She’s gorgeous; if I passed her in the street I’d turn my head to look at her. Any boy would.
‘Hey,’ I say. ‘Long time no see …’
‘Hey,’ she replies. ‘The holidays weren’t the same this year without you.’
I try to grin, but the smile doesn’t get very far. ‘Yeah … I kept thinking I’d have time to pop down for a weekend,’ I say. ‘But it was pretty full-on. Sorry!’
‘It’s OK,’ Skye shrugs. ‘I understand.’
I wish she didn’t understand. I wish she got cross and impatient and bad tempered sometimes. I wish she’d got plainer and grumpier and less stylish in my absence instead of prettier, cuter. I wish I still felt the way I used to feel about her, but the fizz of excitement I used to get when we were together just isn’t there. Can she feel the difference too?
For a whole week, Ellie has blanked my texts and calls. She didn’t turn up at drama group and she hasn’t answered my messages on SpiderWeb. It looks like she really has dumped me. I’ve lost the girl I care about most in the world, all because trying so hard to be the ‘good guy’ has turned me into a cheat and a liar.
‘Call me when you’re single,’ Ellie had said, and I straighten my shoulders at the memory.
Skye is watching me; half shy, half expectant. In the past I’d have kissed her by now, hugged her tight, lifted her up and whirled her around. That enthusiasm has seeped away, invisibly, like air from a punctured tyre. Everything feels flat. I lean in to give Skye the expected hug, but it’s awkward and stiff, like I’m greeting a crusty great-aunt I haven’t seen in a decade and not my girlfriend. Skye smells of lemon shower gel, fresh and familiar. I pull away quickly, flustered and guilty.
‘We should talk,’ I say, biting the bullet. ‘We have … a lot to catch up on …’
‘We do,’ Skye says. ‘Only, tonight might not be the best time for it, what with the Halloween party and all …’
My heart sinks. ‘Halloween party?’ I echo. ‘Right. I totally forgot it was the thirty-first … I’ve had a few things on my mind. Trust us to turn up right in the middle of your celebrations; Mum probably didn’t think … sorry about that.’
‘Not a problem,’ Skye says. ‘We don’t mind, and your mum thought it might be quite good for her colleagues to see Tanglewood at its chaotic best and meet some of the locals. She said it’d give them a taste of the kind of human interest stories they might find if they decide to use us for the series …’
I sigh. My mum is awesome, but she always has an eye on the story.
‘Are you OK with the idea of the reality TV series?’ I ask, and Skye shrugs.
‘Mum and Paddy think it could be good publicity for the Chocolate Box business, but they want to know how it would be handled,’ she admits. ‘They don’t want too much focus on Summer’s problems or what happened to Honey. But apart from that … well, they’re pretty keen. And news travels fast here, so half the village may well turn up to the party later, hoping for their fifteen minutes of fame. Your mum and her friends may think we’re a bit too crazy for TV!’
‘I bet they love it,’ I say. ‘So … we have a party to organize?’
‘We do,’ Skye confirms. ‘Alfie and Shay are coming up later; there’s loads to do … maybe you can be on decorating duties – and bonfire building, of course. And right now, we have ten pumpkins to carve. Mum got a job lot at the supermarket this morning, because they were on special offer!’
I find myself sitting with the sisters around the kitchen table creating pumpkin lanterns while Skye’s mum Charlotte gives Mum, Peter, Adele and Mozz a guided tour of the house, the workshops, the gardens and the beach. Meanwhile, we scoop the orange flesh and seeds out of giant pumpkins; the flesh is chopped and thrown into a huge pan to make soup for later, and the seeds are washed and spread on tea towels to dry for the little kids to string into bracelets and necklaces at the party later. It’s up to us to carve spooky designs into the pumpkin skin. Mine is quite simple – a crescent moon and stars – but the sisters have clearly got this down to a fine art, with swirls and spirals and witches on broomsticks. Honey produces an amazing, intricate cut-out of a slinky cat with a curlicue tail and ‘Happy Halloween’ written in swirly script, before switching tasks and frying up some onions to make a start on the soup.
