‘Hi again!’ she says, falling into step with me.
‘Hi,’ I say, stepping off the pavement and crossing the road towards home.
‘Did you find your sister?’ she asks.
‘Yeah.’
‘Was she in the meeting?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That’s what I said, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. Thanks.’
‘She’s nice, isn’t she?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘She says everyone on your side of the street is terrified of the protesters.’
‘She’s exaggerating.’
‘You’re not frightened of us, then?’
‘No.’
‘So why are you running away?’
‘I’m not,’ I say, stopping and turning to face her. ‘I’m just walking home.’
She smiles at me, and I look back at her, trying to form my features into an expression that says ‘not frightened but not particularly friendly either’. This is a tricky balancing act.
We’re a similar height, probably roughly the same age, but she has the open and innocent face of someone much younger.
‘Can I see inside your house?’ she says. ‘Since we’re neighbours and everything.’
We’re now only a couple of metres from my front door. The keys are already in my hand.
I don’t really want this strange girl in my home, but I feel like she’s cornered me, tricked me into a situation where her question feels like a test of whether or not I’m frightened of her.
For an instant, I wonder if maybe I am. Something about her makes me uneasy.
I take the last few steps to my door, open it and step inside. Sky remains where she is, staring at me in wide-eyed silence.
‘Well?’ I say eventually, which is quite a long way from ‘Welcome, do come in and make yourself at home,’ but this is how Sky seems to interpret it.
She walks in and gazes around, examining each of the walls and even the ceiling like a tourist awed by a cathedral, when in fact she’s in a small suburban hallway. While Sky looks around, wonderstruck, my gaze falls afresh on this cluttered overfamiliar room, and it occurs to me that compared to the house I’ve just left this place has never looked more drab and dull.
After a while, Sky’s eye falls on the hall mirror, which has old family photos and a jumble of postcards slipped in all the way around the frame. She examines every image one by one, in silence, with her mouth half open.
‘Is that you?’ she says, pointing to a faded photo I haven’t really looked at for years, of Dad, me and Rose in a wooden rowing boat, on holiday in the Lake District. Rose and I are around ten and six, and we’re pulling together on an oar, with Dad next to us operating the other oar, and all three of us are squinting into the sun. Rose and Dad are laughing at something, but I’m concentrating on the task of rowing, biting my bottom lip with a pair of chunky, oversized teeth.
‘Yeah,’ I reply, though it seems bizarre that this is true, and barely plausible that the cute child next to me in the boat is the same person as the scowling creature who has just run away from home to live with a gang of hippies.
Mum’s voice, calling from the kitchen, breaks the momentary silence.
‘Luke?’ she says, ‘Is that you?’
‘I’ve brought someone round,’ I say. ‘From over the road.’
Mum appears and looks at Sky. She has her polite face on, but I can see what she’s thinking: something along the lines of Who is this creature and when did it last wash?
Mum eventually stops staring and manages to say, ‘And you are … ?’
‘Sky.’
‘What a lovely name,’ she says, in a way that obviously (to me) means the opposite.
‘Thanks,’ says Sky.
‘Well, Sky, do come in. It’s lovely to meet you,’ says Mum tensely.
‘You have such a beautiful house,’ says Sky, gazing around our messy IKEA kitchen.
Mum turns and glares for a moment, thinking this is sarcasm, but from the look of innocent admiration on Sky’s face, it clearly isn’t. Mum then glances at me, and I look back at her, and a silent this-is-weird flashes between us.
‘Are you hungry?’ asks Mum, switching her face back to Cheerful Hostess mode.
Sky nods, and Mum quickly assembles two sand-wiches, then sits at the table and watches us eat, gently probing Sky with questions about the mystery of what is really happening in the dilapidated house over the road.
Sky answers all her queries with a guileless simplicity that hides nothing but doesn’t seem to reveal much, either. It turns out Sky is the only child there. Most of the protesters (though they prefer to be called climate rebels) are in their twenties and childless. The only exceptions are the three older people I spotted, who are veterans of other environmental campaigns. The place is supported in part by crowdfunding, and is striving to be a zero-carbon movement.
Sky, it turns out, has never lived in the same house for longer than a year, and is homeschooled by her mother.
‘That must be fun,’ says Mum, though I can see from her expression that just the thought of homeschooling makes her blood run cold.
‘Not really,’ says Sky, ‘but most days it’s pretty quick, so …’
‘And … is she a good teacher?’
‘It’s not really like that,’ says Sky cryptically.
‘She doesn’t teach you?’
‘She does. Kind of. And other people, sometimes.’
‘Who?’
‘Just … whoever. I’d like to be at school, but Mum says …’
Sky tails away, looking as if this isn’t a conversation she wants to be having. My mother isn’t someone you can shake off quite so easily though.
‘Your mum says what?’
‘School isn’t … suitable. For someone like me.’
‘Like you in what sense?’
‘Well … I’m different, and the way we live is different, and I need to value that instead of getting boxed in like other kids.’
‘OK. I see.’
