Fiona Harper
Page 9
Yes. Yes. Yes.
They arrived, breathless, at the checkpoint and smiled hopefully at the treasure hunt marshal. He grinned back at them. ‘Eight minutes past eight. Congratulations, you’re the first to arrive.’
Fern waited for Josh to pull her into a bear-hug, but he just jumped up and down on the spot and held his hand out for a high-five. She obliged by giving his hand a half-hearted slap.
Now that they were no longer actually racing, they took in their surroundings. The checkpoint was in a gravel car park in a leafy suburb of south-east London. A large wooden sign proclaimed they were standing outside Chislehurst Caves.
‘I didn’t know there were caves in London,’ Josh said as the marshal led them in to the entrance. Instantly, the temperature dropped and the air was thick with the smell of damp. Instinctively, Fern reached for Josh’s hand.
As the guide led them deeper into the cave network, he rattled on about the history of the place—how it was a vast labyrinth of tunnels and chalk mines, some dating back to the time of the Druids. After a few minutes he led them into a wider area.
‘This is going to be your hotel for the night.’
Fern’s mouth dropped open. There were ‘rooms’ in the caves, cut out of the soft chalk, lined with low foam mattresses, each with a sleeping bag.
‘We’re going to sleep here?’ she stammered.
‘People have been using these caves for shelter for centuries—longer, probably,’ their guide answered. ‘During the Second World War, there was a thriving community down here. Come and see.’
He led them on a quick tour of the immediate area. She could hardly believe it. People had lived down here for weeks on end during the Blitz? There had been a cinema, a church, a dining hall—practically everything a person could need, all on hand in the safety of the caves.
‘What a miserable existence,’ Josh muttered as the guide led them back to their dormitory, one of three they’d discovered.
‘Hardly miserable.’ She gave him a curious look. ‘A little damp at times, maybe, but it could have been nice. They must have had a terrific sense of community, of pulling together.’
He walked to the end of the low room and back again. ‘I couldn’t do it, not even if I’d lived back then. It’s like being trapped. I’d have preferred to have been above the ground and run for the nearest shelter when the siren sounded.’ He shook his head. ‘No, this isn’t living—it’s hiding.’
Fern sat down on a mattress, happy to take the weight off her aching feet. ‘I hardly think it’s cowardly to want to keep safe, to keep the people you love safe. It seems like common sense to me.’
He flopped on to the mattress beside her. ‘I’d rather live.’
Fern wrinkled her nose. That was the point, surely? Being in the caves would have ensured that people didn’t get killed.
The evening wore on and more teams started to appear. Predictably, Kate and Aidan were the next to arrive and chose a pair of mattresses on the far side of the room from Josh and Fern, keeping an eye on them.
The treasure hunt organisers provided a meal of soup and sandwiches, which Fern devoured so quickly she surprised herself. By ten o’clock she was yawning so hard and so frequently that when Josh patted her sleeping bag and gave her a knowing look, she didn’t put up a fight.
She was so tired her head was swimming but, even so, when she lay down inside the sleeping bag and closed her eyes, she couldn’t fall asleep properly. All she could hear echoing in her ears were Josh’s words from earlier: ‘I’d rather live.’
And, as she tossed and turned, the images of a past she could only imagine roamed through her mind. Women with neatly curled hair and gravy browning on their legs instead of stockings. Children in grey clothes with gas masks in boxes looped round their necks on string.
Living down here in the darkness must have been strange. It would have become its own little world, with its share of triumphs, gossip and bickering. The horror of the outside would eventually have melted away, gone blurry and out of focus.
And what surprised her the most while she was thinking this was the fact that, until this week, she had been living that way. Hiding.
Her life was a safe little bubble. Boring sometimes, but always safe, always predictable. From the moment Ryan had died, her parents had made sure it stayed that way. As a child, and even more as a teenager, they’d lectured her on everything—how to cross the road, what to eat, her health.
She’d always thought she’d cut the apron strings from her parents, had moved on and become her own person, but now she’d stepped outside her life for a day and stood looking back at it, she realised that everything she did was about maintaining the status quo. Along the way, she’d soaked up more of her parents’ mind-numbing lectures than she’d realised.
Today had been different. Just one day and she had a whole new perspective on things. Today she had lived.
She rolled over and looked at Josh in the semi-darkness. Now the lights had been turned down low, she could see the outline of him as he lay on his back, legs crossed, hands tucked behind his head so his elbows stuck out.
Because of this man, today she’d felt more fear, anxiety, desire and joy than she’d felt in weeks. Years, even. Yes, sometimes she’d been uncomfortable. Yes, she’d raged and sulked, but she’d also cheered and punched the air at times. And even the negative experiences had provoked a reaction in her that had let her know she was a living, breathing human being.
She sighed. What a difference from the usual coma of her life.
