Following Flora (14 page)

“She was always lovely when she came back,” Zach insisted. “She does crazy things sometimes, but she's not a bad person. And she knew Gran was there to look after me. She wouldn't have left me if I hadn't had Gran.”

I thought about Grandma, then. Once when we were staying with her, the vet came to see one of her ponies, who was lame. The vet said the pony should be put down. “There isn't really a choice,” the vet said, but instead Grandma nursed the pony back to health. No one can ever ride him again, but Grandma says at least he's happy, living quietly in her paddock.

“There's always a choice,” Grandma said.

I didn't say anything now, because it didn't seem right, but I thought it.

Jas tugged at my arm. I caught Flora's eye. She nodded, like she was saying “you do it,” and laced her fingers through Zach's.

So much for the protective big sister.

“The reason we came,” I said, “is that Jas is worried . . .”

“Not
just
me,” Jas said.

“. . . is that we're
all
worried in case Wanda, I mean your mum, attacks
our
mum again.”

“You're going to find her, aren't you, Zach?” said Flora.

“He hasn't found her so far,” I pointed out.

“But he will,” she replied.

Zoran crouched down in front of Jas. “I promise nothing bad is going to happen again,” he said. “But just so you feel really safe, shall we go and tell your dad everything?”

“And call the police?” said Jas.

“If that's what he wants to do.” He glanced over at Zach. “I'm sorry, but this has gone far enough,” he said. “Cassie and the baby might be out of danger, but I'm not having Jas going around frightened.”

The house felt different when we got home. Dad had put the heat right up, and there was a big bunch of flowers on the table in the hall. “Mummy's flowers from the hospital!” Jas cried. “She's back!”

She ran upstairs. Flora and I followed. Mum was lying in bed, looking tired but happy in her old pink dressing gown, with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits on a tray, Twig, Ron, and Hermione lying beside her, and Dad beaming over them, wearing an apron and looking surprisingly like an old mother hen.

“You're better!” Jas flung herself onto the bed. Mum laughed and reached out to hug her.

I always knew Dad would react badly. After we'd all hugged Mum, Flora said Zach and Zoran were downstairs. Mum said they should come up. “After all,” Mum said, “they are part of this family too.” Zach and Zoran came in, looking nervous. Zoran explained.

“I'm sorry,” Zoran said. “I should have said something earlier. It's just . . . It's been difficult.” Mum put her hand on his arm. “Dear Zoran, you're not telling me anything I didn't already suspect.”

My mum's amazing.

Zoran pressed his forehead against her hand and murmured, “Thank you.”

“The thing to do now is find her.” Mum reached out to Zach. “You poor thing, you look so tired.”

And it could have ended there, except that's when Dad shouted, “No!”

Everyone turned to look at him. “No, no, no!” he repeated. “You all knew and you never said anything? Blue knew, and Flora knew, and Zoran knew, and you knew, and nobody thought to tell me? I have spent days
out of my mind
with worry, worried about how to keep my family safe, and NOBODY THOUGHT TO TELL ME? I'm calling the police.”

“No, David.” Mum repeated what Zoran had said to me, that there was no point.

Jas whimpered. “Don't be scared,” I whispered to her. “You can see Mum isn't.”

“I knew you'd react like this,” Mum told Dad. “That's why I didn't tell you. You were so worried.”

“Me too,” I said. “I'm sorry, Daddy.”

“I thought you might stop me seeing Zach,” Flora said.

Zach, speaking for the first time, said, “I'm really, really sorry, Mr. Gadsby.”

Flora really should have learned by now not to put ideas into Dad's head. Dad looked from Flora to Zach and back at Flora again, and said, “Well you were right, that's exactly what I am going to do. You two are not to see each other.”

Mum said, “David, that hardly seems fair,” and Dad said he didn't care about being fair, and was he the only one here to appreciate the full gravity of the situation? “That woman is still on the loose,” he said, not noticing Zach flinch. “And she is a danger to my family.”

“But it's not Zach's fault!” Flora protested.

