Sami's Silver Lining

by Cathy Cassidy

  ‘You’re handling it all pretty well,’ Jake comments. ‘Respect, mate.’

  Marley shrugs. ‘I just feel better knowing it’s not a secret any more,’ he says. ‘It was wearing me out, covering it up all the time, living a lie. Anyhow, bowling alley, right? Let’s forget band stuff – and personal stuff – for a while!’

  ‘Coming, Lexie?’ Bex asks, and Lexie shrugs and says she’s not in the mood, that she’ll stay and tidy up and lock the old railway carriage behind her. She takes off the Minnie Mouse bow and stuffs it into her bag.

  ‘Not a good look, clearly,’ she says.

  ‘I liked it,’ I say.

  Bex frowns, her eyes narrowing as if she can see a whole world of meaning behind that comment, but I keep my face blank and calm and she heads off with the others.

  ‘Coming, Sami?’ Marley asks, and I shrug and shake my head.

  ‘I’ll buy you a lemonade,’ he offers. ‘Bowling’s a laugh – you’ll like it!’

  I follow him down the steps, scratching around for some kind of excuse to get me off the hook, but what’s the point of lies and half-truths, of hiding things?

  ‘I guess I’ll wait for Lexie,’ I say, sinking down on the steps. Marley gives me a long, hard look.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says at last. ‘I reckon I could see that coming … you and Lexie. Just don’t you dare hurt her, OK?’

  ‘I won’t,’ I say, although I know it’s a promise I may not be able to keep. When your heart is in the deep freeze, you’ve got no business going around pretending it’s OK. Someone, somewhere is going to get hurt … I just really, really hope it won’t be Lexie.

  8

  The List

  The first thing you need to know about the list is that it’s a lie. I don’t want to do all those things, but it’s hard to find something romantic to do on a date in Millford so I stuck in a few extra ideas to make it look better.

  I do not want to go to the Leaping Llama, for example. It’s a phoney kind of a place, where everything costs too much and everyone looks a certain way, and they’re all busy trying to capture their visit on Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram. That doesn’t make sense to me. The other thing I have no plans to do is go to the seaside, for obvious reasons. I can still remember the Greek sand crusting my wet skin as I crawled out of the sea three years ago. I can remember the soft touch of sunrise on my back, the taste of salt on my lips that could have been either seawater or tears. A seaside visit does not appeal.

  I hear footsteps behind me, and Lexie appears in the doorway.

  ‘So, what are we doing?’ she asks, and I hand her the list to look at. She sits down beside me, grinning.

  ‘All of this tonight?’ she teases. ‘Or are you saying we’ll have ten dates?’

  ‘I am an optimist,’ I say, even though I’m not sure if I am, not any more. ‘This is just for starters!’

  ‘Let’s get one date done,’ Lexie says. ‘We can see how we go from there.’

  ‘I guess.’

  There’s a silence, and I feel a little sad, as though this whole idea is ridiculous, impossible.

  ‘I love the little sketches,’ Lexie says, looking at the list. ‘They’re amazing. I watch you, sometimes; you’re always drawing at band practice, during the in-between bits. I’d love to see your sketchbook.’

  But the little notebook in my coat pocket is filled with sadness. I am not ready to share that yet.

  ‘Some day, perhaps,’ I tell her. ‘Back home in Damascus, my dream was to study art, perhaps become an illustrator. I don’t think that will happen now.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Lexie says with a frown. ‘You’re easily good enough. I bet you’d get on to a degree course no bother, once you’re older.’

  I shrug. It’s too difficult to explain just what I lost on the journey from Damascus to Millford – way more than just my family, my friends, my home. I lost my past and my future, my confidence, my courage, my dreams.

  That’s not a great topic for a first date, obviously.

  ‘So what shall we do?’ I ask, changing the subject. ‘Chip shop? Feed the ducks? Watch a film? You choose!’

  Lexie bites her lip.

  ‘I’d just like to get to know you,’ she says shyly. ‘You’re so quiet – you don’t give much away. Sometimes I think there’s something between us, and other times I’m not sure. But I think there could be. We have things in common – from what I’ve been told, we’ve both lost the people we love, and found new families we still struggle to fit in with …’

  I nod. ‘My uncle and aunt are very kind. I’m lucky to be here with family who look after me, but sometimes I can’t help thinking about what I’ve lost. Is that what it’s like for you with your foster family?’

