Bringing the Summer (18 page)

Gabes pulls a face.

‘She's in a mood with me,' I say.

‘Obviously! What have you done?'

‘Nothing, really. She'll get over it. I hope.' I change the subject quickly. ‘So, Christmas. You sure it's OK?'

‘Course. The more the merrier: you know Maddie.'

‘I don't mean her, I mean for you. It's just that, well, my last few Christmases at home have been totally awful. Me being the only child. No Joe.'

Gabes looks sympathetic. ‘I can imagine,' he says. ‘And it's usually fun at ours. Lots of people, anyway. You'll have a good time.' He's silent for a while.

I finish my coffee and spoon up the milky froth at the bottom of the cup.

‘I'll hear whether I've got my place in London, soon.' Gabes says.

‘You're bound to get in.' I make a sad face. ‘I've just got to know you, and now you'll be off.'

‘Not till next September. And you can visit,' he says. ‘Like you visit Theo.'

For a second I'm so taken aback I'm speechless. He knows! How? Did Miranda tell him? Theo?

Gabes gets up. ‘Want another coffee? I'm getting me one.'

I shake my head. ‘No thanks.' My voice comes out weird. I know my face must be scarlet: I've gone hot all over.

I'm so totally embarrassed I can't think. I watch him standing at the counter ordering his coffee. He turns for a moment, and catches my eye. He's so very good-looking, with his golden, curly hair and startlingly blue eyes, and so very different from Theo you'd never guess they were brothers.

I didn't expect this.

Gabes brings his coffee back to the table and sits down next to me. He stretches his long legs out under the table and sits back in his chair, stirring in a spoonful of sugar, acting too casual, as if he's not bothered.

‘I'm sorry,' I say at last. ‘I should have told you straight away about meeting up with Theo.'

Gabes frowns. He carries on stirring. ‘It's none of my business, really,' he says. ‘You're a free agent.'

I wait.

There's a horrible silence before he starts talking again. ‘But my
brother
, Freya? A bit insensitive, don't you think? Not even to mention it.'

‘It's not like you think.'

‘What do I think?'

‘Oh, I don't know. This is really embarrassing, Gabes. But you and me, well, we've just been friends all this time, haven't we? I mean, you didn't seem interested in me, not in
that
way . . . least, that's what I thought; not like girl and boyfriend I mean, and of course that's fine, if it's what you want, and it's kind of the same with Theo but . . . except . . .' I run out of words.

‘Except?'

‘I don't know.' My voice fades.

‘He fancied you right from the start, didn't he? I should have realised.' Gabes turns to look me right in the eyes. ‘That's so typical of him, you know? He doesn't have a clue what
friendship
means. He's jealous of it, so he has to mess it up for me. It's like a kind of base instinct with him when he can't have something: to destroy it for someone else.'

I look down at the table. I fold the paper napkin over and over, into tight white squares. This is horrible.

‘You should be very careful of Theo,' Gabes says slowly, after a long silence.

I don't ask him what he means. He's warning me, and I kind of know he's right, but I don't want to hear any more.

Across the room, Miranda is watching. She half smiles, and turns away.

I feel sick, suddenly. Claustrophobic.

‘I need to go,' I say. I grab my coat and my bag and push open the door, out into the street.

I stand for a second on the busy square. The fruit-stall people are packing up. Pigeons are pecking at the scraps in the gutter. The big tree in the middle of the square is twinkling with fairy lights hung along the branches. Above the tall buildings that surround the square, the sky is a deep navy blue.

I blink tears away. This is ridiculous. I haven't done anything wrong. Not really. Have I? I've kept some secrets. Got close to two brothers. It's hardly a crime, is it? Why can't I be friends with both of them?

I glance back at the café. It looks cosy and comforting, all lit up. And then, when I look more carefully, I see Miranda, sitting exactly where I was a few minutes ago, leaning forward, talking to Gabes.

I turn away. I start the walk home alone through the crowded streets. Town's been busy like this since half-term: coachloads of people doing Christmas shopping. I have to push through crowds of tourists staring up at the decorations in the Abbey courtyard. The noise and the people grate on my nerves. I shove and push through the people waiting at the park and ride bus stops, past the queues waiting for the cash machine outside the supermarket, past the church and the library. I start walking home up the hill: the pavements are emptier here, now that I'm passing houses and flats and pubs instead of shops. I begin to calm down.

It's nearly six by the time I get back, but neither Mum or Dad are home. They seem to be working later and later. I remember, as soon I see her note, that Mum said she was going straight from work to a talk at the university to do with her landscape gardening course. There's macaroni cheese ready to be heated up for my supper, and salad in the fridge.

I can't be bothered to heat the food; I eat it straight from the bowl, cold, standing at the kitchen window. I don't eat any salad. I go upstairs and lie on my bed. I don't bother to turn my light on. I stay there for ages. Eventually, I crawl over to the desk, switch on the lamp, haul my bag up on to my lap and look for my homework notebook.

Art coursework due on Monday. Biology test: Friday. That's tomorrow. I pull out my Biology file and start reading the notes. I make myself focus.

Twenty

‘You've got some post,' Mum says as I come in the door after college on Friday. ‘Looks like an enormous Christmas card. Wonder who it's from?'

‘Mum! You're so nosy!'

I pick up the envelope from the kitchen table and take it upstairs with me. I don't recognise the handwriting.

I open it.

It's from Danny.

