Season of Secrets

by Sally Nicholls

  “What do you mean?” I say. And then, when she doesn’t answer, “Grandma? What are you going to do?”

  “Me?” says Grandma. “I’m going to London.”

  And she finishes the last of her coffee in one long gulp.

  Kew Gardens

  It’s late. Hannah and I are sitting on the stairs, waiting for Dad to come.

  “D’you think Grandma doesn’t want us any more?” I say.

  Hannah’s drawing a broken heart on the knee of her new jeans.

  “Grandpa wants us,” she says, half-comfortingly.

  Car-noises come down the lane. Someone bangs on the door. We jump up and open it.

  It’s Dad.

  “Has something happened?” he says. “Are you all right?”

  “Grandma’s going to London!” I say.

  Dad catches hold of my hands, but he doesn’t get a chance to say anything, because Grandma’s door opens and Grandma comes out, dragging a suitcase. Grandpa follows, wearing his coat and cap and carrying a big green bag.

  “Mum!” says Dad.

  Grandma beams. “Toby!” she says. “At last! I was wondering if you were ever going to show up.”

  Dad drops my hands. “Mum,” he says. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re going to London,” says Grandma. “It’s about time we had a holiday.”

  Dad looks confused. “But—” he says. “You could have asked—”

  “We could,” says Grandma. “And we are. We’ll be back Thursday.” And she comes downstairs – bump – bump – bump like Christopher Robin, dragging her suitcase behind her.

  Dad just stands there staring.

  “But—” he says, and I want to giggle, he looks so confused. “Are you taking the girls?”

  Grandma stops. “Really, Toby,” she says. “I did think I’d taught you more sense than that. Of course we aren’t taking the girls. Arthur’s taking me to the V&A . . . and Knightsbridge . . . and maybe Kew Gardens. I haven’t been to Kew Gardens in years.”

  “But. . .” says Dad.

  “You don’t have to open the shop,” says Grandma. “But if you do close, can you leave a note in the window saying we’ll be back Friday? And the girls need to be in school at nine. They’ve got PE tomorrow, but I’m sure they’ll fill you in on all the details. Come on, chicks. Say goodbye.”

  She hugs Hannah and then me.

  “Have fun,” she whispers, and lets go before I can ask her to stay.

  When Grandpa hugs me, I cling to him. “You are coming back, aren’t you?”

  Grandpa squeezes me. “Course we are,” he whispers back. “Grandma just wants your dad to spend some time with you. That’s all.”

  I keep my arms around his neck, remembering what happened last time.

  “You’re coming back Thursday?”

  “Thursday,” says Grandpa. “Promise.”

  In the house, I’m sure it’s going to be like that horrible weekend in Newcastle, only this time Grandpa isn’t around to rescue us. Dad doesn’t know what to do. He stands in the hall, his funny, ugly face screwed up helplessly.

  “Do you people know what that was about?” he says eventually.

  “Who cares?” says Hannah. “D’you want a cup of tea?”

  She makes tea in the teapot, the way Grandpa does. I sit as close to Dad as I can. I wonder, if I love him hard enough, if I can persuade him to stay.

  “Are you staying here?”

  “I’m going to have to, aren’t I?” he says. “Lucky I’ve got so much holiday saved up.” He pats my hand. Then he looks around him, probably pleased to be back in a clean kitchen again. “This is great tea, Hannah,” he says.

  Back

  Next morning, it’s Dad who wakes me up, wearing one of Grandpa’s checked shirts and Grandma’s shop apron.

  “Up, up, up!” he says, banging on the back of a saucepan with a spoon.

  I rub my eyes.

  “It’s half past seven,” Hannah groans, from her room. “We don’t have to get up yet!”

  “Don’t you?” says Dad. He sounds surprised. At home, we had to be up in time to drive to school. Here, it’s just down the hill.

  He’s set the table for breakfast. He’s bought me another present: Coco Pops from the shop. When I lived with Mum and Dad, I only liked Coco Pops for breakfast, but now I like Frosties and Weetabix and eggs if Grandpa is making them.

