by Lily Graham
He touched her arm. ‘We can do this, if you like, celebrate just the two of us.’
She smiled, her black mood lifting somewhat. He was right, surely it was more special if it was just the two of them?
‘I didn’t bring your present though,’ she said, biting her lip.
He shrugged. ‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘Did you try your father this time?’ she asked. ‘I thought maybe if you asked him—’
Jack shook his head. ‘He wouldn’t agree, not if it meant a fight with my mother.’
She nodded. She’d known it was a long shot right from the start. Just being friends with Jack was hard enough; it was only in the last few months that he’d started taking more chances to see her, like they were doing now. She supposed boys were different. She would have risked – had already risked – several arguments and fights about Jack with Evie and her aunts just so she could see more of him.
They used to speak every day after school; Emma used to hang back especially just so they could. But Janet Allen had put a stop to that a few months ago, when she saw the two of them laughing outside the school gates. She stopped her car so abruptly it left a trail of dust, and jumped out, leaving the door open in her haste. A few people around them gasped, some laughed, as Mrs Allen slipped in her heels as she marched across the cobbles towards her and Jack.
She shoved a finger under Emma’s nose. ‘Stay away from my son!’ she roared. Emma jumped back in shock.
‘Mam!’ protested Jack. ‘We were just talking – calm down.’
‘Calm down? Calm down! Get in the car this instant Jack Robert Allen, how dare you embarrass our family like this,’ she said, wrestling him towards the car. Jack tried to pull his arm away. ‘You’re the one being embarrassing,’ he hissed, his face red with shame.
But Mrs Allen’s grip was vice-like and she shoved him into the car. Seconds later they’d sped off, and Emma had been left alone and mortified, with the sound in her ears of dozens of her schoolmates whispering and laughing at her.
After that, Jack had avoided her for a week, to her hurt and dismay. Till he passed her a note in the corridor, telling her to meet him by the abandoned farmhouse after school.
‘I’m sorry about what happened,’ he said when they met. ‘And for not speaking to you. It’s my mother – she’s become impossible, she said that if she caught me talking to you again, I’d be grounded for a year. I’ve tried to explain that you’re different. I mean, you don’t even really believe in any of that nonsense about your cottage and the food your family make, do you?’ he asked.
It was one of the first times they’d ever spoken about it – so directly, anyway.
Emma felt her throat constrict. She’d always played it down around Jack. She hadn’t really known that he had thought it was all nonsense until now.
‘Um, no, not really,’ she said, ignoring the small part of herself that was screaming, ‘Liar!’ inside.
‘Exactly – well, that’s what I told her, but she won’t hear it.’
Since then they’d met every few days for a long walk after school. Now that Mrs Allen was sure that he wasn’t speaking to her, she’d stopped coming to fetch him, which was a relief for Jack, who’d found the situation embarrassing. ‘I mean, no one else gets fetched.’
Emma could well understand his mortification. She was that glad though that he thought their friendship was important enough to him that he had arranged a way for them to still keep it – even if it had to happen in secret. It was better than the alternative.
As they walked home now though, six months later, Emma thought of the weekend approaching, when, she, as usual, would be the only one in her year not going to Jack’s birthday party. She couldn’t help but wish that it was different.
Jack was moaning about how he would have given anything not to have Stella Lea come. ‘She’s always whining – it drives me mad, but no, “The Leas and Allens have always been friends”,’ he said, imitating his mother’s voice. ‘So, she’s coming, of course.’
Emma shook her head. It wasn’t fair – why did Stella Lea get to go and not her?
* * *
Emma’s attitude towards The Book began to change after she and Jack began to spend more time together. Evie noticed the change when Emma started to come home late, with no explanation of where she’d been, smelling of fresh earth and heather, her face guarded, her tone terse, monosyllabic when questioned.
Perhaps, thought Evie, it was the way Emma’s eyes averted when she saw The Book, or the way that just for a moment they would flash with resentment when she was asked to help with a recipe, where before they would have sparkled at the thought of helping someone.
