Kite noticed that Seth disappeared a few times during the afternoon and when he came back he always smelt of smoke. The last time he popped out Dr Sherpa ‘kept him company’, and when they returned Seth began singing and strumming away at his guitar.
‘You’ve got your Grandpa’s voice, all right.’ Aida started humming along, picking out lines of the story here and there in a surprisingly sweet and tuneful voice. The old men bickered with her over the lyrics.
‘Don’t go listening to these two. They never could hold a tune!’ Aida laughed.
‘Aye, well, that’s as maybe, but we’ve been hard pushed hearing ourselves think all these years with you around, let alone sing!’ Giles was smiling fondly at Aida. Until now Kite had never been much around so many old people, but despite all their arguments and bickering they seemed to know and accept each other as part of the landscape. She glanced over to the cap on Jack’s empty chair; it seemed impossible that he wasn’t somewhere nearby, tapping along to the music. She wished that Lily could hear Seth’s songs and that Hannah could have known her own story. And more than any of these things she wished that she could go back to London and walk down the stairs to Dawn’s flat, sit on her bed and tell her all about this. She glanced outside to see that the light was fading. Tomorrow, she thought, if the wind is still raging I’ll take my birthday kite and fly it for Dawn.
‘You know I won’t be able to stop here, don’t you? I’m going to have to find the family of this Peter Klein,’ Seth said as they drove back across the common. ‘Who knows, maybe he’s still alive.’
Kite nodded. She thought of old Jack’s photos of his time in India . . . and about how Jack and Agnes had been secretly in love. It wasn’t just where you were from; it was all the experiences that you drank in during your life that made you who you were. Despite everything, it was somehow comforting to know exactly how you stretched into the past and out across the world in all directions.
Skeletons
In the morning Kite walked over to the spyhole window and peered out. For the first time since they’d arrived she watched the glowering rainclouds brood over the mountain. To the left the woodland swayed in a wild wind dance.
Garth was waiting for her on the path below Mirror Falls. He wore sturdy new walking boots with a thick tread.
‘Look for the bones under this ledge – that’s what Gran said, isn’t it?’
She nodded as Garth climbed on to the stone platform where the sheep carcass had lain. He held out his hand to help Kite down, but instead she slid along the rock and jumped the remaining distance herself. She felt as if she had been here before, in her dream. Garth eased himself over the ledge and found a foothold in the rock. The roar of the waterfall was at its most ferocious here. Garth ducked to see into the crevice and whistled as he realized how many bones lay there.
‘I can see why Gran thought the owls were haunting her; they must have kept coming back looking for the barn and crashed to their deaths. You know they nest for generations in the same place. No wonder she couldn’t live here with this on her conscience.’
Kite shivered. It was like discovering the aftermath of a massacre – and Agnes had hidden the evidence right here under her ‘dream house’.
When they’d finally cleared out the crevice, the bones half filled both hessian sacks. They climbed in silence up the path and left them at the door.
Seth was sitting at the table eating breakfast.
‘I’m helping Garth finish his sculpture,’ announced Kite.
Seth looked up and tapped the newspaper – the Cumbrian and Westmorland Herald. ‘I’ve been reading all about your commission from the National Trust!’ He smiled at them both. ‘Seems like Garth’s garths are going to be all over the walkways of the Lakes! It says here your work is –’ Seth put on what he called his ‘proper posh’ voice – ‘“A meditation on the erosion of time . . .”’
‘Really! I didn’t know that!’ Garth laughed, then picked up the paper and read it for himself. ‘Makes me sound good! I wish they’d told the Art GCSE markers though!’
‘Why, what did you get?’
‘A “D”.’
Seth laughed and clapped him on the back.