‘Can’t sleep?’ Josh’s voice was low, only a soft rumble.
She shook her head, even though he probably couldn’t see her. ‘No,’ she whispered. She longed to inch closer to him, to curl against his long frame and feel his warmth.
She must have sent out a subliminal message because, a few seconds later, he shuffled towards her, still on his back, and she could feel the warmth of his leg and side against her, even through the thickness of two sleeping bags. She inched just a little closer, holding her breath, then let it all out and relaxed against him.
‘How’s your new house?’ she asked, not wanting to close her eyes just yet and let sleep blot out this lovely warm feeling that was creeping up on her. ‘You were just about to exchange contracts last time I saw you.’
‘It’s fine.’
In the dark, Fern rolled her eyes. ‘I’m a girl, Josh. I need more detail than that. What’s the décor like?’
He groaned. ‘I bet you’re not going to let me go to sleep until I tell you, are you?’
‘Yes, you are absolutely right about that.’
‘Actually, there’s a bit of a funny story attached to it. A year after I got the keys I was still partially living out of boxes with the furniture from my old flat filling about a quarter of the space.’
She could imagine that. Pauline Adams had shown her the estate agent’s brochure. Not a grainy sheet of photocopied paper—a brochure, if you don’t mind. It was one of those tall white houses in Notting Hill that seemed to be the average family home in Hollywood films. In reality, it would leave a dent of several million in the bank account.
‘What happened?’
‘Mum started to nag me about the state of the place. Apparently, having bare floorboards and no curtains at the windows after all that time was disgraceful. But I just hadn’t had time to unpack and think about what I wanted to do with it.’
Fern’s eyes grew large. ‘In a whole year you didn’t have time to unpack?’
She could feel the slight shake of his head against her shoulder. ‘Not really. I was only ever there a few days at a time between trips.’
Fern smiled. No way would Pauline have let that one lie. ‘What did she do?’
‘In the end, she nagged me into hiring an interior designer. Then I went to New Zealand and I forgot all about it. Came back a month later at three in the morning, didn’t bother turning the lights on and was scared half to death by one of my own African masks
hanging in the hallway.’
Fern giggled. That, she would have paid money to see.
A comfortable silence fell. Even though their lives were so very different, they could still find some common ground. They both had strong-minded mothers who stuck their noses a little too deep into their children’s lives. Money didn’t make any difference to things like that.
‘What are the neighbours like?’ she said, thinking of the slightly annoying guy in the flat below hers. Everyone had stories about their neighbours.
‘Loud, occasionally.’
She nodded. Downstairs guy had a passion for heavy metal she was praying he’d be cured of shortly. ‘Have you met them?’
‘Only in passing.’ He mentioned the name of a well-known American rock singer and her British film star husband. ‘He likes gardening, would you believe? Grows his own herbs. Offered me some basil for a pasta sauce once.’
She closed her eyes. Similar lives? Yeah, right. She lived upstairs from an unwashed computer geek and he lived next door to the bright young things of London and Hollywood. And Josh had probably been smooth and charming and had fitted right in without a second thought.
Her heartbeat was soft in her ears as she lay still and listened to the sound of her breathing—which was completely out of synch with Josh’s. When she inhaled, he exhaled, and vice versa. Even if she tried to fall into rhythm with him she couldn’t.
How short-sighted she’d been to think that lack of physical proximity had been their obstacle. When he’d moved out and gone to university their lives had diverged. For a while they’d been like trains on the same track, then someone had pulled a switch and the points had changed, and he’d headed off in one direction while she’d gone in another. Now she felt like the serviceable freight train to his Orient Express.
She was tucked up against him, closer than they’d been in years, but never had the distance between them been so vast.
CHAPTER SIX
Twelve years earlier
FERN peeped into the crowded church hall and then turned to sink against the wall of the corridor, her back against the cool plaster. She closed her eyes and breathed out a silent prayer of thanks.
He’d made it.
Josh was here and, although he’d promised he would be, she hadn’t known whether to believe it or not. Last week he’d been in Turkey and the month before that, Madagascar. It had seemed at times that his gap year would never end and that he’d never come home to go to university.
As she relaxed a bit further against the wall, the netting in the petticoat of her party dress made a crunchy noise and scratched the back of her legs. Almost automatically, she tugged the strapless bodice into place by digging her thumbs under the edge and pulling upwards.
She heaved herself upright and took another look inside the church hall. Her party was in full swing, all her friends from school and the youth group dancing the night away. He was over there—talking to the DJ. Her stomach turned icy and rolled over. And then, as if he sensed her looking at him, sensed the connection, he lifted his head and smiled. She tried to remember to be sophisticated, to pull herself tall and be elegant, but the urge to flop into a heap was practically irresistible. She forced herself to take a few more steps into the room.
