?’ Cassy asks. ‘You’re so fed up.’
‘Like what?’
‘We could go shopping . . . the sales are on. Or go to see a film? What would you like?’
‘Nothing, really. It’s raining too much to go anywhere.’
‘We could go and see Bob, at the hospital. I know it’s not much of an outing. But I haven’t been for ages. We need to see how he is, tell him about Mattie. We could take him something.’
‘Such as?’
‘I don’t know. Something to eat? Hospital food is rubbish these days. What does he like?’
‘Cheap cider. Chips.’
Cassy laughs. ‘OK, then, let’s get him fish and chips on the way in.’
‘The nurses won’t allow us, Cassy.’
‘We’ll say they’re for us. We can secretly feed chips to Bob, when they’re not looking.’
‘Is he better enough to eat chips?’
‘I don’t know. We’ll find out, won’t we? Last time, they wouldn’t even let me see him. I should’ve been back before, but what with Christmas and everything . . .’
Cassy’s driving’s worse than Seb’s, even though she passed her test years ago. We have to have the windows open and no radio or music on because she says she gets distracted and doolally. Having a baby is making her even more like that, she says. She doesn’t like reversing, so we search for a huge parking space. Even so, she swears a lot and huffs and puffs, going backwards and forwards. ‘Sorry about the language,’ she says.
‘I don’t mind,’ I say. ‘I’ve heard much worse.’
‘You should get Seb to teach you to drive,’ Cassy says once she’s got the car straightened up. She’s gone over the white lines on one side. ‘I’d be useless at teaching you.’
I laugh. She’s right; she would.
‘You haven’t seen him for a while. You haven’t fallen out with him, have you?’
‘No. He’s at his auntie’s. On some island that isn’t an island any more, in Dorset. But he’s back tomorrow, I think.’
‘Such a lovely boy,’ Cassy says. ‘You fell on your feet there.’
Cassy does a quick dash to the loo while I get the parking ticket. It’s still drizzling. Maybe it’s a good thing Bob’s warm and dry in hospital, instead of out on the streets in the endless rain. We’ve forgotten about the chips, I realise. Just as well. Cassy’s a bit mad sometimes.
I follow her through the swing doors and along a corridor and up two flights of stairs. Cassy stops at the nurses’ station to ask for Bob. Three of them in dark blue uniforms are having a laugh about something, but they sober up when Cassy mentions Bob’s name.
‘Mr Bob Moss,’ Cassy says again.
‘Are you a relative?’ The nurse in charge frowns at us like we’re bad news or something.
‘Just friends,’ Cassy says. ‘Bob doesn’t have any relatives, as far as we know. Is there a problem?’
One of the nurses click-clacks away down the corridor, and the other one starts flicking through the pages in the big diary on the desk.
Our nurse stands up. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Could you come through into the office, for a moment?’ She looks at me. ‘Perhaps your daughter could stay here.’
‘I’m not her daughter,’ I start saying, but she’s already shutting the door behind her and Cassy. So I wander off down the corridor. The ward stinks: boiled cabbage and poo. I walk past a row of single rooms with notices on the doors: No unauthorised entry. High Infection Risk. I’ve got a bad feeling about it all even before Cassy calls me. Her voice is teary and her hair’s all mussed up.
‘I’m so sorry, Em. I should’ve left a number with the ward manager. I should’ve called her before. I feel terrible we didn’t know.’
‘What’s happened? Cassy? Tell me.’
She’s crying so much it’s hard to take in what she’s saying, even though I kind of know instantly what she’s about to say.
‘Bob isn’t here. Bob died just before Christmas.’
He caught an infection and he was too weak and unfit to fight it off. His liver packed up. That, and the heart attack that started it all off.
‘All this time and we didn’t know,’ Cassy keeps saying, as if that’s the worst thing. ‘All through Christmas and everything.’
She’s so upset it means I can’t be. That’s the way it seems to work, like only one person at a time can be really sad. So I hand her tissues and give her hugs and she cries quietly all the way back to the car park.
Back in the car, I suddenly think: Mattie! What now?
