The fox has stopped screaming now; her eyes are glazed. I think she must be almost spent, her spirit fading fast. Tears sting my eyes and I don’t care any more whether boys are supposed to cry. I want to help, but I think we’re too late.
This was not the way I wanted my new year to start.
I reach out, fingers shaking, but the minute I touch the fox’s leg she jerks and yelps, convulsing with pain, and this just pulls the snare tighter than ever. I can barely see the wire at all now; it is hidden by matted fur and clotted blood.
‘The peg,’ Coco whispers. ‘Dig up the wooden peg!’
I kneel up straighter. Coco is right – if we can dig up the peg anchoring the snare to the ground, the pressure will ease. Perhaps then we can pick up the fox and bring her to safety.
I start scraping at the snow with my bare hands, but the ground beneath is half frozen and my fingers are like blocks of ice. Coco joins in, but it’s only when Sheba begins to dig – gleeful, enthusiastic – that we make some progress. The skinny dog’s paws scrabble frantically at the hard ground, sending showers of snow and soil flying. It’s as if she knows what we need her to do, and she works steadily, scratching, scraping, until the wooden peg is exposed enough to loosen and, finally, pull up.
‘Yessss!’ I breathe, but when I look at the fox again I see that her eyes are half closed now in the moonlight, her lips drawn back from her teeth in a terrible rictus grin.
‘She’s still alive,’ Coco whispers. ‘Just. We have to try, right?’
‘Right.’
I take off my coat – a thick woollen jacket – and spread it out on the snow. Moving as quickly and gently as I can, I scoop up the fox and wrap her in the jacket, tucking the trailing wire and wooden peg in too. When I take my hands away they are sticky with blood, stinking of fox. I lift up the whole bundle in my arms. The fox whimpers, but it’s a tiny sound, a whisper.
‘Let’s go,’ I say. ‘We need to find the road, and fast. Before it’s too late …’
Coco frowns. ‘I don’t know for sure, but if we veer to the left, I think we’ll hit the road eventually. And it’ll be easier to walk once we’re out of the woods.’
At last the trees thin out again and the snow-covered lane comes into view. I am beyond frozen by then; my body shaking, my feet numb with cold. My arms ache from carrying the fox bundle and I don’t know how much further I can go.
‘OK,’ Coco says as we stand in the road in the swirling snow. ‘We’ve come out on the main road; we must have gone further than I thought. It’s quite a way back to Tanglewood from here, but if we go in the other direction …’
‘The other direction?’
‘It’s a risk, because she might not even be here,’ Coco is saying. ‘She might be away for New Year, visiting family or something, but maybe – just maybe – we’ll be in luck. There’s a vet who lives along this way, and she’s really nice: Sharon Denny. I did some work experience with her back in the summer, just for a couple of days, and she was really cool. Her surgery is in Minehead, but still, she might know what to do, who to call …’
‘Is it far?’
‘Not far,’ Coco promises. ‘We can do it. Keep going!’
We trudge on through the silent dark and finally a cottage looms out of nowhere, a small sandstone place with fairy lights twinkling in the window and a holly wreath hanging on the red-painted door. A silver four-by-four sits in the driveway, muffled beneath a thick layer of snow.
‘Let’s hope that means she’s home,’ Coco says.
She leans on the doorbell and the buzz of it crackles out into the night.
7
Sharon Denny takes it all in her stride, as if half-frozen teenagers accompanied by dogs and foxes turn up on her doorstep regularly in the middle of a New Year blizzard. Well, maybe they do.
‘Coco,’ she says, rubbing her eyes, sleepily. ‘What the …?’
‘Please help us,’ Coco says. ‘This is my friend Lawrie, and it’s a long story, but we were lost in the woods and we found a fox. She was caught in a snare …’
‘Show me,’ the vet says.
I lay my coat on the kitchen floor and open it to reveal the mangled russet-red body inside. For a moment I am sure the fox is dead, and then she writhes and jerks and thrashes, and relief floods through me because this means she still has a chance.
‘OK,’ the vet says. ‘We are very, very lucky that the snare just caught her leg. Often it’s the belly or the neck …’
She reaches for a leather bag and takes out a syringe, a bottle.
‘I’m going to sedate her a little so I can check her properly and stop the bleeding …’
The needle slips into matted fur and the fox slumps abruptly. She’s not giving up the fight but relaxing, allowing us to fight for her; the vet is looking at the damaged leg now, cleaning it up, stemming the blood.
‘I thought snares were illegal,’ I say.
‘Not illegal,’ Coco tells me. ‘They should be, though. And I’ve never seen an animal caught in one before …’
It could have been Sheba, I think. It could even have been a child.
‘I’ve seen it a few times, sadly,’ Sharon says. ‘Where did you find her? Some of the local farmers use snares to keep the fox population down. It’s not something I approve of, but it happens.’
‘Not Joe Wallace,’ Coco says. ‘He farms the land next to Tanglewood. He wouldn’t do this …’
‘Not Joe,’ Sharon agrees. ‘But some of the others; they see foxes as vermin. I don’t, but we have a bit of a dilemma here. She’s clearly been in that snare for a while. She’s lost a lot of blood and tried to bite through her leg to get free … I don’t think we can save that leg. And a three-legged fox is not going to survive in the wild, Coco. I’m sorry.’
