‘I expect so,’ I said.
‘I’m thinking of doing my doughnut stall. I should make tons of money.’ Aurora’s eyes lit up. ‘And Gabe will be playing with his band.’
‘Quite a family affair, what,’ Hugh Netherby said, rubbing his hands.
‘I’ll probably be back in London by then,’ I said, wishing I was already there.
Chapter Fifteen
My head was buzzing. How dare Gabe blank me like that! It might be an aristocratic thing to be so rude, but I wasn’t going to take it. Not from someone who seemed to like me.
Sarah and I were sitting together in the lounge. Every now and then my eye would just happen to glance at the clock. At five to nine, Sarah said, ‘Kai knew how much that vase meant to me. He even wrote a poem about it!’ She nibbled the skin at the edges of her fingernails.
I asked, ‘Does he make any money from his poems?’
Sarah smiled at me like I was a three-year-old who had asked if the moon was really made of green cheese. ‘Kai is not materialistic. He is devoted to his art. We get by. We can usually make a fair bit at the festival.’
‘With a poetry tombola?’
‘No, it’s the food stall that makes the serious cash. I’m going to stuff vegetables into tortillas and call them “Soul Food wraps”.’
I glanced at the clock and said as casually as I could, ‘I’m going outside for some fresh air.’
Sarah stood up. ‘A great idea. I’ll come with you.’
‘I had sort of arranged to meet up with someone.’
‘It wouldn’t be one of those boys from next door, would it?’ Her voice had a gooey quality.
I nodded. The first time I had clapped eyes on Gabe he had been next door, so it wasn’t a total lie.
‘I knew it! Don’t be late. And wrap up warm,’ Sarah squealed.
My aunt was a romance addict through and through. Learn from this, Jenna, I told myself. Do not allow yourself to be taken in by Gabe. It was probably a good thing that Sarah didn’t have any children of her own. No way would Mum have let me set foot out of the house at this time of night without good reason.
When I got outside I suddenly started to question myself. What was I doing going there in the first place? After the way he’d reacted earlier, there was every chance that he wouldn’t be there and I’d have to huddle in a dark corner for an hour or so to save face before crawling back inside. Or maybe he’d be all over me – full of explanations and crass excuses and trying to kiss me.
My head was buzzing as I stepped out of the house and made my way to the spot where we had met the night before.
He was waiting for me. He held out his hand to me and whispered, ‘Sorry about earlier. I’m just no good in public.’
We walked in silence across the fields towards Aurora’s treehouse. Then I turned on him. ‘Your family is hardly public. The village hall is public. The Mini-Mart is public.’
‘I love the way your mouth puckers up when you say public.’
‘Would a simple smile and hello have been too much?’
‘Way too much. I want to get to know you without any pressure. So, was the mushroom quiche to your liking? Found it a bit chewy myself.’
‘You remind me of a field mushroom.’
‘Because I’m wild and tasty?’
‘Because you’re nowhere to be seen during the day, then you spring up from nowhere during the night, you fungus!’
We were both laughing by now. It’s hard to hate someone who makes you laugh.
Gabe sighed. ‘I don’t like my dad and Isobel knowing all my business.’
‘So meeting me is business, is it?’ I put on a dodgy South London accent.
Gabe put on an even worse one, ‘As a matter of fact you are, darlin’.’
I sat down on the grass. ‘I can see what a drag it is living in a place where everybody knows what you’re up to.’
‘Think they know,’ Gabe corrected me. ‘I hate it when people make assumptions about who you are.’
I thought about Sarah and the vase and how quickly she had judged me. It had been the same at school and with Mia’s mum. They had all assumed that it was me.
‘It must be hard living in such a small village. Gabe, I won’t ever make assumptions about you. I promise.’
‘That means a lot to me, Jenna.’ Gabe’s voice quivered as he spoke.
I looked up. It was a clear night sky full of sprinklings of stars as if someone had shaken glitter over a piece of navy-blue silk.