‘She says schools are factories for conformism,’ Sky adds, then looks up with those unnerving ice-blue eyes of hers, fixes her gaze on Mum, and says, ‘Do you think that’s true?’
Mum’s cheeks flush. I can see that she knows she’s been too nosy and has been caught out. She doesn’t want to lie, but it’s pretty clear she can’t give an honest answer, either.
‘I’m sure she knows best,’ replies Mum unconvincingly, before swerving as quickly as she can to a new topic. ‘And … er … you must have got to know my daughter, Rose. She’s just moved into the commune.’
‘A bit.’
‘How’s she getting on?’
‘OK.’
‘And do you have a sense of … well, of … what it is she does all day?’
‘Just … normal stuff.’
‘Such as … ?’
‘Don’t know. Chatting.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Just normal things. Like everyone else. Drinking tea. Having meetings. Do you have a bath?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Do you have a bath?’
‘Of course.’
‘Can I have one?’
‘Now?’
‘Is it OK to ask, or is that rude?’
‘No, it’s … it’s fine. I’ll show you the way and find you a towel.’
Mum and Sky head upstairs, and through the ceiling I hear the sound of water pounding into the bathtub.
After a while, Mum reappears carrying Sky’s clothes at arm’s length, pinched between finger and thumb. She puts them in the washing machine and slams it shut.
‘I’ve given her some of your cast-offs,’ she says.
‘OK.’
Mum washes her hands, then sits next to me and whispers, ‘Why did you bring her here?’
‘I didn’t. I went to see Rose and she just followed me home.’
‘How is Rose?’
‘Fine.’
‘Fine? Is that all
?’
‘We didn’t talk much.’
‘Why not?’
‘She was busy.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Having a house meeting.’
‘About what?’
‘Jars.’
‘Jars?’
‘Yes. They were talking about jars.’
‘What is there to say about jars?’
‘A lot apparently, but don’t ask me to tell you what it was. Anyway, Rose seems fine – happier than when she was living here, anyway.’
‘Thanks,’ says Mum. ‘Very sensitive.’
‘You asked me how she was! You want me to lie and say she’s miserable?’
‘No, I just … never mind.’
Mum gets up from the table, fishes some ingredients out of the fridge, then passes me a pile of potatoes to peel.
I’ve just finished when Sky walks back into the kitchen with wet (but still straggly and tangled) hair, wearing one of my favourite hoodies and a pair of grey tracksuit trousers that only reach three-quarters of the way down her shins.
‘Thank you,’ she says to Mum. ‘That was lovely.’
‘No problem.’
‘You’re very kind.’
‘It’s nothing.’
Sky smiles at her, looking as if something is on the tip of her tongue which she can’t quite get out, then she takes a couple of steps forward and says, ‘Carrots.’
Mum looks up from the carrots she’s chopping. ‘Yes. Would you like one?’
‘Thanks. I like carrots.’
Mum passes her a carrot and tosses another one to me.
After a couple of noisy bites, Sky says, ‘Can I watch TV now? I’ve seen it through the window. You’ve got a huge TV, haven’t you?’
‘Not huge. Just normal size,’ says Mum.
‘Can I watch it?’
‘Er … OK. Luke will put it on for you.’
I lead her into the living room and show her our old, average-sized TV.
‘Wow! It’s massive!’ she marvels.
‘What do you want to watch?’
‘Something good.’
I open up Netflix and put on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. She stares at it, transfixed, standing in the middle of the room.
‘You can sit down if you want,’ I say.
She reverses on to the sofa and sits without taking her eyes from the screen. After a while, I go next door to talk to Mum.
‘You gave her my best hoodie!’ I hiss.
‘It’s worn out. There are holes in the elbows.’
‘It’s my favourite.’
‘Sorry. You’ve got lots of others. Without holes.’
‘Not like that one. And why did you tell her she could watch TV? Next thing she’ll be staying for dinner, then she’s going to think I’m her friend and I’m never going to be able to shake her off.’
‘She asked! I couldn’t just say no.’
‘Why? She’s not my friend!’
‘You don’t like her?’
‘She’s a freak!’
‘Well, I think we should make an effort to be nice to her. It can’t be easy being her. She said she’s the only child living there.’
‘That’s her problem. I’m not going to be her social worker.’
‘Nobody’s asking you to be her social worker. But you can at least be kind.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s the right thing to do.’
‘I thought you hated those people. Now you’re saying I have to be nice to them.’
‘I never said I hate them. I just don’t want Rose to live with them.’
‘Because you don’t want her to become like them, because you hate them.’
‘Keep your voice down. And has it occurred to you that having someone from across the road visit us occasionally might be our best chance of finding out what’s going on over there? Rose isn’t going to tell us anything, is she?’
‘Are you saying you’re going to invite her again?’
‘I’m just saying she’s our neighbour. She’s been living right over the road from us for weeks, and she’s obviously lonely, so we can at least be pleasant to her.’
‘Out of charity, or so we can use her as a spy?’
‘It doesn’t cost anything to be nice.’
‘She gives me the creeps.’
‘You just need to get used to her.’
‘I don’t want to get used to her.’
