The Farm Beneath the Water

by Helen Peters

  “Oh, brilliant. Thank you so much.”

  Miranda looked curiously at the memory stick, and then at Jack’s and Hannah’s faces, and Hannah could have sworn she saw a flash of something very like jealousy pass across her features.

  Miranda Hathaway, jealous of her and Jack? Could it really be true?

  “When do you need this back?” she asked.

  “That’s OK, you keep it. It’s all on the hard drive.”

  Miranda looked from one to the other of them, her eyes narrowed.

  “Effects for the play,” Hannah told her. “It’s going to be amazing.”

  “Yep,” said Jack. “The stuff on there will blow your mind.”

  Matthew appeared in the doorway. “You have got to see this, mate. Look what she’s getting them to do.”

  He dragged Jack out into the hall, where Zara’s choreographer was holding a dance rehearsal for the spirits in The Tempest.

  Lottie appeared in the doorway, holding an embroidered jacket.

  “Can you try this on, Ben? In case it needs any last-minute adjustments.”

  She didn’t look at Hannah, and Hannah felt the misery of it like a weight in the pit of her stomach. For a few minutes, the rehearsal had taken her mind off the hideous fact that Lottie had acted all day as though she didn’t exist.

  Hannah had tried to explain again but Lottie had totally blanked her. How long would she keep it up? What if she went through the whole play like this? What if she never spoke to Hannah again?

  Hannah couldn’t bear even to think about that.

  Miranda looked at Ben’s jacket and curled her upper lip. “Are we finished? Because I do have other things to do.”

  “Er … yes,” said Hannah. “That scene’s perfect now. Thanks so much.”

  Miranda elbowed past the others, her expensive bag whacking Hannah on the leg. She stopped in the doorway. Then she spun round and glared at Hannah.

  “Look at that!”

  “What?”

  “That,” spat Miranda, flinging out an arm in the direction of the stage, “is what you get when you have a proper choreographer and a proper costume designer. Not a bunch of amateurs like we’ve got here. I don’t know why we’re even bothering.”

  With a final look of disgust at Hannah and Lottie, she strutted away.

  “What are you planning to do about her?” asked Ben. “We’d better think of something soon. We’re running out of time.”

  Hannah and Lottie were silent. Jack walked back into the classroom, unzipped his bag and pulled out a laptop.

  “Now she’s gone, take a look at this.”

  “If it’s to do with you-know-what,” said Hannah, “it’s too risky to watch it here. Anyone might come in.”

  “It’s nothing incriminating. Just a bit of film footage. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it, that’s all.”

  Hannah shot a sideways glance at Jack. He sounded so mature. He hadn’t even said anything rude to Lottie. And he clearly had been working on the projections. She had been so right to trust him. Why couldn’t Lottie admit that?

  Jack double-clicked on the mouse pad and turned the laptop round so they could all see the screen. Ben moved closer. Lottie was fiddling with the jacket, pretending not to be interested, but Hannah knew she was watching.

  Up flashed the animated body of a chubby garden gnome, with Lottie’s head superimposed on it. The Lottie gnome was dancing to synthesised music.

  “Jack!” yelled Hannah.

  Lottie made a grab for the computer. “You idiot! Turn that off right now.”

  “I am so sorry,” said Jack. “I totally did not mean for that to happen. I have no idea how it got there.”

  “Delete that this second,” spat Lottie. “No, give it here and let me delete it.”

  “Hey, get your hands off my computer. Look, I’ll delete it and you watch, OK? Jeez, some people are so touchy.”

  Lottie turned to Hannah, her eyes blazing. “See? Do you see now? Or do you still think he should be part of our play?”

  Hannah felt as though she was going to explode. Emotions boiled up inside her: fury with Jack for making a fool of her, hatred of herself for being so stupid, and utter misery at ruining her friendship with Lottie.

  She rounded on Jack.