‘I’m just going up to pack a few things, in case it rains,’ Kite called, running up the staircase. She placed the reed box in her backpack. It felt like time. She knew that Dawn wasn’t angry with her and she also knew that she could never give her all the answers to her questions. What she could do was honour Dawn’s memory and lay her spirit to rest in a beautiful place that Dawn would have loved, a place that Kite had come to love too. She picked up the feather and placed it back under her pillow. She had decided to keep it after all. The feather – and the birthday card, that she now turned over in her hands. I’ll open it when I’ve buried the reed, she promised herself as she unhooked her tethered kite from the wall.
When they were gone, Seth wandered over to the large glass window and watched their journey through the valley. He saw Garth take Kite’s hand and not let go. They disappeared from view as they descended the steep path that led down to the base of the waterfall.
Then further up the valley he saw a multicoloured kite begin to bob hopefully. The string seemed to get caught a couple of times before the kite lifted way off the ground and rose steadily, strongly, into the fading grey sky. So here at last were the moods of the mountains. Watching his daughter from this distance, Seth felt the tears stream down his cheeks. When Garth and Kite reached the furthest part of the valley they stopped for a moment, turned and looked back towards Mirror Falls. Seth waved to Kite, though he knew that she would probably not be able to see him.
He looked up at the owl print on the glass. Only one wing was vaguely discernible now.
Cloudburst
A herd of sheep gathered off the fell and huddled together, forming an orderly line in the shelter of a drystone wall.
‘They always know when it’s going to be really bad,’ Garth told her as they packed away the kite.
Sure enough, it wasn’t long before the thick black clouds that swirled across the top of the mountains gathered speed . . . and then came the cloudburst. Kite opened her mouth and drank. Her cheeks stung with the constant pressure of the sharp rain, but she was glad that there was nowhere to shelter. She felt alive in every cell of her body for the first time in ages as they began to climb the steep path over Kite Carrec. Kite peered up at the grey mountain that had been so green and sunny on their last walk together. Holding on to each other, they slipped here and there in the stream that was already beginning to cascade down the track.
By the time they’d descended the slope into the reservoir they were both soaked and mud-smeared. The rain had taken only a few minutes to penetrate Kite’s thin cagoule. Garth handed her his padded jacket, his damp shirt clinging close to his body.
Together they placed all the owl bones deep into the sheep’s belly and sealed them in with slates. As Garth worked he seemed to forget that the rain was falling.
‘Do you think you can find a place for this?’
Kite took the little box from her pocket. She lifted out the reed and handed it to Garth. He turned it over in his hands with great care, just as he had in her dream.
‘Dawn’s golden reed,’ she whispered.
Garth lodged it firmly among the slates, stones and bones of his sculpture. When the reservoir filled and the sheep was underwater, maybe all these tiny shards of history would float away from the sculpture: the trout that Seth had caught for Jack, Agnes’s owl bones and Dawn’s music. They were all now part of the story of this place.
‘Do you want to sit and watch it disappear?’ asked Garth.
Kite nodded through chattering teeth and Garth grabbed her hand and started to run with her across the bridge and up a steep rocky slope. They were high above the dam now and Kite turned to look down to where the boundary walls and the little bridge were already beginning to be submerged.
‘Come and watch it from here!�
�
A thick overhang of rock served as a secure roof sloping low on both sides so that the water drained off the edges, leaving the view over the dam clear.
Garth rummaged in the back of the cave and found a hessian sack full of dry twigs and wood.
‘This is my place where I like to come, to be alone with all this!’ Garth spread out his arms, taking in the lake and surrounding mountains with his gesture. He stacked the twigs into a pile and took out a lighter. The fire was slow to start and smoked for a while, but Garth kept piling twigs on until bright orange flames started to rise up.
‘Thank you!’ Kite said as she warmed her hands.
‘What for?’
‘Bringing me here, listening to me, helping me through.’
She laid her head on his shoulder and they watched the rain pour over the ledge and steam mingle with smoke from the fire. She felt his fingers lift a strand of her hair and twist it around and around, making perfect spirals. He bent down slowly and kissed the top of her head and she could feel what was coming next. She pulled away from him.
