One Lucky Summer

by Jenny Oliver

  Fox cut in on her thoughts. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Dolly said quickly. ‘Absolutely fine.’ The sun sizzled their skin. Burnt like they were on the barbecue. The yellow tufts of grass stretched on either side of them, dry and arid. She looked at Fox’s broad back and his triathlon T-shirt. She couldn’t believe that once again he’d got her thinking about things. She hadn’t noticed a tactic. But he’d most likely used distraction. This time though, she found she wasn’t quite so annoyed, more relieved in a way, that, while she hadn’t said anything out loud, she could finally call to the fore some of the things she’d buried deep down in her head.

  Fox glanced across. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘Why are you looking at me?’

  Dolly said, ‘My mum wasn’t really suited to real life. To any life away from here and my dad. She died soon after we left. I think of a broken heart. Olive would say she drank herself to death.’ She rubbed her eyes. ‘It was a really rubbish time.’

  Fox nodded.

  Dolly immediately wanted to take it back. She didn’t want it to sully the memory of her mother. Not that Fox had any memory of her, but her own. Like, now it had been said, it was real. Even though it had been real all along.

  ‘You’re not going to tell anyone any of this, are you?’

  ‘Tell them what?’ he asked. ‘You’ve hardly told me anything.’

  ‘Just …’ Dolly felt like he knew everything in her head. ‘Swear on Buddha you won’t say anything.’

  He snorted a laugh. ‘I swear on Buddha himself.’

  Dolly nodded.

  Fox said, ‘Do you hear that?’

  ‘What?’ Dolly paused to listen.

  ‘That’s a waterfall!’ he said, face lighting up. ‘See, Dolly. Think positive and thee shall find.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking positive,’ she said.

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Well, how do we know which one of us was right?’

  ‘You can riddle that one out on your own,’ Fox said, as they crested the hill and saw the glistening waterfall below them, a secret cove where the twinkling brook tumbled its way down black rocks and lime-green moss. ‘I am going to have myself a cool drink of water.’

  Fox and Dolly practically ran down the other side of the hill, skidding to the waterfall, whooping like giddy children.

  ‘Race you!’ Dolly shouted.

  But Fox did one better. Without warning, he scooped her off her feet and ran with her to the cascading water.

  ‘What are you doing? Put me down!’ She whacked at his hands. ‘Fox, you can’t just pick me up! Put me down.’ But he took no notice. Instead, when he got to the fastest point of the waterfall, he stuck both their heads underneath the running water.

  ‘Put me down, you great oaf!’ She smacked his chest with her good hand, coughing and spluttering with surprised laughter as he put her back on her feet. There was water up her nose. Her hair was soaked.

  Fox was lapping water with a big grin on his face.

  Dolly slicked her wet hair off her face. ‘I can’t believe you just did that.’

  ‘Believe it, baby,’ he replied, dark eyes twinkling.

  Dolly had to look away. It suddenly felt too friendly, like she’d told him too much. She felt trapped, unused to someone having so much on her.

  She cupped some of the running water and drank it in parched gulps.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t have friends. It was that her friendships were all on her terms. She chose what they saw. How close they got. She glanced surreptitiously up at Fox, who had moved on to other things. Climbing the rocks to explore. He, however, seemed to magically coax out information and that unnerved her. He paid no attention to her glib retorts that usually worked to ward off anyone treading too close. He even laughed at her. It was uncomfortable new territory for Dolly and she couldn’t say if she liked it or not.

  Chapter Sixteen

  On the pretence of a walk, Olive had stormed off on her own. It amazed her how well she knew the paths of Willoughby Park. Knew all the nooks and crannies, all the memories etched on her brain. She avoided the path to the woodland and the beach, and the other to the orangery and instead went in the direction of an area that was roped off. Personnel only. Piles of chopped logs and bonfire remains, a compost heap and a green four-wheel drive. She got closer. There was a polytunnel with raised beds on either side with exotic-looking plants. A couple of giant palms in pots ready to be heaved into the ground. This was where Terence, the old groundskeeper, worked his magic. And where her dad, when he was home, earned a bit of extra cash.

