‘You don’t want to mess with Miles’ mum, apparently,’ Thea continued in a slightly more serious tone. ‘Even my sister, who is a hard-nosed cow, wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her, although they both seem to be in a similar friendship group. Apparently, she can make or break a woman’s spirit.’
Skye scoffed disbelievingly.
‘You may mock,’ said Thea, poking Skye in the ribs, ‘but she’s a gossip queen and my sister says she’s got the hots for Zack. It’s why she’s told Miles he has to befriend Emmie and keep her close. Miles doesn’t really like her, as he wants to be the top kid and have the best of everything. Emmie, living in a place like she does, must niggle at him like nettle rash.’
Skye leant her arm on the kitchen counter and rested her head on her hand, staring at Thea in awe. This place was becoming more exciting by the minute. Who needed her old job, when this little village had enough drama to keep her busy for years?
‘Miles’ mum, Mirabelle,’ continued Thea, oblivious to her rapt audience, ‘thinks that if the kids are friends, then the parents will be friendlier. Miles spends half his life stuck up a tree because his mum fancies the local tree man. I could almost feel sorry for him, if he wasn’t such a nasty little troublemaker.’
‘She’s called Mirror Ball?’ asked Skye with a gasp. Thea laughed and stuck out her tongue.
‘She’s called Mirabelle, but demands that everyone addresses her as Belle as she thinks she’s so damn beautiful.’
Skye spluttered and bit her lip to control her giggles. ‘What about the tree man?’ she asked, giving Thea a lewd wink and licking her lips. ‘How did he get his name? Has he got a secret weapon we should all know about?’ When Thea just raised her eyes to heaven and ignored her, Skye sighed and tried another route. ‘How on earth did you find all that out? I thought you’d only been here a couple of months longer than me?’
‘My sister,’ said Thea simply. She appeared to be trying hard to shake the mental image of what might be inside Zack’s shorts, now that Skye had mentioned it. ‘She hates Belle with a passion, but has to pretend to be best friends with her, apparently, to keep her social standing. Doesn’t stop her from slagging Mirabelle off to anyone who will listen, though. Not really that smart a move in a little town. One of these days ‘Mirror Ball’ Belle will hear something and come round and wallop her one. Luckily, people are just as terrified of my sister and wouldn’t dare rat her out in case she started slagging them off too,’ Thea said cheerfully, making Skye smile.
It was great to see Thea properly relax and enjoy herself. She seemed like quite an uptight person who worried about what everyone else thought, rather than not giving a damn, like Skye. Who cared what the stuck-up bitches of the world thought, when you had lost the love of your life?
‘Hang on,’ said Skye, backtracking slightly in her mind. ‘Did you say Miles spends half his life up a tree?’
Thea giggled and tried to disengage her bottom from the sticky furniture, which seemed to want to come with her. Skye jumped down from her stool and gently helped Thea from the seat, trying all the while not to tip her off, which was her first instinct to show how daft this all was. She hadn’t had this much fun in ages, angry hot man aside.
‘Zack runs a tree-walking centre on the grounds of the estate. It’s just off the road, near my cottage. They say the previous owner set it up for his hippie lover, then got bored and ran off with a barmaid or something. No one really knows Zack’s story as he keeps to himself, but I don’t think he’s been here that much longer than you or me. Maybe we should start up a newbie mum scrum and throw Zack into the middle? It can be a dad-mum scrumptious scrum!’ Now she sent Skye a wink, which looked more like she had something in her eye, and Skye burst out laughing, although the thought of rolling around with Zack did make her skin flush. She quickly brushed her hair round her face to hide her embarrassment and hoped Thea hadn’t realised. ‘He is pretty easy on the eye though, you have to admit,’ said Thea, as Skye’s face flushed interestingly.
‘I hadn’t noticed,’ lied Skye, nonchalantly, realising that Thea was staring at her with that dratted raised eyebrow in silent question again.
‘He’s not one for conversation,’ said Thea checking on Flo and flopping into one of the cool grey armchairs in the lounge. ‘No one knows where his wife is as they’ve never seen her, although Belle started a rumour that she’s dead, evil cow! Allie asked Emmie once, but she just said her mum was incredibly busy and important and didn’t have time to visit. What a bitch!’
‘I’ve not seen him at the school before,’ said Skye, drawing the conversation back to Zack, seething inside that a woman could abandon her child. Although, to be fair, she might be the best mum in the world and just have been turned into a complete harridan by the rumour mill.
‘Zack does go to collect Emmie from school, but he avoids other parents like the plague. He tends to stand at the back behind the rain shelter and occasionally chats to one of the other dads, Mike. He’s a carpenter, but seems to be working more and more for Zack at CloudClimb. Personally, I think he’s hiding from ‘Mirror Ball’ Belle.’
‘Well, if Zack is as grumpy with her as he was to me today, she’s welcome to him. Such a waste of a good body,’ she sighed theatrically, making Thea almost choke on the first sip of the fresh soft drink Skye had just got for her. Skye smiled, innocently taking a sip of her own drink, then pulling Thea up so that they could go into the garden and see what the children were up to. They’d been awfully quiet out there for the last ten minutes.
