“We’ll have to take you to meet my mother,” Ana tapped her fingers against the page of a cookbook, “We need to pay her a visit soon. She’ll love you! She doesn’t live too far from your dad, actually. I’ll ring her up and see if she’s not too busy sometime before you go back to school. She’s seventy-two now and busier than she’s ever been since my dad passed away. I know she’d love to see the twins. She adores them.”
It actually freaked me out a little how included I was becoming in Oliver’s family. I realised that it was not just him I’d grown to love, but I loved them all. Ana was a lovely, sweet woman and the two of us had given each other something neither of us would ever have had. She gave me a mum love and I gave her a daughter's adoration. Her husband and I were developing a bond as well. You see, Eddie, like all men, enjoyed food above anything but sex, and he was thrilled when extra special things like pies, cakes, biscuits and breads were pouring out of his kitchen and on to his plate.
“You’re becoming quite the chef,” He told me one evening across the dinner table, “I love Italian. You’ll make an excellent wife one day.”
Oliver squeezed my knee under the table, but his mother said, “She’ll be more than a wife one day.”
“And she has lovely, excellent, huge, well-rounded...” Alexander began to speak, but trailed off, looking around the table for reaction. All eyes were upon him, expecting the worst. “Filthy minds, all of you!” He snapped, “I was going to say she has lovely, excellent, huge, well-rounded…” He cupped his hands in front of his chest, “Course backgrounds at comp to support her brains and talent, which will be excellent when she comes to her senses and marries me one day. Then she can cook and pay the bills both while I sit on my bum and play video games.”
“Keep dreaming, Little Brother,” Oliver told him as he reached for the milk, “Sil’s mine.”
“Damn it!” Alex ran a hand over his face, “Can’t you just let a man have his dreams?”
“In your case…no.”
I had to get my things together quickly after dinner that night in order to catch my train home. School was starting the day after next and I hadn’t even begun to organize. Oliver and I were heading out the door when he realised he’d forgotten his wallet in his room and dashed upstairs to retrieve it.
Eddie came out of the kitchen and saw me waiting by the door. He flashed a smile and asked, “Do you want to just move in, Silvia?” I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not. I stood in the entryway, blinking at him like a moron. He kept grinning kindly, “I know you can’t, but I think I’d like it if you did. I’ve never told you how fond I am of you, have I?”
“No, Sir, I don’t think you have.”
“Well, I am. You’ve become a real part of this family. I’m beginning to think of you as my own daughter. I can’t help it.” He paused and looked at me thoughtfully, “I’m hoping after you graduate you’ll move down so we can all be closer. Spend more time together, you know?”
“I’m planning on it,” It was impossible not to smile when Ed smiled and Ed was smiling at me. “Oliver and I have been talking about what we’re going to do after graduation.”
“Good,” He said firmly, “You’ll have to fill me in later. Now off with you! You’re going to miss your train!” But instead of wishing me a nice voyage as he normally did, he hugged me, and then kissed me on the cheek. I held him tight for longer than I needed to. I held on to him the way I’d always wished I could hold on to my own dad. When I finally let go of him, he held on to my hand. “Oliver!” He called his son, “Come on now, Boy! She’s going to be late!”
Oliver galloped down the stairs, “All right, I’ve got it! See you soon, Dad!” He pulled my hand from his father’s as if it were something that happened every day and took it into his own.
“Safe!” Ed said seriously as he closed the door behind us.
Oliver took me to my train. After a quick snogging, I went home as I always had to sooner or later. I got a taxi at the station and came into the house unnoticed. My father, per usual, was in his office working and my sister was sitting on the floor in the middle of the loo painting her toenails. I went into my bedroom and packed my bags for school, then lay on my bed and closed my eyes. I thought for a long time about the Dickinson’s and how blessed Ollie and Alex were to be born into such a family. How lucky they were to have had cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, not to mention each other and two loving parents who always wanted to know where they were and what they were doing. They’d had all of that love their whole lives. I lie there and I cried thinking of all that warmth they’d gotten that I’d missed. All the hugs, all the kisses, the giggles and the jokes. Even the angry times when their father would shout and their mother would get so frustrated she’d make them stay in their rooms for hours seemed so wonderful to me. At least someone cared enough to be angry. My father never got angry.
I’d had none of that sort of love. It hurt to know it and it made me feel upset with my mother for dying and let down by my father for not seeing to it that I’d gotten it after she was gone. I was at home, in my own bed, crying my eyes out, and I knew no one was going to come and comfort me. I knew as well if I’d been in the bed in the extra room at Oliver’s that someone would have.