  “How dare you do that? You promised! You promised you’d take this seriously and look what you’ve done. I trusted you and you’ve made a complete idiot of me, and my best friend won’t even speak to me. Don’t you care about anything? You said you wanted to make up for what you’d done, and all you’ve done is make things worse. The farm’s going to be destroyed and all you can do is make videos of dancing gnomes. You are a complete—”

  “Hannah,” said Lottie.

  There was something in her voice that made Hannah look up.

  Lottie glanced towards the door with a warning look. Hannah turned round. Miss Summers was standing in the doorway.

  “Oh,” said Hannah. “Hello.”

  Miss Summers stepped into the room.

  “I just came to see how your rehearsal was going. Is everything all right?”

  Lottie broke the awkward silence.

  “Yes, thank you. We’ve finished the balcony scene. Hannah and Jack were just having a bit of a disagreement about the projections for the backgrounds, that’s all.”

  “I see.” She looked hard at Hannah and Jack. “Will you be able to resolve your differences, do you think? Without coming to blows?”

  Hannah said nothing.

  “I think so, miss,” said Jack. “I’ve got some other stuff she might prefer.”

  “Right. Well, I’ll leave you to it, then. But if you have any problems that are too difficult to resolve by yourself, Hannah, come to me, will you, and we can chat about them. Don’t let things get on top of you.”

  With a last look at Hannah, she left the room.

  Hannah turned to her friend and took a deep breath.

  “I’m so sorry, Lottie. You were completely right and I was completely wrong. He is an idiot.”

  “Hey, I am here, you know,” said Jack.

  “Yes, and you’re an idiot. Just go away. You’ve ruined everything.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’ve finally realised what a loser he is,” said Lottie. “It took you long enough.”

  Hannah looked at Lottie. Her voice sounded normal again. Could she … might she … be forgiven?

  Jack was fiddling with his laptop. He turned the screen out to face the others again.

  “What are you doing?” asked Hannah. “I told you to go away.”

  “Just look at this one thing, will you? I’m sorry about the gnome. Just look at this and then I’ll go away if you want me to.”

  A picture appeared on the screen. A flickery, slightly faded, black-and-white film of farm workers harvesting a field of corn.

  The camera zoomed in slightly. Hannah gasped.

  Grandfather! He had died before she was born, but she recognised him immediately from the photos around the house. He was driving an old combine harvester. He had stopped it next to the grain trailer and the freshly harvested corn was pouring from the combine’s chute into a slithery golden heap in the trailer.

  She turned to Jack. “Where did you get this? I’ve never seen it before.”

  “There’s an old bloke down my road who used to work at your farm. Tom Robson? I asked him if he had any photos of it in the old days and he brought me this. He had a bit of a thing about photography, he said. He took this with his first video camera.”

  The camera panned out to show the tractor pulling the grain trailer.

  “Wow, that tractor’s tiny!” said Ben. “It hasn’t even got a cab. And look at that exhaust funnel.”

  Hannah wasn’t looking at the exhaust funnel. She was looking at the tractor driver.

  “Is that your dad?” asked Lottie. “He looks so young.”

  “His fashion sense hasn’t changed, though,” said Jack. “He’s still working that flat cap and check
ed shirt combo.”

  There was no sound on the video but you could tell that Dad and his father were sharing a joke as the corn spilled in a steady stream into the trailer.

  “He must be young,” said Hannah. “Grandfather died when Dad was fifteen.”

  “What year was this film taken?” Lottie asked Jack.

  “1973, I think he said.”

  “Oh!” cried Hannah.

  “What?” asked Lottie.

  Hannah was staring at the screen. “Grandfather died in 1973. In the autumn. He was doing some tractor work for another farmer, up on the Downs, and his tractor rolled over on the hill and crushed him.”

  “Ouch,” said Jack.

  Ben gave him a look. Lottie shuddered, even though she had heard the story before.

  Hannah looked at the image of her father, so relaxed and carefree up on his tractor seat, with no idea that his world was about to change forever.

  “Cool to have some footage of him,” said Ben.

