Chocolate Box Girls

by Cathy Cassidy

  ‘Hello, Skye,’ the lady behind the counter beams. ‘Enjoying the school holidays?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Lee,’ Skye says.

  ‘And who is your lovely friend?’ the woman continues, smiling at me. ‘Not local, I think. And perhaps more than a friend – family, maybe? Although I must say you don’t really look alike …’

  The woman peers at me, frowning. She flicks back her dark wavy hair, and her silver hoop earrings jangle.

  Skye laughs. ‘Mrs Lee has gypsy blood,’ she tells me. ‘She can see things …’

  I think of the gypsy caravan I saw years ago in the Borders, and the one I am sleeping in now, and Mrs Mackie’s song and her theory that Dad has a little bit of the gypsy in him.

  I blink. ‘See things?’

  ‘Sense things,’ the woman says. ‘I can see beneath the surface, to the truth of things …’

  I feel myself shrink away, like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar, but Skye doesn’t notice. ‘You’re right, as usual, Mrs Lee,’ she says. ‘This is Cherry, my new stepsister. Well, kind of. She and her dad, Paddy, have just come to live here. Isn’t that cool?’

  I hand over the thatched cottage postcards and Mrs Lee takes them, flipping my hand over gently to see the palm. ‘A girl at the crossroads,’ she says. ‘A new family, truth and lies, a make-or-break time … difficult choices, Cherry.’

  Right now, if I had the choice, I would be a million miles from here. This woman is clearly nuts.

  ‘Um … two second-class stamps, please,’ I say.

  Mrs Lee smiles. ‘Of course. I hope you settle in well, pet!’

  I smile through gritted teeth and follow Skye back out into the sunshine.

  ‘She’s a bit odd,’ Skye says. ‘But quite cool too, if you like that sort of thing. She once told me to beware of strangers and not to let a love of history go to my head, and that exact same day I ended up getting a detention off this new supply teacher for wearing a floppy vintage sunhat in class …’

  ‘Er … right …’

  ‘Anyway … that’s the church, over there, it’s twelfth century …’ Skye chats on. ‘And that’s the primary school, and I can show you the park …’

  A posse of little kids on bikes swerve past us in a skid of gravel, all asking Skye if she’s coming to the park, and we end up following them over and going on the swings, the slide and the roundabout. I haven’t done that since I was about eight years old, seriously. The kids try to talk us into a game of footy, but Skye says we are too busy right now, and drags me off for more sightseeing.

  I now know where the allotments are, and the community centre, and even the bottle banks and the public loos. I have been introduced to about a million people, beaming middle-aged ladies and whiskery old men and tribes of little kids with skipping ropes, and all of them know Skye and clearly think she’s wonderful. I am beginning to agree – Skye’s enthusiasm is infectious.

  ‘Fancy a milkshake?’ Skye asks, tugging me towards a cafe called The Mad Hatter. ‘This is where we always go, they do amazing banana milkshakes and the best cream scones in the village …’

  We push through the door and my heart begins to race – Honey and Shay are holed up in a corner booth, sipping Coke and chatting. I try not to smile, not to blush, not to care.

  ‘Hey, Skye, Cherry!’ Shay calls, grinning and waving. ‘Over here!’

  I catch Shay’s eye and turn away, coldly, pretending to look at my postcards.

  ‘You can have our seats,’ Honey says to Skye. ‘We were just going.’

  Shay blinks. ‘We were?’

  ‘We were. C’mon, Shay, I’m not hanging around here to talk about dolls and ponies with my little sister and her freaky friend …’

  I feel like I’ve been slapped, and a tide of crimson floods my cheeks.

  ‘Miaow,’ Shay says to Honey. ‘Finished your saucer of milk, have you?’

  ‘I’m surprised she hasn’t curdled it,’ Skye is saying, elbowing her way into the booth. ‘Honestly, Honey, like we’d want to hang out with you anyway.’

  Shay picks up his blue guitar and slings it over one shoulder, adjusting his slouchy black beanie hat. Honey just flicks her waist-length hair and slicks on another coat of shimmery lipgloss while she waits.

  ‘See you around,’ Skye says.

  ‘Not if we see you first,’ Honey says sweetly, and Shay just shrugs apologetically and herds her out of the cafe.

