Sami's Silver Lining

by Cathy Cassidy

  Contents

  1. Lucky

  2. Lost & Found

  3. Someone Else’s Girl

  4. Auditions

  5. The Leaping Llama

  6. Stars

  7. Take a Risk

  8. The List

  9. A Day in the Life

  10. The Notebook

  11. Pretty Street

  12. Today Millford, Tomorrow the World

  13. In the Artist’s Studio

  14. The Muse

  15. A Story to Tell

  16. Letting Go

  17. Song for the Sea

  18. Star of the Show

  19. A Work of Art

  20. A Crowded Train

  21. Making the Best of Things

  22. A Message from the Past

  23. A Boat to Spain

  24. The Beach

  25. A Haircut, Maybe

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  About the Book

  The must-have second book in the brilliant Lost and Found series from Cathy Cassidy, bestselling author of the Chocolate Box Girls books.

  Forced to flee his home in Syria for safety in England, Sami attempts to begin a new life but struggles to overcome the pain of the past. Memories of the long and dangerous journey across icy waters, armed with only his dad’s old coat, a flute and the hope of a brighter future, are never far away.

  Can his new friends in the Lost & Found band and a blossoming romance with the girl of his dreams melt his frozen heart, or is it too late to find a silver lining?

  About the Author

  Cathy Cassidy wrote her first picture book for her little brother when she was eight or nine and has been writing fabulous stories ever since.

  Cathy is the bestselling author of Dizzy, Driftwood, Indigo Blue, Scarlett, Sundae Girl, Lucky Star, GingerSnaps, Looking-Glass Girl, Broken Heart Club, the Chocolate Box Girls series (including Cherry Crush, Marshmallow Skye, Summer's Dream, Coco Caramel, Sweet Honey, Fortune Cookie and Life is Sweet), and Love From Lexie, the first instalment in the Lost and Found series.

  Cathy lives in Merseyside with her family, and of all the many jobs she's had she loves writing best – it’s the perfect excuse to daydream, after all!

  For all the latest on this bestselling author go to www.cathycassidy.com

  Hiya!

  Welcome to the second book in my Lost & Found series, all about refugee Sami who is still struggling to get to grips with the trauma of his journey from Syria, as well as life in the UK. With the long summer holidays stretching before them, the band see m to be losing their spark – and when Sami finds himself falling for fellow band member Lexie it feels like one complication too many. Can Sami build a new life for himself in Millford, or are his feelings on ice for good?

  The refugee crisis is perhaps the biggest human tragedy of our time, and this book is my attempt to raise awareness by telling just one of its many stories. Sami’s Silver Lining is an emotional book, but I think you’ll love it! Switch off your phone, curl up and start reading … and remember that no matter how tough things may get, there is always, always a silver lining to be found.

  Books by Cathy Cassidy

  Lost & Found

  LOVE FROM LEXIE

  SAMI’S SILVER LINING

  The Chocolate Box Girls

  CHERRY CRUSH

  MARSHMALLOW SKYE

  SUMMER’S DREAM

  COCO CARAMEL

  SWEET HONEY

  FORTUNE COOKIE

  LIFE IS SWEET

  BITTERSWEET: SHAY’S STORY

  CHOCOLATES AND FLOWERS: ALFIE’S STORY

  HOPES AND DREAMS: JODIE’S STORY

  MOON AND STARS: FINCH’S STORY

  SNOWFLAKES AND WISHES: LAWRIE’S STORY

  THE CHOCOLATE BOX SECRETS

  ANGEL CAKE

  BROKEN HEART CLUB

  DIZZY

  DRIFTWOOD

  INDIGO BLUE

  GINGERSNAPS

  LOOKING-GLASS GIRL

  LUCKY STAR

  SCARLETT

  SUNDAE GIRL

  LETTERS TO CATHY

  For younger readers

  SHINE ON, DAIZY STAR

  DAIZY STAR AND THE PINK GUITAR

  STRIKE A POSE, DAIZY STAR

  DAIZY STAR, OOH LA LA!

