The Telephone Box Library

by Lucas, Rachael

  ‘Lucy.’

  Sam’s voice was soft. She turned around, halfway across the lane, and looked at him. He was standing on the footpath, hands by his sides.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ll see you on Thursday. Thanks for a lovely evening.’

  Chapter 23

  Oh, for God’s sake. Sam woke up the next morning, remembering. If he’d – oh, why the hell didn’t he just admit how he felt about Lucy? He gave a groan of frustration, and rolled over onto one of the dogs. Amber gave a woof and jumped onto the wooden floor of the bedroom, nails clattering on the wood, whining immediately to be let out.

  He opened the curtains and looked across the road, as had become habit. He could see Lucy’s sitting room curtains were open, and – he stepped back out of view, realizing she was coming out of the front door. This was ridiculous. He was turning into a peeping Tom.

  Just then Freya emerged from her room.

  ‘Morning, darling. You organized for school?’

  She nodded, not looking up from her phone.

  ‘I’m going to be late tonight. Got study stuff on.’

  ‘Do you need me to pick you up?’

  ‘Nah. Cam says she’ll get the bus back with me.’

  ‘Okay.’ Sam tipped dog food into two bowls, flicking on the kettle. ‘God, I didn’t realize the time. I better get in the shower. See you later.’ He put a hand on her shoulder and dropped a kiss on her head.

  He stood in the shower, feeling the needles of hot water pummelling his shoulders, running over the day’s plans as he always did. They had a few last pieces to finish off on the treehouse, and then he was taking the lads to their weekly college course in Bletchley. After that, he had a quote to do, and bloody Annabel Bevan wanted him to come back again and double check something. And then it would be Thursday, and the WI meeting. He felt a buzz of excitement. What the hell was going on with his life, if he was getting excited at the prospect of a bloody WI meeting about a telephone box?

  It was all down to Lucy. He’d gone to sleep last night with her on his mind, and then dreamed about her. It was ridiculous. She was a temporary visitor, and he had a responsibility to Freya to be the best parent he could be – the only parent she had. Maybe once she was grown up, he’d think again. But right now he needed to be there to make sure she stayed on the straight and narrow and didn’t veer off like Stella had. That was one of the worries that niggled away at him in the middle of the night. Right now, though, she wasn’t showing any signs of being like her mother. Freya was very much her own person, and he was proud of her for that.

  He was in the midst of taking some measurements for a quote when his mobile rang.

  ‘D’you need to get that?’

  If it was Freya, she’d message – teens never actually used their phones to make a call. He shook his head at the owner of the big country house on the other side of Bletchingham, who was after a two-storey treehouse for his teenagers to escape to. If the weather held, he could get it done before winter really hit.

  ‘It’s fine, my voicemail will catch it. So when you say you want an apex roof, are you thinking something like this?’ He pulled out some paper and started sketching. The phone started ringing again. He hit the mute button, silencing it.

  ‘So sorry.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  It rang again twice, buzzing in his pocket like an irritating wasp. Shaking hands with the potential client, he headed back to the truck. Next stop was driving back to Brackley to collect the lads from college. He sat down and closed the door of the cab, pulling out his phone. Bletchingham High School – four missed calls.

  Shit. He hit the return call button, worried sick.

  ‘Hello? This is Freya Travis’s dad. I’ve had a missed call – well, four of them.’

  ‘One moment.’

  ‘Mr Travis,’ said a voice, smoothly. ‘No need for alarm, I’m sure. I wanted to check with you as we hadn’t had a call this morning to say Freya wasn’t going to be in.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ His stomach lurched.

  ‘The automated text system. We didn’t get a reply back from you to our message asking why she hadn’t registered this morning.’

  All his nightmares were coming true. Where the hell was she?

  ‘She’s not with me. I mean, she might be at home. I need to go. I need to find her.’

  Hitting the phone buttons with shaking fingers, he tried her number.