“I don't care!” Dad roared.

“Daddy!”

“He's right, Flora,” said Zach. I wouldn't have thought it was possible, but he looked even paler than before.

“But it's not your fault!” Flora repeated. She squared her shoulders and faced Dad. “You can't stop me! I'm seventeen years old and . . .”

Dad held up his hand to silence her. “Zach, you are a gentleman,” he said. “And now, if you all don't mind, I am going for a walk.”

He was very dignified as he left the room. I slipped out after him and asked him if he would like company on his walk, but he said, still dignified, that he would rather be alone. He walked down the stairs with his head held high. In the hall, he put on his coat, his scarf, and his old hat. He slipped out of his indoor shoes and pulled on his sneakers.

“AGGGGGGGGhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

I swear his scream made the house shake, and his swearing afterward would have made a pirate blush.

Apparently Ron had been using his shoes as a toilet again.

“Those ******* ****** cats!” Dad yelled. He pulled off his sneakers and hurled them out into the street. Tore down to the basement for some clean socks. Stormed back upstairs, put on the socks, his shoes, and walked out slamming the door.

Dinner was silent. Dad made pasta with a jar of puttanesca sauce, and even though Jas hates olives, she ate the whole thing without complaining. Mum stayed in bed. Flora stayed in her room. Ron and Hermione stayed in the shed.

 

FRIDAY, JANUARY 24

Flora skipped school today to see Zach. He called her late last night to ask her to meet him, and she asked me to cover for her. She said, looking more serious than I have ever seen her, not to ask any questions but that things had changed since Wednesday. We left home together this morning as usual, but after we dropped Jas and Twig off we both went in separate directions.

I went to the school office to tell them Flora was sick.

She went to spend the day with Zach and his mother.

She told me everything this afternoon when she got back.

Zach finally heard from his mum last night. She said she wanted to see him, and he thought it would be good for Flora to go too.

Flora said, “But what if she attacks me?” and Zach said that wasn't going happen, and that he wanted his mum to see how great Flora was.

“Once she knows you a bit, she'll love you,” Zach said.

“That was a bit deluded,” I remarked, and Flora agreed, but she went anyway.

She met him at the train station and they walked down to the river hand in hand. “Does she know I'm coming?” Flora asked, and Zach replied, “Yes, of course, and she thinks it's a really good idea.”

It was a beautiful day. They walked past a little park and some pubs and a houseboat with a dog on the roof and a woman watering potted plants and it was all really pretty, except Flora was too nervous to enjoy it. They came to a tiny street with gardens on one side and gardens giving way to the river on the other, and Zach finally stopped in front of a big house with black-and-white marble steps going up to a dark red door and said, “Well, this is where I live; this is my grandparents' house.”

“What was it like?” I asked.

“The house? Old, a bit like a museum.” Old furniture, and old books, and a kitchen which reminds me of Grandma's, except not as big. Loads of photographs of Zach and his gran. Only one of him and Wanda. But we didn't stay long. Zach called out for his mum and she didn't answer, so he said maybe she was outside, and we crossed the road to the garden.

The garden, Flora says, was like going into another world. They closed the big red front door behind them, went back down the black-and-white steps, crossed the tiny street, and went through an iron gate set inside a tall hedge. Flora says it was like going into Narnia or something, and she could hardly even hear the city anymore. There was a lawn with an old stone bench and a weeping willow tree, with a little wall at the end with another gate in it, and a small jetty on the other side, and on the pontoon there was a little table covered with food, an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne, glasses and cups and plates, and a thermos of coffee, and one of those little barbecues in a bucket, and cakes and croissants and pastries and the smell of cooking sausages. There was jazz music playing.

“Surprise!” Zach's mother appeared suddenly from behind the branches of the weeping willow. Zach started to laugh. Flora tried not to stare.

For today's picnic, Wanda was dressed like a society lady from the 1920s, with a cloche hat and a big fur-collared coat over a drop waist dress, gray buttoned shoes, and matching gloves. She twirled to show herself off.