  “Yes. I wonder if Dad’s ever seen it.”

  The picture cut out suddenly and the screen turned to flickery greyness.

  “I thought it would be good to show this kind of thing,” said Jack. “To show the continuity of the same family farming it for all that time.”

  “It’s amazing,” said Hannah. “Thank you so much for finding it.”

  “There’s more on that memory stick. And I’ve set the pictures I took on Saturday to music, so they make more of an impact. Anyway, watch it and see what you think.”

  Hannah looked at Lottie. “What do you think? Should we give him one last chance?”

  Lottie narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know. He may have got hold of that film, but he’s still an idiot.”

  “Tell you what,” said Hannah. “You and I will watch it together.” She turned to Jack. “And if it’s really good, and if you absolutely swear that you won’t mess about, then we might let you stay in the team.”

  Jack looked as though he were about to make a sarcastic retort, when the door opened. He closed his laptop.

  “It’s OK,” said Hannah. “It’s only Jonah.”

  “Charming,” said Jonah, walking in and shutting the door. “You won’t be saying, ‘Only Jonah’ when you hear what I’m about to tell you.”

  “Really? What?”

  “This reservoir, yeah? You’re not going to believe it.”

  Hannah made herself focus on Jonah. “Believe what?”

  “You know my dad’s got this mate who’s a local councillor?”

  “Yes, you said something about it.”

  “Well, my dad asked him a while back to find out as much as he could about the reservoir.”

  I bet he did, thought Hannah. Trying to see how he could make money out of it.

  “Anyway, this guy’s a retired engineer and he’s been looking into all the technical stuff. And he rang back this morning and guess what he’s found out?”

  “What?”

  Jonah looked round at the others dramatically. “You are not going to believe this. I was totally gobsmacked when my dad told me. After everything they’ve been saying, and all those photos in their brochure. I’m telling you, when we tell everyone, there is going to be a riot in that hall.”

  The first lesson for 8M on Friday was geography. They were supposed to be reading information in their textbooks about locations for industry. Lottie was bent over her book, the picture of concentration. If you hadn’t known better, you would have taken her for a model student. But Hannah did know better, and Hannah knew that Lottie, like her, was actually reading Aqua’s Draft Water Resources Management Plan.

  They had decided they must read the Aqua brochure properly if they were going to tackle Nick Constable in public. They had also decided the task would be easier to bear if they did it together. Geography was ideal for this, partly because the brochure fitted neatly inside their textbook, and partly because their geography teacher, Miss Purcell, was both lenient and unobservant.

  Hannah looked at the first page. The words swam before her eyes. However many times she tried, it didn’t get any easier to read. As soon as she attempted to focus on the brochure, other thoughts popped into her head.

  “I emailed Nick Constable’s lines to him last night,” she whispered.

  “Oh, great. I’ve nearly finished his costume, too. Just a cloak and hat, since I don’t have his measurements.”

  Hannah shuddered. “Well, no, you wouldn’t want to get that close, would you?”

  “It’s quite fancy, so he’ll feel really important.”

  Hannah snorted. “What, even more important than he feels already?”

  “Girls,” said Miss Purcell, “can we have less talk and more work, please?”

  They went back to the brochures tucked into their textbooks. After a few minutes of silent contemplation, Lottie suddenly started skimming through the pages, running her finger down the columns, a frown knitting her brows.

  “You’re reading fast,” whispered Hannah.

  “I’m not reading, exactly. The way they write this stuff’s so awful, I thought I’d look at the numbers instead. We know they just use words to lie, but maybe it’s harder to lie with numbers. Maybe the numbers will actually tell us something.”

  “Right, class,” said Miss Purcell. “Now that you’ve read the introductory paragraphs, could you all look at the Points for Discussion in the box on page 38? I’d like you to discuss Question 9 in pairs and make a list of at least five points in favour and five against.”

  Lottie turned to the next page of the brochure. “Here we are. Some actual figures at last.”

