Season of Secrets

by Sally Nicholls

  “An ambulance wouldn’t find me,” he says.

  We sit there quiet together, watching the dust dancing in the sunlight from the door.

  “I’ve brought you some stuff,” I say. “I thought you might— I mean, if you want— You don’t have to have them if you don’t want them.”

  I pass the carrier bag over to him. He looks at it, puzzled, and pulls out a tin of peaches. He turns the tin around, sniffs at it. His mouth gives a funny twitch at the picture, then he lays it on the ground.

  “It’s pretty,” he says. “Thank you.”

  “It’s a tin of peaches!” I say. “Don’t you know what a tin is?”

  He looks at me, expectant. I tug at the ring-pull and open the tin for him.

  “Look. Peaches.”

  He dips a grimy finger into the peach-juice and touches his tongue to it, cautious. I watch him. A look of surprise crosses his face and he laughs out loud.

  “It’s sweet!”

  “You can eat it. I brought you a fork – look.”

  But he doesn’t want the fork. He digs his fingers into the syrup and eats the peach-slices whole, juice running down his chin. I know exactly what Grandma would say about eating with hands as dirty as his, but he seems happy.

  He shakes his head when I show him the rest of the food in the bag.

  “Enough. It’s enough. Thank you.”

  “Aren’t you hungry?” I say, and he shakes his head.

  I’m puzzling over this when I notice something else. Something is growing out of the soil beside him. A tree. A baby tree. A sapling.

  It’s almost as tall as him. And I’m almost certain it wasn’t there last time.

  “Where did that come from?”

  He looks up; lifts his hand and touches the branch above his head. It grows – I swear it – stretching out like it wants to wrap itself around his fingers. He draws his hand down and the new branch follows.

  And I notice other things. There’s grass growing around his feet that wasn’t there before. And the ivy crawling up the wall – there’s more of it behind him. Was it always like that? Or—

  He sees me staring and laughs. He holds out his hands. They’re empty. He blows on them and something begins to grow, out of nothing. A seed. A little green sprout. Leaves. A flower.

  A bluebell.

  “For you,” he says and gives the flower to me.

  I hold the bluebell very carefully in the palm of my hand. I’m afraid it’ll vanish if I move.

  He’s watching my face. He seems pleased. He sits back.

  “No,” he says. “I don’t need your food.”

  Jack

  When I come back, Jack’s raking our garden. I stand on the gate and watch.

  Jack lives next door to the shop, with Ivy. Ivy’s a bit batty. She shuffles around all day in slippers and a pink hat with flowers on it. She’s not supposed to go beyond the garden, but sometimes she escapes and wanders down the lane and Jack has to go and bring her home. Once, I saw her escaping and ran after her and brought her back. Jack was in the kitchen and he said, “Eh, lass, where were you off to this time?” She looked up and beamed this great big beam, with no teeth in it, and said, “I was going to the circus!”

  I like Ivy.

  I like Jack better though. Jack’s a man, but he does all their cooking and cleaning. He even washes Ivy in the bath. He told me so. Jack and Grandma and Grandpa have a big garden between them, and Jack looks after it.

  He rests his chin on his rake when he sees me, and raises his hand.

  “What’s up, woodchuck?”

  “Nothing,” I say. I climb over the gate and sit on top of it. Jack carries on raking.

  “I’ve got a flower,” I tell him.

  “Have you?”

  “A bluebell.”

  I’ve got it in my pocket if he wants to see, but he doesn’t ask. He carries on raking.

  “That’s a brave bluebell,” he says. “Out in October.”

  “It’s magic,” I say. “A man made it grow out of nothing.”

  Jack doesn’t answer. He rakes his leaves into a pile.

  “You believe me, don’t you?” I say. “You do believe in magic?”

  Jack stops.

  “Do you see those trees?” He points. I nod. “I made them grow out of nothing.” He laughs. “There’s more magic in trees than in conjuring tricks,” he says.

