3: Chocolate Box Girls: Summer's Dream (9 page)

11

When we get home from school that afternoon, Grandma Kate is there, sweeping through the house like a small whirlwind. She rolls up her sleeves and chases Mum from the kitchen, telling her to run a bath, relax, get into honeymoon mode.

Mum and Paddy are in the living room checking passports and travel documents, finishing their packing, modelling ancient sun hats and dodgy sandals. Their minds are already several thousand miles away from here, in the Peruvian rainforest, dreaming of organic, fairly traded cocoa beans and llamas and the Lost City of the Incas.

‘Be good for Grandma Kate,’ Mum says, her face creased into a frown. ‘Try not to be any trouble, and help make
sure everything runs smoothly. Be friendly. Be helpful. And whatever you do, don’t forget the room-changes on Saturdays …’

‘Mum, we won’t,’ I promise. ‘It’s all sorted – I’ve made a list so everyone knows when to help. It’ll run like clockwork!’

‘Your curfew is eleven, so no later than that, promise?’

‘We promise,’ we chorus, except for Honey who is suddenly busy checking her phone.

‘Honey?’ Mum prompts.

My big sister looks up sulkily. ‘Eleven?’ she asks. ‘Seriously? I’m fifteen, not five!’

Mum stops packing and turns to Honey, hands on hips. ‘We agreed, Honey,’ she says. ‘Eleven. The last thing I want is Grandma Kate worrying about where you are. If you can’t go along with that, the whole thing’s off.’

Silence falls around us, and Paddy rakes a hand through his hair, despairing. Honey breaks the silence.

‘OK, OK,’ she laughs. ‘Don’t panic, it was a joke, yeah? I will stick to the curfew. I promise.’

Mum relaxes, and Paddy’s shoulders slump in relief. ‘Harry knows what he’s doing in the chocolate workshop,’
he says. ‘He should keep that side of things ticking over nicely, but if there are any problems …’

‘There won’t be,’ Skye promises.

‘It’s all under control,’ Grandma Kate tells Mum and Paddy. ‘Stop worrying! The girls and I will manage just fine, and Harry will run the workshop with military precision. All you two have to do is go off and enjoy yourselves!’

‘But three weeks …’ Mum sighs. ‘I don’t know. Anything could go wrong …’

‘Nothing will,’ I promise, but there’s a sad, empty ache in my chest that tells me things are going wrong right now. I want to hang on to Mum and hug her hard and beg her not to go, but I don’t, of course. That would be childish and selfish and cruel. Wouldn’t it?

‘Summer, I so wish I could be here for your audition,’ Mum is saying. ‘I know how much it means to you. I’ll be thinking of you, wishing you luck every inch of the way. I’ll text whenever I can, I promise.’

‘It’s OK.’ I drag up my best stage smile, think bright, happy thoughts. Let’s just say that if my dancing career falls through, I could have a great future in acting.

Mum squeezes my hand and I have to turn away, tears prickling the back of my eyes without warning.

Next morning, we are up at dawn to say goodbye. The suitcases have been packed into Paddy’s minivan and Mum is frantically looking around in case she’s forgotten anything. ‘You’ll walk Fred and feed the ducks, won’t you, Coco?’ she asks. ‘And make sure Humbug is shut safely in the stable every night?’

‘You can rely on me,’ Coco promises.

‘Call me if there are any problems,’ Mum says. ‘I’ll have my mobile switched on at all times, in case of emergencies …’

‘There won’t be any emergencies,’ Grandma Kate says firmly, but Mum doesn’t seem to be listening.

‘There’s lentil soup, home-made steak pie and sausage casserole in the freezer,’ she says. ‘Remember not to overstack the dishwasher. Keep an eye on The Chocolate Box website and log orders as they come in … bank the business payments at least once a week … water the veggie garden …’

‘Relax, Charlotte,’ Grandma Kate says gently. ‘Time to switch off, enjoy the honeymoon.’

Mum hugs us all hard, and Paddy tousles our hair as if we are bouncy puppy dogs and not soon-to-be-abandoned children. They jump in the car and Paddy revs the engine while Mum leans out of the open window. ‘Do everything Grandma Kate tells you … and stick to the curfew, OK?’

They drive away fast in a screech of gravel.

‘We’ll cope just fine,’ Grandma Kate says briskly, turning back towards the house. ‘Let’s hope they have the best honeymoon ever. Now … let’s get this show on the road! Who’d like some of my special French toast for breakfast?’

‘Me,’ Coco whoops.

‘Me too,’ Skye echoes, hooking an arm round Cherry’s shoulders. ‘Can we have that every morning? It’s my favourite! If you’ve never had my gran’s French toast, Cherry, you have not lived. It has cinnamon and butter and a drizzle of maple syrup … gorgeous.’

‘Cool,’ Cherry says.

A few weeks ago I’d have thought it was cool too, but now I am just vaguely irritated that a high-calorie breakfast is meant to make me feel better about Mum going away. My stomach growls with hunger, but I am getting to like that empty feeling. It makes me feel light, clean, strong.

The others troop back into the house. Honey yawns and says we must be crazy to even think about eating when it’s practically the middle of the night, and that she is going back to bed, possibly until lunchtime.

I am left alone, standing on the empty driveway, staring into the distance long after the car has gone.

12

I am in the studio at the dance school, running through my exercises and working on the set piece we have to perform for the audition. The clock on the wall says I have been practising for two hours, but I’m not happy yet with the way it’s going.

I need it to be smooth, light, effortless, but today it’s not working. I feel dull, leaden, lost. I need the music to fill me up and take me away from this place, somewhere timeless, magical, where dance is the only thing that matters.

I look towards the window. A plane cuts through the cloudless sky, leaving a soft, white surf-like trail in its wake. Are Mum and Paddy on that plane? I have no way of knowing.

