Mostly Sunny with a Chance of Storms

by Marion Roberts

  ‘Sunday! Of course not. Sleep deprivation is no fun, though. It’s a form of torture. Have you had brekkie?’

  ‘Yep,’ I said. ‘Mum, I seriously think Steph doesn’t want me there. Maybe Dad only has me over because he has to.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true, love. She’s probably just—’

  ‘And most of all I’m worried for Flora because Steph never smiles at her or makes goo-goo noises, or even hardly looks at her, and it just makes me feel so empty and sad, and I’m sure Flora feels it too, and you’re not meant to feel empty and sad when you’re a baby, Mum. You’re meant to feel like absolutely everything is all right.’ My voice got a little quivery and I got a big case of throat ache.

  ‘Oh, Sunny,’ said Mum giving me a hug which made everything all the more quivery and achy. ‘I’m sorry it’s such a difficult time, darling.’ She swept my hair back behind my ears. ‘I know you love Flora, but you really mustn’t feel so responsible for her. You’ll worry yourself sick. Flora will be all right. You’ll see.’

  Why don’t you go and look out back?’ said Mum. ‘Lyall and Saskia worked all afternoon yesterday on an obstacle course for your dog business.’

  I looked at my watch. I had two hours before Finn came over, presuming he was an on-time person. At least by then I wouldn’t look so weepy. Let’s face it, you really should hold back from crying in front of extremely new new best friends.

  I stood on the back steps and blew my nose into a tissue. There were tradesmen everywhere, including all over the roof. Windermere was a construction zone. Carl had pegged out a whole area of lawn at the side of the vegetable garden, that I guessed was destined to become the community plots. I noticed Settimio leaning against his picket fence. He looked bewildered, as if maybe he thought the whole house was about to get bulldozed. I waved to him but he didn’t wave back. It could have been that he had bad eyesight. Maybe that’s how he got himself all banged up.

  There was a flat area of lawn at the edge of the garden, right before it sloped down to the river bank. That’s where Lyall and Saskia had set up their obstacle course, if course was the right word for what seemed to me to be a mess of strings, sticks and balls among a few witches hats.

  I had to fight back a pang of jealousy that I wasn’t a part of making it, but mostly I just wondered where the witches hats had come from. I had a strong feeling in my intuition that Lyall would have stolen them, for sure. That’s exactly the sort of thing Lyall does. Boy, I thought to myself, I go away for two days and the whole house is turned upside down!

  At exactly ten o’clock the doorbell rang. I was up in my room neatening things up a little. I couldn’t find my favourite stripy hoodie anywhere and finally gave up looking for it when I remembered I must have left it at Dad’s. I grabbed my second favourite non-stripy hoodie instead. I was glad Finn was an on-time person, like me. Seriously, I don’t know why most people bother having a watch, other than to tell them how late they’re running. Especially Dad and Claud.

  Willow ran to the door with me, but I had to shut her in the library until I’d sussed out the pigeon situation. She gave me a look as if to say, Well, all right, Sunny, but if I’m in here for too long I’ll pee and I can’t guarantee it won’t be on the rug.

  ‘Oh, Willow,’ I said gently closing the library door. ‘Please don’t.’

  I took a deep breath and opened the front door. Finn was standing there in a navy-blue pinstriped suit jacket, strange jeans and his new stripy scarf. He was holding a flat crate with a wooden lid.

  ‘Sunny Hathaway,’ he said. ‘Nice pad! You rich or something?’

  ‘No, my grandma was – I think – don’t know really. We kind of just got given the place.’

  There was a sudden loud banging from the workmen on the roof, and Finn looked up quizzically.

  ‘Solar panels,’ I said. ‘Carl says we’re going to make enough power to feed some back into the grid.’

  ‘Sweet,’ said Finn, still standing there with his box full of birds and an are you going to invite me in look on his face.

  ‘Oh, you can leave the box on the porch if you like. Come in, Finn. You can meet my mum.’

  Finn turned out to be one of those friends who are especially good at making parents like them, which you have to admit is a pretty handy life skill. He even drank herbal tea, which really rocked Mum’s world because she’s so used to kids who argue all the time about who finished all the juice. To top it off, Finn asked Mum all about her work. I mean, what friend ever does that? Come to think of it, even I don’t. It was as though Finn actually liked talking to my mum. Weird.

