A light goes on, but it’s the wrong light. The room Skye and Summer share. Great.
The twins appear at the window, then the sash slides up and Skye leans out.
‘Shay?’ she whispers. ‘What the …?’
‘Shhh,’ I say. ‘Please? I know what you think of me, Skye, but give me a chance – I just need Cherry to hear me out.’
‘Finch rang me this afternoon,’ she says softly. ‘He explained. To be fair, Honey’d been saying the same thing too, but we didn’t listen …’
‘You’re speaking to me?’ I ask, wide-eyed. ‘You believe me?’
Summer leans out of the window alongside her twin.
‘Of course we do,’ she says. ‘We’ve been texting you all day … Cherry has too!’
‘She has?’ I grin. ‘My mobile’s dead. Sorry!’
‘No, we’re sorry,’ Summer says. ‘We should have given you a chance. It’s just – Cherry’s cool. She’s our stepsister, and she’s had a rough time, and nobody – NOBODY – is allowed to hurt her.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ I argue. ‘I won’t!’
‘Better tell her that,’ Skye laughs.
I take another piece of gravel and aim higher, but this time the pebble hits the roof and skids down the slates again with a clatter. Abruptly, the turret room lights up and Honey’s window swings open.
‘About time,’ she calls down. ‘Have I missed the big apology?’
‘No,’ I huff. ‘Give me a chance. I wasn’t counting on having an audience …’
‘Too bad,’ Honey drawls. ‘You’ve woken us up, you’d better entertain us now.’
Another light snaps on, over to the right, and Coco’s window creaks open. ‘Is that you, Shay?’ she wants to know.
‘Who else would it be?’ Skye yells across. ‘We don’t usually have random teenage boys wandering about the garden in the middle of the night, do we?’
‘You never know, with you lot!’ Coco smirks. ‘This is SO slushy! Are you serenading her, Shay? Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?’
‘Cut it out,’ I say. ‘It’s not funny!’
‘It is from where I’m standing,’ Honey says, and Coco pushes her window open wider, settling herself on the window sill with her violin. A whining dirge begins to swirl out into the darkness, and in the kitchen Fred the dog begins to whine along in tune. On the plus side, if the pebble-throwing doesn’t wake Cherry, the violin solo definitely will. Ouch.
The downstairs lights flare into life, the kitchen door opens and Paddy and Charlotte appear on the doorstep in PJs and dressing gowns.
‘What the heck is going on?’ Paddy demands. ‘Is this some kind of midnight garden party, or are you just casing the joint for a possible burglary? Shay?’
‘I can explain,’ I say, alarmed. ‘If I could just talk to Cherry …’
‘Finally,’ Charlotte says. ‘Can you two just make up, please? I can’t take any more of the tears and moping.’
‘Somebody wake Cherry, for goodness’ sake,’ Honey grumbles. ‘We’ll be here all night.’
Finally the light goes on in Cherry’s attic room, and the Velux window lifts and opens and a sad, pale face framed with dark, rumpled hair appears above me.
‘Say something then,’ Coco says, setting down her violin at last. ‘She’s waiting!’
They’re all waiting. I know I need to apologize, but not to the whole family, surely?
I clear my throat. ‘Cherry?’ I call up to her. ‘I think we need to talk. I … I’ve messed up and there’s a lot I need to say to you, but … it’s hard to find the right words. So … well, I wrote a song. For you.’
I take a deep breath.
‘Go for it, Shay,’ Honey says. ‘What are you waiting for?’
So I play. I try to forget that Cherry’s dad and stepmum are right in front of me, that Fred the dog is sniffing around my feet, that her stepsisters are watching, that my ex-girlfriend is listening. I blank it all out and keep my eyes on Cherry, putting my heart and soul into the song.
When I finish, there is a silence and Cherry puts a hand to her mouth and ducks away from the window, out of sight.
Then Skye and Summer begin to clap, and Coco whoops and whistles, and even Honey, Paddy and Charlotte join in. Fred licks my hand and wallops the blue guitar with his tail.
