Bringing the Summer (22 page)

And if I was there now, I'd be getting up and going downstairs; Evie would hear me, and she'd come down too, and I'd tell her . . .

Tell her everything.

About Theo, and Bridie. About Gabes, and Beth . . . this family that isn't my family, however much I wish it was.

There! It must have been the sound of the back door, after all, that first woke me. The stairs creak as someone treads heavily up them, and along the landing. I wait, holding my breath, but eyes tight shut, pretending to be asleep.

Theo brushes against my mattress as he squeezes past and goes into his room. I listen to him undressing, pulling the duvet up around him, moving his pillow to get comfy. The bed squeaks every time he shifts or turns over.

It goes quiet.

I open my eyes.

Theo's standing at the bedroom doorway, watching me. His eyes glint in the dark. It's seriously spooky.

‘You
are
awake. I knew you were!' he says.

‘I was worried about you,' I whisper. ‘When you didn't come back.'

‘That makes a change,' Theo says. ‘I don't suppose anyone else was.'

‘Where have you been all this time?'

‘I went to see if the stream was frozen. It wasn't, or only a tiny bit at the edges, not thick enough to take my weight.'

I suck in my breath, imagining him walking on ice, slipping through . . . People die, doing that.

‘Then I just walked for hours. Ended up at the railway.'

He's deliberately frightening me.

‘Why?' I whisper.

‘She told me to.'

‘Who did?'

‘Bridie, of course.'

I don't speak. I remember what he said before, about hearing voices. Her voice, telling him to do things.

He laughs, a hollow laugh. ‘But there were no trains. Because it's Christmas Day.'

‘Theo,' I say. ‘Stop this.'

‘Stop what, sweet Freya?'

‘This crazy talk. You don't mean it. You're winding me up. Very successfully, if you must know.'

‘But you were worried?'

‘Yes. I told you before. I wanted to come and find you, but Beth said . . . she said you often went off, and you'd come back. And I didn't know where to start looking, in any case.'

He
wants
to know I was worried. It's as if he wants to push things to the limit, to test people. Me.

‘Theo?' I say. ‘It's not fair, making people worry just for the sake of it, to prove something. It's a cruel thing to do.'

He's silent.

I turn away, wriggle further down into the sleeping bag and pull the hood up to cover my face. I don't like him looking down at me like that, watching me.

Eventually he goes back into his room. He leaves the door open. It isn't very long before I hear the slow, rhythmic breathing of someone deeply asleep.

Gradually, I calm down.

I so wanted to believe that somehow I could save Theo from himself, just by being normal and loving. By understanding what it's like to feel sad, and to miss someone who's died. I could offer him that, at least. That's what I thought. But it's not enough, I realise now.

 

Everything seems different by the morning. I wake, late, to a strange, pale light. I crawl along the mattress and pull back the curtain on the little window next to the roof beam.

‘Theo! Come and look! It's snowing!'

Theo groans. ‘I'm asleep! You're too loud!'

‘No, come here and see. It's amazing! Proper snow that's settling.'

He wakes up fully after a while; he wraps himself in his duvet and joins me at the window. ‘You're cold!' he says. He holds out one edge of the duvet so I can cuddle in next to him, in the warm. He puts his arm round me and pulls me close. I'm acutely aware of his body, in a creased T-shirt and old pyjama bottoms, next to mine in my thin pyjamas. For a while, neither of us speaks. We watch the snow falling, piling on to the window ledge. It seems eerily quiet.

I sigh. ‘I ought to phone Dad for a lift, before the snow gets too thick.'

‘Why don't you stay?'

‘I don't think so. Not after last night. You frightened me.'

‘I promise I won't go off again,' Theo says. ‘We'll have a good time. Really. I'd been drinking all day . . . too much, that's all it was. Sorry. I won't have any today.'

He seems so ordinary and sensible now that I start wondering what was real and what wasn't. That stuff about voices, the railway . . . did I imagine all that? Did I dream it?

I stare out of the window. The snow's falling fast, big soft feathery flakes. While I'm watching, the back door opens downstairs and Beth, Laura, Kit, Liu and Ellie spill out into the yard. They run in circles round the yard, and disappear through the gap in the wall into the garden. Their dark footprints are already filling up again with snow. I lean forward to open the window a little; icy air rushes in and with it, the sound of laughter, shrieking.

‘Are you mad?' Theo says. ‘It's freezing!' He pulls it shut again, sends a little pile of powdery snow over the ledge.

I laugh. ‘I wanted to hear the snow. You know, that special soft sound it makes as it falls? Come on, let's get dressed and go outside with the others.'

 

It's funny the way snow transforms everything. Not just outside, where everything is cleaned and purified, all the dirt and muddle smoothed under a blanket of white, but people, too, are different. Even the adults.

Maddie's pulling on her boots and coat when we reach the kitchen. ‘Have some breakfast,' she says. ‘Then come on out.'

But we're too excited to stop for breakfast. Theo finds me some spare wellies and an old waxed jacket and we run out into the yard. Nick and Gabes are searching for some old plastic sledges in the barn. It's not deep enough yet for sledging, but it might be if the snow keeps going. The sky is so completely white, the air so still and cold, it really might.

We follow the prints round the side of the house to the orchard and the garden. The grass is already covered, except where people have scooped and rolled the snow to make snowmen. But they are not your average sort of snowmen with a small round head on a big round body; these are works of art, snow sculptures: a woman and a baby, no, two babies . . . and Kit's making a boy, and before long, with everyone working together, there'll be a whole snow family . . . Except that Gabes throws a snowball that hits Kit, and then another at Theo, and a big snowball fight breaks out instead.