  ‘Yikes!’ I said, remembering Willow was still shut in the library. ‘Come on, Finn, I’ll show you around. You haven’t even met Willow yet.’

  Finn put his empty cup on the sink, which you could tell Mum also found dead impressive. ‘Thanks for the tea, Mrs … um …’

  ‘Aberdeen,’ said Mum. ‘Lovely to meet you, Finn. Call again, any time.’

  After a quick tour of downstairs and a few Willow tricks we went up to the turret, which Finn liked best of all, mostly because of the telescope.

  ‘Neat!’ he said taking off the lens cap. ‘When I finish school I’m going to study astrophysics.’ He squinted through the eyepiece. ‘Wow, this is a really powerful telescope. I bet you can even see Pluto. Can you?’

  I was a little embarrassed to say that so far all I’d used the telescope for was to spy through Settimio’s windows or to check for vampire bats in the cypress trees. I hadn’t really considered using it to look for planets.

  ‘It’s been so cloudy lately,’ I said, neatening some books on my shelf. Do you like Harry Potter? I don’t.’

  ‘How could you not like Harry Potter, Sunny Hathaway?’

  ‘I don’t know, every time I read it, I fall asleep. I used to think maybe it was because of the spells. Please don’t tell anyone, okay? Maybe I just need to start again from the beginning, or read it in the mornings.’

  ‘You don’t have to like it, Sunny.’

  ‘Well, to me, it kind of feels like you do. Everyone does.’

  Finn disconnected himself from the telescope and looked out the window to the river. ‘Is that your boat?’

  ‘Not mine personally; it came with the house. It’s called Queenie.’

  ‘Mad!’ said Finn. ‘Have you taken it down the river?’

  ‘Not yet, we’ve pretty much just moved in. We can though – Mum said it’s doesn’t take that long to get into town. It’s got a little motor, like a lawnmower.’

  ‘Mad!’ said Finn again.

  ‘Not today though, ’cos we’ve got a business starting after lunch. Involving dogs.’

  I was feeling a little pressured about maybe having totally run out of things to say. I mean, we’d done Pluto, Harry Potter and river boats. None of those topics exactly led to others. When I’m with Claud I never have to worry about thinking of stuff to say, on account of her being such a chatterbox. Then I remembered the whole purpose of Finn’s visit.

  ‘Hey, Finn, are we going to set those pigeons free?’

  We set the crate on a patch of lawn near the rose garden at the front of the house. Willow was safely locked up in the library again and was peering through the window with her ears all pricked. I knelt down low so that I could see inside the cage. There were six pigeons in total. Two white, two greyish and two speckled reddish-brown ones.

  ‘It’s now or never,’ said Finn undoing the latches on the wooden lid. Then he swept it open and we both stood back a little.

  One of the white ones hopped up and perched on the side of the crate for a moment, while the others just looked about. Finn waved his hand gently around the cage and all of a sudden all six birds took off, making a whirring-whistling noise with the flapping of their wings. I looked so high above me that my neck hurt. Soon the whistling and whirring grew faint and their fluttering shapes became tiny specs against the clouds. Then they were gone.

  Nowhere. Well, nowhere f
rom my perspective, anyway.

  But for them – they were busily flapping around somewhere. Somewhere up there they were finding their way home.

  And that’s the bit I couldn’t understand about Granny Carmelene. Where actually was she for her, if she was nowhere for me? She had to be somewhere for her, didn’t she?

  Finn checked his watch. ‘It’s exactly ten-thirty,’ he said, taking a notebook and pen out of his inside jacket pocket.

  I kept looking up to the nowhere sky and out of the corner of my eye I saw a single pure-white feather spiralling and zigzagging towards me. I held out my hand and it landed gently on my palm, as if it was meant only for me.

  ‘Do you believe in angels, Finn?’ I asked, without even really meaning to.

  ‘’Course I do, Sunny Hathaway,’ he said. ‘What sort of guy do you take me for?’

  ‘Have you ever actually seen one?’

  ‘Course I have, Sunny Hathaway. I even met one on a bus one day. Crazy angel got herself all tangled up in my wool.’

  17.