At last Cherry appears in the kitchen doorway and her stepsisters vanish, one by one, their lights extinguished like candles on a birthday cake.
‘Don’t be too late,’ Paddy says, and he and Charlotte retreat too, leaving Cherry and me alone. In the shadows outside the kitchen door we are awkward, unable to look at each other.
‘I’m sorry,’ I blurt.
‘No, I’m sorry –’
‘It was all a mistake – I know I shouldn’t have blanked your call – but there was honestly nothing going on …’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘Honey swore the same thing. And Skye said you told Finch the whole story …’
‘I should have told you, though,’ I sigh. ‘I’m an idiot.’
‘I’m an idiot too, for not trusting you … it’s just that it looked bad, and I was so upset and didn’t want to listen … I felt so stupid!’
‘No, I’m the stupid one …’
We move away from the house, in case well-meaning stepsisters are eavesdropping in darkened rooms. We walk down beneath the trees strewn with fairy lights and sit on the steps of the gypsy caravan, the way we used to last summer when we first met, before we were actually going out together.
‘You wrote a song for me,’ Cherry says. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘You’re beautiful,’ I say. ‘The song doesn’t even start to say what I’d like to say, but it was terrible without you … I’m going to make sure I don’t lose you again, OK? No matter what.’
‘I’m not beautiful, though,’ Cherry protests. ‘I’m just ordinary, really, and Honey – well, she really is gorgeous. That’s why I thought … maybe you’d had enough of me, maybe you wanted to be with her again …’
‘You’re a million miles from ordinary, Cherry,’ I sigh. ‘You’re the most beautiful girl in the world to me, inside and out. I never felt that way about Honey, not ever. I cared about her, sure – I still do because she’s so mixed up, so unhappy. She was in pieces about the threat of being taken into care, threatening to run away again – I don’t know why she came to me, but she did, and I had to at least try to help. I had no idea it would all turn into such a mess, or I wouldn’t have bothered …’
‘You would, though,’ Cherry says. ‘Because you’re kind and caring and thoughtful. That’s why I love you.’
When I hear those words I don’t care any more about the ruined record deal or wasted trip to London or the fact that Dad will probably ground me for the rest of my life when I finally go back home. I don’t even care that I’ve just had the worst few days of my whole entire life because I know that everything is going to be OK again. Better than OK.
Cherry leans up and kisses me, and I want the kiss to go on forever, warm lips, the taste of mint toothpaste, happiness. We pull apart and sit for a long time on the caravan steps beneath the cherry trees, arms wrapped round each other.
‘We’ll be OK, won’t we?’ I ask at last.
‘We’ll be fine,’ Cherry says. ‘Promise. But … will you play that song again? “Bittersweet”? Please?’
So I do.
10
I get home at daybreak, and Dad yells and roars and tells me I am grounded until Christmas, except for school and my job at the sailing centre. I shrug. Nothing he says or does can touch me now.
When I don’t react,
he takes away my mobile phone and bans me from the internet, even says he’ll put my blue guitar on the bonfire.
‘No,’ Mum argues. ‘Enough! I won’t stand for it, Jim. That’s plain cruel. You’ve pushed one son away – don’t do the same to Shay!’
I don’t remember Mum ever standing up to Dad before, certainly not to defend me. Dad looks just as shocked.
‘I just want what’s best for him!’ he protests. ‘He’ll thank me, one day!’
‘Like Ben is thanking you?’ Mum asks. ‘You have two wonderful, talented sons – but you can’t see that because all their lives you’ve been trying to bully and control them, push square pegs into round holes. You’ve spent years trying to turn Ben into a carbon copy of you, but you’ll never do it – he’s different, can’t you see that?
‘You’ve ignored Shay because you don’t understand him, which is just as bad. Perhaps he is too young for the music business right now, but you can’t crush his dreams just because they’re different from yours. He’s going to shine, with or without your help!’