In the end, Sky did stay for dinner, and she stayed while we did the clearing-up, and she stayed while we all stood there in the empty kitchen waiting for her to leave. Eventually Mum said, ‘I think it’s time for you to go.’
Only then did she get the hint (if you can call that a hint) and go home.
Though it just felt weird at the time, when we tell Dad about Sky’s visit later that evening, the whole thing suddenly seems funny. Mum and I have trouble explaining it in a way Dad can follow, because we both keep cracking up. I do an impression of Sky’s awestruck face as she sees the TV that almost makes Mum fall off her chair, and when I mime Mum carrying Sky’s clothes at arm’s length with her head turned away, they both lose it.
This garbled story must have stuck in Dad’s mind though, because it’s the first thing he asks me about as we drive to visit Grandpa on Saturday, which we do every other weekend. I’m not really sure how I got into this routine – Rose hardly ever goes, and Dad doesn’t seem to mind when I skip it – but I’ve always felt close to Grandpa, and I quite like the trip. The drives to and from the care home are the only time I have Dad’s undivided, undistracted attention, with him actually listening to what I say and asking follow-up questions.
We have a game we play in the car where he plays me the terrible music he used to like when he was young, alternating with me playing him the stuff he ought to like but doesn’t because he’s too old and stuck in the past and obsessed with outdated things like guitars and melody.
Near the care home there’s a kebab place that Dad loves, so we always stop there after seeing Grandpa and pick up a takeaway to eat in the car. Part of the ritual is that every time Dad takes his first bite he says, ‘Still the best!’ and I roll my eyes at him. I’m not sure why, but we do this every single time.
All in all, the visit to Grandpa is a pretty good option for a Saturday morning.
‘So that kid from over the road,’ Dad says, barely a minute after we set off. ‘What was she like?’
‘Weird.’
‘In what way?’
‘Every way. Even how she looks at you is weird. She just stares all the time.’
‘Who invited her in?’
‘She invited herself. Couldn’t keep her out.’
‘Must be a strange life for her in that place. She’s always hanging around, looking bored, isn’t she? The amount of time she spends in that front garden, just drawing or doing nothing …’
‘What goes on in there?’ I ask. ‘What do those people actually do?’
‘Hard to say. It’s a bit of a mystery.’
‘Why do you think Rose has gone?’
‘Well … teenagers like to rebel. It’s just what happens.’
‘This is kind of extreme though, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose.’
‘It might make sense if she hated life at home, but she doesn’t, does she?’ I ask, turning towards Dad.
‘I don’t think so. Which is good. It means she hasn’t really run away from us – she’s run towards them.’ Dad glances away from the road to meet my eye, and gives a tentative smile.
‘Why though? I can see it might be fun to visit, but to live there! The place is a dump.’
Dad goes quiet for a few seconds, then says, ‘Well … I can kind of understand it.’
‘Really?’
‘I can see that being there is more interesting than being at home with me and you and Mum. It’s different.’
‘Don’t you think they’re all weirdos though?’
Dad brakes for a traffic light and turns to
look at me. ‘Is that your word for anyone who’s different from you?’
‘No!’
‘I did a lot of travelling when I was younger, backpacking around.’
‘Yeah, I’ve heard the stories.’
‘Well, it was years and years ago, but I ended up spending time with a few people like that, and they’re OK. Part of me admires them.’
‘Admires them?’
Dad turns back to face the windscreen as we accelerate away from the lights. ‘They’ve got the guts to be different and make their own rules, when everyone else just becomes a slave to work and money without even thinking about it.’
‘Last I heard, you and Mum were going crazy about Rose living there, now you’re saying you like them.’
‘I never said I like them, but they’re making a stand for something they believe in, and I respect that.’
‘So you don’t mind Rose living there?’
‘She should come home. But that doesn’t mean I think the people in the commune are evil.’
‘Does Mum?’
‘No! But she is a bit more upset than I am.’
‘Why?’
‘She and Rose just have a more … intense relationship. She feels kind of wounded by Rose leaving like that, without even talking to us about it. And she’s worried.’
‘She cares more,’ I say, half a question, half a statement.
Dad doesn’t respond to that, but he appears to be mulling it over as we drive the rest of the way in a silence that only breaks as he reverses us into a parking space and mutters, ‘I sometimes wish I’d done things differently.’
‘Different to what?’
He switches off the engine and yanks up the handbrake, but makes no move to get out of the car.
‘Don’t know,’ he says, looking straight ahead at the dirt-splattered van parked in front of us. ‘You only get so many choices in life, and the really big decisions don’t even feel like you’re consciously making them. Things just happen to you, then that becomes your life.’
‘Like what?’
‘Work mainly. I don’t remember ever actually wanting a job in insurance, but here I am … twenty years doing the same thing. On and on.’
‘Wow, you’re a barrel of laughs today.’
‘Sorry. Am I moaning?’
‘I guess it’s my job to cheer up Grandpa, then?’
‘OK, let’s go,’ says Dad, pushing open his car door. ‘You do the cheering-up, I’ll do the moaning.’
The Summer We Turned Green Page 4