It’s impossible to stay awkward with the Tanberry sisters mucking around and having a laugh at the kitchen table. The chat is easy and friendly; nobody asks where I’ve been the last few months or questions my sudden reappearance. They just accept me, and the minute I finish one pumpkin I’m given another, and then Shay and Alfie arrive and things escalate from busy to full-on chaos.
We split into two groups. Alfie, Summer, Skye and Honey focus on making food; the list of tasks covers everything from making pumpkin soup to ghostly white chocolate cake and spider web cupcakes, as well as something called Bloodbath Trifle. I am relieved to be roped into the outside group with Shay, Cherry and Coco. We make jam-jar lanterns, looping wire around the jars with pliers and twisting it into hanging loops. Soon we have a crate full of them, each with its own tea light candle, waiting to be lit and hung from the trees at dusk.
Next we build the bonfire, hauling armfuls of driftwood from the beach and mixing it with a couple of broken pallets to create a giant, towering structure at the foot of the garden. Shay sets up some outdoor speakers while the rest of us string fairy lights through the trees.
It doesn’t take long to fall under the spell of Tanglewood again … at least it wouldn’t, if I could just get Ellie out of my mind.
After a while, Charlotte calls us and we crowd around the kitchen table on mismatched chairs, eating a buffet of pizza, dips and wedges to keep us going until the party starts. I sit beside Skye, but I can’t think of a single thing to say to her.
It sounds as though the negotiations and discussions about the reality TV series are going well, though. Peter, Adele and Mozz are buzzing with questions and ideas, and Charlotte and Paddy chip in brightly with their own suggestions. Mum is making loads of notes and Mozz stops eating at random intervals to take a photograph of Fred the dog, or of the Aga cooker piled high with party food for later, or even the ‘Happy Halloween’ pumpkin Honey’s placed on the kitchen windowsill.
Charlotte turns to me, suddenly, smiling. ‘Jamie …’ she says. ‘We’re a little short on space this weekend – we’ve converted one of the old guest bedrooms into an office for the Chocolate Box business. I was going to put you in a twin room with your mum, but Skye reminded me that the gypsy caravan is free so we’ve got that ready for you.’
‘Best bedroom in the whole of Tanglewood,’ Summer says.
‘Totally,’ Cherry agrees.
Alfie grins. ‘We can do the ghost stories thing like we did the year before last … that was fun!’
‘It can be our hideaway,’ Shay says. ‘We can have a party-within-a-party!’
‘Ignore them,’ Charlotte tells me. ‘Have fun by all means, but don’t let them rope you into any all-night parties! The caravan is your space. Sound OK?’
‘Perfect,’ I say. ‘Thank you!’
I fight the urge to run out to the caravan right now, to flop on the bunk and pull the quilt over my head and hide until tomorrow afternoon. Beside me, Skye looks just as awkward. Can she tell what I’m thinking? How I’m feeling?
I wish I’d had the guts to finish things between us a long time ago. With hindsight, it was the only thing to do … dragging things out had nothing to do with being kind or trying not to hurt Skye’s feelings; it was pure cowardice. I don’t like myself right now, not one bit. I desperately want to end things, get it over and done with, but I can’t ruin the party for everyone by causing a big drama and upsetting Skye. That would be just plain cruel.
‘C’mon, guys,’ Honey is saying. ‘Let’s get ready … I’ve got face paints upstairs! Let’s get this party started!’
I grit my teeth, then catch myself and turn on a grin at the last minute, but Skye sees my gri
mace, and her blue eyes brim with sadness.
6
The party is epic. There is a flurry of last-minute activity; the jam-jar lanterns are hung from the trees, the fairy lights lit, the carved pumpkins positioned around the house and beside the front door. The kitchen table is piled high with quiche and sausage rolls and baked potatoes, and the pumpkin soup is warming on the Aga next to a stack of dishes and spoons.
Paddy and Charlotte have been at the face paints, transforming themselves into white-faced zombies with painted on cuts and shadowed eyes, dressed in white and trailing ‘bloodstained’ bandages. Skye and Summer are both witches, in matching black sixties dresses worn with huge fake eyelashes and black lipstick; Honey is a ghost, in a gauzy white dress with fake bones tied into her hair, and Coco is a black cat with whiskers and fun fur ears. Shay, Alfie and I submit to green face paint and end up as monsters, Frankenstein style, but when the visitors start to arrive my eyes are popping. There are aliens, corpse brides, vampires, wizards, mummies, trolls, goblins, elves, werewolves and every kind of ghost or ghoul or witch imaginable.
