Bringing the Summer (9 page)

I check the time. It's three o'clock, the dead time of the night, the time when people who are dying actually die, when the life force is at its lowest ebb. I switch off the light, and I drift in the darkness, back towards sleep, until it's properly morning and the house begins to wake.

Ten

Beth offers to give me a lift home. Neither Gabes nor Theo are up, but I've had breakfast and helped Maddie let the hens out, and played with the babies all before ten o'clock, and I'm ready to go.

She drives slowly and carefully along the lanes. She looks different this morning, I think: lighter and happier. Or perhaps it's just that she's driving, and not with the children: we've got the windows open and a CD playing in the car. She turns up the volume. ‘Listen to this one,' she says. ‘My favourite.'

It's a song about being free, and close to the one you love. ‘
Closer to heaven, and closer to you
,' Beth sings along. The lyrics will stay in my head all day.

‘Life is so much easier when I stay at Home Farm,' Beth says. ‘You can't imagine how difficult it is, sometimes, on my own with the children all day. It's turning me into some kind of monster. No wonder Will doesn't want to come home to us at the end of the day.'

I'm embarrassed. I don't really want to hear all the details of Beth's marriage problems. I don't know what to say.

‘So, did you have a nice time? In spite of grumpy Gabes?'

‘Yes. I love being there, too,' I say. ‘My own home's a bit . . . quiet, I suppose. A bit empty.'

‘
Quiet
sounds heavenly, to me!'

‘It's the wrong sort of quiet,' I say.

Beth glances at me. ‘I'm sorry. Tactless of me. I've just remembered what Gabes told us. About your brother.'

I don't say anything. I'm wondering what Gabes has said, and to whom. I don't like people feeling sorry for me.

‘You'll have to tell me where to go, in a minute,' Beth says, as we turn on to the ring road. ‘I know the general area, but not exactly where your street is.'

I give directions and she stops at the top of the hill for me to get out.

‘Thanks so much, Beth. It's really kind of you.'

‘My pleasure. Any time, really. Thanks for helping me with the babes, too.' She scrabbles about in her handbag and finds a pen and scrap of paper. ‘My mobile,' she says. ‘In case you need a lift or anything, while Gabes is in plaster and can't drive the bike.'

‘Thanks, Beth!' I watch her turn the car and drive off, before I walk down the hill to my house. I really like her. I wish I'd had an older sister, like her.

Dad's car is outside. He's back from his conference.

The back door's wide open; the kitchen smells of coffee and toast. Through the window I see them – my parents – at the table, talking together. Mum's laughing. I don't disturb them. It's rare to see Mum laugh like that, or looking as if she's feeling close to Dad, happy even. At one point two summers ago I thought they might be about to separate, but they didn't, and I am so glad about it I find myself wanting to do everything I can to keep them close. Sometimes I worry that being with me reminds them too much about the child who is missing. That having no children around might be easier than just one.

I go upstairs instead and lie on my bed. I'm tired, from being awake so much of the night. Later, I'll do my work for college, and phone Miranda. Later.

 

Monday morning. Art. Our lecturer, Jeanette, is going round looking at everyone's preliminary studies. I spread my notebooks out on the table ready, plus a stack of paintings I've been working on: small watercolours, mostly, apart from the one I did yesterday, which I put at the bottom because I think it is the best one, and I want her to see it last. All yesterday afternoon I worked fast, intuitively, painting the scene in the dream: the girl swimming into the blue, viewed from a high vantage point on the lichen-covered rock, with the space of air and light between.

Jeanette's face doesn't give anything away. She picks up the notebooks first, flicks through the pages, turns them the right way round where I've worked over two pages, sideways on. She leafs through the paintings, until she reaches the sea one. She spends a long time studying it. She looks at me. ‘This one, this is very interesting. The viewpoint, and your use of colour, and the sense of flow. As if you were painting at the scene, very fast.'

I breathe out, relieved.

‘But it seems to be more about harmony than discord. Of itself, it's very good, Freya. The quality of light and air is beautiful. Keep working like this. Do some more paintings. Start to think about how you might interpret the theme more explicitly.' She flips back through some of the drawings, stops when she gets to the one with the dead bird. ‘This, for example. Could the hawk be part of the painting? The element of discord in the scene? Or is that too obvious? Perhaps it could be connected in some way to the figure of the girl?'

‘I'll think some more,' I say.

 

Gabes isn't in college, and although I'm not surprised, I miss him at the breaks. I text him, to see how he is, and he texts back, briefly. He's bored, he says. When Miranda and I catch up at lunchtime and I describe my weekend I don't mention Theo, because that makes everything too complicated, somehow, which means I leave out quite a lot of the detail. I wonder at myself, later: since when have I become so secretive?

Gabes is away from college all week. He texts me back when I send him texts, but he never phones or anything. So I'm not sure what to think.

Now it's Friday, after school, and I've brought a mug of tea and my art notebooks outside to the garden table, partly because I want to make the most of this last bit of sunshine, and partly because the house seemed so empty and lonely when I got home. Neither Mum nor Dad is back from work, even though it's after six.

All this week, I've thought about Gabes, but I've also been thinking about Theo. I know I shouldn't: he'll be going back to Oxford for the new term any day now, and it's disloyal to Gabes, even if nothing has really happened between Gabes and me, yet. Perhaps that's the trouble: we're friends, but not really anything more than that, even though he doesn't have a girlfriend, and we've been spending lots of time together, and I've been to his house twice . . . and Miranda says it's blindingly obvious that he likes me. I think of us lying side by side on his bed, last Saturday evening. It was me who got up and left, wasn't it? But he didn't seem bothered. He went on listening to his music, as if he didn't mind either way. And he still hasn't phoned. He's never the one to send a message first: he just replies to mine. But then, maybe he's just in pain, and a bit out of it . . .

