Soul Love (2 page)

Kai’s poems were toe-curlingly, teeth-achingly bad. They were long rants, full of stuff about naked bodies, human smells and the power of lust. Old gals Mum’s age seemed to lap it
up, swooning over his ‘rock star’ looks and so-called ‘ability to understand women’. Mia and I had got seriously glared at for giggling at his poems. Mum had commanded that
we ‘grow up’, which had just made us giggle even more.

I chucked my bags down in the tiny hall and went inside the cottage. It was like walking into a junk shop. Every available space was crammed with stuff. I had to blink several times to clear my
vision, as books, boxes, pieces of decorative fabric and hideous pottery all fought for my attention.

‘Kai’s away on a book-buying trip,’ Sarah said brightly as she brushed away a strand of wispy dark hair from her face. She had silver rings on every finger and hundreds of
jangly bracelets on her arms. Every time she moved she sounded like a wind charm in a gale. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked as I stood in the centre of the room, blinking madly.

Before I could answer she moved into the kitchen and started rattling some cups around. She said, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m gasping for a coffee.’

I grunted and flopped down on the dusty sofa and got ready to watch some TV. Instead, I found myself staring into the eyes of a large black cat sitting in the space where the TV should’ve
been. We blinked at each other for a few moments before she launched herself off the table and landed with a thud on my lap. She then began to purr loudly.

Sarah came back in with two large mugs and laughed. ‘Tallulah must like you if she’s doing her industrial purring. My cat is not easily impressed. She goes where she pleases and does
what she likes. She often comes with me to the shop.’

I took a sip of coffee and cut to the chase. ‘How long am I here for?’

Sarah sighed and tugged at her hair again before replying. ‘For the holidays . . . to begin with. Then there’s a new school to sort out. There’s always Netherby Community
School if you want a fresh start away from the city.’ She sat down beside me and stroked Tallulah. After a long pause she went on, ‘Look, Jenna, you are grown-up enough to know that I
can’t force you to do anything. I can’t make you tell me what really happened at school and I can’t make you stay here. I’m not your jailor. I don’t want to be. You
can walk out of here any time you like. All that I ask is that you let me know first.’

That stunned me, because in the car on the way down I’d been planning a big speech along the lines of: ‘You can’t keep me here. I’ll run away. You can’t make me do
anything!’ Then I’d planned to lapse into silence, just like with Mum. I was going to keep schtum until Mia, in the form of some weird fairy godmother, set me free with the truth.

There was even a name for my condition. I’d found it in Mum’s dictionary of adolescent problems, which was conveniently left lying around the kitchen. It was called Elective Mutism.
Or in my case, Selective Mutism.

Sarah’s speech had left me
truly
speechless. I drank my coffee and allowed myself to feel a bit more cheerful. The place felt less like a prison if it was my choice whether I stayed
or not.

‘Can I use the phone?’ I asked. Mum had confiscated my mobile.

Sarah spent ages fiddling with her bracelets before saying, ‘Actually, the phone’s been disconnected.’

For a second I felt pleased. It meant a break from Mum’s nagging voice. Then it hit me. No TV, no telephone and no friends. No distractions and plenty of time to brood. Maybe a spell at
boot camp wouldn’t have been so bad after all.

Chapter Three

I
opened the curtains the next morning to see a semi-naked body in a deck chair in next-door’s back garden. I
took a step back from the window and risked another peek.

I could make out a tight muscular torso with small brown nipples. His skin was startlingly pale. My eyes slowly traced a fine line of dark black hair from underneath the belly button to the top
of his faded jeans. They continued along the line of his jeans pausing to take in the tear on one of the knees and the white toes that were rhythmically stroking the grass.

His face was hidden from view by the book he was reading. I watched and waited, hoping no one could see me. Every now and then his hand would scratch his chest or brush a fly away.

The door squeaked suddenly and I jumped away from the window. No one likes to be caught drooling, do they?

‘Tallulah!’ I sighed with relief as the cat padded in, looking for attention.

When I looked again, the boy had turned round and was pulling on a faded red T-shirt with his back towards me. I liked the way his dark black hair curled around his neck.