Evie blamed the spate of near-miss recipes that season. It could happen sometimes, like an unseasonal rainfall. When John Pendle came for a recipe to help his farm flourish, his crop got blight. When Katie Harvey wanted to win the harvest pageant, she came down with measles. Many more would occur before that spring, and soon, Evie saw the doubt begin to creep into Emma’s eyes; noted in fear the way Emma began to tally each one up, a grim satisfaction upon her lips as if it explained something deeper.
That was the year Emma began to resist, and wouldn’t step inside the kitchen for days.
Evie watched as she fought herself, her fingers twitching, her shoulders tensed, until at last she’d light the fire in the old range, and finally allow herself to do what she loved.
Evie saw how each time it took longer and longer for Emma to get back into the kitchen. Her notebook – once so full and minutely observed – lay blank and abandoned for weeks, sometimes months, on end.
‘She’s been spending time with young Jack,’ whispered Dot, one dark, cold November afternoon. Pennywort was dozing with his head on the table as she peeled the carrots for a recipe for Mrs Morton’s bad sight. Aggie shook her head. ‘I saw them myself,’ Dot insisted. ‘It’s like Margaret all over again,’ she went on sadly.
‘Maybe not,’ said Evie. ‘I’ll have to speak to her.’
But it was like trying to stop a train by standing on the tracks.
‘So… you and Jack Allen,’ she began.
‘Yes?’ asked Emma, feeling her face flush as she took a seat across from Pennywort, who laid his head on her arm and promptly closed his eyes again.
‘I hear you’ve become quite good friends.’
Emma looked up. ‘Is that a problem?’
‘No,’ said Evie, as she began to chop an onion. ‘It’s just, well, we can’t help noticing that lately, you haven’t wanted to cook anything and I wondered if Jack—’
‘It doesn’t have anything to do with him.’
Emma looked away; she heard his words inside her head. I told my mother you thought it was rubbish – you do – don’t you?
‘Okay,’ said Evie, in the tone of someone who was looking for more. Emma looked up. ‘Maybe it’s because, well, sometimes they don’t really work anyway.’
Evie nodded. ‘That’s true enough, but then that’s the truth with all things, love. No one succeeds at everything all the time, even this,’ she said, pointing at The Book. ‘Though sometimes things do work, just not the way we think they should.’
Chapter Fourteen
Whistling Village Hall, 2005
* * *
Sixteen-year-old Emma was standing in the back of the hall, in a black and beige dress that inverted like a tulip, her long red hair shining under the amber lights. She stood next to Gretchen, who was dressed in a pantsuit, and Maggie, who was wearing a lacy pink and black dress that stopped at the knee. Jenny was sitting in the corner, absorbed in a novel, as usual, while the rest of them were all watching Jason Thorpe spike the punch from the bottles he’d filched from his parents’ liquor cabinet, which were hidden in a sports bag at his feet.
The town hall had been transformed for the annual winter dance. This year’s theme was Enchanted Forest.
Sculpted willow trees created a canopy overhead that had been covered with fa
iry lights and fake snow.
Emma’s eyes scanned the room and, with a little jolt in her chest, she saw Jack staring back at her from across the dance floor. He was standing next to Stella Lea, who was dressed in a pale blue dress that seemed at odds with her sour expression. He gave her a small smile, and she looked away with a flush.
A slow song came on, and a geeky boy with dark hair who lived in the next village, and was wearing a Superman T-shirt with his formal trousers, came over to ask her to dance.
Emma agreed, despite Gretchen and Maggie’s sniggers; she didn’t quite know how to say no politely. When the song finished, she felt someone touch her shoulder. It was Jack.
‘Let’s go outside,’ he said.
She blinked, surprised, but nodded.
It was freezing outside; she’d left her coat in the hall. He shrugged out of his jacket and gave it to her.
‘Who was that?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘No idea, he just asked me to dance.’
‘So you said yes?’