  I forced myself to hold off from feeling too weird until after Finn had gone. I mean, I’d known I was suffering all the symptoms of an official pre-crush, but up until then I hadn’t had any solid evidence that Finn might have a pre-crush too. But what he said about thinking I might be an angel was solid evidence, right? Even if it did make me blush, as well as remind me of how I’d nearly ruined his knitting.

  I walked Finn down to the front gate and Willow trotted along after us, trying to grab a nibble of the white pigeon feather I was holding in my left hand. When we got to the gate, I leant down and held her by the collar, which was kind of handy because if Finn did happen to make another comment that made me blush I could easily hide my awkwardness by crouching down.

  ‘So,’ said Finn, holding up two twisted-together fingers. ‘Here’s hoping they all make it home.’ He was safely on the other side of the gate with his empty pigeon crate.

  ‘I’m sure they will, Finn,’ I said, holding up the feather. ‘But it’s a pity you can’t call me up and let me know, or SMS, or email.’

  ‘Just you wait, Sunny Hathaway, once the pigeon post is up and running you’ll—’

  ‘Oh look,’ I said, pointing over Finn’s shoulder. ‘You get to meet the precookeds.’

  Lyall and Saskia were making their way up the hill, and it was perfectly obvious from Saskia’s stompy walk and pokey-outy bottom lip that she and Lyall had been arguing. Again.

  ‘Seriously, you guys!’ I called out. ‘You’re like an old married couple!’ I could tell Finn was trying not to laugh, which gave me the urge to try and say something even funnier at Lyall and Saskia’s expense, but I managed to resist the temptation to avoid putting myself in the same smart-alec category as someone like Buster Conroy.

  ‘Hey,’ said Lyall, still puffing from the steepness of our hill. ‘You must be Finn.’

  I was hoping like crazy Lyall wasn’t about to say something cringeable like Sunny’s told us ALL about you, so I had to make absolutely sure he didn’t get the chance.

  ‘Lyall, Saskia, this is Finn. Finn, this is Lyall and Saskia. Finn’s just heading off, aren’t you, Finn? We just set his pigeons free, didn’t we, Finn?’ Finn looked a little overwhelmed. ‘Come on Finn, I’ll walk with you to the bus stop.’

  ‘Hey, Sunny, don’t be long,’ said Lyall. ‘We’ve got something to show you in the library.’

  I knew exactly what he was talking about. The surveillance gear. And I’d been starting to think that maybe proof wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all – if it made something become certain and all, like it had just become certain that Finn had a pre-crush too. It kind of makes you feel you can get on with stuff, and not just wonder about your wonderings all day.

  Maybe if we did manage to catch an angel on Lyall’s surveillance monitor it would somehow give me some relief from wondering so much about the whereabouts of Granny Carmelene? Don’t ask me how. But you have to agree it was worth a try.

  When I got back from the bus stop, Willow was waiting for me on the other side of the gate with a You could have taken me with you look on her face.

  ‘I know, Willow, I’m sorry.’ I said, squeezing my way back inside. It was weird. I had only just said goodbye to Finn, but I was already looking forward to seeing him again. And I didn’t even know when that would be. Why hadn’t I made a solid arrangement?

  Suddenly I couldn’t care less about the surveillance system, or Boredom Control either, for that matter. I just wanted to escape up to the turret, lie on my bed, close my eyes and have all the conversations I’d just had with Finn, all over again. Weird.

  Willow started barking and made a couple of pounces towards me, crouching down on all fours and then darting away again.

  ‘You’re right, Willow!’ I said. ‘There’s only one thing for it.’ And I made a pouncing movement back at her, followed by one arms-outstretched twirl, throwing in a quick glance towards the library to make sure Lyall and Saskia couldn’t see.

  Willow did two spins and then barked to make sure I was planning on gearing up for more.

  ‘Go girl!’ I said, twirling about. She copied me exactly but in the opposite direction. ‘We got to Washing Machine this crush business right out of me!’

  ‘See how I’ve taped the wire around the doorframe?’ said Lyall, pointing out his handiwork. ‘It runs along the top of the skirting boards, around the corner and up the stairs.’

  I went out to the entrance hall. ‘Good job, Lyall,’ I said. ‘You can’t see the wires at all.’

  Lyall was obviously super-proud of himself and was talking at a million miles an hour. ‘Then, at the top of the stairs, I’ve wired it under the hallway runner and into my room so we can keep check on the monitor, which, for now, is hidden under my bed.’