I smiled as Tallulah batted me with her paw and meowed crossly. Then I smiled again, because it had felt weird to be smiling. The only smiling that I’d been doing lately was of the
joyless, laugh-out-loud, ‘Ha! I don’t give a damn’ variety that made your face ache and your heart burn.

Tallulah weaved herself between my legs, head-butting my knees in order to get some attention. I was starving, too. Yesterday, Mum had been too mad at me to think about eating so I’d
survived on chocolate bars bought during our service station stops. Last night I was too tired to be tempted by Sarah’s offer of reheated mung bean curry, but now I could eat the entire
contents of the fridge.

I looked out the window once more before heading to the kitchen. The deck chair was empty, apart from the book. Hadn’t I sworn that I was going to have nothing to do with boys for at least
a year? Liking boys had played a large part in the trouble Mia and I had got ourselves into. One boy in particular, but I wasn’t going to think about Jackson now. I couldn’t even bear
to look at his photo, hidden away in my purse.

I found Sarah standing on her head in the lounge. She called out, ‘Help yourself to breakfast!’

The kitchen was only marginally less dusty than the rest of the place. There was an assortment of cupboards, a grease-encrusted cooker and an ancient fridge. As I tugged the heavy door open the
fridge rumbled and shook. Inside was half a carton of milk and some bean curd that looked more like green turd. Eating the entire contents of the fridge instantly lost its appeal.

There was a large shelf full of cookbooks, but the rest of the cupboards were empty. I found an old box of cereal and the milk didn’t smell bad. I wandered out into the back garden to eat
it. It was a lovely sunny morning and it wouldn’t do any harm to check out Torso Boy some more from a better vantage point.

Sarah had maintained the ‘neglect’ theme into the small back garden. It was an overgrown tangle of weeds with a rusty car door right in the centre. I sat down on a wobbly wooden
bench.

‘Bit of a mess, isn’t it?’ Sarah said as she sat down next to me.

Your life or the garden? I thought to myself, but aloud I said, ‘Isn’t Kai into green things? His poems are all about nature, aren’t they?’

Sarah started to laugh loudly. It startled me because the laugh didn’t seem to belong to her. It belonged to a coarse loudmouth, not to my quiet, sensitive aunt. Then she gulped in some
more air and said, ‘Ha! You thought Kai was into green things, did you?’

I watched in horror as the huge belly laughs transformed themselves into floods of tears and she lunged at me. I had no idea how to deal with this, so I gave her back a few awkward pats as if
she were some grotesque oversized baby.

After a painfully long time she said, ‘Kai’s left me.’

I was speechless again. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Sarah was supposed to be supporting and guiding
me
. I wasn’t equipped to deal with her problems. The only thing
that should have been on my mind was trying to see if Torso Boy’s face was as cute as his body.

‘He left me three weeks ago. Said he needed some creative space. He felt that my poetry was stale and that he turned into a vegetable whenever I walked into the room.’

I resisted asking the question, ‘Carrot or courgette?’ – even I knew that this wasn’t the time for silly jokes. It would be hard for Sarah to see the funny side when
someone you love had insulted you so badly. I nodded and made a sympathetic grunt.

Sarah blew her nose on a screwed-up piece of tissue and said, ‘He took the TV, computer and most of our money. The phone has been cut off and I’m going out of my mind with worry
wondering where he is.’

I made some more sympathetic noises, although I had to admit that part of me felt a tinge of pleasure at learning that I wasn’t the only person in this family who had stuffed up. Mum was
always going on at me about the bad choices that I was making. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Kai was not going to be Mr Reliable. All those poems about hunting for
rare flowers in damp tropical forests and worshipping naked statues of goddesses were a bit of a giveaway.

We sat in silence for a few moments. I tried not to make too much noise crunching my cereal. From time to time I glanced over at next door’s garden. This was probably not the best time to
ask about who lived there.

Sarah blew her nose again and continued. ‘We didn’t have children because he said that would kill off his creative spirit. He said that running Sarakai Books was enough of a
distraction. I would have loved to have children. Came pretty close to persuading him once, but I respected his creativity. Kai’s art comes first . . .’

