by Gwyneth Rees
‘Libby, you haven’t told Mum and Dad, have you?’ She sounded breathless.
‘Of course not!’
‘Good. Listen, I’ll explain everything when I get back. Just carry on with our plan for today. Promise me?’
‘But –’
‘Please, Libby? You’re the only person I can trust … Listen, I have to go. I’ll meet you where we said at five o’clock, OK?’
I didn’t know what to do after she’d hung up, so I decided to chain my bike alongside hers and walk back to the high street.
No wonder Bella was being so secretive. If our parents found out Sam was here they’d kick up a massive stink. And if Dad found out she’d been riding around on Sam’s motorbike … I shuddered as I thought back to the last row she’d had with Dad about Sam.
‘I’m not a child any more, so stop interfering!’ she’d shouted at him.
‘You’re fifteen!’ Dad replied scornfully. ‘You haven’t got a clue what’s best for you!’
‘Dad, you are so patronising!’ Bella retaliated, practically boiling with rage. ‘You know what? One day I’m going to leave home with Sam and never come back, and you won’t be able to do anything to stop us!’
I can’t remember how Dad responded to that but I was pretty sure he hadn’t taken her threat very seriously.
I thought about how Bella talks about Sam. It really isn’t that dissimilar to the adoration she always seemed to have for Dad when we were younger. Everyone had called her a daddy’s girl, just like they now call Grace a mummy’s girl. It seems strange to imagine that now when you see how much Bella and Dad argue. She says he’s stupidly overprotective and that he worries like an old woman – especially about us.
I was walking past the post office ten minutes later when I saw Tansy heading towards me. There was no sign of her dad.
‘Hi,’ I said, giving her a shy smile.
She immediately stopped to talk to me. ‘It’s Livvy, right?’
‘Libby,’ I corrected her. ‘Short for Elisabeth.’
‘Right.’ Suddenly her attention was caught by something behind me. ‘Look,’ she said quietly. ‘Isn’t that Mrs McLusky?’
I turned to look. We were a short way along the road from the village dental practice and the headmistress of St Clara’s was standing outside chatting to someone. And that someone was Aunt Thecla!
Of course it was no secret that they knew each other but I still felt uncomfortable seeing them together. It felt like my aunt was encroaching on my school life, where she normally didn’t belong.
Mrs McLusky was going inside the dentist’s when Aunt Thecla turned her head and saw me. There was nothing for it but to wait for her to come over.
Suddenly Tansy’s dad appeared beside us. ‘Tansy – there you are!’
At first he didn’t seem to recognise my aunt as she approached, but then he stiffened, standing almost to attention the nearer she got.
Aunt Thecla’s eyesight obviously wasn’t as good as his because she kept walking towards us with a smile on her face.
‘Oh no,’ I murmured under my breath. ‘Please God …’ The next thing I knew I was actually praying for divine intervention. I don’t know quite what I expected God to do, but something along the lines of freezing time for a few minutes so that we could all run away would have been pretty good.
‘Michael!’ Aunt Thecla’s voice was a little hoarse as she got close enough to recognise him.
‘Hello, Thecla.’
They looked at each other so awkwardly that for several moments it almost seemed that time really was standing still, waiting for one or the other of them to leg it out of there.
‘Well, Michael,’ my aunt finally said in a strange, tight voice. ‘It’s been a long time. How are you?’
‘Good, thank you. Good enough anyway … You heard my father died?’
She nodded.
‘I’m trying to sort out his house … I met um …’ He glanced at me. Clearly he’d forgotten my name.
‘Elisabeth and her two sisters are starting at St Clara’s this year,’ Aunt Thecla said as she looked questioningly at Tansy, who had drifted away to look in the bakery window.
‘So is my daughter, Tansy,’ he said. ‘We’ve just been getting her uniform.’
Tansy turned round and my aunt let out a gasp of shock. ‘Oh my goodness! She’s the spitting image of –’ She broke off, flushing pink and looking like she was worried she’d put her foot in it in some major way. ‘Forgive me, Michael, I didn’t mean to … I’m so clumsy sometimes …’
‘Don’t worry, Thecla,’ he said at once. ‘Anyway, it’s true. She does take after him. Everybody who knew him says so.’ He paused. ‘As you can imagine, my father was absolutely delighted!’
