by Claire Wong
“Kit! I won’t ask you again. Come back here now!”
His mother’s exasperated tone cut through that wave of fear, bringing him back to an ordinary world. Nothing had changed. He stood up and tried to brush down his trousers, but there was no cleaning the mud that had embedded itself into their turn-ups and the soles of his shoes.
When he returned through the tunnel to the main path, Catherine and Juliet were a short distance away, calling his name while scanning the fields and gorse.
“It’s OK, I’m here!” Stepping back onto the sunny Cleveland Way, he waved to his family, and noticed an angry red line carved across the back of his hand. It stung sharply, but did not bleed. He must have caught it on the gorse thorns when he reached out to stop his fall. It would be best if his mother did not see, so he lowered his hand and hid the mark.
“Kit! What were you thinking, running off like that? And leaving the path. It’s not safe on the edge of the cliffs; you have to stay on the level ground. The rocks give way all the time – Sean warned us about it this morning. What if you’d fallen?”
It would have been a sudden end to his quest, but Kit supposed it might have briefly felt like flying. He did not think his mother would appreciate this response.
“Sorry, Mum. I must have taken a wrong turning.”
“Oh well, at least you’re safe. But look at the state of you!” She took in the mud caked around his feet. “What were you doing? Jumping in a peat bog? You’ll have to take those shoes off before we get indoors, or you’ll be explaining to Sean why there are muddy footprints all over his nice clear floor.” She sighed and ran her hand through her hair. Kit did his best to look contrite, which was not easy when he was still shaking off the horror of his fall. It must have been enough though, because Catherine brightened up. “Let’s go back now, and no more running out of sight this time! When we’ve had a rest from our walk, we can talk about what colour you both want your rooms painted when we get our new house.”
Kit knew his mother would keep an eye on him the whole way back, so he walked ahead to make it easier for her. While Catherine and Juliet discussed cupcake recipes, Kit began to count his steps, measuring the distance back in strides.
“One, two, three,” he muttered under his breath so the others would not overhear.
“So what was all that about today then?” Juliet asked. She had relocated to Kit’s room for the afternoon and sat on the wooden floor beneath the window with her knees pulled up to her chin. Most of the time she was distracted by her phone, but periodically she would say something without looking up that showed she had not forgotten her brother was there too.
“What was what?” Kit examined his hand where he had grazed it against the gorse. The scratch had raised itself up into a thin red ridge across his skin that only stung when he remembered it was there. At least it was clean and wouldn’t become infected: that was one small advantage to having a mother who made you wash your hands every time you came back in from outdoors.
Juliet’s line of inquiry was not derailed by his nonchalance. “I saw what you were up to. When you disappeared for a bit, you didn’t get lost like you claimed – that was deliberate, wasn’t it?”
She raised her dark eyes from the phone screen and fixed him with a stare he could not avoid. For all that she might try to behave like their mother, Kit always found that Juliet was much better at knowing what was going on. She had a way of spotting his excuses or knowing when he was hiding something, which his parents did not. He knew she would not give up asking questions until he told her the truth, so he explained about Beth who lived in the secret room downstairs and how he had decided to collect what she needed to finish her map.
“It’s such a cool place, Jules. You can forget everything up there, and just imagine what it’s like being a bird flying over the sea. I found it for Beth, so she can remember where it is.”
He decided not to tell her the rest: how the magical lookout point could be treacherous if you let down your guard or overlooked your footing. Juliet needed more reasons to like their new home, not fewer; only this morning, on learning that Askfeld did not generally stock oat milk for its coffee selection, she had described the guest house as “prison conditions, but with fewer social opportunities”. Sean had even offered to source some dairy alternatives specially, but Juliet had insisted she couldn’t let him go to such trouble for her sake, and then contacted her school friends to shock them with tales of her ordeals in the North.
“That was… nice of you, I suppose. Why did you do it?”
“To help her,” Kit replied, which was a true answer, if not a complete one. He hoped it would be enough to deflect suspicion.
Juliet made a scornful noise: the short “huh” that she used when she lacked the motivation to properly laugh at something. “I overheard Mum say you had to be helpful while we’re here. I’m not sure this is what she meant.”
“No, it’s not that,” Kit protested, resenting the insinuation that he only did anything right when instructed to by adults. Being kind to others was just something he did, the way being brilliantly hardworking was what came naturally to Juliet. Not that he was stupid. His mum always made a fuss of his school marks and house points. It was just that he could never match his sister’s achievements, and had realized after one too many parents’ evenings in Juliet’s shadow that maybe he could instead carve out a space for himself by protecting classmates from bullies and collecting exercise books for Mrs MacAllister. “It’s like… it’s like this.” He grabbed his copy of Legends of King Arthur and held it up for Juliet to see. “They get quests in this book. Tasks they have to complete. Because they’re knights, and they have a code of honour, and they’ve sworn to serve the king but also to help others in need.”
“Right. So this Beth is what – a princess in need of rescuing? By you, the noble Sir Christopher, I suppose.” Her lips twisted into a thin, wry smirk. “What about monsters? Every knight has to face a villain or a monster on their quest. Have you decided who that is yet?”