‘Can we just keep meeting each other in the evenings? Take things slowly and keep it private? Can this be our time, Jenna?’ Gabe whispered. He was leaning against a tree trunk looking up at the stars.
So I ignored all those sinking doubtful feelings lying in the pit of my stomach and mentally scrunched up the common sense questionnaire that my brain had drafted. Gabe was a risk I wanted to take.
‘Yes, this can be our time,’ I replied.
Gabe let out a loud yell and ran around the tree.
‘So will you be Lord Netherby one day?’ I curtseyed in front of him.
He reached out a hand to grab me ‘Maybe. Would you like to be a lady?’
I pulled away. ‘Thought I was one already.’
Gabe reached over and tugged at my hair. ‘A foxy lady.’
‘They kill foxes round here, don’t they?’
‘Only if they don’t behave themselves.’
He tugged at my hair again and I got my revenge by ruffling his hair and running off. It took him ages to catch up with me and when he did, he was breathless.
‘Maybe being forced to do PE three times a week does pay off.’ I laughed as Gabe sat down on a bench and his breathing began to steady.
‘Had a bug last week. It’s taken a while to shift. We aristocrats are very delicate creatures, you know.’
I sat down beside him. He put his arm around me.
‘I know. Going to the chemist is beneath you. Mrs MacLean makes personal deliveries to your place!’ I joked.
He didn’t joke back as I’d expected. I felt his arm stiffen and the atmosphere between us changed.
After a long, awkward silence, I stood up and said, ‘I should be making a move.’
Gabe pulled me back. ‘Stay a bit longer. It’s a beautiful evening.’
I sat back down again. The air smelled clean and crisp like freshly washed sheets. It wasn’t spiced with petrol fumes like at home.
‘There’s so much more sky here,’ I said. ‘It makes you feel small.’
‘Plato says that astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from one world to another.’
‘And I just thought they were pretty, twinkly things!’
‘They’re much more than that. They are different colours, for one thing.’
‘They all look silver to me.’
‘If you look at them through a telescope you can see that some are orange or yellow or red, depending on their surface temperature.’ Gabe looked back at me. ‘Did that sound as nerdy to you as it did to me?’
I stretched out my hand. ‘Come on, you old wreck. I’ll give you a hand up.’
I braced myself like a muscle man about to lift a truck. He played along and resisted my grip. When he was almost upright he relaxed and fell against me. Instinctively I put my hands out and we found ourselves in an awkward hug.
‘Sorry, cheesy move,’ he said.
‘Pure Gorgonzola,’ I replied, enjoying the feeling of his cheek next to mine.
The moment was broken by the sound of Gabe’s watch beeping. In a quick change from mush to matter of fact, he said, ‘Got to go. Same time tomorrow?’
I nodded in agreement and sighed. ‘It’s time we went back. Even Sarah must be thinking it’s getting late by now.’
It was like we were skimming the surfaces of each other. It felt like we were both holding back from telling each other things. All of a sudden I felt ashamed. When Mia rang me tomorrow I was going to make her do the right thing. If Gabe k
new why I was here, what would he think of me?
Chapter Sixteen
Mia had said that she would call me that night, so I waited by the phone box. I was determined to have it out with her.
It was amazing how busy the Mini-Mart was. There was a constant stream of cars and vans pulling up, slamming their car doors and then pulling away with their last-minute shopping.
I bought myself a bag of crisps and a magazine and tried to stay calm. The sky was overcast, but it was unbearably hot and airless. I scraped my hair back into a ponytail, but my head still felt hot and itchy.
To stretch my legs I walked over to the front of the shop to drop my crisp packet in the bin. Mia was five minutes late so far.
A group of boys then cycled up to the front of the shop. I recognised them as the scouts from the summer fête. One of them nodded in my direction. I’d promised to save him any Batman comic books that I came across in the shop.
Hugh Netherby was the next customer. He screeched into the car park and jumped out of his battered old Land Rover. He gave me a big wave. Actually it made me feel good knowing that I was a part of a place.
After fifteen minutes, I checked out the phone. It seemed to be working.