  ‘Hi there,’ said Freya’s chirpy voice. ‘I can’t come to the phone right now because I’m busy, or I’m asleep, or it’s been confiscated. Please leave a message and I might call you back . . .’

  ‘Freya, darling. Where the hell are you?’

  He tried calling the landline at home, but it rang out until he heard his own voice on the answer machine. Mel didn’t pick up – probably in the middle of a dog training class. He dialled Bunty’s home number.

  ‘Little Maudley 823390,’ she said, crisply.

  ‘Bunty, it’s Sam. Have you seen Freya?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Has she gone AWOL?’

  ‘I think so. She didn’t turn up at school today. Probably taken herself off to Milton Keynes shopping, or something like that.’ It sounded plausible. He’d played truant enough as a teenager – maybe she was taking after him.

  ‘I expect so. I’ll keep an eye out, and let you know if I hear anything. Oh, here’s Lucy. I’ll let her know.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He wished for an irrational second that Lucy was there with him, calm and kind and easy-going. She’d know what to do. And – he looked at the clock – God, he had to collect the boys from college. He turned on the truck and reversed out of the drive, feeling sick.

  He tried Freya’s number again, and this time it rang out.

  ‘Hello?’

  Keeping both eyes on the road, trying to be heard over the sound of traffic on his hopeless Bluetooth speaker, Sam could have wept with relief at the sound of her voice.

  ‘Where the hell were you?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘I’m coming out of school.’

  Oh, she was going to play it like that, was she? Right. He took a left turn and headed for the community college, parking up outside and waiting for the boys to appear. One by one they peeled themselves off the wall they’d been leaning against and slouched towards him.

  ‘Okay, I’ll see you at home then?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Freya. ‘I thought I’d make some cake. Might pop up to the shop and get some stuff so if I’m not there when you get back, that’s where I’ll be.’

  No you will not, young lady – you’ll stay exactly where you are, Sam thought. ‘Okay, see you in half an hour,’ is what he said.

  He dropped the boys off in Bletchingham and spun round, heading back to the village at top speed. He pulled up outside the cottage and left the truck sitting on the road – there was no way he had the patience to carefully reverse it into the drive in his current state of mind.

  Inside the house, Freya was sitting quite comfortably on the sofa, watching YouTube on the television screen while scrolling through Instagram on her phone. She looked up with an angelic smile that made him feel quite cold. For a second, she looked so like her mother that it threw him.

  ‘Hi Dad,’ she said, blithely. ‘Sorry, I haven’t made cake yet. You don’t fancy nipping to the shop to get me eggs and some more butter, do you?’

  ‘I think I’m fine for cake,’ he said, grimly. He sat down on the armchair, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, and looked directly at her.

  ‘How was school?’

  ‘Fine.’ She didn’t look up from her phone.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Absolutely. I mean boring, but fine.’

  He turned his phone to face her, showing the missed calls on the screen. For a second she looked at them uncomprehendingly, then the penny seemed to drop.

  ‘You weren’t at school.’

>   ‘All right.’ She chewed her lip. ‘I got the bus to MK. I went to the shops and wandered around and had a coffee. Then I came back in time to get the school bus home.’

  He looked at her for a long moment. Freckles scattered across her nose, her hair in two long plaits tied together at the back. She had two silver hoop earrings in each ear – against school rules, but disregarded by her form tutor, who believed that there was no point in creating battles over minor indiscretions. And Freya was a model pupil – or she had been, until recently.

  ‘You could have told me,’ he said, feeling a bit hopeless.

  ‘What? “Hey dad, I’ve decided to wag off school today, see how it feels?”’ She laughed. ‘And you’d be okay with that?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ He felt completely out of his depth. Maybe someone else would ground her, or cut off her access to the internet or something, but he’d never really parented that way. ‘Just please don’t do it again, okay? I was worried sick when I didn’t know where you were.’

  ‘I won’t,’ she said, cheerfully. ‘It was quite boring, actually. And I kept worrying people would be thinking I’d wagged off because I was in uniform.’