  “Molly doesn’t eat that any more,” says Hannah. “And I don’t eat cereal either. I have toast, like Grandma.”

  Dad doesn’t wash the breakfast things up, like Grandpa. He leaves them in the sink with last night’s mugs. He clearly cares less about tidying than I remember him caring. And at ten to nine, when Hannah says, “You’re supposed to tell us to go now,” he looks at his watch and says, “Off you trot, then!” without asking if we’ve got our topic books or pencil cases or papier-mâché model of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge.

  In the front yard, we stop and look at each other.

  “Dad’s back!” I say.

  “Not for ever,” says Hannah. “But no smelly Grandma bossing us about!” And she runs off down the hill, school bag bouncing on her back.

  When we get home, he’s in the shop, selling stamps to Alexander’s dad.

  “Afternoon!” he says. “Want an egg?” And he throws us a Cadbury’s Creme Egg each.

  “You’re happy,” says Hannah. He is. He makes us proper Dad home-made bread, which doesn’t rise in Grandma’s oven either, but tastes just as chewy as it always did at home.

  By Thursday, we’re used to having him to ourselves. It’s a shock to think he’s going home soon.

  After school, before Grandpa and Grandma get back, I help him in the shop. I stack all the new tins and things on the shelves. I mop the floor. I sell sherbet fountains to Sascha and her little sister.

  “If I was your grandma,” says Dad, “I’d give you a job.”

  He looks so happy, I risk asking him again.

  “Don’t you want to stay?”

  Dad puts his arm around me.

  “I wish I could,” he says. “But I can’t take your grandma’s job. I’ve got my own work. You know that.”

  I lean my head against his stomach.

  “So you can’t have us.”

  “No.”

  “And we’re Grandma’s responsibility now.”

  “Well.” He squeezes me. “Maybe a bit mine too.”

  I look up. “If you had another job, would you have us back?”

  He doesn’t answer for the longest time. Then he says, “Would you want me?”

  I nod.

  “I—” He stops, but then he starts again. “I might not always get things right.”

  “I don’t always get things right,” I say. “I get things wrong, all the time I get things wrong. And you don’t mind, do you?”

  “Oh, Moll,” says Dad. “Never. Never, ever.”

  “Well, then.”

  Dad’s quiet. “There’s a job coming up,” he says. “Sub-editor. Working for someone I know from university. It’s the other side of the city, but the hours are better. And you can cope for a few hours after school on your own, can’t you?”

  “Yes!” I say. “Do it!”

  “It’s only a maybe,” says Dad. “I might not get it. You do understand that, don’t you, Moll? It’s nothing definite.”

  “You’ll get it,” I say. “You will, won’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” says Dad. Then he squeezes me, suddenly, so I can feel my ribs pressing against my organs. “Keep it to yourself,” he says. “But, yes. I think I will.”

  The Midnight Hunter

  So that’s Dad sorted. One down and one to go. If Grandma can sort Dad, can I sort the Holly King?

  The night Dad goes, I can’t sleep. I lie and listen to Grandma and Grandpa moving about downstairs. I can hear people laughing on the radio, and Grandpa singing as he rinses out the tea mugs, and Grandma doing the accounts, asking Grandpa, “Do you know why e
veryone seems to be buying cotton buds all of a sudden?”

  If I push my head outside my curtains, I can see a deep blue dusk, with a single star hanging in the sky over the hills. I wrap my arms around Humphrey and rest my chin on his head. It’s perfectly quiet. It’s perfectly still. No one’s out.

  And then I see him.

  He’s standing in the shadows, watching the shop. It’s him. The horned god, the Holly King. It makes me gasp, seeing him so close.

  It’s the same thick body, the strong, flat, animal-ish face. But he looks older, darker. And he’s standing, without the horse he had before. He looks less like a man and more like an animal, bent and hunched against the wall.

  I don’t know why he’s here, and I don’t worry now, because now my own man’s here, coming up the hill from the village on a grey horse. When the Holly King sees him he turns and runs, head bent, body down, in and out of the circle of street-light light and down the lane.