A bunch of old-fashioned party games have been set out in what used to be the breakfast room of the B&B, and the place is swarming with little kids bobbing for apples or battling, blindfold, to take a bite from apples that hang on strings from one of the beams. The little ones are high on toffee-apples and monkey nuts, the teens on Coke and cake, the adults on some green-tinged fizzy punch that Paddy has concocted. Seeing all the kids I knew last year again is kind of weird, and I’m relieved when Skye, Summer, Tia, Millie and their friends head out into the dark to gossip and tell spooky stories. At least, left with Alfie Anderson, I feel less out of my depth.
We hover for a while in the living room, where Mum and her colleagues are holding court to the interested villagers. Mum is wearing cat ears and a fake tail from someone’s old dressing up box, but Peter, Adele and Mozz have gone wild with the face paints and painted themselves varying shades of white, grey, blue and green before putting on tattered costumes. They move easily among the locals; chatting, eating, making notes, telling everyone more about the proposed TV show. I think everyone in the village offers to take part … it’s like a ghoulish version of X Factor, with one elderly man dressed in wizard’s robes bursting into song in the middle of the kitchen in the hope of being offered a bit part in the series.
‘Crazy,’ Alfie tells me. ‘If this series happens, the media frenzy could be too much for a sleepy place like Kitnor. First the film last summer, now this … they’ll be setting up a Hollywood sign at the end of the drive any minute now …’
‘I know,’ I agree. ‘Paddy and Charlotte don’t know quite what they’re getting into!’
‘I wonder what they’ll call it?’ Alfie muses. ‘Paddy and the Chocolate Factory? Truffle and Strife? Village of the Damned?’
He tries to keep a straight face as a middle-aged woman dressed as some kind of zombie fortune teller bears down on us, eating a bowl of the Bloodbath Trifle. She is wearing a spotted headscarf and gold hoop earrings with a tiered gypsy dress.
‘Terrific party!’ she says, beaming at us between mouthfuls of trifle. ‘The psychic powers are always strong at this time of year! The spirits are watching us, mark my words!’
‘Are they, Mrs Lee?’ Alfie replies. ‘As long as they stay away from the sausage rolls, I don’t really mind!’
‘Ever the sceptic,’ Mrs Lee huffs, turning to me. ‘Ah … I don’t know you, do I?’
‘Meet Jamie Finch,’ Alfie says, helpfully. ‘Skye’s boyfriend.’
Mrs Lee frowns. ‘Skye? No, no, I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘I read Skye’s palm just a few weeks ago, and you’re nothing like the boy I saw in store for her there. I am never wrong about these things!’
‘But you told Skye last year that you saw a bird – a finch – in her future,’ Alfie recalls, teasingly. ‘And then she met Finch, just a little while later. Are you saying you were wrong?’
‘I’m never wrong,’ Mrs Lee says. ‘But life changes, Alfie Anderson. And a finch can be here one minute and gone the next, so if I saw you in Skye’s palm, young man, I’m afraid it wasn’t for long …’
She grabs my palm and squints at it while I squirm in horror, wondering what she might see. Lies? Deceit? Disaster?
‘As I thought,’ Mrs Lee declares. ‘You have a true love already. A stormy relationship, sometimes hidden, but a true one. That’s just as well, isn’t it, seeing as you’re not in Skye’s future! Ooh, is that Paddy with the Halloween punch? I must just get a refill …’
My cheeks are burning at her words, but under a thick layer of green face paint this isn’t visible to Alfie. I dredge up my acting skills and pretend to be offended and confused. ‘What was that all about?’ I ask.
‘Forget it,’ Alfie says. ‘Mrs Lee is nuts. She’s harmless, but she reckons she’s part gypsy and that she can see the future. She works in the post office, and trust me, she can’t even see the small print on a special delivery sticker without her reading glasses. She doesn’t mean any harm. I mean, I know it’s Halloween and all that, but who actually believes in ghosts and ghouls and premonitions? Load of old rubbish!’