  Wish Upon an Oak God

  I go back into the house. I’m thinking a thought. Not a big one. It’s right at the back of my head; so small that I don’t dare bring it into the light or even think it in anything but a sidelong sort of way. If I do, it might crumble away to nothing, the way things do sometimes when you show them to someone else.

  The thought is this: if the man in the barn is a god, and if he brings the summer, and plucks growing things out of the air, and does whatever else a summer god does, what else can he do?

  Not superpowers or jewels or fairy palaces. I don’t want these things. My wishes are simple and plain.

  Could he make my dad take us back?

  Could he bring my mum safe home?

  Un-Quality Time

  He does something to my head, this man. When I go and see him, I forget all the things I ought to ask – like Who are you? – and get distracted by bare feet and ivy leaves.

  I don’t even know his name. If I was one of the Famous Five, I’d have solved this mystery by now.

  Of course, if I was one of the Famous Five he’d be either a smuggler or a gypsy or a detective in disguise.

  But still.

  On Saturday, at breakfast, I make a list of all the questions I want answering, starting with, What is your name? and working my way through, Are you really a pagan god? right up to, What else can you do besides make trees? And could you teach me how, so I can do it too?

  “Can I go out?” I ask Grandpa, but he shakes his head.

  “Not today, lovey.”

  What’s today? Another day out with Auntie Meg or one of Mum’s friends? Going to “play” with my cousins, who are boys and at secondary school and like computers and football and stare at us like they’ve forgotten how to talk?

  “Your dad’s taking you out, love. Remember?”

  Oh. Dad.

  “Molly Alice,” says Grandma, putting down the butter knife. “Don’t look like that. You want to see your dad, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say. I scratch the plastic tabletop with my fingernail. “Of course I do.”

  “I don’t,” says Hannah. She spears her fork into her egg and glares at Grandpa.

  He looks away.

  Every time Dad comes, I look forward and look forward to it, and every time it’s horrible.

  We’re in a car park. Hannah is scrunched as far towards the other side of the car as she can get. She’s got her earphones plugged in and her music turned up as far as it will go.

  “Come on, love,” says Dad. “Come and have something to eat.”

  “Leave me alone!”

  Dad is crouched by the door. You can tell he doesn’t know what to do. Mum usually does all the talking and fighting in our family.

  I’m standing next to him looking out over the car park. I feel like we’ve been here for hours. I wish he would just tell her what a brat she’s being. Someone (not me) ought to.

  “Can’t we just leave her here, Dad? I’m hungry.”

  “Oh, grow up,” Hannah snarls, sudden as I imagine tigers might be. “And keep your nose out of other people’s business.”

  Dad rocks back. He opens his mouth, then, all of a sudden, he shuts it again. He stands up and strides out across the car park, without looking back at either of us.

  I run after him. Hannah’s always horrible on days Dad takes us out. Last time he took us to the Harry Potter castle in Alnwick and she sang I know a song that’ll get on your nerves all round the tour. The time before that we went to the beach and she tipped sand over his seat and all the sandwiches because he said we couldn’t have fish and
chips.

  Today, she won’t even get out of the car.

  I catch up with Dad at the café queue. We’re supposed to be looking round some old house with gardens. I don’t know why. Dad hates gardens. And the only old house I like is Newby Hall, because of the paddle boats and the zip line.

  I rub Dad’s elbow to show him I’m there. He gives me a quick smile, but it vanishes immediately.

  “What do you want to eat?” he says. “There’re sandwiches over there – look. Go and choose something.”

  It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to have us, if all that happens when he comes is that we fight. I go and pick out a plasticky cheese sandwich from the fridge, with horrible slimy-looking pickle in it.

  It’s cold.

  Dad takes a seat right over from the window, like he doesn’t care about Hannah. But he keeps looking over his shoulder at the car. It’s not fair. This is my day with Dad just as much as hers.

  I take a sugar lump from the bowl and bite on it. I expect him to tell me off, but he doesn’t even notice.