She gave a weak smile. ‘I can imagine.’ There was an even longer awkward silence. ‘Um … I was just going to get a coffee, so …’
‘Actually, Thecla, perhaps I could join you?’ he said in a rush.
Aunt Thecla looked totally floored. I could tell she hadn’t seen that one coming. ‘Well …’
‘Here, Tansy.’ Her dad swiftly handed her some money. ‘Why don’t you girls go and buy yourselves an ice cream?’
‘So do you know anyone else here?’ Tansy asked me as we sat down on the wooden bench in front of the village war memorial, licking the ice creams we’d just bought. I was keeping a lookout for the girls I’d met at the park, but thankfully there was no sign of them.
‘No,’ I replied, my friend radar switching on for the second time that morning. ‘Do you?’
‘Nope.’
Good, I thought. ‘Where have you moved from?’
‘Southampton. Now Grandpa’s died my dad’s decided to come back and live here. It’s a crazy idea if you ask me.’
‘Is it just you and your dad then?’ I asked curiously.
‘Yes. Mum and Dad are divorced, and I’m living with Dad because Mum’s gone to Africa to work for a charity there. She’s a doctor and she’s helping to set up a health clinic.’
‘Wow.’ I felt pleased that she was confiding in me so easily. Maybe Tansy wanted a new friend just as much as I did. ‘So how long has she been away?’ I asked, trying to sound politely interested rather than super-nosy. (Bella says I sometimes sound like I’m interrogating people when I get curious and want to know more.)
‘Almost four months. It was meant to be three but it got extended. She gets back to England in two weeks’ time though.’
‘I bet you can’t wait to see her.’ I could only guess how much I’d miss Mum if she ever went away for that long.
When Tansy just shrugged rather than agreeing with me, I asked, ‘So … will your mum have to go away again after that or is she back for good?’ Maybe her mum was leaving again and that was why she still seemed unhappy.
‘No.’ Tansy sounded angry as she added, ‘But I’m still not going back to live with her. I don’t care what she says!’
‘Oh …’ I could sense there was more she wasn’t telling me, but I didn’t feel like I knew her well enough to ask without risking her thinking I was sticking my nose in.
We sat silently eating our ice creams while I tried to think of something else to say. If there’s one thing I’m good at it’s getting people to talk about themselves.
‘So how do you like living in the country?’ I finally asked.
She pulled a face. ‘It sucks! I mean, Dad never really talks about growing up here, but as far as I can work out the most exciting thing that ever happened when he was a kid was the church fête!’
I smiled. ‘Don’t forget the annual tractor race!’
‘Dad actually won that one year,’ Tansy said with a grin. ‘He and his girlfriend paid a local farmer to let them use his tractor. He says no one could believe it when they came first. He says it was all down to his girlfriend, because she drove like a maniac!’
I was positive that the girlfriend in question had to be Aunt Thecla. I couldn’t imagine her perched on a tractor, but t
he driving like a maniac sounded right. And I was sure I’d also heard some story about her winning the village tractor race.
‘Tansy, did you know that your dad and my aunt lived next door to each other when they were young? And that they were engaged for a while.’
‘What? You mean that aunt we met just now?’ she looked shocked. Then she started to grin. ‘Oh wow! I thought he was acting a bit weird. I had no idea she was Bluebell!’
‘Bluebell?’ I was confused. ‘But that’s not her name!’
‘Oh, Bluebell was just Dad’s pet name for her. Her real name was pretty weird apparently.’
‘Thecla?’ I said.
She grinned. ‘Very possibly. Wow! I can’t believe Bluebell is your aunt! Wait till I tell my mum. She thinks Dad never really got over his first love … though Dad says that’s rubbish!’ She grinned even wider. ‘I’m telling you, seeing him with your aunt just now, I’m thinking Mum might be right … I’ve never seen him so keen to take someone out for coffee!’