‘I can’t,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I feel as if I’ve just buried my friend.’
Garth nodded and placed an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close to him. She could feel his heart beating against her chest and she closed her eyes. She listened to the rain falling and the crackling of the fire and then she heard another sound, warm and free and golden. Dawn’s music rose up from where the reed lay lodged between slates and bones, up into the air and travelled through the valley towards her, coursing along her blood stream, up through her spine and into her heart.
At first it came upon her gently like a whisper of sadness blowing through her, but then the tears were rolling freely down her face and her chest ached, as if her ribcage was about to crack open with surging grief. Now her breath came in great sobs that she had no control over. She felt Garth draw her closer to him, but he didn’t speak or try to quiet the emotion in her. The rain poured over the edge of the rock and the reservoir below began to fill with water. The tears that she had held back for so long, tears for the friend she would never see again, fell hard and strong, building in force, not weakening, as she let them flow.
Birthday Card
It was not until morning that Kite realized that the owl print was gone.
‘As if it had never been . . .’ she whispered.
‘Well, I just hope we make it through this weather!’ Seth muttered to Dr Sherpa, Ellie and the rest of the little group that had gathered outside the Carrec Arms. Just as they were about to leave Aida wheeled herself up to the car and gave Seth a hand-sewn leather deer.
‘This is the toy that Peter, your grandad, made!’
‘Thank you, Aida!’ Seth clasped it in his hands delightedly.
The car started on the third attempt. The little windscreen wipers swished back and forth, desperately trying to keep up with the constant rivulets of rain pooling against the bonnet. As they drove slowly along, the girl with pink hair came running out of a little stone cottage. Not seeming to mind about the rain, she stood and waved.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Seth.
‘Cassie.’ Kite waved back.
‘Seems like you’ve made some friends around here.’
Kite smiled. She looked down at the little slate necklace Garth had given her and thought how much she would miss these people and this place.
The windows were steaming up. Since she was little Kite had always loved the feeling of lying across the back seat of the car driving through the rain, all cosy and safe whatever was happening outside. Seth’s shoulders were hunched in concentration as he kept slowing to clear the mist on the inside of the windscreen.
Kite placed her hand in her pocket and slipped out Dawn’s card, opened it and read the words that she knew could not be avoided any longer.
Dear Kite,
Happy Birthday my best friend, my ‘thithter’!
Love Dawn
XXX
A small sharp noise escaped from her mouth. Just as Hazel had said, there was no explanation here, nothing. Slowly she closed the card and turned it over to see the image on the front and, as she did, she had to struggle to catch her breath. In her hands she held a photograph of a great white owl soaring over a mountain range, her wings lit up against a starry night sky.
Epilogue
The Hardest Things
Kite had seen Lucy the counsellor as soon as she’d got back, on Dr Sherpa’s suggestion. She’d felt ready to speak of everything she had felt, everything she was still feeling, and it was reassuring to know that whenever she needed her Lucy was there. But the person who helped her the most over the next two years was Miss Choulty.
Kite had missed her in school while she’d been on maternity leave and had spontaneously hugged her when she’d called round to check that Kite was ‘getting through’. It felt strange to be sitting with Miss Choulty, talking of Dawn, as she fed her newborn baby, and yet somehow comforting to witness what Miss Choulty called her ‘miracle of happiness’ that she had named ‘Hope’.
‘What are the hardest things to cope with?’ Miss Choulty asked as she placed Hope in Kite’s arms.
There had been so many hardest things . . .