Not a card, but an Advent calendar. Not a glitzy one or one with chocolates, but home-made specially for me: he's drawn a picture with pen and ink, painted it, stuck on glitter sprinkles, made the little doors with numbers and everything. The picture is a map of St Ailla, with the beaches and the lighthouse and the post office shop and the farm and campsite and everything. He's drawn tiny Christmas lights along the rigging of the little ferry moored up in the bay.

There's a note on a scrap of paper.

You can open all the doors up to today (whatever day this gets to you, that is) but then you must promise only to open one a day till Christmas Eve. No cheating! Dan x

The doors are tiny. I prise open the first one with my fingernail, very carefully. Inside, there's a little fish, swimming in turquoise sea. I open eleven doors, one after the other. Everything's in miniature. A tiny border collie dog, like Bess at the farm; a crab pot; a rowing gig; a fire on a beach; three mackerel on a fishing line; my blue notebook; a pebble; my special glass bead; a paper lantern with a candle inside; two wetsuits hanging on a line; a tent. He's drawn each little picture in black ink and then touched in the colours delicately with a watercolour wash. I had no idea he could even draw.

For a split second I'm almost jealous that I didn't have the idea first. But I'd never have thought of making an Advent calendar for Danny. Who now calls himself
Dan
, I notice.

I imagine him poring over the paper, his dark hair falling forwards over his face, concentrating. I stare at the tiny pictures. They bring my island summers so sharply into focus that for a moment I am full of
longing
to be there – to be sitting in Evie and Gramps' solid stone house, or running up to the downs, the sound of the sea drumming in my head. I want to be climbing up, up one of the rocky stacks on the wild side of the island, right to the top, the wind blowing my hair back as I stand, arms outstretched, taking in the whole panorama of our island and all the other islands stretching beyond, dark shapes floating on a bright sea.

Dear Danny.
Dan
.

I am utterly touched – it's the nicest present anyone could have given me, and so totally unexpected. I work out that each of the little pictures is a reference to something we've done together or something I've told him about. I prop the calendar up on my table against the lamp. Just looking at it makes me smile.

But I don't stay happy for long. It's Friday night, and I'm not going anywhere. No one's phoned or texted me. I daren't call Miranda. I have the horrible feeling that she's never going to talk to me again. Right now she's probably out with Charlie and Tabitha and Ellie and everyone – Gabes, even – having fun. I wonder what she's been saying about me. I feel really alone.

Theo will be back at Home Farm this weekend.

But I don't phone him, and he doesn't phone me.

After a while I stop moping and pull myself together. I might as well make the most of my spare evening. I've got loads of work to finish for college. I need to plan what to get for Christmas presents for everyone.

I go looking for Mum. I find her sitting at the desk in her newly painted study with the blue curtains and white walls, a big pad of paper spread out in front of her.

‘What can I send Evie and Gramps for Christmas?'

‘Something you've made?' Mum says. ‘They don't really
need
anything.' She puts her arm round my waist and pulls me closer to her. ‘Most of all they'd like to see you, Freya. Perhaps you could arrange a date to go over? The Easter holidays, or spring half-term, when the weather will be better.'

‘What are you doing in here?' I ask her.

‘Planning out a garden, for a new client. Dad's client, in fact, but they're going to be guinea pigs for my first proper design.'

‘Nice.'

‘Yes. I'm pleased.' She takes her arm away, and flips back a page to show me what she's done so far. ‘I need to get on, Freya. I've got so much to do at the moment.' She looks up at me briefly. ‘You're OK, aren't you? I don't seem to have spent much time with you lately. But I guess you've got plenty on too. You're busy with your own friends.'

‘I'm fine,' I say, though I'm not. I drift towards the door. I almost tell her about Theo. About Bridie and Gabes and Miranda and
everything
. I'd like to, really. But she's busy working again, head bent low, concentrating on her design. This isn't the right time. I pad downstairs into the kitchen and make myself tea.

 

I flick through the stack of drawings and paintings in my portfolio. It will need to be something small enough to frame and post. I pull out the one I did back in September, of a girl swimming out to sea, viewed from high up, as if we are looking with a seagull's eye, with the space of air and light between. It's still my favourite.

I rummage through my bits of paper and card to find some mounting board, and get my special knife from my pencil case, for cutting the edges. It's one of the cool things we've learned this term, how to mount a picture properly, with a bevelled edge. It takes two goes to get it right. I turn the board over and in pencil with my best handwriting, I write the title of the painting:
Into the Wild Blue
. I sign my name. It's going to be too heavy to post if I get a wooden frame for it, so I decide not to. I wrap it up in layers of white tissue paper and bubble wrap and then some shiny blue paper from the box of recycled wrapping paper we keep under the stairs. I write on a small square of card:
Happy Christmas to dearest Evie and Gramps with all my love from Freya xxxxx
, wrap the whole thing in brown paper and address the package.

I'll post it tomorrow.

I sort out Mum and Dad's present, next, and then I try to think of something I could send to Danny. I scan in the drawing I did of him in the summer, fishing for mackerel off the rocks. I make it into a card. I don't write much, just
Happy Christmas
, and
love Freya
.

And then I think about Miranda: even if she isn't speaking to me, I still have to send her something. I can't bear not to. So I make another card for her from the same little sketch of Beady Pool that I used as the inspiration for Mum and Dad's watercolour painting. Next I go through a load of photos to find one of us together, that I can print out and frame for her as a present. If we ever see each other again, that is.

Dad comes back from his latest work trip at about ten thirty; I hear voices, him laughing with Mum downstairs, the chink of wine glasses, and then music drifts upstairs and I can't hear anything else. I check my phone for the millionth time but there are still no messages.