  The sun rises slowly over the island in a blur of red and gold – I think it will be the last thing I ever see.

  My breathing is raw, ragged, and I’m struggling to keep my head above the crashing waves. I think that I have swallowed half the Aegean Sea, that I might as well stop fighting, give in to it, let myself sink down beneath the surface and die.

  I am cold, so cold my limbs feel like ice, and the salt that crusts my lips feels like frost. The island looks closer now, but it might as well be a million miles away because I have no more fight left in me – I have nothing at all. Another wave lifts me and carries me forward, leaving me face down in the shallows. My hands claw at wet, gritty sand, and I lie exhausted, frozen, gasping for air.

  All is lost.

  1

  Lucky

  They say I am lucky, the luckiest boy alive. They say that I must be brave and strong to have survived the hardships life has thrown at me, that I have been given a chance for a new beginning and must grab that chance with both hands.

  I am lucky, lucky, lucky … or so they tell me.

  I didn’t choose any of this, and new beginnings feel empty and hollow when you have nobody to share them with.

  Well, I have my aunt, my uncle and two grown-up cousins I’ve barely met. But although they have opened their arms and their hearts to me, I cannot do the same. I cannot let myself care any more, because I am not as strong as people think. I am broken, useless, like a piece of damaged pottery that looks whole but can never be the same again. I look OK on the outside, but inside I am flawed, fractured.

  I am not what people think.

  I am a fifteen-year-old boy held together with glue and good luck. There will come a time when my luck runs out, and I will fall apart. The world will see that I was damaged and hurting all along, and perhaps people will understand me a little better. Of course, it will be too late by then.

  Sometimes I wish that we had never left Syria, even though our city was a war zone, and everyone an enemy. The government my father and mother once respected had turned against the people, and rebels took to the streets to fight back. Then came the extremists, like vultures feeding on carrion, bringing harsh new laws that dragged us all back to the dark ages. We prayed for the west to help us, but when help arrived it came in the form of western bombs that rained down from the skies and destroyed what was left of the place I once called home.

  Sometimes I wish that we had stayed in the refugee camp, even though we were crammed three families to a tent, each tent so close they were almost touching. So close that sickness spread faster than wildfire.

  I wish we hadn’t taken passage on that boat to Kos, but my father said it would be one step closer to Britain, where my mother’s brother lived. Uncle Dara and Aunt Zenna would give us shelter. Sometimes I wish I had stopped fighting then and sunk beneath the waves of the Aegean Sea, the way my father, my mother and my sister did.

  I was the lucky one.

  I swallowed down my grief, carried it inside me, but it was like a parasite that gnawed away at everything that was good. Eventually I got to the mainland and joined a long line of people who were walking across Europe. I walked until the soles of my boots were worn away, until I had gathered a group of kids around me, who like me were travelling alone. We stuck together because it was safer that way, but still we faced danger every day. We grew tough and cynical and ruthless, and we cried silently at night for all that we had
lost. At a camp on the Italian border, charity workers tried to find us places to live. I told them I had family in Britain, and after a long wait they managed to trace my uncle and aunt and get me added to the last consignment of unaccompanied refugee minors to be allowed into the UK.

  All I knew of my aunt and uncle were the stories my parents had told and a vague idea that they ran a tailor’s shop in London. In fact, they didn’t live in London at all, and the tailor’s shop was actually a dry-cleaner’s, but the charity that was helping me back then tracked them down anyway.

  I remember the first time I saw Uncle Dara and Aunt Zenna, standing on the pavement outside the shop to welcome me, the nephew they hadn’t even known they had. They were older than my parents, but Dara had a look of my mother all the same: dark wavy hair, stern brows, eyes that glinted with the promise of mischief.

  ‘My little sister Yasmine’s boy!’ my uncle said, anguished. ‘After all this time, how can it be? You are welcome here, Sami. We are family, yes?’ He threw his arms around me and I felt the dampness of his tears against my cheek.

  I was safe.

  I was lucky.

  I was home.