‘It was supposed to cheer us up,’ Cassy says mournfully. ‘Our trip out for the day. Now look at us.’ She sniffs.
‘Let’s go and get fish and chips, anyway,’ I say. ‘Let’s remember nice things about Bob, you and me. And then we have to think what to do about Mattie.’
Cassy blows her nose like a great trumpet. ‘Thanks, darling,’ she says. ‘You’re so grown-up and sensible these days. I’m sorry I’m like this. It’s those hormones running riot. I can’t help it.’
‘Are you OK to drive?’
Cassy nods. ‘We’ll go to the Jazz Cafe and have a slap-up lunch and take it from there.’
So that’s what we do.
We talk about what should happen to Mattie. I think we should go and get her straight away, look after her ourselves. It’s horrible to think of her in that place, all unloved and lonely.
‘I’ll do everything,’ I say. ‘I’ll feed her and take her for walks every day. Once we’re all in the big house, it won’t be a problem.’
‘But you’re at school all day. And you’re not always going to be around, are you? You’ll be off like Kat at the end of next year. And then there’s the baby coming . . . We’ve got to think sensibly, Em, long-term.’
‘Long-term there’ll be masses of space. The garden’s so big she won’t even need taking for walks; she can just run in the fields. Moat House is huge. And it will be nice for the stupid baby. I think you’re being selfish and mean.’
‘Emily!’ Cassy sounds genuinely shocked. But she doesn’t start crying again. She goes silent, which is almost worse.
It’s like she’s actually counting down the days till both Kat and me will be gone. It’s horrible, realising that. They’ve got it all planned out, Cassy and Dad.
Life after us.
2
Seb phones me as soon as they get back from his auntie’s house on Portland. I tell him about Bob straight away.
‘He wasn’t even old,’ I say. ‘He looked it because of being out in all weathers. But he was only about thirty. And Cassy won’t let us have Mattie. All she cares about is herself and Dad and the baby. She never thinks about what I might want. It’s like I just don’t matter an
y more.’
‘Shall I come and get you?’ Seb asks. ‘I’ve got the car. You can come back to my house for the evening.’
Almost as soon as I’ve got in the car I start crying. I feel such a twit. But just the way Seb looks at me, and puts his arms round me makes it all come flooding out.
‘Sorry,’ I say, once I’ve got myself sorted a bit. ‘It’s all got too much. It’s that stupid caravan driving me crazy. There’s nowhere to escape.’
Seb tells me about Portland while he drives us back to his house. I haven’t seen him so animated about anything before. There’s some stone quarry place, apparently, where you can learn how to do proper carving and lettering and things. You can get qualifications in it, even. ‘I might do the course,’ he says. ‘If I can get the money for it, somehow. Portland stone is famous. St Paul’s Cathedral’s made of it. Lots of other famous buildings too. It’s a unique kind of limestone, but much harder and longer lasting than other kinds. You get a really clean line. Sharp. And the stone has this amazing way of both absorbing and reflecting light. When the sun shines, it’s luminous. Dazzling.’
Upstairs in his room, he shows me more stuff on the computer about the limestone beds in the quarries. ‘When this was all formed, the sea was warm, like the Bahamas today. There are loads of fossils in the stone. Ammonites and other creatures. Insects that died when they fell into the salty water in the lagoons. And there are bits of forest too. A kind of cypress tree that’s extinct now.
‘Imagine,’ he says. ‘You can split open a face of stone that has been hidden since it was formed a million years ago, and be the first person to see it. That’s awesome!’
‘You’d have to go and live down there,’ I say, ‘if you wanted to do the course. It’s too far to travel from here.’
‘Yeah. I can stay at my Auntie Ruby’s. She’s already said I can.’
We lie on his bed together. I kick off my shoes. It begins to dawn on me that this is why Seb didn’t phone all the time he was away. He’s totally taken up with this new project. It’s a side of Seb I haven’t seen before.
‘I can feel your heart beating,’ Seb says. ‘Ever so fast!’ He keeps his hand there.