Chapter Twelve
I was longing to tell Bella about Aunt Thecla being called Bluebell by Tansy’s dad – and how Tansy thought he was still secretly in love with our aunt. I was pretty sure Bella was going to laugh her head off when she heard that. As for me, I didn’t just find it funny, I found it totally thrilling. And if Tansy was right then this was something I couldn’t just leave alone. I had to find out if Aunt Thecla might still be in love too. Of course on the surface she wasn’t, but what about deep down? Buried so deep that nobody else would ever know? And what if the two of them could somehow be brought back together?
But first I had to find Bella and make her tell me what was going on with Sam.
I felt a bit nervous about going back to wait for her at the park because I really didn’t want to meet those three girls again. Luckily there was no sign of them.
I didn’t text Bella because I was imagining her on the back of Sam’s bike and I figured it was safer for her to keep holding on rather than being distracted by her phone.
I spotted the motorbike straight away as it came down the street towards me. At least it wasn’t roaring along at top speed, and I could see that Sam and my sister were both wearing helmets.
They stopped just in front of me and Bella immediately removed her helmet and shook out her hair. ‘Libby.’
‘Hi, Libby,’ Sam echoed as he lifted his visor so I could see his face.
‘I should have guessed you were the reason she was sneaking off all the time,’ I told him coolly.
He looked a bit surprised by my unfriendliness.
‘Shut up, Libby, this is nothing to do with you,’ Bella said sharply. ‘Sam, you’d better go. My aunt has spies everywhere in this village.’
I stared at him as he said goodbye, remembering how Katie and her friends had called him cute earlier. I have to say I’ve never really thought of Sam as cute, but then again there’s definitely something quite striking about his face. He has brown eyes set in an angular face and a mop of messy dark-blond hair. Today he was wearing jeans, a leather jacket and big biker boots, and he looked tougher and more streetwise than usual.
‘But, Bella, what’s he doing here?’ I burst out the second he’d driven off.
‘Trying to find a job.’
‘I thought he already had a job with his uncle!’
‘He wants a job here, stupid … near me!’
‘Wow! So does his mum know he’s here?’ Sam doesn’t have a dad – at least not one who’s ever been around – and his mum has always seemed extremely laidback and hands-off compared to my parents. But still …
‘She knows he’s OK,’ Bella grunted. ‘I don’t think she cares beyond that.’
‘So where’s he staying?’
‘At a B & B in the village. But he’s run out of money, so after tonight he has to move somewhere else.’
Now I understood why she’d needed all that money. ‘Bella, can’t you just ask Mum and Dad to help? Maybe when they see how badly the two of you want to stay together …’
‘Yeah … right …’ she said sarcastically.
‘But don’t you think –?’
‘Libby, we’ve already got it covered, OK? I’m going to take him to the cottage.’
‘What cottage?’
‘Rat Cottage, of course! It’s still empty and there’s that window at the back that doesn’t shut properly, so it should be easy for him to sneak in and out.’
‘But, isn’t that against the law?’ I asked in alarm.
‘Probably.’
‘So what if he gets caught? He’ll get into loads of trouble.’
‘We haven’t got a choice. I’ve already given him all my savings and the money I managed to get off Dad this morning. He bought some food and some more petrol for his bike but there’s nothing left.’
‘But, Bella –’
‘Libby, you have to promise not to say anything about this to anyone. If you do …’ She spoke in a voice that told me that if I did I’d regret it.
‘I won’t tell,’ I promised, instantly subdued by the threat of losing her trust again.
‘I knew I could count on you.’
She quickly changed the subject by asking me what I’d been doing while she was gone. And as I’d expected, she was intrigued to learn that I’d met Michael Godwin and Tansy. When I mentioned Aunt Thecla’s nickname she laughed in disbelief. ‘I mean, I can think of some other less delicate plant names that would suit her.’
‘Like what?’ I asked with a grin.
She shrugged. ‘Thistle … or Cactus!’
I laughed, even though I don’t think our aunt is really all that prickly. Bossy and interfering, maybe. Though I guess Bella might have a different opinion. In any case, I didn’t contradict her because it felt nice, the two of us laughing together like this. It made me feel like I was back on Team Bella.