  2

  Lost & Found

  I live in Millford now, a small town in the English Midlands. Uncle Dara and Aunt Zenna run a small shop that does dry-cleaning and alterations, with a workshop and a flat above. I sleep in the room that belonged to my cousin Taz before he left home to work in London. My cousin Faizah’s old room lies empty; she is married with a little boy now, and lives in Birmingham. The third bedroom belongs to my aunt and uncle.

  There is no roof garden and no warm breeze that smells of jasmine – just a fire escape, a rusting metal staircase with ancient, warped railings, bolted to the back of the building. It has a view of the skip behind the charity shop next door and the orange glow of street lights hides the stars, but still, I like to sit here, playing the flute or reading a library book. The fire escape rattles in the wind and shudders a little when you climb it, but it is still my favourite place in Millford.

  School, by contrast, is my least favourite place.

  I was always going to stick out, a tall, skinny kid with black hair like a bird’s nest and a worn, threadbare tweed overcoat.

  ‘Welcome to Millford Park Academy,’ Mr Simpson, the head teacher, had said on my first day. ‘We are pleased to have you, Samir. I hope that in time you will come to feel at home here.’

  At home? Really? I forced a smile. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  The head teacher frowned. ‘The overcoat will have to go, though,’ he said. ‘We have a strict uniform policy here, and that coat is … well, it’s not part of our dress code.’

  I shook my head. I was grateful to the head teacher for allowing me to continue my education after the nightmare of the past few years, but I was not willing to part with the coat. It had been with me for most of my journey across Europe; it meant more to me than I could ever put into words.

  ‘The coat, I will keep,’ I said slowly and carefully.

  ‘I think perhaps I’d better speak to your social worker,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Go along to class now. We can sort out the coat issue later.’

  My social worker, Ben, came into school and talked to Mr Simpson, and the ‘coat issue’ was sorted. No teacher ever asked me to take the coat off after that, not even in PE lessons. They raised an eyebrow occasionally, or frowned at the coat, or sighed in a long-suffering kind of way, but they never spoke of it again.

  The kids at Millford Park were not as polite, of course.

  ‘What’s with the coat?’ they asked.

  ‘Bet it stinks! Look at it – filthy!’

  ‘Looks like someone died in it.’

  ‘Miss, Miss, how come Samir is allowed to wear his coat in class and I’m not allowed to wear my studded belt? ’S not fair!’

  I kept my head down through it all. My English was OK, and getting better all the time, but it seemed safer to stay silent.

  ‘Your teachers say you’re not talking, not integrating,’ Mr Simpson said to me, a few weeks later. ‘It must be hard for you, Samir, we understand that, but you must make an effort. You have to try.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I replied. ‘I will try.’

  The head teacher looked pleased. ‘That’s the spirit,’ he said.

  He meant well, but Mr Simpson had no idea what it felt like to be me. I was barely holding myself together back then, and making an effort to fit in was not high on my agenda. Besides, I don’t think any amount of trying would have made much difference.

  The kids in my year asked awkward questions. Most were just curious or concerned or kind, but some said things that were cruel and shocking, words so sharp that they made my head rage, my heart ache.

  One day, a couple of months in, I was in the school lunch hall, half-heartedly picking at the packed lunch my Aunt Zenna had made for me. I’d chosen an empty table, but there were primary school kids visiting that day and they’d taken over three big tables, shrieking and laughing while their teachers looked on fondly. I tried to remember myself at that age, a bright-eyed kid without a care in the world, but I couldn’t dredge up anything at all. The memories had gone, like smoke in the wind.

  The lunch hall was full to bursting and a bunch of kids from my year were scanning the room for seats. They spotted me, alone in the corner, and swarmed around me, filling the table with plates of salty chips and pizza and salad, bowls of chocolate pudding and custard.

  ‘All right, Sami,’ one of the boys said, a kid from my English class who never went anywhere without a guitar slung across his back. Marley Hayes, his name was.

  I nodded in acknowledgement, then dropped my eyes to the table again. I wondered how long I should wait before getting up and walking away, wondered what length of time would be enough to stop me seeming rude, impolite.