  At the entrance to the polytunnel she paused, peeked her head in and took a sniff. Warm manure and the tang of summer. They were hothousing lemon trees, figs and clementines. She put her hand on the wood. She remembered her dad building the frame. Felt bittersweet pride at the fact it was still there. Her stomach tight with nostalgia. She walked on, the concrete floor was even more cracked with grass growing through the crevices. The damson tree still overhung the shed at the far end, sticky fruit staining the floor purple. She felt her steps get slower as she reached the door of the shed. The smooth plastic of the handle was as familiar as skin. The smell hit her like a wave. She stood on the threshold, savouring for a moment the scent of her youth – her happiness, time spent here with her dad eating sandwiches and drinking tea – before her nose became accustomed to the smell and it disappeared.

  She felt like she was trespassing. The chairs and table and the shelves were the same. The little Calor gas stove was probably a replacement but still the same. Chipped mugs hung on nails alongside bits of twine and labels and dirty teaspoons.

  Olive sat down in one of the chairs, positioned such that she could see out of the window over to the rolling hills, the deer camouflaged in the bracken, the oaks in the distance, the wide path that led round the trees to the fountain. She closed her eyes and thought of the times she’d walk down here carrying a basket of sandwiches for his lunch when her mum was working. Everest, his beloved lurcher, barking. His hands ingrained with dirt. Of the hair-raising tales he’d tell of his various scrapes and near-misses across the globe. Little treasured moments. The lukewarm tea and a KitKat. The pair of them blissfully alone, unreachable.

  ‘Coo-ee.’

  Olive opened one eye. Tottering in her direction in a gold bomber jacket, leather leggings and L’Oreal’s best flame-red hair, was Aunt Marge.

  Olive jumped up out of the chair. ‘Marge, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Hello, Olive darling, I went to the Big House and Ruben and that lovely little girl thought you might be down here.’ Marge approached with her arms open for a hug, Olive felt herself step back, Marge then lost her nerve and reached to squeeze her shoulder instead. She smelt of talcum powder and hairspray. ‘Dolly texted me last night to say she was on her way and I worried that I might have stirred up a bit of tension. I know what you two can be like and I thought, my girls, I’m not sure they’re going to be able to do it on their own.’

  Olive frowned. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Dolly texted you?’ Thinking of how she’d chastised her earlier for the worry she’d caused.

  ‘I did.’ Marge got her phone out to prove it. The message had indeed been sent but unread. ‘How is one meant to do anything in a place with no mobile phone reception? I got sent the most hilarious meme on the way here. I’ll forward it to you when I’ve got Wi-Fi.’ Aunt Marge’s memes always came three weeks after they’d had their heyday. She put her phone away with a ‘Oh well, no harm done,’ and then giving Olive a beady stare said, ‘How is it? How’s it going?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Olive, always a little wary in the presence of Marge.

  ‘You fibber!’ Marge grinned good-naturedly. ‘Now, let’s get the kettle on, I’m gasping. Drove the whole bloody way at about nine hundred miles an hour and only got flashed once. Good eh?’

  Olive made the tea on the Calor gas stove, completely bamboozled. She was all fingers and thumbs. Ne
rvous for some reason. Marge was faffing about with her phone, holding it up outside the shed, trying desperately to get some signal, all the while Olive sensed she was sizing the situation up. At the very least it was suspicious that Olive was alone in the shed and Dolly was off over the other side of the headland.

  When she was handed the cup, Marge wrapped her hands round the warmth and took a long, piping-hot sip. ‘Teflon mouth, that’s me,’ she used to say, as teenage Olive and Dolly quietly, miserably, cupped their mugs of out-of-date hot chocolate in Marge’s haphazard flat.

  ‘So,’ Marge said, ‘tell me everything. How’s Ruben – aged well, hasn’t he? Still very handsome. And, more importantly, how are you and Dolly getting on?’

  Olive gave her a very précised rundown of events so far. As she rounded off with the arrival of Dolly and the argument, the great black cat sauntered into the shed and Marge gave it a sneer of disdain, ‘Get out of here, shoo!’ she snapped. The cat ignored her. ‘I hate cats,’ Marge grimaced, looking utterly disgusted as it leapt onto her lap. She sat with her arms crossed, glaring at it. Olive remembered Marge’s little dog, Bernard, an insane and very unfriendly pug. The reason they couldn’t take the lurcher with them when they left. One of many things Olive stacked up against living with Aunt Marge.