  My man stops his horse and looks up at the house. I stick my head out of the window.

  “He went that way!”

  My man shakes his head. He’s older again. A real man now.

  “Come down!” he calls. “Come down and join the hunt!”

  I hesitate, just for a moment, then I pull my head out of the window and start scrabbling under my bed for my shoes.

  I don’t wait to get dressed. I just take my coat off the hook and pull it on over my pyjamas. There’s a jiggle of excitement where my heart is as I let myself out of the back door. I always wanted to do this, go out alone in the middle of the night. I never understood how the Famous Five dared. But tonight, I’m not afraid. Tonight, there’s a man on a tall horse. Tonight, the moon is round and silver, and tonight the air is sharp and cold and tonight the sky is a deep, deep blue and there’s this one, bright star shining over the hills and I’m out without anyone knowing, and I want to sing.

  He’s waiting beside the wall. He’s not got a saddle or a bridle – he looks like he’s stolen someone’s horse straight out of its field. Maybe he has. He’s wearing what I think is a cloak, but when I get close I see it’s a deerskin. A real deerskin, with four dangly leg-skins, but no head. It’s tied round his neck by the front legs and the rest hangs down his back. There’s a strong, thick smell, frightening and exciting at the same time.

  “Come on, then,” he says, and holds out his hand.

  I’ve only ever been on a horse once before and that was a pony really. I’m not frightened, though. I climb on the wall and my man reaches down and lifts me up by my armpits, and there’s a messy, scrabbly moment when he’s pulling and I’m holding on to the horse’s mane, and then suddenly it’s all right and here I am, sitting up in front of him.

  I look at him and I look at the house and I laugh out loud.

  “Look,” he says and he shows me something. It’s a horn – the sort you blow and the sort that belongs to an animal, both. The narrow bit at the end is made of what looks like gold, but the long curved body comes from an animal. I don’t know which sort.

  “Can I?” I say and he nods.

  I put my mouth round the horn and blow, but all that comes out is a sputtery noise. My man laughs. He takes the horn off me and holds it up in one dark arm and then he blows.

  This wonderful noise comes out – Turaaahh! Turaaahh! Turaaahh! – it’s a hunt-call and a warning and a challenge, all rolled into one. The horse rears up on its hind legs and my man’s arm tightens around my waist and he blows the horn again – Turaaahh! Turaaahh! – and we’re off.

  Off down the lane, the horse’s hooves clattering on the road. Off, with the wind in my hair and my man’s arm tight around my chest and my fingers clinging on to the horse’s mane. We really are going faster than fairies, faster than witches; faster than rollercoasters and sledges, faster than ice skating, or bicycles, much faster than Chloe’s fat pony. We leap over a hedge and my man blows into the horn – Turaaahh! Turaaahh!

  And I realize that we aren’t alone – there are other shapes crashing through the hedges, low and dark and fierce and hot – dogs with black legs and white teeth. There are other huntsmen around and behind us, wild huntsmen, and I look back at my man and see the shadowy outline of horns growing up out of his head, and all of a sudden, I’m afraid. I’ve been here before. I remember this – the night, the wild hunt and the hunted man, only this time my man isn’t hunted, he’s the hunter.

  The huntsmen plough forward into the night. The dogs howl. My man spurs his horse onwards, over and through the hedges, branches and leaves digging into my legs and tearing at my clothes. “Stop!” I shout, “Stop!” but he just laughs. He’s different again; wilder, more dangerous. I cling to the horse’s mane and squeeze my legs tight around his belly. The Oak King’s arm still holds me, but he’s laughing now and urging the dogs on. If I fall off, I’ll be crushed under the horses’ hooves and – I realize with a sudden start of fear – he won’t go back for me. He won’t even notice I’m gone.

  I want him to stop. I want to tell him I’ve changed my mind, to let the Holly King go. I’m frightened. Everything is mixed up in my head – who’s good, who’s bad, who’s right, who’s wrong. I can do nothing except cling to the horse’s mane and wait for it to end, however it will end.