Kit thought about this. Though he knew her question was meant to mock him, Juliet was right: heroes always had an enemy to defeat before they could reach their goal. He had not met anyone at Askfeld who acted like a villain, but then some monsters could disguise themselves. Was there anyone who might harbour ulterior motives? Maddie was fearsome but avoidable; Bert seemed friendly and harmless. That left one person.
“I think it’s Sean,” he said, remembering how he had blocked the way to his wife’s room. “He doesn’t want me to help Beth, or even to see her. Don’t know why though.”
“That’s stupid. Why would he not want someone to help her? He’s her husband. It’s not as if he’s locked her away like Mrs Rochester. You’re making too much drama out of it. You always overthink things.”
“I don’t know.” Kit did not know who Mrs Rochester was either, but did not want to admit this and earn his sister’s scorn. He stared into the distance as he tried to imagine why Sean would oppose any efforts to be kind to Beth. “But I guess if I keep on finding the places for Beth’s map, I’ll find out sooner or later.”
Juliet rolled her eyes and checked her phone again. A moment later she threw it down in frustration. Kit considered telling Juliet about the other reason, but decided she would object to it. He had not shaken the thought that there must be a way to bring their dad to join them here sooner. There was no escaping the sense that something was not right in the Fisher family, and that was surely because they were separated by hundreds of miles. That was not how it should be, and Kit felt the ache of that wrongness growing each day. He saw it in the rest of his family too, in his mother’s shortness of temper and his sister’s strange behaviour. But he meant to fix it.
His father just needed convincing that he wanted to live here instead of in the city. It must be hard, as an adult, to leave an important job and move to somewhere comparatively quiet and remote. Kit would find a way to persuade his dad that Askfeld was not so bad, not
as grey and bleak as his mum would joke from time to time, and that they could be happy in their new home. Beth’s unfinished map was like a promise of shared adventures to come, not just for the Garsdales’ child but also for Kit and his family. He would be the one to reunite the Fishers and set everything back to the way it should be.
First, he needed to find a way to sneak past Sean to see Beth and set his plan into motion.
CHAPTER FIVE
NORTH AND SOUTH
DAY THREE
Top three things about our new home that Dad will love when he gets here:
1. All the open space for playing football – you don’t have to share the beaches and moors with a million dog walkers and joggers like in Richmond Park.
2. Being right next to the sea. That’s where people usually go in the summer for a weekend, but now we’re going to live by it all the time, Dad will get to feel like he’s always on holiday.
3. If everyone’s as friendly as Beth and Bert, then it will be easy for him to make new friends. Dad likes having lots of people to talk to and tell jokes with, so Askfeld will be great for that. Note – Mum always says Dad is good for her because he reminds her to go out and have fun from time to time. So we need Dad here or she’ll never stop phoning her old office.
This time, Kit waited until he had seen Sean abandon the reception desk for the kitchen. He might have been reading too much into the situation, but it was interesting timing, the way Sean left just as Maddie returned to Askfeld from her shopping trip. Maddie let herself in, muttering phrases Kit sometimes heard at school but wasn’t allowed to repeat at home as she stomped on the doormat to dislodge mud from her walking boots. As Kit leaned forward in his chair by the fireplace, he could see what had annoyed her. The shopping bag she was using had split, jettisoning its contents. She now carried the bundle of her new purchases in her arms, still wrapped in the bag’s shredded remains. There looked to be a few tins with metal lids and a plane like the one Kit’s dad kept in the garage for sanding down wood. A hammer rested in the crook of her arm, the way a wealthy landowner might carry a shotgun around his estate, and the weight of it had pulled her raincoat off that shoulder so that she looked dishevelled and flustered.
What was she up to? A summer holiday was hardly the time to start building furniture, but Kit could not see what else this new selection of tools could be intended for: he had seen his father use similar ones when he made a coffee table for Kit’s mother as an anniversary gift. That table was now in storage, waiting to be unloaded into their new house one day. Maybe Maddie wanted a coffee table to make her room at Askfeld feel more homely, since she had nowhere else to go, according to Bert. And yet there were enough more pressing mysteries at hand, without investigating someone so easily enraged. Kit was not sure it would be worth it, to risk being shouted at again. He decided to let this particular puzzle remain.
She glanced around, checking that no one had seen her come in, and as she looked through the doorway into the sitting room, Kit jolted back against his chair so hard he made it rock on its hind legs. He opened a book and pretended to be engrossed in it.
The bravest of all Arthur’s men was raised by Nimue, the Lady of the Lake. She trained the orphan Lancelot in all he would need to know to become a knight at Camelot.
Nimue probably taught more useful skills than he had learned at school. Lancelot would not have needed to worry about subordinate clauses or modifying adverbs, as long as he had courage and good manners. Knowing how to wield a sword probably got you further in life than memorizing times tables.
Satisfied that no one was spying on her for once, Maddie marched up the stairs, and through the ceiling overhead Kit could hear the creak of floorboards as she crossed the landing to her room. The coast was clear at last.
