‘Jenna!’ He sounded pleased to hear my voice. ‘Mum’s out getting a few things for our surprise holiday to Florida.’
I cheered up. I wasn’t being exiled to Sarah’s for the summer after all! Mum had been winding me up. I suppose I deserved it for giving her such a hard time. Yippee! Sun, sand and roller-coasters!
‘When do we leave?’ I asked.
‘We’re getting the plane tonight. We’ve got a house in Florida for three weeks,’ Marcus continued excitedly.
‘What about me? Are you picking me up on the way, or shall I get a train?’ I asked as Marcus rattled on, oblivious.
‘A friend of Mum’s had two spare places available at the last minute. Mum says we deserve a break after all the stress you’ve put this family through. She was going to tell you tonight.’
‘Sarah’s phone has been cut off,’ I said.
Mia had been to Florida and now I was desperate to go to the shopping malls and theme parks that she’d told me about. I couldn’t believe that they were really going without me.
‘I hope you both have a lovely time!’ I said sarcastically.
‘Thanks, Jenna,’ he said. ‘I’ll send you a postcard.’
I stayed in the phone box for a long while, shocked by the news. Then all my emotions started sparking off like fireworks inside me. I stumbled across the road and followed a public footpath sign through a field. The path led to a stile and then into another field.
How could Mum even consider going away without me? The stress I’d put them through? What about me? Admittedly, I had been pushing things with her in the weeks before the last incident. Coming in late at night, spending a lot of my time at Mia’s house, talking on the phone with Jackson and lying about having done all my schoolwork. But that was only the usual stuff that kids did to wind up their parents. Did she hate me so much that she wanted me grounded in a Netherby hell instead of flying in a roller-coaster heaven? It’s not easy getting excluded from school. Did Mum stop for one minute to wonder how I was feeling? That what I might need right now was some support and encouragement, instead of being sent away from home? I certainly wouldn’t be getting any here. Aunt Sarah was incapable of being in charge of a tin of soup, let alone a human being.
I sat down in the shade of a tree and looked round. With no one in sight, I unpacked that section of my mind that stored all my unhappy feelings about Mia and Jackson, and mixed them with how I felt about being abandoned by Mum and Marcus. Then all my anger, hurt and sadness bubbled up into a liquid that I let out as ugly great blobs of tears. I’d been bottling things up for too long – time I let it all out and had a really good cry.
A few minutes of this and I was feeling much better.
I was blowing my nose when a stick dropped from the tree above and landed at my feet, followed by a rustling sound. I looked up, expecting to see a bird or a squirrel, but to my surprise it was a girl. Her hair was tied in tight plaits and she was wearing a pair of homemade dungarees and an intense expression.
‘Trees don’t like crying. It upsets them,’ she said as she worked her way down a branch and landed at my feet. She patted the bark, sat down beside me and added, ‘You’re not from round here.’
She was about ten years old, but she spoke in a clipped voice, like a child actor in an old black-and-white film.
She kept on staring at me until I cracked under the pressure to say something. ‘I’m Jenna and I’m working in the bookshop.’
The girl smiled. ‘I’m Aurora. It means the dawn. I was called that because I arrived bright and early. Sarah’s cool. She lent my brother a book about trees and we play this great game. He brings me a leaf and I have to guess what type of tree it comes from.’
‘That sounds exciting,’ I said brightly. A few more days in Netherby and I would probably be driven by boredom to playing that game.
‘We’ll come into the shop soon. My brother loves books.’
I stood up to go. ‘Will you be all right here in the middle of nowhere by yourself?’
The girl burst out laughing. ‘I live here, silly. That’s my treehouse.’ She pointed up to a wooden building, hidden amongst the branches, and said solemnly, ‘All these trees, flowers and fields belong to me. As far as your eyes can see and beyond, it’s all mine.’
I smiled back, waiting for her to introduce me to her imaginary pixie friends who lived in the tree with her.
The girl smiled back at me. ‘I like you, Jenna. You look strange.’