The cereal turned to sawdust in my mouth. What could I say? I’d never seen an adult in this state before. My brain flapped around like a goldfish out of water until it came up with,
‘Has he got someone else?’

My dad had left us for his PA before marrying a librarian called – I kid you not – Foxy. It was difficult at first, but now Mum’s happy and Dad’s happy. We get two
dinners at Christmas. Result all round.

Sarah smiled at me. ‘It’s nothing as clichéd as that! I’m sure he’ll come back. He never misses the Netherby Festival. He’s always such a big hit
there.’

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘You’ve never heard of the Netherby Festival? What
does
my sister talk to you about? It’s only one of the most famous alternative festivals in the country. It takes
place on the August bank holiday in the grounds of Netherby Hall. It’s amazing. You’ll have to go.’

I grunted unenthusiastically. I wasn’t planning on sticking around that long. I was hoping to be back in London within the next couple of weeks.

Sarah sprang up and punched the air. ‘What we need is some positive action!’ she declared. ‘When do we want it? NOW!’

We spent the rest of the morning hacking away at the weeds. After about an hour I ‘casually’ asked, ‘What are the people next door like?’

‘I’ve been really lucky with my neighbours. This terrace was originally built to house farm labourers so they are quite small and close together. Mr Gordon lives on that side, but he
only uses the cottage at weekends. Evie Winthrope lives on the other side, but she’s off on another of her jaunts to Africa so she’s rented out her place to some college students for
the summer. Freddie and Charlie live there at the moment. They’re fun. The only thing they take seriously is their music. They are an anti-folk band.’

I had no idea what anti-folk was, but I just nodded my head. I wondered which one, Charlie or Freddie, I’d already seen. They might turn out to be company for the short time I was here in
this weird summer.

At around twelve the sun was really beating down on us so we stopped working.

‘Is there anything else I can do?’ I asked.

Sarah tugged at her hair and said, ‘You could go to Greater Netherby and open the shop up for me. The float is hidden in the old toffee tin under the counter and all the books are priced
up. I’ll join you later. Saturday is my busiest day.’ She handed me a large set of keys and explained which ones opened what.

Mum never let me go to the shops without a list and strict instructions to give her all the change back. Was Sarah really asking me to
run
her shop for the day?

I felt the weight of the keys in my hand and I didn’t say a word. At least I was being taken seriously.

Chapter Four

G
reater Netherby was only a ten-minute walk from Little Netherby. It had one charity shop, a café, a
chemist’s, hairdresser’s and the bookshop, which was tucked away on the corner at the bottom of the street, with just a small, hand-carved sign that said:
Sarakai Second-hand
Books.
Blink and you’d miss it.

I fiddled with the keys to find the right one, trying to recall Sarah’s instructions. As I struggled with the door I felt a prickly sensation on the back of my neck, as if a hundred pairs
of eyes were watching me. The curtain in the hairdresser’s window opposite twitched and two old ladies walked out of the charity shop to take a good long look at me before doubling back into
the shop. This was not like London, where people don’t care to know your business. Here, a stranger unlocking the bookshop was hot news.

I pushed past a wedge of post to get inside. The shop was much larger than it seemed from the outside. There was a counter to the left of the entrance and behind that was a small office space.
Beyond the counter, the shop turned into a forest of shelves that seemed to stretch for miles and miles. Beside one of the bookcases was a tatty armchair. This place was so dusty it made
Sarah’s cottage seem like an operating theatre by comparison. I started to cough. This was not a place to work in if you had a dust allergy or delicate nerves. The badly fitted shelves
groaned under the weight of books. It seemed like it would only take one false move or loud sneeze and the whole thing would collapse.

The only dust-free object was a shiny new poster advertising the Netherby Festival in August. I noted that there were some pretty cool bands playing.

On my way to fetch the float, I tripped over a box of old records, labelled:
Kai’s personal property. NOT FOR SALE
. I gave the box an extra kick. How dare he say he turned into a
vegetable every time Sarah walked into the room! It was a bit rich, coming from a man who transformed into a lecherous toad whenever anything remotely female entered a room.