by Liz Flanagan
I go with her image. ‘Maybe you have to get broken down and built into something else.’
‘What if I don’t want to be? I don’t want to get used to it, Jess, but I can feel it happening.’ She’s crying proper tears now, plopping off her chin and into the snow.
‘It’s still terrible, worse than you can imagine, but it’s not constant. Not like it used to be. It’s lifting, just a little. It’s like losing her even more. I can still picture her though.’ She closes her eyes. ‘She could be standing right there.’ She waves a hand to her left. ‘I can see her, Jess, smirking down at me, for doing this.’
I blink twice. I see her too.
Iona, in her winter coat, laughing at us. Her fair hair is loose in the wind. Her cheeks are as pink as ours. ‘Holly and brandy? For me? I’m honoured. Cheers, girls.’ She raises one hand in a salute. Then she turns on her heel and disappears just as the first flakes of snow start to fall.
Eden opens her eyes, exhaling long and slow. She pats the headstone. ‘We’d have made up, one day. And just cos we didn’t get time, it doesn’t mean I have to get stuck on the bad bits.’
I get that. I was stuck for a bit there too. Stuck in pain and fear. Too stuck to speak up and be seen. ‘It’s OK. We can be the walking wounded. I reckon that includes everyone, sooner or later.’ My hair is escaping, so I tuck it behind my ears. Even my damaged one is good for that.
She gives me a little crooked smile, wiping her face. ‘Hey, your ear,’ she notices. ‘You stopped hiding it.’
‘Yeah, I reckon what other people think, that’s their business, not mine.’ It’s taken more counselling, but on my good days I can just about pull it off.
‘When did you get so wise?’ Eden asks.
‘Right back at you.’ I say it so it lands as gently as these new snowflakes.
Eden is putting gloves back on. ‘Come on, Jess.’ She starts scrabbling around in the drift by her feet. ‘Let’s make her a snowman. She always loved them. When we were little, we made a massive one on the front lawn, proper face and everything.’ She’s already rolling a ball.
So I help her. There’s a hysterical edge to our laughter, but we commit to the task. We make a respectable snowgirl, just to the side of Iona’s grave – at the end of the row, in the vacant plot. I shape her head with care. I give her one perfect ear and one that’s angled, to match mine. We find stones and leaves for her mouth and eyes, little sticks for her arms.
‘There,’ Eden says to Iona’s headstone, ‘so you have company today, OK?’
I see Claire’s car appear in the distance, slowly driving towards the chapel. ‘Hey, your folks are here. I’m gonna leave you to it, OK? Say hi to them for me, yeah?’
‘Same to your mum and Steph.’ She nods.
I leave Eden there and wave at Claire and Simon as I pass their car. I set my chin, shoulders back, deep breath, and I start running home.
The view is better this way, an expanse of pale valley and the enormous domed sky, like the world is a snowglobe. As I look around me, I see this snowy world’s not black and white at all. It’s full of colour.
That holly tree is swathed in shadows of plum and cobalt. Its leaves are glossy wintergreen spikes, hiding scarlet berries. The snowfield to my right is a watercolour, washed with apricot, violet, rose. I turn down the lane, banked high in dry-stone walls, coal-black but veined in gold. I see a rock face hung with tiny icicles, glistening with opal fire. There’s a necklace of rainbow lights garlanding the farm over there, pulsing like my heartbeat. That’s three new paintings, right here. I plan them in my head, excited.
I run faster, gulping down the colours. I eat them up. I make them mine. I imagine my insides: a fiery swirling palette. Then I exhale it all as dragon breath, pearly clouds in a muted sea-glass sky. I laugh out loud and keep the beat going, running through colour all the way into town.
The streets are almost empty. Sound is muffled. Cars are slow. Outside the park gates, there’s a tall figure in a mossgreen coat, making a snowball in his mittened hands.
Liam turns and lobs the snowball at me, leaving me time to duck. His laughing eyes in the bright snowlight take my breath away. He catches me and pulls me close. ‘You’re hot!’
‘Why, thank you!’
‘Yeah, all right, both ways!’ Then, serious, ‘How was it, up there?’ He gestures at the hill I’ve just run down. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I am,’ I say. And I stand on tiptoes in my new running shoes to kiss him.
Acknowledgements
Writing these thanks is something of a dream come true, so please bear with me if it gets a bit Oscars-ish. First of all I must thank Ben Illis at The BIA, literary agent extraordinaire, for his belief in my writing, even through the tough years. Ben, thank you for not giving up on me! And thanks to the rest of #TeamBIA, the most gorgeous, generous and talented bunch of writers you could ever hope to meet. Thank you also to Ben’s international colleagues Adrian Weston and Marinella Magri.