‘Thanks a bunch,’ I said.
‘You don’t look like anyone else around here. I like the way your hair is red and brown with yellow stripes in it.’
‘They’re highlights,’ I said.
‘They’re wonderful,’ she gasped.
I laughed. She was cute in a funny, tree-elfish sort of way.
‘Your eyes are green like a cat’s eyes. I bet you’re interesting.’ She stared up at me.
I laughed again. ‘I’m not. My Mum will tell you what a pain I am. I never do what I’m told.’
Aurora shrieked with laughter, put on an even posher voice and waggled her finger at me. ‘Are you wilful and have no regard for authority?’
I smiled. ‘Definitely.’
‘Were you crying because you were mad at someone?’ she asked.
I nodded and said, ‘I’m mostly mad at myself.’
‘My mum gets mad at herself when she can’t fit into her party dress. My brother gets really cross when he’s not feeling well. Why are you mad?’
There was another rustling noise in the tree. I looked up, half expecting to see a pixie, but there was nothing there. ‘Everything and anything can drive me nuts!’ I said. ‘From the way my hair sticks up in the morning to the way we’re treating the planet. Worst of all, I hate the fact that if I have two choices, I always end up making the wrong one.’
There was another rustling sound from the tree.
‘Is there anyone else up there?’ I asked, suddenly feeling panicked. Was there another witness to my crying fest? As if on cue, there was a tiny meow.
Aurora giggled. ‘It’s only Curiosity, my cat. We call him Curio for short. You can be a friend of mine, Jenna.’
I bowed my head and grinned. ‘Thank you. I am deeply honoured. Goodbye.’
Aurora giggled again. ‘See you again soon, Jenna. I like you.’
Even though she was obviously not from this planet, I liked her too.
The Mini-Mart was surprisingly well stocked. It even had three types of cat food to choose from.
‘Tallulah likes Gourmet Puss,’ the woman behind the counter said. The fact that everyone seemed to know me was freaking me out. In London I have neighbours who have lived next door since I was a baby and still wouldn’t be able to pick me out in a police line-up, let alone identify my cat’s favourite food.
‘What does Curio like to eat, then?’
The woman frowned at me. It was good to know that they didn’t know absolutely everything about everyone. Then again, tree elves probably couldn’t afford to buy cat food.
When I got back, Sarah had got dressed and was sitting out in the garden with a large pot of tea.
She sighed. ‘I’m feeling a bit better.’
I told her about my encounters with Julius and Ava in the shop, but I didn’t mention Aurora. I liked to keep my crying fests as private as possible.
Sarah poured some tea. ‘I should’ve warned you about them. But they’re both harmless.’
‘What about the Rampant Romantics? How harmless are they?’
‘Be afraid. Be very afraid … The Rampant Romantics take their quest for a good love story very seriously,’ Sarah said, grinning. ‘They have an insatiable appetite for romance.’
I mimed sticking a finger down my throat to gag myself, then asked, ‘How many of them are there?’
‘Only three hardcore members. Ava is the most prolific romance reader. She has been known to read four books in one day. Then there’s Gina and Muriel. They run the charity shop.’
I sniffed. ‘I can’t think of anything more boring than constantly reading soppy love stories.’
‘That’s because you haven’t been in love yet …’ Sarah started and then stopped herself and frowned. ‘I’m sorry. That was so patronising of me. You’ve probably been in love dozens of times.’
To draw the heat away from my so-called love life, I asked, ‘How many times have you been in love, then?’
Now it was Sarah’s turn to fluff around. ‘That’s a difficult one …’
I instantly regretted the question. I wasn’t ready to listen to any kind of answer that Sarah was going to give me. She wasn’t fitted with ‘child filters’ the way Mum was. Mum would have told me to butt out or given just as much information as I could cope with. Sarah was unpredictable.
‘I’ve had lovers …’ Sarah began.
I cringed. Please, please don’t go into detail about your love life …
‘And there have been times when I thought it was love, but I think my answer would have to be twice. I have been in love on two occasions in my life.’