A breeze had now begun to blow, but it was no cooler. I could feel itchy lines of sweat drawing down my back.
Then a car pulled up and the occupant, a large man in a loud shirt, walked over to the phone box.
He was on the phone for an agonising twelve minutes. What if Mia had called? Would she try again? Why didn’t I just ring her? The thought of her mum answering put me off that idea. I didn’t even know what I was going to say to her. She had all the power. If our friendship meant anything to her she’d keep her promise. I’d kept mine to her. And if she didn’t, what was the worst thing I could do to her? I could only really threaten to tell Mum the truth. Mia would get mad and things always got worse when Mia got angry. A large chunk of my time spent with Mia was taken up with keeping her sweet. I could see that now so clearly.
The wind had whipped itself up another notch and the sky was darkening. Even an urban urchin like myself had worked out by then that a storm was brewing. The hot, sticky atmosphere was becoming unbearable. I decided to wait five more minutes.
It wasn’t all Mia’s fault that she was used to controlling situations. She wasn’t used to people saying no to her. She was surrounded by people that her parents paid to say yes to her every demand. I had been guilty too of handing my life over to her to control.
Well, I certainly wasn’t going to tell her about Gabe. I was scared that if I spoke about him it would jinx things between Gabe and me. Somehow Mia would find a way to spoil it.
There was a lightning flash, followed by loud thunder that released a relentless bead curtain of rain. I ran across the lane and ducked back inside the phone box. There was no way I was going to shelter in the Mini-Mart and miss the call. I wanted to make her finally understand that she had to speak out about what we had done.
The rain instantly brought the temperature down and I began to shiver. A white van chugged round the corner and stopped by the phone box. The window wound down and Charlie popped his head out.
I opened the door of the phone box. ‘I was expecting a call, but I was late and missed it and got soaked,’ I lied.
Charlie smiled. ‘Would you like a lift? I have to drop some stuff off at the village hall first. You can use my phone.’
I shook my head as I jumped into the seat next to him and tried not to soak it too much.
‘There’s some clothes in the back. You could get changed when we get to the hall. Gabe always leaves something behind him,’ he said, chuckling.
‘Maybe he’s used to servants picking up stuff after him.’ I snorted.
‘Not Gabe, he’s just a natural airhead.’
‘How did you two meet?’
‘At a pub in Clerkenwell in London. We were watching some anti-folk acts and we got talking. We both were huge fans of Lyle Hasslett and his band, the Stale Pumpkins, so decided to start a band of our own.’
‘The Stale Pumpkins? I don’t know them,’ I said.
‘I’ll burn you a CD. Lyle has a great voice. We’ve played with him a couple of times. We called ourselves Goats in a Spin after some lines in one of his songs:
I’ve put up with your screwball comedy and crackpot psychology
So that you would stay with me.
Girl, you’ve got me dancing like a goat in a spin.
A goat in a spin.’
Charlie had a sweet voice. He finished singing, blushed and said, ‘Girls are a bit of a mystery to me.’
‘I really liked the tune,’ I said in the most un-mysterious tone I could.
Charlie went on. ‘That’s the great thing about anti-folk music. It’s the music that matters. It was Lyle who got us a slot playing at the Netherby Festival. When Gabe told us his family lived in Netherby we thought it would be a great place to spend the whole summer. Our parents were cool about it because they used to go to the Netherby Festival. Gabe’s old man said he’d keep an eye on us.’
The van pulled into the empty car park of the village hall.
‘Jenna, you couldn’t stay for a bit and give me a hand setting up? Only Freddie is nowhere to be seen.’
‘No problem,’ I said. Sarah had gone over to Julius’s to check out some books that were for sale on the internet so she would be ages. I picked up Gabe’s green T-shirt and headed for the toilets.
‘It’ll only take me a minute to get changed out of this wet shirt.’
The T-shirt still smelled of Gabe.
Most of the band’s stuff was stored in a cupboard at the back of the hall. Charlie had already made a start getting it out.