A very close second, I need to thank everyone at David Fickling Books. What an extraordinary team of people. Your enthusiasm for my story means more than I can say. Thank you Bella Pearson, David Fickling, Phil Earle (I’m so glad you moved to Hebden Bridge), Simon Mason, Bronwen Bennie, Carolyn McGlone, Anthony Hinton, Alison Gadsby, Talya Baker, and last of all (but actually first and foremost) Rosie Fickling who stayed up late to read my story on the day it arrived: thank you so much.
This novel was written as part of my PhD in Creative Writing, so next I must thank my wonderful team of supervisors at Leeds Trinity University, especially Martyn Bedford (a mentor with the perfect combination of understanding, humour and rigour), Susan Anderson, Paul Hardwick and Garry Lyons from the University of Leeds. Without your guidance and the support of the studentship from LTU, I couldn’t have written this book.
Thank you to Tara Guha for reading this story (and the ones that came before) and for your friendship all along. Thank you Janine Bullman. Thanks to Anne Caldwell and Andy Leigh for the coaching. Thank you Stephen May and the Monday night writing group. Thanks also to Beverley Ward, and to Writing Yorkshire for the free read from TLC when this was just a half-formed idea.
Thank you to everyone who helped with my research. Any mistakes here are mine, not yours. Thank you to Sue Whitehouse and to Andy Manns MCSFS, a CSI with the Avon and Somerset Constabulary, for helping me with police procedural information. Thank you Dr Finian Black for your advice around head trauma treatment. Thank you Anna McKerrow for the tarot reading and advice. Thank you Dr Andi Johnson-Renshaw for your guidance on young-adult psychology and PTSD.
A special thank-you is owed to Arvon and to all the colleagues and writers whom I met at Lumb Bank, the Ted Hughes Arvon Centre, over the four years I worked there. I hope the story is full of the great love I hold for that unique place. Thank you to the incomparable ladies of Lumb: Bec Evans, Rachel Connor, Ilona Jones, Jill Penny and Becky Liddell. And thank you to all the fabulous Arvonistas, past and present, including Ruth Borthwick, Claire Berliner, Becky Swain, Dan Pavitt and Pete Salmon (who’s probably forgotten I still owe him a bottle of whisky). I don’t think I would have kept writing without the support and advice of the writers I met at Arvon. Thank you especially to those who read my work and encouraged me: Steve Voake, Tiffany Murray, Maggie Gee, Jonathan Lee, Julia Golding, Celia Rees, Marcus Sedgwick and Nicky Matthews Browne.
To my first actual young-adult readers, massive thanks and respect. It was a scary thing to share my work with you, and you were so kind and generous with your feedback. Holly Illis and Elisha Cruthers, I salute you.
Huge thanks and gratitude go to Melvin Burgess and Brian Conaghan, for your early support, vast generosity and the cracking testimonials. What can I say? You’re gentlemen and superstars and masters of this craft.
OK, here I start sniffing a bit. Thank you to my dear friends Helen, Lee, Vic, Nicky, Tash, Sue, David, Alex. Yvonne, I really wish you were here to read these thanks. Likewise Ben. Mum and Dad, thank
you for everything. Thank you to Matthew, Sian and Alex; to Eileen, John and Jonjo; to Uschi and Uli; and to my cousin Sarah Mason for all the beautiful photography (sarahmasonphotography.co.uk). Thank you to my astonishing and beautiful daughters, Molly and Hanna. And finally, the biggest love and thanks to Christoph, who has believed in me for a very long time now.
Additional Information
This is a work of my imagination. I’ve taken liberties with real-life geography, and the people described are fictional.
I wrote the book from a place of empathy and solidarity for anyone who has experienced a hate crime. There are far too many real-life stories involving hate-crime attacks, and I don’t try to speak for anyone else. For more information and support if this story has affected you, here are some organisations whose work you might be interested in.
The Sophie Lancaster Foundation
http://www.sophielancasterfoundation.com/
One of this charity’s aims is to provide education that will challenge prejudice and intolerance towards people from alternative subcultures.
Cruse
http://www.cruse.org.uk/children
Bereavement care for young people who are grieving.
YoungMinds
http://www.youngminds.org.uk
YoungMinds is the UK’s leading charity committed to improving the emotional wellbeing and mental health of children and young people.
Copyright
Eden Summer
First published in 2016
by David Fickling Books, 31 Beaumont Street, Oxford, OX1 2NP
This ebook edition first published in 2016
All rights reserved
Text © Liz Flanagan, 2016
Cover Illustration © Tree Abraham, 2016
The right of Liz Flanagan to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
ISBN 978–1–910989–09–8