  ‘A bit,’ Lexie says. ‘I kept them at arm’s length for so long – it’s hard to let people get close when you’ve been hurt.’

  I take a deep breath. I want to ask if Lexie’s heart is frozen too, but I’m scared to know the answer.

  ‘Not long ago, I found out I had grandparents I never even knew about,’ Lexie is saying. ‘That was weird. It was actually Ms Winter who helped my grandparents to find me again – they’d been friends with her for years, but they didn’t even know I existed until they saw that picture of me and the rest of the band in the Millford Gazette with Ms Winter and Ked Wilder. They recognized me – I look exactly like my mum used to, apparently.’

  ‘That’s so cool,’ I say, meaning it but knowing that newly found grandparents probably can’t replace Lexie’s long lost mum. ‘So what happens now? I mean, you’re not going to live with them? Or are you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lexie admits. ‘Maybe, eventually. Maybe not. I’d miss my foster parents, and Bex, obviously. I know that my grandparents are family, but I didn’t know a thing about them until a few weeks ago and it’s early days …’

  ‘I understand,’ I say. ‘That’s kind of how I feel about Uncle Dara and Aunt Zenna. I’m grateful to be here. I’m so lucky compared to a lot of refugee kids, but I miss my parents and my sister so much – it’s like part of me has been lost along with them. I want to feel lucky, I want to fit in, but how can I? I just don’t belong.’

  ‘Oh, Sami, you do,’ she tells me. ‘You’re amazing. You’re the bravest and most inspiring person I know – you’ve come through so much! Besides, the Lost & Found are all misfits, really, aren’t we? I think that’s why we make such a good team!’

  Being a part of the Lost & Found is one of the best things about being in Millford, but I feel awkward and uncomfortable about the compliments. I don’t want to be called brave or inspiring; it’s too much, too soon. I want to rewind and find safer territory. Luckily, Lexie seems to understand.

  ‘I’m going to shut up,’ she says, grinning up at me from beneath that cute little fringe. ‘I talk too much when I’m nervous. Let’s take it slowly, OK?’

  ‘OK. We can take this slowly too,’ I say, nodding towards the list.

  ‘I can’t believe you made this for me,’ she says. ‘Even if we never do half of these ideas … well, it’s still lovely.’

  Her brown eyes are shining, her grin is wide and hopeful. She makes me believe we could have a chance, maybe, if we wanted to. She makes me want to take a risk.

  ‘There is one thing I forgot to put on the list,’ I say. ‘Something I’d really like to do more than any of that other stuff …’

  ‘What’s that?’ Lexie asks.

  ‘It’s just … this.’

  My hand strokes her hair, soft as silk, and the evening sun picks out highlights of mahogany and golden brown I have never noticed before. I take a deep breath and lean my forehead against hers, and her hair falls forward, a soft, sleek curtain that touches my own bird’s-nest tangle.

  I breathe in sunshine and vanilla and some kind of citrus shampoo, and then our lips meet, and this time I don’t freeze or panic.

  My lips touch hers, softly. There’s a slab of ice where my heart should be, and it aches so mu
ch I think it might kill me, but then Lexie rests the palm of her hand right over the centre of my chest and all at once the ice is melting. Just like on those documentaries, the Arctic summer has finally arrived, and I’m so shocked at the overload of emotion I don’t know what to do. My body is all floodwater, all feeling. I could drown in it. I remember reading a book about a man who had frostbite, about the pain he felt in his hands and feet as the sensation slowly returned, and I think that perhaps I feel like that. Still, the pain is worth it.

  We pull apart, take a breath, but neither of us wants to be anywhere else but here. We look at each other, grinning like little kids, eyes wide, as if we are discovering something unique, something amazing … each other. My fingers trail down the soft skin of her cheek, brush the faint dusting of freckles across her nose. Her fingers slide across my cheekbones, trace the line of my jaw, burrow up into my hair. She laughs, and then we’re kissing again, the list forgotten, everything forgotten except for this.

  Arctic summers can be over in a heartbeat, of course, but I try not to think of that.

  The next day, I am brushing my teeth in the bathroom, fresh from the shower, skin scrubbed and shiny-new. I drag on jeans and T-shirt, catch sight of my reflection in the mirror, my face half hidden behind a mess of damp hair. I swear I look different.