Then, before I could stop myself, I asked, ‘What’s the difference between thinking it’s love and knowing that you are in love? That it’s not just a stupid crush or something.’ I was thinking of how mixed-up I felt about Jackson.
‘You know it’s love because you would risk anything for the person. Even the awful pain of their leaving.’ Sarah’s face started to crumple, but instead of breaking down she stood up, looked at her watch and said, ‘It’s a quarter past five now. You can stay here and relax. I’ll go back and run the shop for a couple of hours. We get a few tourists staying in Netherby at this time of year.’
‘Will you be wanting me to work there again?’ I asked.
‘I’m counting on your help, Jenna. The summer is a busy time for the shop. I’ll pay you when I can. See you later.’
I went back up to my bedroom, lay down on the bed and took out the crumpled photo of Jackson for the first time since leaving London. That boy was cute even when he was doing his best to look mean and moody. He was much more classically teen-mag model good-looking than Torso Boy.
I smiled as I remembered the day Jackson had given me the photo. It was one of those rare times when there was just the two of us. Mia had been off school with a bad cold. Jackson had to go and renew his bus pass and afterwards we decided to catch the bus into Leicester Square and grab a slice of pizza. We spent ages hanging around the square watching the different types of people come and go.
We played this stupid game called ‘That’s Your Boyfriend/ Girlfriend’, which involved spotting a passer-by and quickly shouting out, ‘That’s your girlfriend!’ The first person to shout it out won that round. The idea of the game, if there really was one, was to pick the highest number of outlandish people for your opponent and to shout it out the fastest. We played it for ages, laughing hysterically.
‘You’re cool, Jenna,’ Jackson had said on the way back, as he handed me one of his photographs. When Mia saw them the next day she had insisted that we all cram into a photo booth and pose for more photos. That was fun too.
Mia was great company, but we were always ending up doing what she wanted. It had all started when she came to Coot’s Hill in Year Eight when we were twelve years old. She knew how to handle the other girls and the teachers so that no one dared to get in her way. I was struggling with everything from making friends to keeping up with my coursework.
An image of Mia flashed into my brain. She was taller and skinnier than me. She was one and a half centimetres taller, to be precise. Her hair was longer, Dad richer than mine … Mia was keen on statistics, especially when they came out in her favour. There were never any limits on what Mia thought she could do. Mrs Andrews described her as a ‘high achiever’, but my Mum said ‘attention seeking’. Mum never really got on with Mia, which is one reason I did.
Then Jackson transferred to the school last term. At primary school he had always been one of those annoying boys, obsessed with football cards and spouting Premier League scores. The most complicated thing he had ever said to me was, ‘What team do you support?’ He had gone on to a different secondary school and I hadn’t thought about him for ages.
He’d undergone a growth spurt and transformed from a faceless geek to definite boyfriend material. Tall, muscular, well dressed. He didn’t stand a chance. Mia was the tracer bullet and he was the target. When he started tagging along with us things got complicated. I knew that Mia liked him, but I wanted to spend some time alone with him too. I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted people to think that I was going out with him. I wanted it to be serious.
To try and shake off these thoughts of my past, I spent a long time washing my hair. Then I went out to sit in the back garden to let it dry and read a trashy crime novel that I’d found lying around in the living room. I was just getting absorbed in it when a brown beanie hat popped up from next-door’s garden and said, ‘Hi!’
For a split second I thought it might be Torso Boy, but when I looked up it was a tall, gangly lad of about seventeen. He smiled and said ‘Hi’ again.
I smiled back and said, ‘Hi.’
‘Great job on the garden. We heard you thrashing about in weed city earlier on,’ he said, grinning. ‘I’m Charlie.’
There was a sound of a door creaking open and another figure popped up from behind the fence. A taller, even ganglier version of Charlie, except he was wearing a thick silver chain round his neck.
‘Who you scoping, bro?’ he said in a distorted gangster-rap accent.
Charlie rolled his eyes, ‘Meet Freddie, my kid brother.’