‘So did Mrs McLusky need any fillings?’ Grace asked Mum as we all sat down together at the dinner table that evening.
‘I should think Mummy is too bound by patient–dentist confidentiality to answer that question,’ Dad said in a jokey sort of voice. ‘Isn’t that right, Nina?’
‘Absolutely,’ Mum said. ‘Anyway, the last thing your poor headmistress needs is a lot of children standing in the playground gossiping about the state of her teeth.’
‘Why? Are they in a bit of a state then?’ Bella asked with a grin.
‘They look in tip-top condition to me,’ Dad responded, then realised his mistake when Mum frowned at him.
‘Since when did you get such a close look at her teeth?’
Dad instantly held up both hands in a ‘Don’t shoot!’ kind of way. ‘Yours are looking even more tip-top, Nina.’
‘And they’re a hundred per cent real!’ Mum said tartly.
‘Wait … are you saying Mrs McLusky’s teeth aren’t real?’ Bella and I both blurted, which made Dad snort and Mum’s mouth twitch, though she still managed not to grin.
‘Aunt Thecla had really nice teeth when she was young,’ Grace announced suddenly. ‘She showed me a big photo of her face. I didn’t know it was her at first, because she looked so pretty.’
‘Now there’s a crumpliment if ever there was one!’ Dad said with a mischievous grin.
Just then the doorbell rang.
‘That’s Aunt Thecla,’ Grace said. ‘She said she was coming round after dinner to see where we’ve hung up all her paintings.’
‘WHAT?’ Mum and Dad both nearly choked on their food. ‘Grace, why didn’t you tell us?’
My little sister looked indignant. ‘I just did!’
‘I’m not putting any of them up,’ Mum exclaimed. ‘Not one!’
Dad nodded. ‘Don’t worry, Nina. Just leave it to me.’
The following morning as Bella and I were still lazing in bed, I said, ‘So do you think Aunt Thecla believed Dad about the box with her paintings in it being permanently lost in storage?’
‘Nope.’
‘Neither do I.
She took it pretty well though, don’t you think?’
‘Offering to paint us some more? I’m telling you, the next ones she gives us are going to be even more hideous.’
I smiled. After a short silence I said, ‘I wish she wasn’t looking after us today.’ Dad was away meeting a client for most of the day and Mum had been asked at the last minute if she could go in on her day off to cover a sick colleague’s caseload. Aunt Thecla had offered to help out.
‘She’s not going to be looking after us – just Gracie,’ Bella said firmly. ‘And I think it’s quite handy that Dad won’t be here. It’s always easier to see Sam when he’s not around.’
Aunt Thecla arrived half an hour after Dad had left, just as Mum was setting off to walk to work. Once she’d gone, Bella announced that she was going out on her bike to get some fresh air. Aunt Thecla is a big fan of fresh air, especially country air. She also never bats an eyelid (like Mum and Dad do) when one of us tells her we want to be on our own for a while. She thinks it’s perfectly normal to need time away from other human beings.
Bella left while I was up in our bedroom getting dressed, and when I came downstairs Aunt Thecla was complaining about the lack of fresh food in the house. I thought she was exaggerating because I knew Dad had stocked up at the supermarket before he left, but when I opened the fridge I saw what she meant. The bread bin was empty too.
I was pretty sure I knew where all the food had gone.
Grace suddenly asked, ‘Can we bake something, Aunt Thecla?’
‘I very much doubt we have sufficient ingredients,’ she replied. ‘But we can buy some if we go to the shops. Now then … let’s make a list.’
‘I’m going out on my bike for a bit,’ I announced. ‘I’ve got my phone with me. I’m going to try and catch up with Bella.’
‘Didn’t she just say she wanted to be alone?’ Aunt Thecla called out after me, but I pretended I hadn’t heard as I shut the door behind me.
I knew – or at least I thought I knew – exactly where Bella was going. So when she didn’t answer her phone or my text asking where she was I didn’t let that stop me.