Coming back to Fairview to find that a young couple had moved into Dawn’s flat. Jess’s cat flap had been boarded up and the door painted a creamy yellow colour. Instead of Dawn’s music through the wall she’d heard their baby crying, laughing and gurgling. Over the next two years, as she took her GCSEs and finished her first year of A levels, she had watched little Ebony grow. The day when Jodie and Richard had asked her to babysit she’d had palpitations, wondering whether she would actually be able to step foot inside Dawn’s bedroom. What do you expect to find? she reasoned with herself. Dawn has gone. Nothing of her is here any more. As soon as she entered the flat she knew that that was true. Like Ruby, Jodie was a fan of colour and every room had been repainted. The living room was a rich, cosy orange and Ebony’s bedroom was painted in shocking pink, a far cry from the delicate duck-egg blue it had once been. As Kite peered into Dawn’s bedroom from the doorway Jodie came to stand by her side.
‘It’s OK, Kite; we know what happened to your friend. I’m so sorry!’
A feeling of relief washed over Kite. The only ghosts of Dawn that lived in the flat were the ghosts of her own memories. Sometimes she let them play over her and sometimes she knew that if she was to carry on and do her A levels and babysit for Ebony, if she was to live and grow, she could not let visions of Dawn, either in her waking moments or her sleep, take her over as they had once done.
It had taken her weeks to pluck up the courage to call Hazel and Jimmy at their new home. That had been one of the hardest ‘hardest things’. Jimmy answered the phone and there had been a long pause after she’d said, ‘Hi, it’s Kite,’ because for years, her next line had always been, ‘Is Dawn there, please?’ But they had not talked about Dawn. ‘Remember that job I was going for?’ Jimmy asked Kite. She had forgotten, but she did remember now that he’d worn the interview suit at Dawn’s funeral. ‘Well, I got it. Anyway, don’t know why I thought of that really, but Hazel and I don’t work shifts now; it makes life a bit easier. I’ll ask Hazel to call you, though it’s hard, you know. Don’t be offended if she can’t bring herself to.’
For the first few days afterwards Kite had listened out for the phone, but the call from Hazel never came.
At school everyone was kind and sensitive towards her and went out of their way to draw her into their friendship folds. But she couldn’t always bring herself to be with them in the places that she would have hung out with Dawn. Of course she had the excuse of having to catch up and actually take her GCSEs before she could start on her A-level courses with the others, and that provided her with the get-out she sometimes needed.
It had been Garth’s suggestion that she go to a concert, when she’d told him how much she missed the sound of Dawn’s playing through her bedroom wall. One da
y she contacted Esme and Eddie on Facebook and that’s how she found herself in a concert hall, listening to them play.
Some of the hardest moments of all were when she felt happy. On her third week back Jacey and Laura from running club had turned up at her front door. They were training for a team run and they needed her, they said. It took her two months to get back to fitness, but she found that the running took her out of her head. Sometimes they would chat as they ran along, talking about nonsensical things that happened at school, a film someone had seen, an outrageous post on Facebook, who fancied who, and she would run along and just listen. After a few weeks she would find herself laughing at something, and feel only a wisp of sadness that she had not been able to share the joke with Dawn.
The race they’d entered was a county championship. As Seth and Ruby drove her on to the car park of the muddy field she suddenly lost her nerve. She had almost dropped out, but it was a recollection of Dawn at her last race that made her carry on.
As she lay collapsed in a great heap of wet clay at the finish line, Dawn stared down at Kite and giggled her infectious little giggle.
‘You did it! You beat your best time!’ she shouted, throwing Kite a towel.
Something had changed in the way memories of Dawn came back to her. She was no longer dissecting every conversation they’d ever had, searching for reasons why. Now her memories were often of the happy, random times they’d spent together, and when she was transported back to them she would, more often than not, feel bolstered and encouraged, rather than burdened.
‘Thank you, Dawn,’ she said as her spikes ploughed up the thick clay, her heart pumping hard. She could feel her lungs opening as she pounded the ground and began to pass other coloured bibs. When she faced the last hill she thought of Jack running up Kite Carrec and her legs extended further. At the top Ruby and Seth were jumping up and down in a frenzy of excitement calling her name.
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