‘Cool. Eye-candy,’ he said, winking at me.
I glared back at him. He blushed and fiddled with the silver chain before disappearing back down the garden.
‘Ignore him. It’s just a phase he’s going through. Last year it was cricket statistics, now it’s hip-hop slang. There is no logic either – we play in an anti-folk band together.’
I nodded. ‘Sarah told me about you two.’
‘You should come to the village hall and hear us play sometime,’ he said.
I nodded again. I seemed to have lost the power to construct sentences, which is really weird because when I’m with Mia and Jackson I never stop talking. It must be all this fresh country air affecting my brain, I thought.
Life was certainly taking on some strange twists and turns. Maybe I could hang round with Charlie and Freddie for a while. I could even get to know Torso Boy. That wouldn’t be so bad. At least until Mia got round to fessing up – then my life could go back to some kind of normality.
Chapter Six
After Charlie and Freddie had gone back inside I lay down on a smooth patch of grass in the garden and closed my eyes. The late afternoon sun was warm on my face and I told myself I was absorbing vitamin D and tried not to think about skin cancer or ageing. Mia was big on ageing skin. She never left the house without smothering herself in SPF 25 sunscreen and lip protector.
It was Mia who decided who we weren’t going to like any more, or who was going to have a trick played on them. She decided which teachers we needed to impress and whose life was going to be made a misery. She was the one who told me to leave the choir last term, as it was too uncool. That was tough, as I loved singing, but I was happy to go along with it. When you’ve known someone like Mia for a long time you become loyal and Mia’s cool barometer was always spot on. Being known as one of Mia’s friends made my life a lot easier at school.
Mia always felt that she had an automatic right to anything she wanted, whilst I always believed that I wasn’t quite good enough. That was the big difference between us. Most of the time it was fun watching Mia take all the risks. I am the sort of a person that does ‘being in the background’ best. Mia had even said to me once, ‘When I’m famous, you can be my personal assistant.’
Things didn’t go according to plan for her with Jackson.
The more Mia tried to impress him t
he worse it got. She kept on asking Jackson for Jamaican slang words until he said, ‘Why are you asking me? My mum is from Nigeria and my dad is from East London.’
Then there was the end-of-term disco. I was thrilled because Jackson grabbed me for the last dance and kissed me. He’d walked me home and said, ‘See you around.’
Where was he now? Spending the summer in football training and being chased by girls. At least I never chased after him. He had asked me to dance. I was the one who he kissed at the end of the school disco.
If only I’d known then how momentous the events of that night would be I’d never have gone to the disco. There were too many repercussions …
My face was burning and I wasn’t sure if it was from the sun or the force of that memory.
Chapter Seven
‘We’ll close the shop early and go over to the summer fête at Netherby Hall,’ Sarah announced. ‘It starts at two o’clock.’
‘Whoopdeedoo,’ I muttered under my breath. But at least it would be a change of scene.
It had been a tough week. There were hardly any browsers, let alone paying customers. One day the only visitor I had apart from Julius was Tallulah. She was only interested in washing herself in embarrassing places and snoozing on the velvet cushion.
It’s amazing how motivating being bored out of your skull can be. The counter was polished to within an inch of its life. I also made sure that I was looking sophisticated at all times, keeping a half-opened Penguin Classic on the counter. I’d also discovered a dusty poetry book called Vintage Verse, and I was actually enjoying puzzling over lines of poetry. That’s how bad it had got on the boredom front. Typical that when I was looking gorgeous and ready for him, Torso Boy was nowhere to be seen.
But this particular Saturday morning went by quickly, as there were actually some customers. When she was helping them, Sarah became a different person. She seemed more confident. She knew a lot about old books too. Mrs MacLean from the chemist’s was in seventh heaven because Sarah had tracked down an out-of-print book for her.
The only thing she wasn’t good at was remembering to eat. So at about half past twelve I said, ‘Think I’ll go over to the café for a quick lunch break.’
Soul Love Page 3