  ‘You’re supposed to take clothes in your bag and change,’ he said, almost without thinking.

  ‘Like you did?’

  ‘Exactly. And you don’t want to end up like me.’ He smiled, despite himself. She knew exactly how to wind him round her little finger.

  The next day, he got home from work early, showered, and stood trying to decide what shirt to wear.

  ‘Have you got a hot date?’ Freya appeared, flopping onto the bed and looking at him thoughtfully.

  ‘No, it’s the final meeting about the phone box library. Remember? Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘Oh God. Yeah. I forgot.’ She looked up at him briefly. ‘Actually, I think I might skip it.’

  * * *

  ‘But she’s the one who came up with the idea.’ Sam shook his head in despair.

  ‘That’s just teenagers,’ Lucy said with a shrug. They were sitting with Mel on uncomfortable plastic chairs in the village hall, waiting for the meeting to begin. ‘If you express the slightest interest in something, they usually drop it, because the fact you’re interested automatically makes it supremely uncool.’

  ‘Totally. Camille wouldn’t be seen dead here. Or within about fifty metres of me, unless I’ve got my wallet open and I’m offering to buy her stuff.’ Mel laughed. ‘Even then she’d rather take my bank card, and leave me sitting outside in Nandos while she goes mad in H&M.’

  ‘Freya wasn’t like that, though,’ he began, tailing off as Helen marched onto the wooden dais at the front of the village hall.

  * * *

  At the end of the meeting, Mel got chatting to a friend and insisted they go ahead without her.

  ‘What happened to the bat walk?’

  ‘Good question. I think all the village stuff has been so focused on the phone box library that it’s somehow fallen by the wayside.’

  ‘Shame,’ Lucy murmured. ‘I was looking forward to it.’

  ‘I’ll take you,’ he said, realizing he sounded as keen as a schoolboy. But he didn’t care. ‘How about tomorrow? Freya’s on a school residential, so I don’t have to worry about getting back for her.’ As soon as he said it he realized this sounded a bit presumptuous, so he followed it up quickly. ‘In fact, I could really do with more of your professional advice.’

  He explained what had happened with Freya truanting, and how she’d seemed quite insouciant about it afterwards. ‘I can’t help worrying that she’s going to end up like her mother,’ he said, finally.

  ‘She’s her own person,’ Lucy said, as they stopped outside the terraced row of cottages. Hamish’s head popped up from underneath the curtain, making them laugh.

  ‘That’s what I worry about. So was Stella.’

  ‘But she’s been brought up by you. A bit of rebellion doesn’t do them any harm. Honestly. Shows they’ve got a bit of spirit.’

  He sighed. He had a feeling there was more to it than that. ‘I suspect she’s got that. I used to wag off school as much as I could.’

  ‘That was because you were struggling though, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And Freya’s not struggling with schoolwork.’

  ‘No. She definitely didn’t get her brains from me.’

  Having said goodbye, Lucy let Hamish out into the garden. Despite what she’d said to Sam, something niggled at her about Freya’s absence this evening. She felt torn between telling Sam what she knew and not breaking a confidence – but for now, Freya seemed safe, which was the most important thing. She’d have to play it by ear.

  It was all very complicated. She got into bed and pulled the covers up, laughing at Hamish as he did his usual routine of hopping in circles to make himself a nest in the blanket at the end of the bed. She thought about how much she was looking forward to seeing Sam tomorrow night. As a friend. Just a friend.

  * * *

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘D’you want to come in? I wasn’t sure what the protocol was. Do I need a torch?’ Lucy hadn’t known what to wear for a bat-spotting walk. She’d settled on jeans and a blue-and-white striped jumper, her hair tied back in a loose ponytail.

  Sam shook his head, smiling. ‘No torch. Just yourself.’ Hamish circled around his legs, his stumpy tail wagging. ‘And no dogs, I’m afraid.’ Sam leaned down, scratching him behind the ears.