‘What time does the rehearsal start?’ I asked.
‘Not for another hour or so, but I wanted to come early and try out some of the equipment.’
After we had set up Charlie began fiddling around with the sound system.
‘Test out the mike for me, Jenna?’ he called from across the hall.
I blew into it a few times and did the old chestnut thing of saying, ‘Testing, testing, one two three.’
It was strange holding a microphone. Too tempting not to try it out. It reminded me of when I was singing in the choir concert and was given a solo in the Christmas concert last year. When Charlie popped out to the van for the hundredth time a song that was one of Mum’s favourites sprang into my mind: ‘Because the Night’, sung by this amazing punk singer/poet called Patti Smith.
I let my imagination fill in the background music and I started to sing. It felt as good as the time I’d had the big cry under the tree. I let my voice go raw and I thought about Gabe.
… Because the night belongs to love …
I stopped and laughed and bowed to my imaginary audience.
Someone clapped.
Freddie, Charlie, Gabe and Cleo were staring.
Chapter Seventeen
‘So, how do you feel about Charlie asking me to be in the band?’ I asked Gabe that evening. We were lying on our backs in a field looking up at the stars.
‘Look, Jenna – there’s the Plough. It’s also known as Ursa Major or the Big Dipper.’
‘Answer the question, Gabe,’ I said. ‘Do you mind me being in the band?’
‘You’ve got an amazing voice,’ he said, after a long pause.
‘Answer the question,’ I insisted.
‘It’ll be good for the sound of the band to have some extra backing vocals. Lots of music people come to the festival to look for new talent.’
‘Gabe.’ I sat up and prodded him. ‘Tell me how you feel about it.’
He lifted his arms up in a mock defensive way. ‘OK, OK. It feels a bit weird.’
‘Because of Cleo.’ My mouth felt dry. She had gone up the wall when Charlie had suggested that I sing on a couple of songs they were planning to perform at the festival.
Gabe sighed. ‘Partly because of her, but mainly becau
se I’ll find it hard to keep my hands on my drum sticks when you’re around.’
‘What is the deal between you and Cleo?’ I asked.
Gabe sat up next to me. ‘We are really close friends.’
‘Have you ever – ’
‘We did try going out very briefly, but it didn’t work out. I feel a lot for her, but I don’t feel that way about her. It’s a corny thing to say, but we are more like brother and sister.’
This was not what I wanted to hear. I wanted Gabe to say how little she meant to him. It was clear how she felt about him. But he wasn’t the type of boy to tell me what I wanted to hear. He was giving me the truth.
‘How did you get to know her in the first place?’ I asked.
After a long pause Gabe said, ‘We have a sort of mother connection.’
‘They were best friends or something?’ I was probing for more information.
‘They both died.’
I stopped. This was the first time that Gabe had spoken about his mother. All I knew about her was that she was a wild spirit and how much Aurora hated her.
‘I’ve seen a photograph of her. She was incredibly beautiful. She was called Lavinya, wasn’t she?’
Gabe hunched up his legs and grasped them tightly in his arms. ‘She was.’
I put my arm round him, but he felt stiff and didn’t respond.
‘Was she in some kind of accident?’ I asked.
‘She was killed by a cruel accident of fate.’ Gabe sighed and roughly rubbed at his cheeks. Then he sprang to his feet, stretched like a cat and changed the subject.
‘So, Jenna. What about you? I bet you’ve left some boy pining away for you in London. I’m only your fling for the summer holidays.’
‘Some fling. You’re too much like hard work!’
Gabe laughed.
‘Answer the question,’ he said.
‘There was a boy, Jackson, and we did sort of hang around together.’
For a split second I was tempted to try and make Gabe feel jealous. Then I glanced up at him. Hadn’t he been hurt enough? Much as I was angry with my mum I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to her.
‘I did really like him. We got on well together. I liked the look of him. Other girls liked him. So it was good for the old self-esteem to get some attention. He made me laugh. Trouble was that my best friend, Mia, liked him too.’
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