  ‘She doesn’t mean it,’ Skye tells me, as the door jangles shut. ‘Well, she does, but it’s nothing personal. She was meant to be going up to London this weekend, to see Dad … only he rang last night and cancelled it. Again. D’you remember, just after tea, when Mum was on the phone for ages and she told us to go outside and not bother clearing the dishes away?’

  I nod slowly, remembering Charlotte’s face, tired and weary, as she held the phone and ushered us outside.

  ‘So Honey’s extra prickly, right now,’ Skye says. ‘Dad’s useless, only she can’t see that …’

  ‘Oh … right,’ I whisper. ‘I’m sorry …’

  Skye shrugs. ‘Don’t be. He was never much of a dad at the best of times. He means well, but … he’s pretty selfish, really. And he was awful to Mum. He’s never once been back to see us here. He was meant to come and stay for the weekend, that time Mum went up to Glasgow to stay with you and Paddy, but he cancelled at the last minute and a friend of Mum’s had to come over instead.’

  I open my mouth and close it again, speechless.

  ‘Remember what you said the day you first got here, about everything being perfect?’ Skye says. ‘Well, I guess you can see now that it isn’t. It’s a long way from that. Honey’s angry with everyone, all mixed up – it’s like living with a thundercloud, sometimes. Mum’s scared to say anything to her, half the time. I think it’s great that you and Paddy are here … things will have to change now.’

  I bite my lip.

  ‘I hope so, anyhow,’ Skye sighs. ‘Because I am majorly fed up with Honey lately. Thank goodness she’s got Shay, because he’s the only one she really listens to. He’s good for her. He’s really calmed her down. I don’t know where he gets the patience, because she’s always so moody and mean … but I think she really loves Shay.’

  A little knife twists in my heart, but I ignore it. This is not what I wanted to hear.

  ‘They make a good couple,’ Skye chatters on. ‘They’re both good-looking, and popular, and cool … I’d love to have a boyfriend like Shay one day!’

  ‘I don’t like him,’ I say.

  Skye blinks. ‘What? You don’t like Shay?’ she echoes. ‘But everyone likes him! He’s great, really sweet and kind. He spends so much time up at our place it’s like he’s some kind of adopted brother …’

  Perfect. That’s all I need.

  ‘He’s one of the family, really,’ Skye ploughs on. ‘You’ll like him, once you get to know him.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I say stubbornly. ‘He seems kind of … shallow. And vain. Why wear a beanie hat in July? And I bet he uses straighteners on that fringe.’

  ‘Probably,’ Skye agrees. ‘So what?’

  I roll my eyes. ‘I just don’t like boys like that. You know, trailing round the whole time with that blue guitar, playing at being a rock star …’

  ‘No,’ Skye corrects me. ‘He can really play – you heard him, at the bonfire party. Seriously, Cherry, give him a chance. Shay is OK.’

  The waitress comes over to take our order. Skye switches on a smile and launches into her introduction spiel, and the waitress grins and says she hopes I’ll be very happy here, and lets us have our banana milkshakes and cream scones for free.

  Skye decides that we should walk back to Tanglewood House along the beach, so we wander down through Kitnor Quay, past round-bellied fishing boats and shiny-sleek yachts moored up along the jetties, and a row of neat little sailing dinghies, hau
led up on the grass.

  ‘That’s where Shay lives,’ she tells me, nodding towards a pretty thatched cottage next to some converted outbuildings on the quayside. ‘His dad runs the sailing centre – Shay works there too, in the holidays. He must have had an afternoon off, today. They teach kids to sail, run outward-bound courses, hire out dinghies and banana boats to the grockles –’

  ‘Grockles? What are they?’

  ‘Tourists!’ Skye explains. ‘It’s what we call them down here. There are always a few, no matter what the time of year, but now that the holidays have started they’ll be everywhere. Having picnics in the fields, lying around on the beach, clogging up the tea rooms … of course, we need them, so I’m not complaining. Just about every business in Kitnor needs the grockles to survive. The B&B will be packed out all summer …’

  I take a look back at the cottage and the outbuildings, noticing the sign that says Kitnor Sailing Centre and the canoes and paddles stacked up against a whitewashed wall. Shay does not look like a sporty kind of a boy. I cannot imagine him hauling in sails and lugging trailers about and kitting out plump, middle-aged grockles with wetsuits and luminous orange life jackets, but I remember that he smelled of the ocean, and now I know why.

  Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor …

  Is there no escape from this boy?

  Although if Shay is working at the sailing centre all summer, he won’t have time to hang around Tanglewood House. I hope.

  Skye is back in tour-guide mode. She slips an arm through mine as we walk, telling me about smugglers’ caves and ruined castles and the archaeologists who sometimes come to this bit of coast to hunt for fossils and dinosaur bones.

  ‘I found a fossil once,’ she says, eyes shining. ‘I bent down to pick up some shells … I saw something half-buried in the sand, and it turned out to be an ammonite!’

  ‘A … what?’

  ‘It’s the fossil of this spiral-shaped sea creature,’ Skye explains. ‘They lived millions of years ago, and now they are extinct. And I had one in my hand, can you imagine that? I mean, this little creature used to swim in the sea, right here, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. It was like being given my own little piece of history!’

  ‘Awesome,’ I say.

  Skye grins. ‘It was,’ she says. ‘Not everyone understands about history. Summer and Coco and Honey all think it’s boring, just dusty relics and stuffy museums. But history isn’t dull, it’s brilliant. Just look at the name … history … it’s all about stories!’

  ‘Kings and queens and smugglers,’ I say. ‘Mystery and drama and intrigue and adventure …’

  ‘Exactly!’

  Skye doesn’t know it, of course, but I am an expert at storytelling. Other people have a whole stash of memories to dip into, but I have hardly any … no happy families stuff, nothing except Dad and me and a past that neither of us want to look back at. Stories help to fill the empty space where my mum should be. I have rewritten history so many times in my own head, I don’t even know the truth any more. Does it even matter?

  I think it does. It’s pointless to tell Honey I used to live in a big, swish apartment if she knows I didn’t, and even telling Skye, Summer and Coco I had tons of friends back in Glasgow is kind of risky. Besides, if the Tanberrys aren’t perfect, maybe I don’t have to be, either?

  Maybe it’s time to leave the stories for English lessons.

  I want to be a part of this family, and if that means keeping my mouth closed when the lies unfurl on my tongue, then that’s what I will have to do.

  I am not going to do anything to mess this up.

  I think of the spirally little sea creature drifting around in a long-ago ocean, and I can’t help smiling.

  We walk on, making plans for the summer, plans that involve swimming in the sea and going for long bike rides and picnics, and checking out cute grockle boys in the village. We walk right round the bay and past the headland, until we are in the little cove beneath the cliff path that leads back up to Tanglewood House.

  Suddenly, Skye ducks away from me, running right down to the water’s edge. ‘So … swimming in the sea, right?’ she challenges.

  She kicks off her shoes and socks, pulls the trailing dress up over her head, ditches it on the damp sand and sprints into the surf wearing a purple vest and knickers. ‘Come on!’ she yells, kicking up a spray of silver. ‘It’s fantastic! Hardly cold at all!’

  Yeah, right. It may be July, but this is not the Mediterranean. Against my better judgement, I kick off my shoes, peel off my socks. The damp sand makes me shiver.

  ‘Come on, Cherry!’ Skye laughs. ‘I dare you!’

  That’s all it takes. I wriggle out of my jeans and run into the sea in my T-shirt and knickers, and as soon as that first wave hits me I am screaming, because the water is not cold, it is icy, arctic, agonizingly freezing. Skye grabs on to me so that I can’t retreat, and the two of us jump and hop and screech with laughter as the tide breaks over us.

  I’m not sure if Skye feels like a sister yet, but she is starting to feel like a friend.

  11

  On Friday evening, I am sitting at the kitchen table, writing my postcard for Mrs Mackie and pretending it’s for a friend who is actually under sixty years old. I shield the card with my hand while Charlotte dishes out plates of pasta and pesto with garlic bread.

  ‘Where’s Honey?’ she asks. ‘I called her ten minutes ago!’

  ‘I think she’s in her room,’ Summer shrugs. ‘She’s turning into a hermit, lately.’

  Settling in well, I write on the postcard. The house is beautiful and we are right by the beach, so I can swim whenever I want to. I am sleeping in a real gypsy caravan, along with Rover and a dog called Fred. Everyone is really nice …

  Well, almost everyone is really nice. It’s not a lie, exactly.