The heels on her shoes weren’t too high, just a couple of inches, but for some unknown reason her ankle buckled slightly and the graceful, poised walk she’d practised for weeks became an ungainly stumble. She glared at her treacherous ankles and when she looked up again he was gone.
Just as she was considering backing up a bit and returning to the safety of the corridor, she felt a hand slide into hers. The melting, rushing, tingling feeling skipping up her arm told her who it was.
‘Come on, birthday girl. You’ve danced with everyone but me.’
Without waiting for an answer, he did a little pull and a twist as he tugged her hand and she found herself turning, the skirt of her knee-length dress flaring out, then dropping back against her thighs as she came to a stop in his arms.
Oh, my. How many times had she dreamed about this moment? Hundreds? Thousands, probably. But in her dreams she’d always known what to do, what to say. She felt her cheeks heat and looked away. Don’t blow this.
The music was fairly up-tempo and, thanks to Josh, she didn’t stay still for long. He spun her away and back to him, turned her around, even dipped her, and she found herself laughing and joining in, forgetting that her feet normally turned to blocks of wood whenever she got within sight of a dance floor.
When the track ended, she fanned herself with her hand.
‘You should go outside,’ he suggested. ‘Cool off a bit.’
She stammered. It very well might be nice and cool in the little garden adjoining the church hall, but it was away from Josh and that was the last place she wanted to be. He was slipping away, just as he did in those awful moments when she was ripped from her dreams by the grey morning light.
Josh was already leading her to the French windows that led on to the patio next to the hall. He opened the door for her and she walked through it. What else could she do? Say, Stay, kiss me? She didn’t have the courage. She walked over to a silver birch and placed her hand on its silky bark.
So, the moment she’d been waiting for had come…and gone.
A sigh escaped her lips and her shoulders drooped. Sixteen had seemed a magical age to her before she’d arrived here. The point at which she would no longer be a child, but a woman. The point at which he’d open his eyes and see her. Only he hadn’t seen her at all. She was still little Fern, the kid next door who got a pity dance on her birthday. She closed her eyes to stop the stinging.
The plastic cup was so full that its contents were already dripping randomly on Josh’s shoes. He paused at the threshold and stared out into the night. Where had she gone?
He stepped out into the garden and noticed a pale shadow further down the lawn. It was Fern, standing by the birch tree, the pale blonde of her swept-up hair and the creamy skin of her bare shoulders reflecting the soft moonlight. Something tugged inside him. Something warm and raw. Something he’d never expected to feel—and certainly shouldn’t feel—when he looked at Fern.
Heck, if Ryan had been alive today, and had known he’d been feeling this way about his baby sister, he’d have punched Josh’s lights out. And he’d have deserved it too.
He was almost at the birch now and she turned, hearing his footsteps on the grass. Her face registered surprise.
‘I brought you a drink. You looked thirsty,’ he said, suddenly finding his mouth dry too.
She looked incredible. I mean, that dress. When had Fern started to look like that—going in and out, all soft curves—and why hadn’t he noticed it before?
Twin desires raged within him. His knight-in-shining-armour self was coming under attack from his teenage hormones. And, well, being not quite twenty, he was horribly afraid that the hormones were winning.
She smiled at him gently. ‘Thank you.’
As she took the glass from him, their fingers brushed. It made him tingle in places he didn’t want to tingle. Blood began to rush round his whole body. He could see enough in the glow of the light from the party that her pupils were wide and black and he knew instinctively that her heart was racing just as fast and hard as his was. The cool night air began to crackle.
‘How have you been enjoying your party?’ Odd, how his voice had become unusually scratchy at the end of that sentence. He’d just been watching her lips as she’d taken a sip of the fruit cocktail he’d handed her and, all of a sudden, his vocal cords had gone tight.
She stopped drinking and leaned back against the tree trunk. Her skirt billowed forward as she pressed one hand behind her back and one shoulder jutted forward, emphasising the elegant curve of her neck. She lowered her lashes and took another sip of her drink. He felt heat rush from his feet right to the roots of his hair.
Quick! Get back inside before you do something stupid.
He
shifted his weight on to his back foot and prepared to turn away.
‘I wish Ryan could have been here. I miss him.’ Her voice was quiet and soft, with a hint of unshed tears. He’d be the biggest rat in the world if he left her out here alone now.
She finished her drink, placed the cup on the ground and let out a ragged sigh. He didn’t need to see her properly to know that her eyes were shimmering and that tiny beads of moisture were travelling down her cheeks.
He looked briefly back at the flashing lights of the disco inside the hall. So close, and yet so far. He really had no choice. He stepped forward and ran a hand down her arm. Then, knowing it wasn’t enough, softly drew her into a hug. She came into his arms silently and he felt her ribcage shudder beneath his fingers.