“Do you like it?” she asked. “I've got something for you too. I thought we should have fun!”

And that was how Flora found herself having the strangest picnic, sitting on a pontoon on the Thames at the end of January, with a feather boa round her neck and a cloche hat of her own, eating croissants and sausages and drinking champagne, with Zach sitting next to her in a straw boater and a striped blazer.

“I didn't know if we should have breakfast or lunch,” Wanda said. “So I made brunch!”

She made it sound like brunch was something she had just invented all on her own.

“Did she even mention Mum?” I asked, and Flora said no, but that at this point everything was so strange and rather wonderful she wasn't even thinking about Mum either. That came later, Flora said.

After they'd eaten, Wanda taught Zach and Flora to dance the Charleston, still on the pontoon. Then when the wind started to whip up on the river, they carried everything back to the garden and sat under the willow tree, where she and Zach reminisced about all the other picnics they'd had there, and she made Flora laugh by telling stories of the scrapes Zach got into when he was little.

“You see,” Zach said, putting his arm round Flora's shoulders. “I knew you two would get along.”

“There was a flash in her eye,” Flora said. “An actual flash. Zach didn't see it because he is so besotted with her, but I did. And that is when I remembered Mum.”

Wanda said, speaking of Flora, “She's charming, Zach. I'm so glad I got the chance to meet her before I go away tomorrow.” Zach said, “What do you mean, before you go away tomorrow?” and Wanda said she had been invited to go and stay with some friends in northern Spain who owned a delightful hotel up in the mountains.

“But you've only just got back from France!” Zach said.

“I'm afraid it can't be helped, my darling,” Wanda replied. “I'm sailing on tomorrow's boat. That's why I wanted to see you today.”

“Who goes to Spain by boat?” I asked.

“Loads of people, apparently,” Flora said. “That's kind of not the point.”

“But what about me?” Zach asked when Wanda said about the boat, and Flora's blood started to boil because he looked so miserable. “Where will I live?”

Wanda replied that Zach seemed to be very happy living where he was.

“I can't stay with Zoran forever,” Zach said.

“Can't you stay here on your own?”

“No,” Flora snapped. “He can't.”

“You're my family, Mum,” Zach insisted.

“Well your grandfather doesn't seem to think so,” Wanda said.

“And that's when I left,” Flora concluded. “I couldn't stand it. She really is a witch, Blue. She puts spells on people. She almost put a spell on
me
, with her music and her clothes and her fancy picnic. His little face when she said that she was leaving again! He walked me back to the end of the street, and I tried to tell him what she was doing but he wouldn't listen. I said she was playing us, him against his grandfather, him against me. I said she doesn't care about anyone but herself, she only told you about Spain because you were talking about me and she can't stand it not being all about her.”

“What did Zach say?”

“That I was wrong and that she loves him. Didn't I see how she was today? Would she really put on a picnic like that if she didn't love him, if she didn't want to impress me? I said she'd have impressed me more if she'd bothered to apologize about hurling stones at my mother.”

“How did he react to that?”

“He said we have to look after her. I said, no,
you
have to look after her. She's not my problem, and maybe Dad's right, maybe we shouldn't see each other for a while. I told him to call me when he'd gotten over his mother complex, and that I was going back to my own family.”

“You said that? Call me when you're over your mother complex?”

Flora gave a tiny smile. “It's not quite a milk shake, but seriously, I'm tired of always hearing about her. I can't believe I ever thought it was more important to protect Zach than tell the truth to Dad. There's no one more important than you all, no one.”

Sometimes I really love my big sister, but she is always so extreme.

“I can't believe Wanda never mentioned Mum to you,” I said. “And I'm really pleased you stood up for us and everything, but don't you think that now
you
are being unfair to Zach?”

Flora looked worried. “Do you think so?”

“A little bit.”

“I'll call him tomorrow,” she said. “He'll need cheering up anyway if that witch really is leaving. Also, do you think I should tell Dad what happened today? I'm tired of secrets. And Jas will be relieved to know Wanda's leaving.”