‘She has to survive!’ Coco argues. ‘You have to help her! Please?’
The vet sighs. ‘Sometimes, an injection that lets the injured animal slip away quietly is the best and kindest thing you can do,’ she explains. ‘Wild animals live a very harsh life out there; red in tooth and claw, as they say. She can’t go back into the wild; she’d never survive with this kind of disability … You have to think of the animal.’
‘But foxes are dogs, really, aren’t they?’ I argue. ‘Just wilder. Surely she could be tamed? Live alongside people? We can’t just let her go. I’ve carried her for miles through the snow …’
‘I know you have,’ the vet says. ‘You’ve done all you could to help her, but what about her future? Even if you tried to keep her as a pet, she’d never really be reliably tame. It would be a huge challenge …’
‘Please save her,’ I say, and my voice sounds choked up and shaky and I don’t even care. ‘Please?’
‘Are you sure?’ the woman asks again. ‘You can give her a home? Quality of life?’
I want to slam my fist against the wall, yell and swear and smash things. How can I give an injured fox a home when my family doesn’t have a home of our own to begin with?
‘I can,’ Coco cuts in. ‘Mum and Paddy won’t mind; you know they won’t. And they’d pay for the operation or whatever treatment she needs. We can convert one of the stables, make an outdoor run … She’ll be safe. Please, Sharon? Please?’
The vet rolls her eyes. ‘I must be crazy,’ she says. ‘Whatever. I’ll do my best to save her, I promise you, but I think she’ll lose the leg: that doesn’t look good at all. Don’t worry, OK? You’re good kids … there ought to be more like you.’
Things happen fast after that. A call is made to the emergency vet in Minehead, and Sharon Denny says that she’ll drive the fox straight there so that the leg can be ope
rated on at once.
‘No charge,’ she says, shaking her head as she shrugs on a jacket and drags a comb through her hair. ‘Let’s just call it me getting in my good deed for the year early …’
8
Later on New Year’s Day, we walk down to the beach beside Tanglewood, the whole gang of us; the Tanberry-Costello girls, Jasmine and me. We bring the paper snowflakes from the party, each one carrying wishes and dreams, and throw them on to the turning tide to be carried out to sea.
I have added a new wish: for the injured fox to survive and, somehow, stay with us.
‘I don’t believe in wishes,’ I say gruffly, watching the white snowflake shapes drifting out to sea, being tugged under by the current.
‘You don’t have to believe,’ Coco says. ‘Not with your mind, anyway. It’s what your heart believes that matters.’
I roll my eyes and shake my head, but still, I can’t stop smiling. I am on the beach on New Year’s Day with the girl I like best in the whole wide world. So what if we live at different ends of the country? I don’t care any more, and I don’t think Coco does either. We understand each other; I think we always will.
It turns out that Coco is right too. Mum, Jas and I have wished for difficult things, unlikely things, impossible things: a home of our own, a steady job, a new school with friends, a three-legged fox. And it turns out that these things are not impossible after all.
‘There’s something we wanted to ask you,’ Paddy says to Mum as we sit down later that day to a New Year feast. ‘It’s a big thing, and it may not be what you want at all, but we have to ask …’
‘It’s part of the reason we asked you down to the party,’ Charlotte adds. ‘I mean, no pressure, Sandy, it was just something we’ve been thinking about and it may not be right for you …’
‘What?’ Mum asks. ‘What did you want to ask?’
Paddy rakes a hand through his hair.
‘The business is in profit, and we want to take on a full-time office manager,’ he explains. ‘Someone organized; someone who works well under pressure and has a flair for the publicity and press side of things too. Sandy, we’ve had other part-time workers over the last year or so, but nobody has been as good as you … We wanted to ask you first, before we put the vacancy out there. There really is nobody we’d rather have on board.’
Mum’s eyes widen. I can see she’s having a hard time making sense of Paddy’s offer. ‘Work for you?’ she echoes. ‘Here? At the Chocolate Box? Oh … you know I’d love to … I enjoyed every minute. It was my dream job, and I felt like I really was making a difference. But – I don’t see how?’
Charlotte and Paddy start talking details then, including a salary that knocks the wages Mum has been earning in Kendal into the shadows.
‘It would be official,’ Paddy explains. ‘Nothing temporary or cash-in-hand. You’d have security …’
‘But where would we live?’
Charlotte shrugs. ‘There are a couple of properties for rent in the village just now,’ she says. ‘I’d say you could pick and choose …’
Mum is looking overwhelmed. ‘I have to admit, being back in Somerset has got me thinking. I loved it here – we all did – to begin with anyway. And then that whole thing with James spoiled it and sent us running back to Kendal. I have sometimes wondered if that was the right move; if we couldn’t have found a way to stay …’
‘Think about it,’ Charlotte says. ‘It’s a big thing, I know …’
Mum laughs. ‘It’s too good to be true! I’d have to check … look into things … see what the kids think …’
‘We think you should do it,’ I say, glancing at Jasmine’s shining face. ‘It’s a steady job, isn’t it? Doing something you love.’