‘Totally,’ I say, looking at the palm Mrs Lee had examined. It looks the same as always, a criss-cross web of lines and creases. How can it show hints of a stormy, hidden relationship? It’s just not possible.
I shake off the very idea.
‘Bonfire, Finch?’ Alfie is asking. ‘I think the others headed out that way. Shay said he’d play his guitar …’
Later, when it’s long past midnight and Alfie, Shay, Millie, Tia and the others have gone, Skye and I walk slowly up to the caravan beneath the trees strung with fairy lights. I feel like I ought to hold her hand, but that is clearly a very bad idea.
‘Great party,’ I say into the darkness, because it totally was. I had forgotten how good a Tanglewood party could be.
‘I can’t actually believe you’re here,’ she replies. ‘I haven’t seen you in forever, and then when we do get together it has to be at a party where Mum’s invited half the village …’
‘Looked like the whole village to me,’ I tease.
‘Whatever. It’s just that I thought we’d never get to be alone together …’
Alone together? I grit my teeth and look up through the canopy of trees at the velvet black darkness, studded with stars, a crescent moon hanging above it all. This could be the perfect moment to talk to Skye, to finish things once and for all.
We get to the caravan. Someone has placed my moon and stars pumpkin on the steps, and it glows faintly orange in the darkness.
‘So …’ I say. Before I get any further it occurs to me that I’m trying to have a deep and meaningful talk with a sixties-style witch while my own face is painted green. I find a tissue in my jacket pocket and try wiping the face paint away, but without soap and water it is a hopeless task.
Skye smiles. ‘I love that you still have that old army jacket, Finch. It was one of the first things I noticed about you. It used to be too big for you then, but it’s a perfect fit now …’
‘I don’t really like it any more,’ I say, surprising myself. ‘I’m not so into vintage these days. Guess I’ve moved on.’
‘Right,’ Skye says sadly. ‘That’s a shame. With vintage stuff, you always feel there’s a story to tell … a history. If clothes could talk …’
‘They can’t,’ I say. ‘Not even on Halloween. The past is over with. We can’t reach it, no matter how much we want to.’
I wish I could go back to the summer I met Skye and work out how to stop things falling apart, but I can’t. It’s over.
‘Probably just as well,’ Skye says. ‘I have an overactive imagination as it is …’
I bite my lip. ‘Skye?’ I say. ‘Didn’t you once tell me you’d had dreams of the past, and I was in them? That you knew we’d be together because you recognized me from the dreams?’
She laughs, but it’s a sad laugh. ‘D
id I say that?’ she questions. ‘No … I was having some weird dreams, sure, and I thought I was the girl in the dreams, but I wasn’t in the end. Like I said, overactive imagination.’
‘Was I the boy in the dreams?’ I ask.
Skye hangs her head. ‘I thought at the time you were, but … well, I don’t think so. I just freaked out a little and got things muddled. Like you say, the past is over with. We have to accept that … let it go.’
My heart thumps. Is Skye telling me things are over between us, or is that just wishful thinking?
Before I can say any more, she turns away and runs across the grass towards Tanglewood, and I’m left alone on the caravan steps beneath the moon and stars.
7
I know it’s a dream because even though it feels so real, I know deep down that it can’t be. I am a shapeshifter, a time traveller, an invisible witness; the past unfolds before me …
I can see the crowded platform of a small town railway station. People are waiting for a train; men in uniform – some no more than boys – with kitbags, anxious faces, newly-cropped hair. Their families crowd around them, talking too fast, hugging too tight, promising letters and prayers and that,‘it’ll all be over by Christmas.’
I focus on one young man; no more than eighteen, his eyes bright with adventure, his uniform still stiff and creased as if barely worn. It looks just like my jacket might have done when it was brand new. Beside him stands a girl in a blue dress; Sunday best, her brown hair swept up into a victory roll, her dark green eyes blurred with tears. She reminds me of someone, yet I know I’ve never seen her before.
Moon and Stars Page 3