All morning my mobile has been buzzing with messages
from Mum. Almost at Heathrow, she texted while I was on the bus to town: Checked in, all well, as I was getting changed; Through security, as I bent to reset the CD; At the departure gate, as I stopped to re-dip my shoes in the rosin box; and, finally, for the last twenty minutes, silence.

Mum and Paddy will be in the air right now, heading for Peru, maybe on the plane I glimpsed, or on another plane like it, far away. I am happy for them, so pleased they are getting the honeymoon they deserve … but I can’t help feeling anxious too.

I can’t remember being away from Mum for more than a couple of nights before, on sleepovers or rare, long-ago trips to London to see Dad, or that weekend Mum spent in Glasgow when she was first seeing Paddy. There was a school trip to Wales the year Dad left, an outward-bound type of thing with abseiling and hillwalking, but it seemed wrong to go when Mum was so cut up about the split, when money was short and our family seemed to be falling to pieces. Skye and I binned our application forms without even showing Mum.

I know I’m grown-up enough to manage for a few weeks. It is silly to feel uneasy about it all – we can manage fine,
and Grandma Kate is kind and sensible and very organized. It’s not like we have been left to fend for ourselves. So I have no idea why worry curdles in my belly like sour milk.

The studio door swings open and Jodie appears, dressed for practice. She seems surprised to see me.

‘You’re early,’ she grins. ‘I thought I’d be the first here today!’

I decide not to mention I have been here for two hours already. I’ve been practising more than usual over the last few weeks, but I don’t want to appear too keen, too desperate, too weird.

‘Won’t it be amazing if we get through those auditions?’ Jodie says. ‘Come September, we could be at ballet school full-time. I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m going to practise every day until the audition.’

‘Me too,’ I say. ‘I’d do anything to get a place, anything at all.’

Jodie frowns. ‘Me too,’ she says. ‘But it’s destiny, right? If we’re meant to get a place, we will. If not … well, it just isn’t meant to happen.’

Anger flares inside me. Fate and destiny weren’t exactly on my side last time, were they? Surely Jodie isn’t willing to
leave something as important as this down to fate. Is it enough to dance your best and hope that the panel is feeling kind enough to give you a chance? I don’t think so. I think you have to do everything possible to make sure you shine.

‘It is meant to happen, though,’ I frown. ‘It has to. We’ve wanted this since we were kids, Jodie. If we try hard enough, we’ll get through! We have to!’

She shrugs and smiles and starts running through her warm-up exercises, but I get the feeling Jodie thinks I may be trying a little too hard.

She doesn’t know the half of it.

At teatime, Jamie Finch arrives at Tanglewood wearing a vintage army jacket and a pair of red Converse, his dark hair a tangle of unruly waves, an outsize rucksack on his back. Nikki drove up to London to collect him, then got ambushed by one of the production team the minute she returned, leaving her son adrift.

He wanders into the kitchen, where we have fruit smoothies and angel-wing meringues waiting. ‘Good to meet you, Jamie,’ Grandma Kate says. ‘Welcome to the madhouse!’

It probably does look a little crazy. Coco is sitting on the draining board playing her violin, which is why Skye is wearing pink fluffy earmuffs as she irons some of her vintage dress collection to take down to Jess the wardrobe manager later. Cherry is curled up in the armchair by the Aga writing haiku poetry and even Honey is sitting at the kitchen table making quick ink sketches of everyone.

I’ve just unplugged my iPod after running through my ballet exercises one last time, a baggy T-shirt over my leotard and leg warmers. I didn’t dance well today in class, and I am determined to smooth out the glitches if it kills me. I am not leaving the audition to fate, no matter what Jodie says.

Fred the dog and Humbug the lamb watch it all, curled up together on Fred’s cushion in the corner. We don’t always cram into the kitchen together like this, but today is different. We need to be together because Mum and Paddy are gone and everything feels slightly out of balance.

Jamie Finch laughs, taking the chaos in his stride. ‘Thank you for having me,’ he says politely. ‘I’m so excited to be out of London for a while – Mum’s never let me help out on a shoot before. It’s going to be cool! By the way, just call me Finch … everyone else does.’

‘Finch then,’ Grandma Kate amends.

Coco puts down her violin, blinking, and Honey raises one perfect eyebrow at the idea of a boy who thinks that Kitnor might be cooler than London. I glance across at Skye. She has been counting off the days until Finch’s arrival, yet now looks totally amazed to find him standing in the middle of our kitchen.

‘Hey,’ he says when he catches sight of her. ‘Skye … how’s it going?’

My twin blushes a dark shade of pink and seems to have lost the power of speech. She may not actually have heard his words, what with the pink fluffy earmuffs, but she takes them off carefully now and drops them carelessly into the fruit bowl where they nestle alongside a nectarine and three green apples. She grins and Finch grins back, and when the rest of us notice a faint smell of burning, it’s hard to tell for sure whether it comes from their sizzling gaze or from the iron Skye has abandoned face down on one of her best vintage petticoats.

‘Skye, be careful!’ Grandma Kate says, unplugging the iron and holding up the ruined petticoat, which now has an iron-shaped scorch mark right in the middle.

But Skye can’t take her eyes off Finch, not even to survey the frazzled slip. He is just as smitten. It’s like watching one of those cheesy movies where everything goes slo-mo and soft focus and your toes begin to curl with embarrassment. I have always thought those scenes were exaggerated because it’s seriously not that way at all when I am with Aaron.

‘Hello?’ Grandma Kate says, bemused. ‘Skye? Better leave that ironing now, pet. Finch, why don’t you go and find your mum and tell her there’s a nice pot of tea here for her. Then I’ll show you to your room, and I’m sure the girls will help you to settle in, make you feel welcome …’