She grinned at him, and then looked away. They were walking down the cobbled path towards the Brimbles’ store, now closed for the evening. Just the shadowy moon lit their path.
‘Why? Were you jealous?’
He stopped, his face serious. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.
She looked up at him from beneath her lashes. ‘Good.’
Before she knew it, he was leaning over and kissing her. His lips were warm, his breath scented slightly with rum. Her head started to spin and her heart to thrum. She’d waited for so long for this moment.
It was her first ever kiss, and when they finally tore apart to breathe, she thought she might never be this happy ever again.
His breath was warm on her neck. ‘So, that’s what it’s like to kiss Emma Halloway,’ he said with a grin.
She felt her stomach flip as she looked into his eyes. ‘Did you wonder about it?’
He grinned. ‘Always.’
Suddenly a pair of strong hands wrenched her away from Jack. She gasped in horror as she saw Neil Allen, Jack’s father, standing across from them, a stony expression on his face. A face, she realised, that looked so very similar to Jack’s, only older, and far angrier than she’d ever seen Jack look.
‘Dad—’ Jack started, his eyes widening.
His father’s face grew harder still. ‘You’re drunk – I can smell it from here. At least that explains this stupidity. In front of the whole town too.’
Emma’s eyes widened. She could see Janet Allen marching towards them, her face livid. She left behind her Stella Lea, whose mouth, like that of many of her schoolmates, was hanging open at the sight of Jack Allen and Emma Halloway kissing in the moonlight.
‘I’m not drunk,’ protested Jack. ‘Dad, this is ridiculous, Emma and I are friends.’
‘Friends?’ said Mrs Allen, nearing, her eyes snapping to Emma’s, a look of pure loathing on her face, as if being friends with a Halloway was far worse than finding her son drinking. ‘I thought I told you to stay away from my son,’ she said, pushing Emma away from Jack.
‘Mam—’
Suddenly there were thunderous footsteps, and a cold voice behind hissed, ‘Touch my grandchild again, Janet Allen, and I’ll make whatever stupid curse you think we put on your family, seem like a joke,’ growled Evie, her voice low, and deadly.
There were several gasps all around.
Evie’s blue eyes were wide, her dark mantle of shaggy grey hair fairly snapping with electricity and, for just one heart-stopping moment, there wasn’t a person watching who didn’t wonder if the rumours about them were true. Even Emma.
‘Come,’ she said to her granddaughter.
Emma hesitated for just a moment, her eyes meeting Jack’s. How had what until then had been the most special night of her life turned into one of the worst?
* * *
‘I don’t care what you say!’ shouted Emma, later that night. ‘I love him.’
Dot’s eyes were anxious as she tried to intervene. ‘Evie—’
Evie shot her a silencing look. Dot and Aggie had come over quickly when they’d heard the news. Uncle Joe had made himself scarce in the living room, telling them to, ‘Go easy on the child.’
‘You love him?’ she repeated. ‘You’re sixteen, for goodness’ sake.’
‘So?’
‘So, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Evie, is that helpful—’ began Dot.
‘What?’ spluttered Evie, rounding on her sister, her eyes blazing.
‘Come on, love, it’s not like it’s a surprise – we’ve all known she’s felt this way for years,’ said Aggie with a sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose.
Emma looked at her aunt gratefully and dashed away a tear.
Evie sighed, her anger starting to ebb. When Janet Allen had touched Emma, she had looked as if she could have cheerfully murdered her, but suddenly, all the fight seemed to go out of her. ‘Oh lass, he’s an Allen, I just don’t want you to get hurt and I just don’t see how else this is going to end.’
Emma looked up. ‘B-but he feels the same way.’ She looked back down at her feet. ‘I’m sure he does.’
‘Maybe, lass, I’m just not sure that’s going to make such a difference.’
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you!’
‘No, actually I’d very much like to be wrong.’
Emma’s lip wobbled as she turned on her heel, marched upstairs and slammed the door, hoping to drown out Evie’s words with the sound of it shuddering closed.