  ‘So, not a roaring success so far,’ Marge said as she tried to heave the cat off her lap, glancing up at Olive, lips pursed in wry amusement.

  Olive shrugged. ‘You could say that.’

  Marge laughed. The lines on her face creased deep. Years of suntan and cigarettes carving their grooves in her skin. ‘Poor Olive,’ she said.

  Olive felt foolish for coming across like she needed sympathy, especially from Marge, who had always relied on her to be the strong one. ‘I’m fine, really.’

  ‘Oh, I know you are, darling. You’re always fine. Always were.’ Marge smiled, eyes creased. ‘Superwoman, Olive.’ The cat nudged at Marge’s hand for a stroke. ‘I felt terribly sorry for you when you had to come and live with me – like a little tightly wound ball. Far too young to have all that responsibility and baggage, and then there was me, a terrible parent. It’s shameful. None of us would have coped without you.’ Marge was directing her conversation to the cat. Like she knew, instinctively, that Olive wasn’t one to cope well with the direct weakness of empathy.

  ‘You weren’t terrible,’ Olive replied quickly, while her brain whirred in the background wanting to say, ‘Hang on, can we just pause. Can you just say all that again, please?’ Because she couldn’t really believe what she had heard. An actual acknowledgement of the way it had been.

  ‘Oh, I was. I was.’ Marge sighed, giving in to the giant cat with a reluctant pat. ‘I know it. You don’t have to be polite. I’d have been feeding you both champagne for breakfast if I hadn’t had you there. It was a terrible time that I handled very badly.’

  Olive’s instinct was to jump in and defend her, but Marge held up a hand to preempt it. ‘Don’t deny it, Olive. I’d got a bit better by the time it was just me and Dolly, but not with you. I’m sorry.’

  Olive shook her head like it was nothing but her heart was thumping. ‘Please don’t apologise. You took us in, Marge, you gave up your life for us.’

  Marge was absently scratching the purring cat. ‘Yes, but I did what any good person would do. You were both lovely. And it was all so tragic. My bloody brother and your mother needed a good kick up the behind, both of them.’

  Olive turned away. ‘Don’t say that.’

  Marge lifted the cat from her lap and got up to stand by Olive. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t want to upset you. They were your parents and you loved them.’

  Olive glanced across at her. ‘But?’

  Marge smiled, looked down at the steaming mug of tea. ‘But they both certainly had their faults.’

  Olive shook her head, she wasn’t going to allow history to be rewritten. ‘But it was my mum who had the affair.’

  Marge paused mid-sip of her tea. ‘Is that how you see it?’

  ‘That’s how it was,’ Olive replied, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck stand up in defence of her family.

  Marge nodded, taking another sip. She looked out the dirty window. ‘Oh look, a deer.’ They both watched, a stag had lifted its head from the wilderness, bracken draped over its antler. ‘Do you remember the time your dad left you and Dolly in the wilderness to find your own way back?’

  ‘And my mother totally overreacted!’ Olive replied, knowing she was coming across as tart, but she couldn’t help it. She didn’t want the memory of her dad brought down in any way. ‘It was fine. It was fun.’

  Marge tipped her head, uncertain.

  Olive huffed and looked away out of the window, trying to recall properly the event Marge was referring to. She remembered her new red shorts and the compass that her dad took great pains to teach her and Dolly how to use. She remembered him grinning and saying, ‘Right. It’s three o’clock now,’ handing her his hand-drawn map, ‘you aim to be home by teatime. Yeah?’

  Olive had nodded, hopping with excitement. She could feel Dolly’s hand clutched tight in hers. He’d ruffled their hair, said ‘Good luck, my little adventurers!’ and then he’d gone. And Olive had felt so proud that he’d trusted them alone. That he’d believed they could do it, aged ten and seven respectively. Both of them with their giant backpacks – pocketknife, waterproofs, sandwiches, banana, compass, foil blanket, torch. Prepared whatever the weather.

  She’d been afraid, of course she had, there were sounds in the undergrowth, but that was half of what being an adventurer was all about. Ahead of them the sun danced on the sea and the gorse was bright yellow and the heather pink like witches’ sweets.