Dad’s face struggles between anger and irritation, finally settling on disgust.
‘I didn’t mean it, about the guitar,’ he grates out. ‘I’m not a tyrant, you know. I just want what’s best for them!’
‘Then let them make mistakes, and learn from them,’ Mum says. ‘The way we did. You have to stop this, Jim. Let them have the freedom to be whoever they want to be, and be proud of them for that.’
Dad rolls his eyes and stomps away. In the end, he leaves me with my guitar but sticks with the mobile/internet ban. Mum stops talking to him, except in front of the sailing-centre clients. She stops bringing him cups of tea, gives up ironing his shirts, abandons the morning fry-ups.
It goes on for a week.
In fifteen years, I have never known Mum to protest at all, but now she is making her feelings clear, and Dad is not impressed. You could cut the atmosphere at home with a knife.
It’s actually a relief to be at school. I hang out in the music room at lunchtimes with Cherry, but the other kids are talking to me again – all is forgiven. They ask if I’ve signed the contract with Wrecked Rekords yet; when I tell them there is no record contract, they look disbelieving, like I am trying to hide my imminent fame and fortune from them. It’s like they are expecting me to pop up on X Factor any day now.
‘Love the new song,’ one kid says. I can’t help noticing he’s wearing a beanie hat just like mine.
‘Brilliant stuff,’ a girl chips in.
‘What are you talking about?’ I frown. ‘How …?’
‘“Bittersweet”,’ the beanie-hat kid says. ‘Awesome.’
‘Have you been telling people about the song?’ I ask my mate Chris at lunchtime. ‘Kids keep asking me about it. I mean, how do they even know?’
‘Hard to miss, these days,’ he says, grinning. ‘You have a lot of support, Shay.’
‘Everyone knows who you are now,’ Luke cuts in. ‘You’ve gone way up in the popularity stakes, I kid you not. All the Year Ten girls are crushing on you, and I counted seven kids wearing beanie hats in the canteen yesterday lunchtime. Jammy swine – how did you manage to get so lucky?’
‘All hope of a recording contract shot down in flames,’ I remind him. ‘Grounded till Christmas? Mobile confiscated? Banned from the internet? How is that lucky, exactly?’
‘You’re obviously getting round the internet ban somehow, though,’ Chris says. ‘Your music page on SpiderWeb is updated every day …’
I frown. ‘Hang on … I don’t have a page on SpiderWeb!’
‘You definitely do,’ Luke insists. ‘That song you wrote for Cherry is on there. “Bittersweet”. Nice one!’
‘The page has loads of “likes”,’ Luke tells me. ‘People commenting and stuff. It’s good!’
‘But … I don’t get it! I haven’t made a music page!’ I argue.
Luke takes out his iPhone and searches the net, and sure enough up comes a page called ‘Shay Fletcher Music’. There’s a photo of me, a moody black-and-white snapshot of me playing guitar by a beach bonfire. I’ve never seen the picture before, but I know it’s from the summer, from one of the beach parties we had. Who took it?
Just as Chris and Luke said, a video of ‘Bittersweet’ is on there; the shadowy, grainy film Honey took of me down by the shore. Someone has ramped up the contrast and chopped the editing around a bit, and the whole thing looks pretty awesome for something recorded so quickly. There’s a sort of home-made cool to it, and the sound is actually pretty good.
The video has hundreds of comments, and the page itself has almost 1,200 ‘likes’.
‘Who put all this together?’ I puzzle. ‘And how has it got all these followers so quickly? I don’t get it! I only wrote the song last week!’
We scroll through the comments, all good; some of the names I recognize – Cherry, Skye, Summer, Alfie, Finch … plus lots of kids from school and even our maths teacher, Mr Farrell. Others are names I don’t know at all.
‘That’s how the internet works,’ Chris shrugs. ‘Things snowball. Some musicians don’t actually need a record deal to make the big time these days, you must know that!’