* * *
When she saw Jack the next day, fear grabbed hold of her heart at the look on his face. It was like a wall had formed in the space between them.
‘I can’t see you any more.’
Emma felt like she’d been plunged into ice.
‘W-what?’ she breathed. ‘Jack, no – we can fight this – fight them!’
He shook his head, wouldn’t look her in the eye. ‘No, we can’t.’
She grabbed his arm. ‘Why – why won’t you even try?’
He looked up, the mask slipping from his face so that she could see the pain his words were costing him. ‘I just can’t, Emma. Maybe things would have been different if Evie hadn’t said what she said – it just made it so much worse, they’re so angry with me. It’s like I’ve betrayed them or something.’ He looked down and whispered, ‘They told me things, things I never knew… that I didn’t want to believe.’
A creeping sort of dread started clawing at her throat. ‘About what?’
‘What your family did to mine…’
Emma’s mouth fell open. ‘But Jack, that was a long time ago, and it’s all rubbish anyway.’
‘Yeah well, they lost everything they had on that “rubbish”. Their whole business. My dad said it took forever for my grandfather to rebuild it, and even now it’s not what it was – and it’s all thanks to what they did. God Emma, I know it’s not your fault but I just wish you hadn’t come from that family.’
* * *
It was three weeks after the dance. Emma, in the twilight garden, cast a furtive glance over her shoulder. There was soil trapped beneath her fingernails. Beneath the squashes, a new token had been planted. The necklace that had once belonged to her mother. Tears coursed down her face, but she was determined; she should have done this years ago. She didn’t have much time before Evie came home. Her fingers left dirt on the well-worn page, the book open to an old recipe called simply Faded Love, a recipe that promised to help a heart learn to forget. Though she had eaten every bite of the intricate dish, which had asked for artichoke hearts and fresh juniper berries, as the weeks passed she realised that it had made no difference at all; all she still felt was heartbroken.
She spent as much time as she could away from the cottage, walking the moors. It was a favourite walk, one where as a child she’d gather wild flowers and herbs; but now she was older, she spent more time, she supposed, gazing inward than out.
She lik
ed to come here, so that she could be alone and think. Sometimes she’d imagine that she owned that old farmhouse, with its broken-down roof and faded blue shutters and doors. Sometimes, she imagined getting as far away from Whistling as she could, going back to London, and away from here where people judged you more on your last name than who you were inside.
It hadn’t been easy going back to school after the winter dance, all the stares, and the rumours. The constant whispering. Stella Lea had taken to calling her a witch again; she mostly just tried to ignore her, as usual. Maggie, Gretchen and Jenny tried their best to shield her from some of her schoolmates’ taunts, but they could offer no real solace for the fact that Jack wasn’t really speaking to her any more. It was this that hurt Emma more than anything else.
Leaving the wild and empty moors, she walked back towards the village, thinking she’d spend some time with Aggie in her studio.
As she walked into the village, her hands trailed over an old poster with a smiling cartoon drawing of a grain of wheat, announcing the harvest festival, now long since past. She saw Harrison Brimble, with his long grey hair and misty eyes, give her a little wave from his store. She passed the new pizza bar that had just opened, the scent of pepperoni and mozzarella cheese wafting thickly on the air, and she saw inside her friend Jenny, sitting next to her brother Ryan, laughing as they ate. Maggie said the owner didn’t check for IDs when serving alcohol, so it was rather popular with her peers. She wondered if she’d ever feel like a normal teenager again. When Jenny looked up, Emma averted her eyes; she didn’t want to have to go and say hello, and pretend to be happy. She headed up the street, past the old clock tower to Aggie’s flat, which was a converted old house of honey-coloured stone, the windows and doors painted in a pale mint green, the garden full of hollyhocks, roses and French lavender. She pressed the buzzer, and went upstairs when Aggie’s voice boomed through the speaker for her to ‘Come up, our lass.’