Kit snapped the book shut and headed off to see Beth. As he reached the door, it opened from the other side and he jumped back to avoid a collision with the person exiting.
“Who’s this then?” A woman in her fifties looked down at Kit without smiling. The lines on her face drew out an expression so stern that his first thought was that she might easily be Sean’s mother.
“I’m Kit. I’ve come to see Beth. Can I go in please?”
She did not move.
“Is that Kit?” Beth’s voice called from within the room.
“That’s what he’s saying.” The older woman did not look round to answer, but fixed Kit with a piercing stare.
“Well, don’t go scaring him away, Mum!” Beth laughed, and Kit stared, trying to see any family resemblance in this unfriendly expression. They had the same round face shape, now that he looked again, and perhaps the same nose.
“In you go then; don’t just stand there gawpin’,” she said impatiently, as if Kit had been dawdling out here keeping everyone waiting, rather than recoiling from the stony greeting he’d received. He squeezed past her into the room.
“I’ll see you next Thursday,” Beth’s mother said. “Don’t forget to tell Sean I said not to bother buying a new cot; there are plenty of people with second-hand ones to give away. And tell him I said he needs to clear out his climbing gear to make space for the pram – not like he should be clinging to the sides of cliffs any more either way. He’s got bigger responsibilities now. Phone if you need owt before then.”
“Thanks, Mum. See you next week.”
She closed the door behind her. How could that be Beth’s mum?
“Hello again.”
“Hello,” Kit said cautiously, checking the room for other relatives who might jump out and snap at him. There was a pile of baby clothes neatly folded on the footstool near Beth’s chair, and he was sure they had not been there before. “What’s gawpin’ mean?”
“It means staring. I hope Mum didn’t frighten you.”
Kit decided he would pretend she had not. A knight of Camelot would not be deterred by a stern expression. But he still was not sure what he had done to make her so annoyed on a first meeting.
“Didn’t she want me to come and see you?”
“She didn’t mind at all. She only seemed abrupt to you because you aren’t used to her. Lots of people from my parents’ generation are like that.” Beth leaned forward to lift the stack of tiny vests and cardigans from the footstool so that Kit could sit down. Her movement was slow and deliberate.
“They’re cross all the time, d’you mean?”
“Oh, that’s not her being cross. She doesn’t show friendliness the way you’d expect, is all. If you don’t know her she might seem a bit grumpy, but she’s not really. Lots of people her age are like that, I think. But on the other hand, if you ever end up sat next to my dad on a bus, he’ll happily tell you his whole life story like you’ve known each other for ever. Half the country has probably heard about the time he almost met the prime minister. People round here might be a bit different from what you’re used to in London as well.”
This went against so much of what Kit’s mother had drummed into him about good manners and what she called “courteous behaviour”, which was one of her favourite subjects to teach her children. His father talked about something called “cultural differences”, but that was only when he had to travel with work and needed to brush up on how to greet someone who spoke another language. Then again, plenty of the words Beth’s mum had used sounded foreign to him, as if she had taken the English lexicon and spun her own variation of it. His mother had warned him that people had their own dialect round here.
“Are we really different?”
“Probably more than we realize. Everything seems normal until you find out not everyone else speaks or thinks the same way as you. The one that always threw me and Sean when we met up with friends from Reading was dinner.”
“How’s dinner confusing?”
“Well, what do you think it is?”
Could it be a trick question? The answer was obvious. “It’s what you eat in the evening. Like spaghetti or chicken casserole – that kind of thing.”
; “Not to me. Here, you have your dinner in the middle of the day.”
“But that’s lunch! What do you call dinner then? I mean, what do you call whatever you eat in the evening?”
“Tea.”
“That’s a drink. It can’t be a meal too. Unless it’s afternoon tea, which is when Mum and Juliet go out for expensive cakes on fancy plates, while Dad and I stay home to eat crisps and watch the football.”
Beth laughed, but then she fell quiet and closed her eyes for a moment. Kit guessed the interrogation had tired her more than he had expected. He wished he had a plate of posh cakes to offer her now, to replenish her lost energy. After a short pause, she opened her eyes and continued.
“Like I said, it all seems simple until you find out someone else does things differently. I’ll have to teach you proper Yorkshire dialect some time. Anyway, what’s brought you here today? Have you finished reading about Odysseus already?”
“No – well, yes,” Kit stuttered. “I have finished it, actually.”
“You’re a fast reader. Was it a good school, the one you went to before the move?”
“I’m not sure.” Kit had never given much thought to how his school compared to others. He knew that his parents had been concerned that he went to the “right” secondary school in the approaching autumn term, which before had always meant the same one Juliet attended, and now that they had moved meant St Jude’s was the only suitable option. And whenever they had spoken about the other schools nearby they would lower their voices and make “hmm” noises, as if they knew terrible secrets about them. But school was school. Mrs MacAllister had called Kit her “model student” and his best friend Toby her “young prodigy”.
“What did you think of the story, then? Did you like Odysseus?”