My head spins with questions … Honey took the video of me singing ‘Bittersweet’, but would she go to all the trouble of making a page to promote it? I’m not convinced. Cherry, maybe? Honey must have given her the video.
‘I love that fanpage on SpiderWeb,’ I tell her on the school bus home. ‘I can’t believe you’d do that for me!’
‘I didn’t.’ She smiles mysteriously, sliding the little cherry pendant I bought her up and down on its silver chain. ‘Someone’s on your side, though. Someone who knows a lot about you. It’s so cool … and you’re getting loads of “likes”! Everyone I know is sharing the link!’
‘OK … that’s great! But … it’s definitely not you?’ I check.
‘Not me. I thought it was Ben, maybe?’
‘I don’t think so … not really his style.’
Cherry shrugs. ‘I don’t suppose it matters who it is … It’s taking off, and that’s what counts! You never know just who might hear that song … if you know what I mean!’
‘Um … I don’t, actually,’ I say.
‘Never mind,’ she says cryptically. ‘You’ll find out soon enough, if things work out the way we think …’
‘Huh? Cherry, you can’t just say stuff like that and leave me hanging!’
‘Don’t listen to her,’ Skye says, leaning across the aisle. ‘She’s talking rubbish. Just trying to confuse you. It might all come to nothing …’
‘What might?’ I growl. ‘You’re not making any sense!’
‘Be patient!’ Summer chimes in. ‘If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t … well, no harm done. Don’t worry, Shay!’
The three of them giggle and whisper and nudge each other, refusing to say anything more.
The next day, my brother Ben moves out. He packs his little car up with a suitcase and a couple of boxes, scrawls his address on a scrap of paper and hands me fifty quid.
‘If you can’t stick it, jump on a train to Sheffield and come find me,’ he says. ‘I mean it, mate. I’m there for you, whenever, whatever.’
‘Thanks, Ben.’
‘If Dad’s still being an idiot, or school sucks, or even if you just fancy another road trip …’
I laugh. ‘I know. I’ll miss you,’ I grin, and my big brother hauls me in for a big bear hug. I wonder why it has taken me fifteen years to see just how amazing he really is?
‘Seriously,’ he says. ‘Don’t let the old man push you around th
e way he did with me. You always were better at standing up to him than I was. Be strong. Be your own person.’
‘I will, promise.’
Mum hugs Ben next, wiping away tears. ‘He’s a silly, stubborn man,’ she tells Ben. ‘But he loves you very much. He’ll come round.’
‘I know,’ Ben says. He gets into the car and starts the engine, idling a little as he looks up beyond us to the cottage. I can’t imagine what he must be feeling – a jumble of emotions, good and bad, for the man who tried to live his own dreams through him.
At the very last minute Dad comes down the path, his face like stone. Ben winds down the car window. ‘I hope you don’t live to regret this, son,’ he mutters. ‘I think you’re making a big mistake.’
Ben just smiles. ‘It’ll all work out. I wish it could be different, Dad, but … no regrets.’
As the car pulls away, Dad shades his eyes with one hand, watching until the battered VW vanishes over the hill.
‘Still proud of you, Ben,’ he says gruffly. ‘Always.’
He slings an arm round my shoulders. ‘Come on, son. We’ve got classes to take at the sailing centre, trippers to take out. Let’s get going.’
We work hard, and as the day wears on I notice a thaw between Mum and Dad. Cups of tea appear between classes, smiles are exchanged, words spoken. It’s like the coming of the spring after an arctic winter, slow but sure.
We’re just clearing up after the last of the punters has gone when two cars pull into the car park in a squeal of gravel. One of them is Paddy’s little red minivan, the other a sleek, silver Citroën like the one Finch’s mum drives. Paddy, Charlotte, Cherry, Skye, Summer and Coco pile out of the red van, and Finch and his mum Nikki spring out of the Citroën.
I stop dead just outside the shower block, mop and bucket in hand.
Life is Sweet Page 6