  ‘Do we need to wait until it’s dark?’

  ‘No – if you’re ready, we can go now.’ He opened the door, standing back to let her out. ‘After you.’

  It was strange how awkward she sometimes felt in his company. Lucy got the feeling that he was uncomfortable, too. Without Mel there to act as foil, or the girls, or the dogs, the silence as they walked along the leafy path towards the allotments was deafening.

  ‘How’s Freya?’

  ‘Good. Off on her school trip. And definitely on her trip,’ he grinned, ‘because I saw her off on the bus this time.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  ‘I don’t often get a night off. The trouble with being a single parent is you’re pretty much on call 24/7.’

  ‘I’m honoured you’re spending it with me,’ Lucy said, puffing slightly as they trudged up the hill to the woods.

  ‘I can’t think of anyone nicer to spend it with.’ Sam swatted at a tiny bug on his forehead. ‘You, me, several bats, and the entire mosquito population of Buckinghamshire.’

  ‘You’re not joking.’ She scratched her head. ‘I think I’ve been bitten.’

  ‘Hopefully that means our little bat friends will be coming to join us soon.’

  ‘Our little bat friends?’ She looked at him sideways.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, the corner of his mouth quirking in a half smile.

  ‘Have you got me up here under false pretences?’ She sidestepped to avoid a puddle, her shoulder brushing against his arm. It felt solid with muscle. She stepped away again, wishing for another puddle to avoid. The path was clear.

  ‘No, I’m not in the habit of luring women to the woods after dark for anything dubious, I promise.’

  Shame, thought Lucy, widening her eyes at her inner thoughts. She must get a grip. They were here to look at bats. It was a perfectly normal thing to do.

  ‘Look!’ Sam pointed upwards.

  She peered into the sky. ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘Pipistrelles. They’re tiny. Look, little dots in the air, there –’

  Lucy scrunched up her eyes. ‘Nope, I can’t see them.’

  Sam laughed. ‘That’s because they’ve gone.’

  ‘Right.’ She shaded her eyes, despite the fact that the light was falling rapidly. The sun had dropped below the horizon, leaving a pale, luminescent orange-streaked sky.

  ‘It’s like looking for a shooting star. You’ve got to sort of look everywhere and nowhere at once.
’

  Lucy turned to look at Sam. He dropped his gaze from the sky and looked at her directly.

  ‘You realize that what you’re describing is physically impossible?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why it’s so much fun.’ He was teasing her. ‘Look, I can show you.’ He took her shoulders and turned her gently so she was facing towards a gap in the trees at the mouth of the woods. His hands stayed there, weighting her shoulders.

  ‘If you stand here . . .’ She was alert to the sensation of his body behind hers, as if there was some sort of charge between them. Her heart was thudding as she stood completely still, hoping that he couldn’t sense the fact that her legs were trembling, despite the unseasonable warmth of the evening. ‘We’ll both be looking exactly the same way. That way you’ll see what I can see.’

  Her heart was thumping so hard in her chest that she was certain he could hear it. She let out her breath slowly, wondering if it sounded as shaky as it felt.

  ‘There,’ he said, his voice low in her ear.

  ‘I see them!’

  ‘Gorgeous, aren’t they?’ He was still holding her shoulders.

  Three bats swooped back and forth across the darkening sky. Another couple joined them then, and they stood together watching. And then in a second they were gone.

  ‘Let’s go in a bit – there’ll be more. Harder to see as it gets dark, though.’

  The trees were etched ink-black against the sky, and all around them was silence. Lucy hoped he’d offer to show her where to look again, and when he did, her insides melting, there was a part of her that wanted to simply lean back against him and close her eyes. Never mind the bats.

  An owl hooted overhead. She pushed hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear, brushing away another mosquito as it hummed close to her face. And then something brushed against her skin and she stepped backwards, bumping into Sam, and spun around in a second, gasping an apology.