  I’m the Arctic tundra, come to life at last, my heart a big mess of joy and pain, hammering in my chest, telling me I’m alive and I shouldn’t waste a single minute. I pull in great lungfuls of air, laughing, and when Aunt Zenna raps on the bathroom door to ask if I’m OK, I open it and throw my arms around her, thank her for taking me in, for caring.

  ‘What’s wrong, Sami?’ she asks. ‘What’s wrong?’

  But nothing is wrong – just the opposite. For the first time since I arrived, everything is right. I tidy my room, make the bed and put my dirty clothes in the washing basket, then help Aunt Zenna with the breakfast dishes before heading out, a backpack stuffed with picnic food dangling from one shoulder.

  Lexie and I have decided to work our way through the list after all, starting with a picnic in the park. I provide pita bread, my favourite yoghurt-cheese, lebna with za’atar, and a dish of Aunt Zenna’s best ful, made of fava beans. Lexie brings orange juice and apples and home-made flapjacks, plus a striped blanket to set them out on, and we meet under the willow tree beside the park lake.

  There’s the tiniest moment as we first catch sight of each other when it seems like we might be shy, but then we’re grinning and Lexie runs at me like I’m some long-lost friend she hasn’t seen in years, and I lift her up and whirl her around and I wonder how I ever got through the days without this girl in my life.

  ‘You’re so different!’ she says. ‘What happened, Sami?’

  ‘You happened,’ I tell her.

  She blinks. ‘Am I different too?’

  ‘You’re sort of … brighter,’ I say, and she is. Her eyes are sparkling, her skin glows, her hair glints in the midday sun. I wonder if she’s experiencing her own Arctic summer.

  ‘We’ll never be the same again,’ she says, and I hope she’s right.

  9

  A Day in the Life

  ‘Yassss,’ Bex Murray announces as Lexie and I arrive for band practice. ‘The lovebirds are here! Aww … cute, huh?’

  A chorus of wolf whistles and giggles greets us as we make our way through the old railway carriage. I cringe at the attention but manage a smile, holding Lexie’s hand more tightly.

  ‘Bex,’ she tells her foster sister through gritted teeth. ‘Remind me never to tell you anything in confidence again! What are we, the gossip of the day?’

  ‘My lips were sealed,’ Bex says with a shrug. ‘And then Happi mentioned that you’d texted her the news, and Marley asked if anyone knew what was going on with the two of you, and … well, it just sort of came out! Oops!’

  ‘Congratulations,’ Happi says. ‘I think you make a great couple!’

  ‘Look after her, Sami, mate,’ Marley grins. ‘She’s quite something!’

  ‘I know that,’ I say. ‘I will.’

  The Lost & Found settle down again, tuning instruments, getting ready to rehearse. I almost miss the venomous look Bobbi-Jo shoots at Lexie, and I realize that not everyone is pleased for us.

  ‘Good luck,’ she warns me quietly. ‘I suppose Lexie’s working her way through all the boys in the band … Some girls are like that.’

  ‘Miaow,’ Lee says, but thankfully nobody else seems to have heard. I am no expert on girls, but her spiteful comment seems more driven by annoyance at Marley’s words than anything else.

  I think that Bobbi-Jo Bright is a very insecure girl, and she really, really doesn’t like Lexie.

  Yet another disastrous practice is limping to an early close when Louisa Winter raps sharply on the door of the railway carriage a few days later. She peeps inside, a vision in a paint-stained apron, her tumbledown hair today adorned with an impressive clutch of iridescent peacock feathers as well as the usual paintbrushes. She is grinning, eyes bright.

  ‘Children – I’ve just picked up an answerphone message from Ked Wilder,’ she announces. ‘He called earlier on from his villa in France, but I was painting in my studio and must have missed his call …’

  ‘He’s still in France?’ Marley checks. ‘How much longer? Not being rude, but I was hoping he’d be around to give us some advice, maybe help us cut our first single …’

  Ms Winter frowns. ‘Ked spends every summer in Provence,’ she says with just the faintest shadow of reproach. ‘He always has, ever since he retired. This year, though, he’s writing new material for the first time in more than two decades. He’s asked not to be disturbed; we have to respect that.’

  ‘Yeah … of course,’ Marley says. ‘Sorry – I’m impatient. Always have been.’