  Of course, Dolly had started to cry. But Dolly cried at everything. Olive remembered knowing that she couldn’t let go of her hand. Dolly was holding so tight – her infamous imagination, that already had her left at home when their dad wanted to camp out at night or explore the cave on the beach, kicking in now with a vengeance. Olive smiled as she recalled trying to get her backpack off and the compass out, all one-handed, all contorted as Dolly clung on like a monkey.

  In the shed, Marge started to flick through a crumpled magazine. ‘Oh look, Monty Don. He’s very practical.’

  Olive didn’t say anything. She barely saw Marge nowadays, outside of Christmas and birthdays, even then Marge always had trouble squeezing them into her social calendar so a quick drink in town or a hasty supper was the norm and Olive was fine with that. They didn’t have a great deal in common and, more often than not, if Dolly was there, Olive felt like the third wheel.

  Marge closed the magazine. ‘You don’t take my opinion very seriously, do you, Olive?’

  ‘I’ve never said that.’

  ‘You don’t have to say it. I know. And I know it’s well deserved. I let you down. I allowed you to shoulder far too much. But I’ll tell you one thing. I knew my brother. And I knew your mother. And I knew what was going on between them much better than a child would see.’

  Olive felt her jaw tense.

  ‘Your father was a good man, there is no denying it. But he was also a very selfish man, always had been. And he shouldn’t have buggered off round the world at the drop of a hat, leaving your mum at home in the middle of nowhere with two kids.’

  ‘Please, Marge, don’t do this.’ Olive wanted to put her hands over her ears. ‘She had the affair.’

  ‘Because she was lonely!’ Marge insisted.

  ‘My dad loved her.’

  ‘Yes, and she loved him. That was the trouble. Your parents’ weakness as a couple was her inability to cope without him and his inability to put anyone’s needs before his own. They were both equally to blame.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes!’

  Silence.

  Marge sighed, folded her arms across her chest, heavy gold bracelets rattling on her thin wrists. Olive didn’t look at her. ‘This isn’t going quite the way I had planned,’ Marge acknowled
ged. ‘One of the things I’ve always wanted to say to you, Olive, is that their faults were their own responsibilities. Not yours.’

  Olive closed her eyes.

  Marge sat back down on her chair. ‘They were never your responsibility, Olive.’

  Olive stared down at her untouched cup of tea. Marge reached forward and picked up the magazine again, started to leaf through the pages. Outside the stag stalked away.

  Olive thought again about the adventure her dad had set her and Dolly on. She remembered flinching at every animal noise as they trudged to the higher ground. Every crack of branch. It was exciting. They were brave explorers. They ate their sandwiches and fed the crumbs to the blackbirds. She had a vague memory of popping out at the road and a car with two guys inside pulling over to ask if they needed a lift. They had backed away then, her and Dolly, knowing exactly how to disappear into the denser undergrowth to hide. A bit scary but a good learning experience.

  You wouldn’t get away with something like that now. The Daily Mail would have a field day, reporting on someone dropping their children deep in the woods and challenging them to get home in one piece. But it was exhilarating. Character-building.

  She remembered the light failing. The cold creeping in. It was well past teatime. They’d eaten their bananas. They’d drunk their water. Dolly’s fingertips were cold.

  Olive remembered the massacre of the sheep’s carcass in the torchlight. Left bloody and dismembered by whatever animal had ripped it apart. Olive had stupidly forgotten all her dad’s wilderness training at that moment. She’d forgotten everything she’d learnt the entire ten years of her life. Ask her her name and she wouldn’t have been able to answer. All she remembered was shouting, ‘Run, Dolly! Run as fast as you can!’ Then hurtling through bracken and bushes and brambles, faster and faster, her heart burning in her chest. Dragging Dolly behind her, the thumping sound of an animal chasing behind them. Sweating, bleeding, crying. And then suddenly, ahead of them in the trees was this shed and the polytunnels. And a door that Olive could slam shut behind them and drag an old table in front of and lean against with all her weight as she panted to get her breath back in the pitch darkness until finally she could tell herself there was no beast giving chase and it was stupid to be scared when they were simply here in the shed.