  ‘Mad,’ I said, checking my watch. ‘Don’t we have to go get the dogs soon?’

  Lyall glanced over to his clock-radio.

  ‘Crikey!’ he said. ‘We’ve got to go right now!’

  Saskia was in the entrance hall with Willow, who had no idea that life as she knew it was about to be invaded by three strange dogs. What if they didn’t get along?

  ‘Did you see the dogstacle course we made, Sunny?’ said Saskia. ‘Don’t you wish we’d thought of that name when we made the brochures?

  ‘Ha! That’s funny,’ I laughed, feeling comforted by the idea that if Woolfie, Banjo, Sophia and Willow didn’t get along, at least Willow would be able to outrun the others to safety. She was looking at me hopefully, as if it might be time for a walk.

  ‘Sorry, Willow,’ I said as we squeezed out the front gate and into the street. ‘But we’ll be back really soon with a big surprise.’

  Kara Bleakly had given us a key, but I could see that she was home because her car was parked out front, so I buzzed on the intercom instead of letting myself in. Lyall and Saskia had gone off to get Woolfie and Banjo. Sophia’s snout appeared instantly under the gate and she took three big snorts as I heard Kara’s voice over the intercom.

  ‘It’s Sunny,’ I said into the speaker. ‘From Boredom Control.’

  ‘Just push the gate, Sunny,’ said Kara.

  I tried to make my way up the front path but Sophia lunged at me, wagging her tail, her head and every other waggable part of her wide-load body.

  ‘Down, Sophia,’ I said, acting all stern as Kara appeared at the front door. I was actually worried Sophia might knock me over.

  ‘She really needs to lose some weight,’ laughed Kara. ‘She’s like a freight train.’

  Someone once told me that dogs and their owners end up looking the same, or perhaps it’s that owners choose the dog versions of themselves. But that sure wasn’t the case with Kara Bleakly and Sophia. Apart from their black hair they were complete opposites. While Sophia was all happy, round and clumsy, Kara was pinched-in, wiry and without a hair out of place.

  ‘Here’s her leash, Sunny,’ said Kara. ‘Just leave her inside the gate when you
get back. I’ll put her dinner out because I’ll be working late again tonight.’ Kara bent down and gave Sophia a rub. ‘You be a good girl now, won’t you?’ she said, and Sophia nodded her whole body in agreement.

  When I got back to Windermere, Lyall and Saskia were already there with Banjo and Woolfie, and Willow was doing the Washing Machine interspersed with high-speed laps around the house. As I introduced Sophia, I caught a glimpse of Settimio peering out from his lounge-room window and disappearing again behind the curtain. I realised that the small amount of ground I’d made in getting him to like me had most likely been completely obliterated.

  Once Willow had calmed down a little, we gathered all four dogs into a group at the front of the house and let them sniff each other to say hello. Luckily, there was tail wagging all round.

  ‘Okay,’ said Lyall, as if he was taking a PE class. ‘First we’re going to play Race Around the House, then we’ll see how they go with the dogstacle course.’

  ‘When can we start teaching them tricks?’ asked Saskia, holding Willow’s collar so that she didn’t set the dogs off too soon.

  ‘Later,’ said Lyall, which if you ask me was sibling talk for never.

  ‘I’ll run ahead and get the race going,’ I said. ‘Just give me a few seconds head start before you let them off their leashes!’

  Lyall and Saskia had all four dogs in sitting position: big tall Woolfie with his old-man scratchy grey hair; Banjo, all red and grey with his mischievous glinty eyes; Sophia, shiny smooth and black; and Willow, barely able to contain the excitement of having new friends.

  I took off as fast as I could across the front garden.

  ‘Ready … Setty … SPAGHETTI!’ shouted Saskia behind me, and I presumed it was at the spaghetti part that she and Lyall let all four dogs run free. Within milliseconds Willow had outrun me, and Woolfie wasn’t far behind. The two of them disappeared out of sight down the side of the house. That’s when I glanced back and noticed Banjo, and how he wasn’t at all interested in chasing Willow and Woolfie. Nor was he interested in Sophia, who had darted off in exactly the opposite direction. What Banjo was absolutely and undeniably interested in … was me!