Chapter Ten
Miles growled at Allie and Leo as they walked past his desk and swiped his hand across the surface and into the walkway between the desks. Allie managed to swerve her body to the right and avoided colliding with it. Leo speeded up and swung his body into his chair at the back of the room and sent Allie a conspiratorial smile.
From the desk behind Miles, Emmie watched them with interest. She didn’t know what was going on, but those two had a secret and she was determined to find out what it was. Allie and Leo had been whispering in corners ever since she had witnessed them playing in the cottage garden. Her dad had been watching her for every moment of every day, and even the dogs had refused to co-operate and explore the fields again. Her dad had been mad at her and had lectured her for ages about not going that far alone, but Leo’s mum fascinated her and she was sure they were having lots of fun at his house.
They had almost always managed to avoid Miles since that day, too. If there was a secret to that, then she wanted to know what it was. Miles was as bossy as her dad. He wouldn’t let her have friends to play with, and was really boring to be around. Her dad tried his best to spend time with her, but the new business made him distracted and, instead of making friends with some adults so she could invite their children to tea, he rudely blanked most of them and then insulted others like Leo’s mum. Emmie had been excruciatingly embarrassed by her dad and that had never happened before. She loved living where they did now, but sometimes she thought things had been easier when it was just her and her dad in their little flat. At least he had mostly worked at night then.
Leo’s mum often sent her a wink when she saw her outside school and Emmie would beam at her in return, hoping she would invite her round, but it hadn’t happened. Leo and Allie didn’t want other friends, although she had noticed more children wanting to play with them lately. Well, ones that had the courage to wind up Miles, anyway.
The end-of-day bell rang and Allie and Leo were the first up, swiftly and methodically packing their school bags and saying goodbye to their friends before Miles had a chance to stand up. He stamped his foot in frustration, as Emmie knew he enjoyed winding up the new kids, but he couldn’t get near them these days. Maybe he would start arriving at school earlier and surprise them on their way in, she grimaced. A gleam of menace lit his eyes as he must have had the same idea and he smiled manically at Emmie, who was trying to stuff the day’s belongings quickly into her bag and go ho
me. She offered him a weak smile, and hoped he decided to leave soon, as he kept patting her on the head like a puppy and it was beginning to drive her mad.
Her dad’s patience with Miles and his pushy mum was really starting to irritate her. He kept saying he was going to give ‘that boy’ and his mother a piece of his mind, which sounded disgusting, but yet he hadn’t done it. He often said it when he thought she couldn’t hear him, but he was quite loud mid-rant, even if he was whispering. He always seemed to be muttering to himself these days. Emmie hoped that he wasn’t going senile, as she’d heard that was a really bad thing. She thought the word must mean he couldn’t see things properly, but he climbed the trees most days and hadn’t fallen off yet. Maybe she should ask him if he needed glasses? Anyway, she couldn’t pretend she didn’t hear what her dad said, especially if it was about Miles. Emmie wished that, if he was going to do something, he would hurry up and do it, so she could have some proper friends. She’d tried so hard to fit in at her new school, but it was harder to find someone to like her than she’d thought. Her dad always told her she was amazing, so she couldn’t understand why the other children didn’t think so too.
Emmie knew she could be pretty hard on her dad, but she was having a difficult time getting away from Miles and she was too scared of him to ask a teacher or her dad for real help. He would go bananas and the teachers would tell Miles’ mum, who would also go bananas, which would make Miles even meaner to her. She was supposed to be his friend, so she felt even sorrier for Leo and Allie and the other kids; Miles really hated them.
Chapter Eleven
Allie and Leo ran up to Skye. She’d offered to walk them home and give them some dinner so that Thea could take a nap when Flo did, and then come and collect Allie later, although Skye was curious to see what her cottage looked like. They always ended up at Skye’s house, as this was where they ‘trained’, but every time Skye offered to drop her home, Thea would breezily say she was coming that way anyway. Skye assumed that Thea’s place was a mess and she didn’t want them to see it, but curiosity was beginning to get the better of her and she would have to push the matter soon.
Visiting Skye’s cottage had become a routine over the last few weeks and she had used the time to teach the children new skills at the ninja club. The first week had been child’s play, but she had raised the stakes after Miles pushed Allie over and cut her knee again. Thea had wanted to complain to the school, but Allie had pleaded with her not to, as Miles would make her life so difficult. Against Thea’s better judgement they had let it go for now, but if Miles didn’t back off, then she would pull out the big guns and tell her sister how it had really happened. Allie’s mum may have wanted to keep on Mirabelle’s good side, but if it involved her daughter being hurt, then the gloves would be off and there would be a power struggle, which would probably involve a lot of hair pulling and name calling… from the adults, Skye grinned to herself.
Skye walked the children out through the school gates towards home and then noticed Zack, the rude man from the estate, watching her behind the rain shelter. He was wearing black jeans and a brown T-shirt and, if he hadn’t so many muscles in his arms, he would have almost blended in with the wood of the shelter. Skye smiled at the thought of the chameleon dad, trying to hide from everyone. She looked him straight in the eye until he looked away. She frowned at the sudden surge of butterflies that had appeared in her stomach. She quickly surmised that she must be hungry as she’d skipped lunch because she was too busy setting up the garden. That must be it. She chastised her own silliness.