I join in. I'm an expert, from years of experience with my brother.

‘Ouch!' The bitter cold of wet snow down my neck makes me yell out.

Theo brushes the snow off, and kisses my neck to warm it up, but it tickles and makes me laugh. I run off again, and he chases after. Kit rugby-tackles me and brings me down in the snow. I'm a sprawling, laughing wreck, wet through.

I follow Maddie back in for coffee and toast.

In the warm kitchen Will, Beth's husband, is buttoning Phoebe and Erin into their winter coats, ready to take them into snow for their first time ever.

Beth hovers, anxious. She smiles at me. ‘Your cheeks, Freya! Bright pink! Is it very cold?'

‘Yes, but very fun too!' I say. ‘I'm going out again as soon as I've phoned Dad and had some breakfast.'

‘Come and help with the twins, if you want. We're going to the field the other side of the lane, where there's a gentle slope,' Will says, ‘to try sledging.'

I'm shy with Will: I don't really know him yet, just the things I've heard from Beth, and it's awkward, knowing that he's made Beth unhappy. Right now, though, he seems nice.

Theo helps me pull off my boots. My toes are numb. Maddie pours the coffee. Everything is exactly as it should be.

‘Can you stay a bit longer?' Maddie asks me, when she sees me getting my phone out. ‘One of us can take you home later, to save your parents coming out in the snow.'

‘Thanks. I'd like that.'

I go into the hall so I can talk more easily. Through the sitting-room doorway I can see Ellie with the kittens. She waves at me.

The phone rings for ages. Dad picks up eventually. ‘Freya darling!' he says. ‘Are you ready to come home? Have you had a good time?'

‘I'm going to stay today, if that's OK by you. Maddie says they'll bring me home this evening. We're going sledging in a minute.'

‘You must have more snow out there than we do. Here, it's just a light dusting,' Dad says. Mum calls out something. ‘Hang on, your mother wants to wish you Happy Boxing Day!'

‘Glad you've been having a good time, darling,' she says. Her voice sounds breathy, different to usual. ‘We have too. A lovely long walk and a very romantic evening!'

‘Well, that's good. You can tell me more when I see you later,' I say. ‘Bye, Mum.'

Romantic?
I can guess what that means. I needn't have felt guilty about not being with them for Christmas. It's obviously better that I wasn't there, that it was just the two of them . . .

But there's too much going on to be sad right now. Breakfast, and then sledging, for the whole afternoon.

I go back into the warm kitchen.

 

Theo keeps his promise. He's not moody, he doesn't drink, he doesn't go rushing off, or wind anyone up too much. Gabes is nice too. It's much easier being around them both with so many other people there. We join everyone in the sloping field above the stream, and take turns on the three sledges. At about three, before it starts getting dark, the grown-ups go off for a long walk, all except Nick, who's been called out to a farm in the next valley. Beth and Will take the twins back to the house to warm up, and Tom and Laura go with them, so it's just Theo, Gabes, Kit, Liu, Ellie and me left.

We trudge up the hill to a steeper slope, where the snow is still untouched, thick and deep and soft. It's stopped actually snowing, now; for a brief half-hour the sun comes out: a pale winter sun so low in the sky it throws pink shadows over the snow-covered fields, and then the pink turns to purple and blue. By four, it's almost dark.

We go down the slope in pairs on the sledges, shooting down the iced runs we've made over the afternoon. One girl and one boy on each sledge: I'm with Theo, and Kit with Liu, and Gabes takes Ellie. I go at the front, legs crunched up, with Theo behind, his legs stretched out either side of me, his arms tight round my waist. My ears are numb with cold; the air whizzes over my face, stinging it, as we go faster and faster. I can't stop myself squealing each time – Ellie and Liu are just the same – but the boys are silent and competitive: who can be fastest, stay on longest.

There's a magical moment each time we go down, when the sledge seems to fly over the snow, and the air rushes past; something to do with the cold, the silence that folds over the landscape, and just the whoosh of movement. I close my eyes and I could be anywhere, any time. It's even more spellbinding as the light fades and the first stars appear. The moon comes up, and the whole world turns silver. It's almost too beautiful to leave behind.

But we do. We're exhausted, and wet, and frozen to the core. My face is raw with cold. Silent now, we walk back through the fields, through the dark that isn't properly dark because of the moonlit snow.

Whatever happens, I think, I will remember this perfect afternoon for ever.

Twenty-four

Maddie takes me home in the evening. She doesn't invite Theo to come too, or let him drive me. ‘The roads will be icy,' she tells him when he objects. ‘You've no experience with driving in snow. And I'm not taking any risks with Freya's safety.' Her voice sounds sharp.

She drives the van very slowly along the lane: someone's been along with a tractor, clearing a track, but even so, it's slippery. She has to concentrate, so we don't talk until she's turned on to the main road, nearer town. There's much less snow here.

‘How did you think Theo was?' she says, out of the blue. ‘Be truthful, Freya.'

I turn to look at her. She isn't smiling or anything.

‘Beth told me about him disappearing off last night. I didn't realise at the time,' Maddie says. ‘I'm sorry you were anxious about him.'

I don't know what to say. I don't want to betray Theo, but maybe . . . maybe his mum should know what he was like.

‘I think he had too much to drink,' I say, tentatively.

‘Yes. And did he talk to you? When he came back?'

‘He was very tired. He'd been walking, in the cold . . .'

‘Did he tell you where he went?'

I'm cold. A bit shaky. ‘He said he went to see if the stream was frozen . . .' I look at her face, and I know I have got to tell her everything. I owe her that. ‘And then he walked all the way to the railway line. He said it was because
she
told him to. That girl who died.'