  She pointed to Paragraph 72. The combination of words and figures seemed, to Hannah, even more intimidating than the paragraphs without figures.

  Maybe if she read it aloud she would be able to understand it better.

  “The dry year annual average per capita consumption of Aqua’s domestic customer base as a whole is forecast to be 166 l/hd/d…” she muttered. “What the heck is that supposed to mean?”

  “I think it means they predict each person in the area will use, on average, 166 litres of water per day in a dry year.”

  Hannah stared at Lottie as though she had just translated the sentence from Ancient Greek.

  “How on earth did you work that out?”

  “It’s not hard, really. You just need to use your brain a bit.”

  “But what’s all that l/hd/d stuff?”

  “Litres per head per day, I think.”

  Hannah gazed at Lottie in awe.

  “You just have to work out the abbreviations,” said Lottie. “It’s really not that difficult.”

  “Not if you’re a genius.”

  “I’m not a genius. I just try to work things out.”

  Hannah tried to do the same, but she couldn’t tune out Miranda’s voice from across the aisle, discussing Christmas plans loudly with Emily. Hannah always found the build-up to Christmas difficult. There was nothing more guaranteed to make you feel the lack of a mother than Christmas.

  “So because we’re going to the Seychelles for Christmas and New Year, we’re going to have our Christmas party on the first Saturday of the holidays,” Miranda was saying. “Can you come? It’s going to be the best ever.”

  “Well, we’re not going away for Christmas,” said Emily, “so I’m sure—”

  “You have to come in costume. We’re doing a Victorian theme. Oh, and also you need to bring a piece to perform. It’s going to be exactly like a real Victorian Christmas.” She caught Hannah’s eye across the aisle and put on her sweetest voice. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Hannah. I mean, I’d love to invite you, but I can’t have everybody, you see.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be able to come anyway,” said Hannah airily. “I’ll be frantically busy with the Tudor banquet we’re giving.”

  Miranda gave her a suspicious look.

  “Oh, didn’t I mention it?” said Hannah. “I’m so sorry I can’t invite you, but we only have room f
or our five hundred closest friends. We’re roasting ten pigs and seven oxen. My dad’s dressing up as Henry VIII. I’m going to be Elizabeth I, and guess what? I’m going to be wearing the actual Crown Jewels. My dad has a friend who works at the Tower of London and he said I can borrow them. He says no one will notice if he puts them back the next day.”

  Emily smiled.

  Miranda gave Hannah a sour look. “Ha ha, very funny.”

  “Girls, there seems to be a lot of talking over there,” said Miss Purcell. “I hope it’s all about the question.”

  Hannah turned back to her desk. Lottie was scribbling down numbers in the back of her exercise book.

  “Anything useful?”

  Lottie frowned. “They’re trying to hide the figures,” she murmured. “They stick them right at the back in little tables and they make them look as dull as they possibly can.”

  “Well, they’ve done a great job.”

  “But if they’re trying to hide them, then maybe that means they’ve got something to hide.”

  Miranda leaned across the aisle. “Oh, by the way, Charlotte?”

  Lottie didn’t look up. “What?”

  “I’ve brought in a couple of my costumes for Romeo and Juliet. They might give you an idea of the sort of standard you’ll need to aim for, if you want to be a costume designer.”

  Lottie remained hunched over the brochure.

  “My mum’s friend who runs the hire company was saying it’s so hard to get into professional costume design. Hardly anyone makes it. Apparently, most of the people on her course are working as shop assistants now. If they’ve got a job at all.”

  Lottie grabbed her calculator and started stabbing buttons. Hannah envied her ability to shut out Miranda’s voice.

  “Anyway,” said Miranda, apparently talking to Emily, but in a voice clearly meant to be heard by Hannah, “Mum says even though the house play’s going to be rubbish, at least my acting will stand out. She says it’s a great opportunity to get noticed by a top professional. The judge will probably pass my name on to agents for film roles, you see.”

  A spark lit up in Hannah’s brain. She turned to Lottie, who was frowning over her page of figures.