  Ms Winter smiles. ‘That’s understandable, I suppose,’ she says. ‘I’m sure once Ked’s back in the UK he’ll be happy to advise you, but it won’t be for a while. Anyway, he called to let me know that apparently that documentary’s on tonight – the one they made at the festival!’

  ‘A documentary?’ Bobbi-Jo shrieks. ‘About us? How cool!’

  ‘About Ked Wilder,’ Bex corrects her. ‘And it was filmed weeks ago, at the festival … so not about “us”, exactly.’

  Not about you, Bex clearly means, but Bobbi-Jo seems not to notice.

  Marley brightens. ‘Tonight? Wow, I had no idea! What time?’

  Ms Winter raises an eyebrow. ‘That’s the problem,’ she explains, checking her watch. ‘It’s on any minute now. I thought I’d better tell you; it’s on one of those odd music channels, so I don’t think there’ve been any trailers for it.’

  ‘Better abandon the practice and get home to watch,’ Lee chips in. ‘Although if it’s starting now I’m going to miss the first fifteen minutes …’

  ‘Come up to the house,’ Louisa Winters decrees. ‘Quickly, before we miss the whole thing. Come on!’

  Five minutes later, we’re all in the big, bohemian living room at Greystones, seated on Indian floor cushions, squashed on an L-shaped sofa in emerald velvet or sprawled across the threadbare Persian carpet, watching the flatscreen TV. Ms Winter has put a tray of mismatched glasses, a packet of chocolate digestives and a big jug of home-made lemonade on the coffee table, which isn’t a table at all but a big, battered tin trunk decorated with antique stickers and luggage labels from places like Paris, Berlin, Kathmandu, Constantinople and Machu Picchu.

  ‘My mother was a bit of an adventurer,’ is all she says by way of a comment, and we help ourselves to lemonade and biscuits as the programme begins. A Day in the Life of Ked Wilder, it’s called, and the narrator begins by outlining Ked’s rise to fame in the 1960s, illustrated by a collage of images of the singer looking young and cool in skin-tight jeans and Chelsea boots, including one shot of him with a beautiful doe-eyed girl with hair in waist-length auburn waves hanging on his arm.

  ‘It’s you!’ Lexie shrieks, look
ing at Ms Winter. ‘Oh wow! This is brilliant!’

  ‘Feels like yesterday,’ Ms Winter muses. ‘Where does the time go?’

  The narrator tells us that Ked and Louisa, who was then a famous fashion model, were lovers and then best friends, and that their friendship stayed strong across the decades. When Louisa asked Ked to headline a music festival held to save Millford’s local libraries, he just couldn’t say no, and came out of retirement specially.

  There’s a shot of Ked in the 1960s, sitting cross-legged in the park, reading a book while Louisa, wearing a minidress, white lipstick and spider-like false lashes, stands barefoot behind him, making a daisy chain.

  ‘So cool,’ Bex breathes.

  And then the documentary proper begins, with Ked Wilder waking up, stretching, checking his alarm clock. The camera follows him as he makes a fruit smoothie for breakfast, strums a few chords on his guitar and jumps into a 1960s vintage Triumph Spitfire sports car and takes to the open road. He chats away to the camera as he drives, explaining that he can’t wait to see his good friend Louisa and how this festival is worth coming out of retirement for.

  Lexie sits beside me on the threadbare carpet, her face shining, eyes bright.

  ‘This is awesome,’ she whispers as the footage cuts to Ked arriving in Millford, throwing his arms round Louisa, the two of them walking down through the grounds at Greystones and on into the festival itself. Louisa is telling him about us, the local kids who formed a band and want to save the libraries, and Ked says that music still has the power to change the world if only we believe it.

  ‘Ked always speaks so well,’ Ms Winter says fondly. ‘Buckets of charm. Star quality, we used to call it – he’s still got it!’

  I glance at Marley who is wide-eyed, transfixed by the TV, probably wondering if he has star quality too.

  ‘It’s us!’ Sasha yells abruptly as the camera tracks Ked and Louisa into the festival green room, which is actually just a glorified marquee. We see ourselves in the background, a huddle of anxious teens lurking beside the refreshments table. We’re dressed as pirates in solidarity with Marley, who had been fighting the night before and had a black eye; Sasha had done a camouflage make-up job and even added a pirate eye patch for good measure.