Skye glanced back over her shoulder just in time to see a miserable-looking Emmie appear, with a boisterous Miles tagging along behind her, hopping from foot to foot. One look from Zack, and Miles about-turned and with a weak wave went off to meet his mum, who had stopped chatting for once and was craning her neck for a better look at Zack. Catching his eye again, Skye sent him a sympathetic smile and he started in surprise, then sent her a self-deprecating grin back, which made those butterflies resurface.
Skye carried on walking with a spring in her step. She was still mightily cross with him for being such a rude, hot guy, but there needed to be some solidarity in the battle to overcome the reign of Miles and ‘Mirror Ball’ Belle.
Reaching out and unlocking the door to the cottage, stepping aside for the children to precede her inside, she revelled in the squeals of happiness they made when they saw the gigantic cookies she had attempted to make earlier that day. She had forgotten that they spread to twice their size in the oven and maybe she shouldn’t have covered them in Smarties, which had melted and made multi-coloured swirls everywhere, instead of the professional-looking confectionary she had hoped for.
The children grabbed a slab of baked cookie, looked in the fridge for a drink, then shouted with glee when they opened the back door to the garden. Over the last few weeks Skye had, through play, taught the children to balance, with endless repetitions along the beams she had laid out on the grass. She had also sawn some of the beams at various heights and held the children’s hands while they learned to traverse them without falling off. Seeing the children sprint to the end of the garden and hop onto the first one with ease was so satisfying to watch. The number of times she had to catch them as they fell, it was a good job she had natural agility of her own, or they would have literally pulled her arm out of its socket.
Today, Skye had set up a mini obstacle course. She had laid out piles of books for the kids to balance on their heads as they walked over the beams, hula hoops in various sizes and colours for them to throw in the air and catch, and the basket of softballs she had used weeks earlier. The softball basket was sitting beside a ball launcher, which was set to move around and would send balls spiralling across the garden for them to dodge. The garden table was set out with trays of small objects to play a memory game. She would remove one item each time to see if the children had memorised everything, to help them remember to pick up all their belongings from their school desks before Miles could grab things and hide them. His favourite trick at the moment was to stuff things down the back of the class radiator, where they got covered in cobwebs and sticky spilt drinks.
Skye had set this club up to distract the kids from worrying about Miles but, to her astonishment, it really worked. Leo had reported that, even after a mere few weeks of ninja training, they had pretty much managed to avoid Miles’ kicks and punches by working together and keeping out of his way.
Skye had noticed the red-haired mum looking longingly at Belle and her group again today and, although it wasn’t Skye’s thing, she felt bad for the other woman because she so wanted to be part of that gang. Mulling over an idea she had had a few days previously, Skye clapped her hands to catch the children’s attention and began to explain a great technique to warm up their muscles and get the blood flowing into their brains, making them more alert and able to concentrate. They would have to be paying attention to what she said to keep their balance, not drop the apparatus and co-ordinate their senses to complete the course without having to start again.
‘Mum,’ called Leo, in a voice that Skye immediately knew meant he was going to ask something she might not like. She looked up expectantly, almost doing the Thea eyebrow thing, but he hesitantly looked at Allie for support, and she wondered what was going on.
‘What is it?’ Skye asked, a little impatiently. Leo was such a good boy, but he was an individual and sometimes threw her a curveball by asking her something outlandish. It was her own fault for travelling so much with him when he was small and not hiding her true self from him. He was only a child, but he was all she had and he’d had to know about her old life, for his own protection. She had been very careful not to scare him, but had told him the bare minimum to keep him safe. He had been fascinated originally, but after a while got bored and moved on. He accepted that she was a little eccentric and he had inherited some of those traits.
‘Well…’ he began, slowly. ‘A few of the boys from school
are getting really upset about Miles.’
‘Then their parents should speak to the school,’ Skye said carefully, sensing where this was going.
‘You didn’t call the school,’ he said innocently.
‘Yes, but…’ he had her there. What could she say?
‘It would just be Tammy and Z.’
‘Z?’
‘Yeah, his name’s Barry, but he hates it, so we call him Z. It’s cool!’
‘Oh,’ said Skye in confusion. She assumed this was Leo’s plan. She bet Barry had been perfectly happy with his name before today and Leo had encouraged him to change it to get into the ninja club. Skye looked at Allie who was studiously gazing at the floor and twisting one foot behind the other.
‘Allie?’ she asked.
‘Well… I kind of said to Maisy and Alice that I would ask you about them coming over too…’
Skye threw her hands up into the air in exasperation. ‘Did you not swear an oath of secrecy?’
‘We didn’t tell them about the club, honest!’ they both chorused. ‘They’ve just noticed how we manage to avoid Miles now. We only told them we had worked out how to keep out of his way.’ Skye slapped her hand on her forehead in frustration as Leo continued, ‘Plus, Allie said she likes to come for dinner and now they all want to come.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! I’m not running a childcare club. It was supposed to be a bit of fun.’
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