‘But the upheaval!’ she protests. ‘Moving to the other end of the country again! Disrupting your schooling, you and Jasmine …’
‘I don’t care,’ I shrug.
‘Jasmine?’ Mum asks. ‘What do you think?’
My little sister looks like she might explode with happiness. A move away from the school where she is being picked on, a fresh start in a small village school, with Alfie’s sisters already halfway to being good friends … and living just down the lane from her pony Caramel? Jasmine’s eyes are wide with hope.
‘Say yes, Mum,’ she whispers. ‘Please, please, say yes!’
The wishes come true, one after another. A job, a house, a future … and a three-legged fox.
Three days later, Coco and I are on the bus coming back from Minehead, where we’ve been to see the fox, now named Bracken after the patch of undergrowth we found her in. She lost the damaged leg, but she is recovering well from her surgery in the wild animal wing of the vet hospital.
Sharon Denny has agreed to come and talk to Paddy and Charlotte about converting the stable and looking after a wild animal; it looks like Bracken really will get a new lease of life. And once Mum, Jas and I have settled into our new cottage, maybe Bracken can come to live with us? Who knows. She’ll never be a pet like a dog or a cat, but in time a bond of sorts could perhaps be made.
When I looked at her amber eyes, clear and shining, in the vet hospital today, I was pretty sure that bond was already forming.
‘She’s going to be OK,’ Coco says to me, reading my mind. ‘Bracken, I mean. We’ll look after her for you until you move back and settle in … and then maybe we can build a run for her at your new place and she can be with you.’
‘Hope so,’ I say. ‘If we can just find a cottage with a fox run attached … that’d be cool!’
Today should be Mum’s first day back at work, but she rang to tell them she was stuck in Somerset due to heavy snowfall. Later today, we’ll be looking at some places to live in the village and making a decision; it will be based on which of the landlords will accept animals. I don’t think we will mention that one of the animals in question is a three-legged fox.
Tomorrow we will drive back to Kendal so Mum can give in her notice and work her last few weeks. We’ll pack our stuff and say our goodbyes and move into our new home in February, if all goes well.
The bus stops in Kitnor High Street and we jump off, our boots crunching through snow as we walk up the lane to Tanglewood hand in hand. I remember the day I said goodbye to Coco last time around, sitting together in the big oak tree. I remember leaning across to kiss her, and how the kiss had just startled and scared her, and how we’d agreed to be best friends forever.
If I tried again now, it might be the same; but maybe, just maybe, it would be different?
We stop at the end of the drive and I turn Coco round, holding her hands tight. ‘This has been the best New Year ever,’ I tell her. ‘The best.’
And before I can lean over to kiss her, Coco stands up on her tiptoes and flings her arms round me, her lips pressing softly against mine. Her lips are warm and taste faintly of chocolate, and we bump noses and Coco laughs, but it is still the best and most perfect kiss in the world.
‘Sorry,’ she says, grinning, when we come up for air. ‘I guess we can practise …’
‘I guess we can …’
So yeah … New Year’s wishes. Maybe I’d better start believing in them after all because it looks like they believe in me.
The snow keeps falling, softly swirling, as we walk on up to Tanglewood.
Ash has been a bit of a mystery character in Sweet Honey and Fortune Cookie … I just couldn’t resist the opportunity to give him a story of his own and see just what makes him tick! The timing of this story takes place after the book Fortune Cookie … and Ash has some big decisions to make. Will Honey be a part of his future
or not?
1
The night train to Paris is only half full, and I have room to stretch my legs, lean back, dream. My rucksack sits on the seat beside me, looking tatty and worn now after nine months of adventures. I am probably looking tatty and worn myself.
I reach into a side pocket of the rucksack and pull out an orange – an orange picked straight from a tree in a side street on the outskirts of Madrid just a few hours ago. Picking your own oranges right from the tree might be seen as a little bit cheeky as a rule, but this particular tree was in the grounds of the backpackers’ hostel where I’d been staying and I reckoned it was fair game.
I dig a thumb into the thick dimpled skin and begin to peel it away, releasing the sharp, sweet citrus aroma. The minute I bite into the first segment, memories flood my mind – not memories of Madrid, not memories of Spain at all, but of Tanglewood.
I am running out of the sea, the salt water starring my body with droplets of silver. The beach is deserted except for a girl, a long-limbed beautiful girl, fair-haired and laughing as she watches me run up and fling myself down on to the striped picnic blanket. I snake my arms round her and she wriggles free, still laughing.
‘Ash, no! You’re all wet!’
She shoves a towel into my arms and I wipe the water from my skin and drag it over my hair before dropping back on to the blanket to let the sun finish the job of drying me off.
Then I smell citrus and the girl wafts a slice of orange under my nose; I grab it and eat it, letting the sweet juice slide across my tongue. The girl flops down beside me and I turn to look at her just inches away from me on the blanket: her tanned cheeks crusted with golden sand, her blue eyes brighter than the summer sky.
Life is Sweet Page 19