  “Can’t we leave Hannah behind next time?” I say, to make him look at me. “She’s always horrible.”

  Dad rubs his face with his hands.

  “Hannah’s not horrible,” he says. “Any more than you are, or me. She’s. . .” He hesitates, like he’s trying to think of a nice way to say “horrible”. “Well,” he says. “This isn’t easy for anyone.”

  Rubbing your face means you’re tired. Is Dad tired? I don’t know. He’s older than other people’s dads. And uglier. He hair is thin and turning grey at the edges, and his face is all squashed up and lopsided, like a pug dog’s.

  “I don’t know why you ever took up with him,” Grandma used to grumble to Mum when she was ticked off with him. And Mum would lean across the table, her face teasing, and say, “He made me laugh, of course.”

  Suddenly, I want him back very much.

  “Maybe we should come and live with you,” I say. “Then Hannah wouldn’t be so huffy all the time.”

  “I wish you could, sweetheart,” says Dad. But his eyes don’t come alive when he says it.

  “We could!” I say. I lean forward. “I don’t care how much you work. Me and Hannah can look after ourselves. We could cook you meals and everything.”

  I can cook. I can make tea and coffee and peppermint creams and chocolate crispy cakes and soup and beans on toast and sandwiches. That’s enough to live on.

  But Dad is shaking his head.

  “No, sweetheart,” he says. “Don’t let’s start this again. You can’t stay in the house on your own and neither can Hannah. Not at night. And with this job, I can’t guarantee I’ll be around.”

  This is unbelievably unfair. Loads of kids Hannah’s age stay at home on their own. And kids look after their parents, if they’re in a wheelchair or something. I saw a Blue Peter about it.

  “You could get a babysitter,” I say. “I wouldn’t care. Or a childminder, or an after-school club – lots of people do.”

  “Moll,” says Dad wearily. “Don’t let’s fight about this now. You can’t ask babysitters to come at the sort of notice I can give. And you can’t stay overnight at a childminder’s.”

  Cold shivers down my spine.

  “But we’re going to come back with you,” I say. “You said! You promised! We can’t live with Grandpa for ever!”

  Dad closes his eyes and I stop, frightened. He’s leaving again. Would he just walk away from me, the way he did from Hannah? I catch my breath, but then his eyes open again.

  “Not for ever, sweetheart,” he says, “I can’t have you right now, Moll. I can barely look after myself. Once I’ve found another job, we’ll look at it then.”

  I’m angry at him for making me so frightened, and for spoiling my happy day. It’s not fair. Dads are supposed to want their kids to have a good time.

  “So find a job!” I say. “You just have to fill in a form or go to an interview or something. It takes about five minutes! It doesn’t take weeks and weeks and weeks like this!”

  “I’m trying,” says Dad. “I really am, sweetheart.”

  “Try harder. Everyone else has jobs. It’s not hard!”

  Dad used to wind Mum up something rotten by not fighting with her, and he’s doing it to me now. It’s as if there’s a wall around him, and he won’t let any of my words get through.

  “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go back to Hannah. Let’s see if she’ll let us into the car.”

  In the car, Hannah’s face is screwed up like she’s trying not to cry. Dad passes her a packet of slimy cheese sandwiches and she opens them without saying anything. He turns the car round and we head back to the village.

  When we get to Grandpa’s house, Hannah bolts out of the door and runs inside. Dad gives this sort of sad shrug, like he doesn’t know what to do. Dads are supposed to know what to do! That’s their job!

  “Come on, love,” he says wearily, putting his hand on my shoulder. I pull away and run through the shop door, past Grandpa and up the stairs.

  Sometimes I know just what it feels like to be Hannah.

  Sometimes I hate Dad too.

  Dad

  There are two reasons why we don’t live with Dad.

  The first is his job. Dad’s a journalist, which means that people, i.e., his boss, keep ringing him up and saying, “We need you to cover a story in Shepley, sharpish.” And then he has to drive all the way to Shepley and find out about whatever the story is2 and then he doesn’t get home till late, sometimes not till after we’re in bed.