  Already Mrs Mackie is fading into the past, along with the brown corduroy sofa and Clyde Academy and Kirsty McRae. Who needs Kirsty, anyway, when you’ve got Honey Tanberry? She goes straight in at number one in my top-ten list of Mean Girls I Have Known.

  I sign my name and slip the postcard into a pocket to post next time I am down in the village.

  ‘Honey!’ Charlotte calls up the stairway. ‘Tea’s ready!’

  She shakes her head and hands out plates of pasta.

  ‘We might as well make a start,’ she says. ‘If we wait for her, it’ll go cold …’

  A few minutes later Honey slopes into the kitchen looking deathly pale, with blue shadows beneath her eyes and grey-tinged lips. She looks like a ghost-girl.

  ‘Are you feeling OK?’ Dad asks, and Honey scowls.

  ‘It’s make-up,’ she says. ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Looks like Halloween’s come early,’ Charlotte sighs. ‘What’s the story, Honey?’

  ‘A few of us are going down to Georgia’s to watch the Twilight DVDs,’ Honey says. ‘We thought it’d be fun to dress up a bit.’

  ‘OK,’ Charlotte says. ‘Sounds good. Sit down, love, get your pasta while it’s hot.’

  Honey curls her lip. ‘We’re having pizza at Georgia’s,’ she says carelessly. ‘So I’ll give this a miss, if that’s OK. Don’t wait up for me …’

  Charlotte frowns. ‘But … you love pasta and pesto!’ she argues. ‘And I’ve made garlic bread specially, with cheese grated on, the way you like it …’

  ‘Too bad.’

  Dad and Charlotte exchange glances, and then Charlotte sighs, her shoulders slumping. ‘Don’t be too late then. Your curfew’s eleven. And don’t go scaring any small children!’

  ‘As if,’ Honey huffs, stalking away with her black velvet dress swishing, slamming the door behind her.

  ‘My sister, the vampire,’ Summer smirks.

  ‘Bet she’s meeting Shay,’ Coco adds. ‘She might kiss him. I bet that’s why she didn’t want garlic bread.’

  A piece of crust sticks in my throat
and makes me cough, and Dad has to pat me on the back and Coco fetches me a glass of water.

  Skye grins. ‘Love at first bite …’

  I wake in the dark, my heart racing, with someone banging on the caravan door. Fred is growling, a low, angry rumble that flares into a yelping bark. For a moment, I can’t work out where I am, or why, and then I remember and wish I hadn’t, because I am on my own in a caravan in the middle of nowhere, with a growling, fluffy dog and an axe-murderer trying to get in.

  ‘Cherry!’ a voice calls, and I almost jump out of my skin. ‘Cherry! It’s me! Open up!’

  I switch on the fairy lights and lift the curtain on the door, and outside I see a shadowy figure in a werewolf mask with a dramatic fall of scratchy grey hair, a blue guitar slung over his shoulder.

  Not an axe-murderer then.

  I unlatch the door and Fred launches himself out into the darkness. There’s a muffled yelp and the twang of a mangled guitar string, and when I peer out Shay Fletcher is sprawled on the grass, his werewolf mask askew, with Fred licking him half to death.

  ‘Fred!’ he huffs. ‘Get off!’

  The fluffy dog jumps back into the caravan and hides behind my legs. I can see he would be a great asset in the event of a real axe-murderer turning up unannounced. Shay Fletcher grins at me. ‘Did I scare you?’ he asks.

  ‘Too right,’ I scowl. ‘Put the mask back on, quick.’

  ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘That’s harsh. I was just passing, and I thought I’d say hi …’ He gets to his feet, grinning, brushing down his jeans.

  I huddle on the steps in my patchwork quilt, and Shay settles himself on a fallen log.

  Even in the twinkling light from the treetop fairy lights, I can see that I was right about Shay Fletcher. He is not crush material. Some people might fall for the floppy, wheat-gold hair, the freckled nose, the grin … me, I am not impressed. Well, only a little bit.

  Besides, he has terrible taste in girlfriends.

  ‘Are you mad at me?’ Shay asks.

  ‘Why would I be mad? Because you turn up unannounced in the middle of the night, trying to scare me to death? Because your girlfriend is the meanest girl alive? Or because you told her I was flirting with you, the other night, at the bonfire party?’