Infinite Sky (28 page)

We need you!
a green and gold tapestry shouts above her head.

She scrunches her big mouth over to one side. Her black hair is parted down the middle and her scalp is bluey white. It’s the first time I’ve seen her without her cap on.

‘Just wanted to say . . . I’m . . . really sorry.’

‘What for? Leaving my brother in the road or punching me in the face?’

Her mouth drops open.

‘I’m really sorry. We
had
to go,’ she says, and her expression is urgent. ‘James and Dean are on probation.’

‘I don’t care about that.’

She seems smaller. She’s a different girl. She doesn’t know what to say. She just stands there, with her uneven-looking pointy bob, gawping at me.

‘Trick stayed,’ I say. ‘
Pikelet
. He stayed with Sam while I went to get an ambulance. So Sam wasn’t on his own.’

She looks at her shoes, which are those cheap canvas pumps you have to wear for indoor PE at school. They’re rubbing the tops of her bare feet, turning them red.

‘He was really special,’ she says, and her voice splits. ‘He drew me these pictures. I could show you maybe.’

I shake my head.

Matty has come over at some point, and linked my arm, and all of a sudden any anger I had towards Leanne, and even Punky and Dean who haven’t even come to the funeral, is gone.

I imagine Sam’s drawing version of Leanne – all angular and bright-eyed – and I think of how she cried when he fell, and how she climbed onto the back of the motorbike.

‘I won’t forget,’ I say, and she nods because she won’t either, and then she walks off, shoulders low, to find her dad. She buries her head in his chest and he kisses the
top of her head.

Matty nudges my arm, but she doesn’t hug me. She knows what would happen.

‘I made Sam this,’ she says, and she holds out a small blue ceramic thing.

I turn it over in my hands. ‘What is it?’

‘For flowers,’ she says. ‘It’s a vase.’

‘Looks like a sock.’

‘Piss off,’ she says, and she looks so surprised, and then she blows a snot bubble as she laughs or cries or whatever it is we’re both doing, and we walk out to the sunshine to
see if that feels any better.

Tractors come to harvest the corn.

It is September, and the police have been down to take my statement. It doesn’t match Punky and Dean’s, but Leanne has told the truth. Trick has told the truth too. I got a letter.
He put three kisses, and underlined my name, and there was a drawing underneath which I think was supposed to be an iris. I told Dad what Trick had said, and he nodded. It’s still hard to
talk about.

My counsellor says I’ve got to stop going over the order of events. I’m not responsible, he says. There’s no point in
What Ifs
.

But what if I can’t stop
What If
-ing? I say. He doesn’t laugh.

These things take time, he says. He says that a lot.

I’m feeling half sick and half relieved when I hear the tractor engines from the house. I run with Fiasco across the yard, and through the paddock. Dad mowed it finally, and it looks as
though nobody has ever been there. We jump across the stepping stones, through the barbed wire, past the ancient oak.

The tractors gnaw along the far end of the field’s edges, making their way towards the top of the hill, where our cinema seats are still nailed to that lonely oak tree. I’ve been
waiting for this day. Dad warned me it would be here soon.

I sprint fast as I can, desperate to get there before the farmer sees me. I don’t want to talk to anybody. Fiasco runs ahead. As soon as we make it, I wonder if it was a good idea.

Our cushions have been moved around by the weather and are huddled in one corner against the maize, but the stool I nicked from Silverweed squats where it always did. Corn on the cobs rot in a
pile nearby, and I think of the iris Trick sent. I hung it up to dry by my window, crushed as it was. The jokers we scrapped from the pack have been blown into the corn.

I pick up the stool and cushions, and lay them in the long grass by the oak tree. I want the tractors to have a clear path.

I help Fiasco to the first fork in the trunk, and climb up myself. I use the nail Trick put in for me.

The tractors close in.

Fiasco scratches at the trunk, panicking at being so far from the ground. I pat the seat beside me, and she leaps up, bashing her tail against the burgundy velvet.

The noise hurts my ears. When I part the branches, one of the tractors is coming straight for the corn den. The ground shakes. The tree judders. It passes right by us, hacking at the stalks to
get the crop. Fiasco jumps onto my lap and I hug her.

‘Don’t worry, girl. There’s nothing to be frightened about. I’ll look after you. It’ll be okay.’

I stroke her long brown ears, and she calms down.

I think of Trick, in his red vest and rolled-up jeans, smelling of cigarettes though I never saw him smoke one.

I think of his odd eyes, and how nice he’d looked when he’d sat on the caravan steps holding something in his hands with his little sisters crowding round. I remember the way he used
to look at me, as if I was weird and special and lovely, and what it felt like when we kissed on the lake.

I remember lying on the bed with my warm brother. I remember chocolate on his chin. The way his dimple popped. I remember listening to stories in his bedroom, before it all happened. There was
nothing I wished I’d said to him. There was nothing I wished I hadn’t said.

The tractors have long finished when I climb down. It’s that part of the day when shadows are long and the air is golden. I hold my arms out, and after a lot of
encouragement, Fiasco jumps into them.

With the corn gone, you can see for miles. All the way to Ashbourne Road. The fields around me are empty except for miles and miles of yellow stubble. It’s a different place.

The sky is cloud-free and blameless, and the sun is sinking down after the first autumn day of the year. Overhead a single vapour trail soars upwards.

The summer is over, but it will always be my brother’s season.

I imagine that every year he will come to see me, when the shadows are long, and the sun is coming down like this, and the world is showing how beautiful it is possible for things to be.

Soon I will be older than him, but I’ll chase him anyway, like a little sister, and always he’ll be running just along at the edges of things, and always he’ll be turning a
corner, just ahead.

First acknowledgements must go to my mum and dad, for their endless support and general magnificence. To Liam, because he is the reason I so love to write about big brothers.
And to Josie Richmond and all of my extended family, for their support.

So many people have helped this book along the way, and I would like to thank:

All my workshop friends at the University of East Anglia, especially Anna Delany and Tim Cockburn, and Andrew Cowan who believed in this book early on. Nicola Barr, who gave excellent feedback
as my agent mentor, and The Lucky 13s for all their energy, enthusiasm and wisdom.

Bernardine Evaristo for being an inspirational mentor, and everyone else who helped make the Jerwood/Arvon Mentoring Scheme so wonderful. The Curtis Brown Agency, Grants for the Arts, and
Norwich Writers Centre, for making the finishing of this thing much, much quicker.

Max Naylor, who had to read my earliest attempts at writing, and Fiddy Matthews, Ursula Freeman, Molly Naylor, Em Prové and Clare Howdle, who are my heroes.

Everyone at Simon and Schuster for all the work they have done for this book. Phil Earle, who helped with the title, Frances Castle and Nick Stearn who have made it look so very beautiful, and
especially Venetia Gosling who pushed me to work just a little harder with every passing edit: I hope the words do the cover justice.

Finally, Catherine Clarke for believing in my writing and getting people to read it, and for helping it to meet the world in the best shape it could be.

Thank you.

C.F.