  The second reason is that after Mum died, Dad got sort of ill too. He went and worked twice as late, every night (Auntie Rose was staying, so he could leave us). And sometimes he would come home and stare at nothing and not answer when you tried to talk to him, which is scary when homeless people do it, but doubly, triply, quadruply scary when the person doing it is your own dad. And Auntie Rose did all the important things, like buy food, but all the extra things like piano lessons and school shoes got forgotten about. Then one day Grandma came, because Auntie Rose had to go and see her own kids, and he started crying, right there in the kitchen, and Grandma told me to go outside, but I listened anyway, and I heard her say, “You know we’re always happy to have the children, Toby.”

  And when Grandma said that, it was as if there were two bits of me. One bit was excited – because I like Grandma, and I particularly like Grandpa, and there’s something grand and adventurous about living in the country with your grandparents, like being evacuated with a label round your neck. But the other bit of me knew that the only reason it was exciting was because it would never happen. Because I couldn’t ever believe, really, that a dad like ours, a good dad, who loves us and doesn’t lock us in cupboards or forget to feed us, would ever, really, abandon us.

  But he did.

  A Mizzle Full of Questions

  After Dad’s gone, I come and stand in the shop door. It’s raining again. Not bucketing, cats-and-dogsy rain, but a shivery, drizzly rain with flecks of silver in it; so thin you can hardly be sure it’s there. It hangs in tiny droplets on the edge of the roof, and on my sleeve when I hold it out.

  “A drizzle,” I say, out loud.

  “A mizzle,” says Grandpa. “A mizzle’s finer.”

  Mizzling. We’re in the mizzle of a mizzle.

  “Can I go out?” I say. “I found where the man is – the one who vanished into nothing. He’s hiding in a little house. He’s growing flowers.”

  “All right,” says Grandpa. I’m still not sure he believes me. “But try and stay dry.”

  “I like being wet,” I say.

  “All right for you, curly-mop,” says Grandpa. He comes and stands behind me in the door. We watch the rain.

  “Don’t be too angry with your dad,” he says, suddenly. “He’s doing his best.”

  I tip my head back and look up at him, surprised. He kisses my forehead.

  “Go on,” he says. “Go and find your fella. Before
I change my mind.”

  Everything looks different in a mizzle. Like in a mist. The trees the furthest away I can see are almost invisible. Inmizzible.

  I push open the barn door very, very slowly.

  “Hello?”

  He’s there.

  He’s moved again. He’s had to. His tree’s grown. It’s not a sapling any more: it’s a proper little tree. The top branches hang above the tumbledown top of the wall. There are little leaves, all covered in mizzle-beads. Oak leaves, like picture-book clouds.

  The ivy’s grown, too. It stretches across half the back wall. Little yellow flowers are pushing their way through the floor. He’s sitting with his back against the trunk of the tree. He looks bright and strange and wild-looking – and somehow older than he did before. I can’t work him out at all. At home, I think maybe he’s a tramp or an escaped prisoner or something, but here I really believe he’s a god, like Miss Shelley says.

  I take out my notebook and start right at the beginning.

  “What’s your name?”

  He frowns.

  “Like, I’m Molly. Who are you?”

  “I don’t have a name like Molly,” he says. “Why should I?”

  He doesn’t say it angry, like Hannah would, but curious. Like he really doesn’t know what I mean.

  The next question on my list is, Are you the god of summer? but somehow now I’m here I don’t dare ask it. I try something else.

  “How old are you?”

  If he is Miss Shelley’s god, he was only born in the spring.

  “Older than an acorn.”

  “Have you ever seen a winter?”

  “A winter? Why? Have you lost one?”

  “One’s coming soon. Then you’ll be cold.”

  He gives me his most loving look.

  “I don’t get cold.”

  I rest my chin on the top of my knees and wrap my arms around them. I’m cold. Even here under the roof, the rain still catches me when the wind blows in.