  ‘Not that friendly, is he?’ another boy said, a red-haired kid with a cold, hard stare.

  ‘Probably doesn’t understand English,’ one of the girls chipped in. ‘It’s so sad, what he must have been through.’

  ‘Sad?’ the red-haired kid echoed, scowling at me. ‘Don’t be fooled. He can’t be trusted – look at him, watching, waiting. I’m on to you, mate, OK? I know your game.’

  The hairs on the back of my neck prickled, and I pulled my chair back from the table, put the lid on my lunch box. Time to go.

  ‘What is his game?’ Marley asked the scowly kid, frowning. ‘Why don’t you tell me, Rory? What’s he ever done to you?’

  The boy sighed and shook his head. ‘Obvious, innit?’ he snarled. ‘It’s not what he’s done – it’s what he might do. He might be one of them extremist types.’

  I flinched at the word, and he pushed his face right up against mine, so close I could smell cheese-and-onion crisps and bad breath and cruelty.

  ‘Am I right?’ he asked, so close that a fleck of warm spittle landed on my cheek. ‘Are you a terrorist?’

  I wished that I had no English, that I didn’t understand, but I did. I understood all too well.

  It seemed I would always be seen as an outsider, a threat, a danger, no matter how far that might be from the truth. I stood up, shaking, pulled my backpack on to one shoulder.

  ‘What’s up?’ the boy spat. ‘Got nothin’ to say?’

  I looked up, saw the hate in his eyes and wondered what I’d done to deserve it, wondered if he’d ever know how far off the mark he really was, or if he’d even care.

  Then I saw Marley Hayes launch himself at the red-haired boy. A fist grazed his jaw with a crunching sound, then Marley grabbed his hair and pushed his face into a dish of chocolate pudding and custard.

  ‘You’re a loser, Rory,’ Marley said. ‘A nasty, twisted little loser. Seriously, you are.’

  The school lunch hall was silent, dozens of primary kids wide-eyed at the spectacle. One little girl with pigtails burst into noisy tears, and a teacher leaned in to comfort her. Mr Simpson slammed through the double doors, stomping to a
halt beside our table.

  ‘You again, Hayes,’ he snapped, glaring at Marley. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

  The red-headed kid wiped the custard from his face and he and Marley Hayes followed the head teacher from the hall.

  That was the first time I had anything to do with Marley Hayes.

  A few months later, I was playing my flute in the music room at school one lunchtime, alone and lost in the music. The flute was the one possession I’d carried all the way across Europe, the one thing that hadn’t been lost to the Aegean Sea. Its plastic case had protected it from the worst ravages of the salt water, and my aunt and uncle paid for it to be restored. Playing it was the one sure way of finding peace in the madness of a British secondary school, of keeping the past at bay. When I stopped, there was Marley Hayes, leaning in the doorway, doing a slow hand clap.

  ‘Sami, you’re actually a freakin’ flute genius,’ he said, one eyebrow raised. ‘Who knew? Did you play back home in Syria?’

  ‘A bit,’ I said.

  ‘I know a girl who’s starting a band,’ Marley said to me. ‘They probably need a flute player. You in?’

  ‘Um, dunno … maybe …’

  It was the last thing I wanted to do, but Marley Hayes dragged me along to audition for a band called the Lost & Found. I must have passed the audition because suddenly I had something to do with my spare time, a place to go, people to hang out with. I had friends, sort of, and a chance to deaden the pain with music.

  I have Marley Hayes to thank for all of that.

  3

  Someone Else’s Girl

  I guess you could say that the Lost & Found rescued me. Suddenly, I had a bunch of new friends and a chance to play the flute without worrying about whether it would annoy my aunt and uncle. I was part of something. Rehearsals were chaotic, as we worked out how to pull things together, find a style with our original songs. Marley provided a basic melody and a girl called Lexie Lawlor wrote the lyrics, and the rest of us worked out how to fit in around it all, mostly by trial and error.