When I think of Theo, it's different: exciting, and a bit
wrong
, as if instinctively I know it won't be good for me, being with him.

‘You need to make the first move, if Gabes isn't going to,' Miranda said, when we were having lunch together at the Boston café. ‘Why should it always be the bloke who has to do that? Perhaps he's shy, or he's not sure how you will react. You need to make it more obvious that you want him to. So he's absolutely clear it's what you want.'

But is it? That's the real problem, I slowly realise. I'm not clear, even with myself. I keep telling myself it doesn't matter, that none of this is that important, anyway, in the grand scheme of things. Why shouldn't I be friends with both of them? They are brothers, after all.

Friendship. Is that what I'm wanting, really, with both? Is that all? Is it enough? Or is it the family, all of them, that I want to be a part of? My need to belong somewhere? Because my family is just too . . . small? It doesn't feel like a family at all, any more.

Too much thinking does my head in. I open my box of pastels and start to draw. I do what Jeanette says: pay attention to the object, look properly, as if you have never seen it before. Draw what is actually there, not what you think is there, and keep the connection: the eye, and the hand, moving across the page. An edge of table, and the back of a chair, and a plant in a pot: a geranium with leaves that smell of lemon, and tiny white flowers. The smell is part of it, but how can you show that, in a painting? Through colour? Association? The drawing lacks depth, somehow. I push the page away from me.

Mum phones: she's got a meeting after work so she's going to be late, and Dad won't be home till nine. ‘Make yourself something proper for supper,' she says. ‘Have some fruit and vegetables.'

‘I'm sixteen, Mum. You don't need to tell me.'

The house seems even emptier now. On impulse, I phone Gabes.

My heart does a little flutter as he answers.

‘Thought I'd actually speak to you,' I say. ‘Instead of texting. Is your foot any better? What have you been doing today?'

‘Lying around, watching crap telly, mostly,' Gabes says. ‘And being bored.' There's a slight pause, before he says, ‘Do you want to come over, this evening?'

‘Well, yes, that would be great. But I'm not sure how I can get there . . . my parents aren't around. There's no one to give me a lift . . .'

‘Hang on a minute.'

I hear him calling out to someone, and voices in the background, and then he speaks into the phone again. ‘Beth can come and get you. She said she'd like to.'

‘Really?'

‘She wouldn't offer otherwise. You can help her out, sometime, if you want to pay her back.' I hear voices again, in the background. Gabes laughs. ‘Now she's cross with me for saying that. You don't have to do anything, she says. What's your address, again? She thinks it'll take her about half an hour.'

So suddenly I'm happy, and rushing around, changing into clean jeans and top and getting my things together. Money, phone, notebook and pastels, which I then take out of the bag again, swimming things, just in case I get to stay over and it's warm enough to swim tomorrow; toothbrush, a change of top and underwear . . .

Beth texts me, to say she's at the top of the road. By the time I get there, she's turning the car round, ready. She leans across to open the door for me. ‘Sling your bag on the back seat, if you can find a space!'

I push it between the twins' car seats.

‘Thanks so much, Beth!' I say as I fasten the seat belt, and she drives off. I look at her, remembering what she told me last time. ‘So, how's your week in Oxford been?'

‘Awful,' she says. ‘Don't ask. That's why I've come home again for the weekend. Will's staying in London.'

Home
. Such a tiny word, and so telling. You'd expect her house in Oxford with her husband Will to be her home, but instead she uses the word for the house she grew up in, with her parents. Or rather, her dad. Maddie, I remember now, isn't her real mother, even if she's been like a mother most of her life.

Beth smiles at me. ‘But I'm fine now. Just having other people around, the twins seem so much easier to look after, and happier. Gabes has been great with them this afternoon. Playing endless games of bricks and reading stories. They love him.'

She concentrates on driving for a bit, negotiating traffic on to the London Road and then over the bridge to the ring road. It's busy at this time on a Friday.

I clear my throat. ‘And Theo? Is he at home this weekend?'

‘Yes. His last one before uni starts up again.' She glances at me, curiously, and I wish I hadn't asked.

She turns off the lane down to the farmhouse. The green driveway isn't green any longer: the leaves on the overhanging trees have turned brown and gold. My spirits lift again. I love the first glimpse of the cobbled yard, the whitewashed walls and dipping roof, and that big wooden door into the kitchen.

Gabes must have heard the car. He comes out to meet us. ‘Hey! Freya!' He hugs me, and I'm so relieved and happy I forget about the awkward moment in the car with Beth. Everyone seems pleased to see me: his mum, the twins and even Kit, on his way out somewhere. There's no sign of Theo.

‘You'll be amazed how quick I am on these now!' Gabes waves one of the crutches. ‘Even outside, and up and down stairs.'

I laugh. ‘That's good.'

‘Come and see the latest addition to the family.'

‘Who's that, then?'

‘The fox. Remember Dad talking about it?'

I do, vaguely. ‘Where is it?'

I follow him out of the house again and across the courtyard, round the side of the house. Against the wall someone's made a small pen out of wood and wire mesh. The young fox is crouched at the back. It cowers further into the shadows, and bares its teeth in a snarl. I can just make out the bandaged leg.

‘She's terrified, obviously. But we can't let her go till her leg's mended. And that'll be weeks. But we mustn't make her too tame, either, otherwise she won't readjust to being wild.'

‘It seems a lot of effort,' I say, ‘just for one fox.'