  We pour through the fields, through the night. Above us, the stars whirl. Below us, the world is turning. Winter is over. It’s the spring equinox, and tonight a new rule begins.

  The dogs are howling. They’ve seen what they’re looking for. A man, running. They pour down the hill like black water and cover him. He holds one hand up over his face, but he’s down, covered with dogs, and I see that he doesn’t have horns any more, he’s just a man, and I’m screaming and screaming and my man has pulled in his horse and he’s watching, just watching, without doing anything,

  and then. . .

  And then it’s over.

  The world is still. The hunt is gone. There’s nobody here but us – me and the horned Oak King on our horse and the Holly King down on the grass, one hand still raised above his head. He’s bleeding, but he’s still alive. He stares at us. He doesn’t speak.

  I’m crying, tears rolling down my cheeks. I’m crying because I thought that the Oak King was good and the Holly King bad, but it’s not that simple. Because if you want the summer, the winter must die, and if you want the winter, the summer must die too – because Persephone must go down under the green earth – because the world must turn – because the Holly King and Oak King must fight and one must defeat the other.

  My man – and he’s the horned huntsman now, the leader of the wild hunt – my man stands straight on his tall horse. He doesn’t say anything to the Holly King and he doesn’t say anything to me. He looks down at him, lying there on the grass. Then he pulls on the horse’s mane and turns it round, back towards the village, towards home.

  Talking to Miss Shelley

  At school, I’m tired. Miss Shelley is talking about suspension bridges, but her words are flowing over my head like water and I can’t catch them. The bridge she’s drawn on the whiteboard is stuck to the ground, so how can it be suspended?

  I just blink when Alexander tries to get me to sign his petition to bring back chips in school dinners.

  “It’s all right for you lot,” he says. “You get chips at home. My parents never give me so much as a French fry! And it’s not like chips don’t have vitamins. They’re potatoes, aren’t they? They’re practically our national food. I’m being denied a valuable cultural experience!”

  “We have a national food?” I say and Alexander shakes his head and goes off after Emily.

  When the bell rings for break, Miss Shelley calls me back.

  “You all right, Molly?” she says.

  It strikes me as funny that after all that’s happened this year – Mum dying, Dad leaving, my man dying and then coming back – she picks today to ask if I’m all right.

  “Yes. . .” I say. Then, “Miss Shelley, you remember the wild hunt?”


  “Yes.”

  “Is it good? Or bad?”

  Miss Shelley tucks her hair behind her ear. She looks at me thoughtfully.

  “You know,” she says. “I’ve never been able to work that one out.”

  “Don’t the stories say?”

  “Oh, stories,” she says. “I wouldn’t trust stories. They can never agree with themselves from one day to the next.” She rubs the back of her neck with her hand. “Spring equinox last night,” she says.

  “It was?”

  “Oh yes.” She looks at me and then, suddenly, she laughs. “Don’t look so worried, Molly!” she says. “They won’t be back till Beltane. And they didn’t hurt you, did they?”

  “They. . .You mean they’re real?”

  “I couldn’t begin to comment,” says Miss Shelley seriously. “All questions not relating to long division or man-made bridging structures should be directed to the questioner’s pagan or religious figure of choice.” The sun has brought out new freckles on her nose and for a moment she looks so much like my mum that it hurts. “Alternatively, you could go and have a look at the mess the horses made of the lane,” she says. “Whichever.”

  A Game I Stopped Playing

  And now summer’s here. Blue sky – sometimes – and sandals and checky school dresses, and sun warm enough to leave our coats at home. There are daisies on the lawn and dandelions on the tarmac and cow parsley and foxgloves growing on the banks by the lane.

  Dad gets the job in Newcastle. We’re going back to live with him as soon as he’s managed to sell our house, probably at the end of term, Grandpa says. He puts in an offer on a funny little terraced house at the other side of the city, with a long dandelion-y garden and a sycamore tree with a tyre swing. There’s a school for me at the end of the road and a rough, tough secondary school with a hockey team and a youth club and guitar lessons for Hannah.