I made up my mind right then what I really wanted in my life. It was comfort of a home and a family. But more than that I wanted love. I wanted love to surround me. I wanted to swim in it. I wanted to hold it in my hand like heated sand and pour it through my fingers so it covered my feet. I wanted to taste it, I wanted to smell it. I wanted to wrap myself up in it like a blanket and stay safe and warm inside of it forever. And I wanted to give it. I wanted to drown people in it. I wanted to love with all my heart and be loved just as much in return.
And I knew I could have it, but I’d have to change. I’d have to let go of all the loneliness of my childhood. I’d have to focus on filling my world with love from that day on. It meant having to re-think every reaction, but I was going to make sure I had what I wanted. I’d learned that I could accomplish whatever thing I set my mind on and that anything was possible. I knew that love, pure and undiluted, could really exist.
I knew this because Ana and Eddie Dickinson had shown me that it was true.
That night, I swaddled myself in a jacket that Oliver had left in my room. I slept with my face buried in the lining where I could smell him and pretend that he was close. I knew he wasn’t really there, but the scent of his skin made me remember that even if he wasn’t in the room, he was real, and even if all I had of him for the moment was his jacket, I was still closer to love than I’d ever been before.
CHAPTER FIVE
Our final year at Bennington went by at lightning speed. Bennington, above anything else, was a preparatory school, and anyone who went there was required to have and to maintain an exemplary grade point average. Thus, even at the best of times, it was competitive. That final year, though, was a very different atmosphere than it had ever been before. Everyone seemed more serious and more focused. Tempers were hotter and there was a lot less general messing about on campus. There were many students that attended Bennington College that were wealthy. Some were beyond wealthy. And then there were others, like me, who came from working class backgrounds. Students like us only had one chance. We were not about to budge over and allow someone to take away our grants. Every scholarship student there wanted their futures as much as I did. Therefore, I found myself in constant competition for marks to win money for university. I was not about to have to leave Great Britain to continue my education because I could not pay to attend Cardiff University, nor was there really another college I wanted to be read at since Oliver had his heart set on Cardiff University and I had my heart set on Oliver.
Realistically, I knew my father could have set aside enough money to put me through at least the first four years of university, but I had plans that went beyond four years. Daddy had always worked as a journalist and editor, but his income had never been
a steady one. The money that paid for mine and Lucy’s education, I knew, came from my mother. More specifically, it came from her death. She had a decent life insurance policy, I had gathered, but I knew something that my father had thought was a secret, too. I knew how my mother had died and I knew that he sued the people who were responsible for at least a million pounds. However, I knew that he was sued for liability over an article he wrote years later and lost a portion of that money. Take that and consider the two houses he bought for us to live in, the one in Edinburgh, which he refused to sell, and the one in Denbigh, which he had paid too high a price for, and the cars he had to buy along the way, and then add the cost of Lucy’s and my private education and the answer was that I really did not know how much was left for Lucy once I finished up. I didn’t want to take all the money and leave her without enough.
Anyroad, it didn’t matter. I had always been a good student. I had always worked hard and studied. I didn’t see any reason why I should not finish ahead and go to school where I wanted. There would be nothing--and I meant nothing--that would stop me.
That scholarship became an obsession. I worked harder than I ever had. I fretted over every detail of every essay, hounded the Profs for extra credit, tested and retested myself before exams and destroyed and recreated any of my project assignments that were not utterly perfect. I slept very little and worried very much. I even skipped meals sometimes. It was not long before I was tired and cranky and so completely stressed out that no one wanted to be around me. I don’t know how or why Oliver put up with me, but he did.
“Look at her,” He whispered to Alexander as I studied in our common room on a Friday night. It was just before Christmas and I wanted to do well on my exams before we went on holiday. Everyone else in the room was singing Christmas carols and dancing around with bottles of soda in their hands. “Bless her! She’s like a bloody hound! Nose down to the paper, sniffing for facts! Oh, where, oh, where has my Little Sil Gone? Oh where, oh where can she be?” He sang, softly nudging me under the table.
“See that, Ollie? She didn’t even look at you! No sense of humour anymore, that Silvia!” Alex shot a rubber band at me. It landed in my hair and hung there. I flicked it away and ignored them. “Come on, Sil!” He begged, “Give us a smile!”
I looked up at the two of them. “Stop it! I have to study!”
“All you do anymore is study!” Oliver returned. “Come on, Sil! Why don’t you take a break and we can…”
“Your parents may have the money to put the two of you through Bennington and then pay for you to attend Cardiff as well, but my father more than likely does not!” I snapped, “I have to study! I don’t have a choice!” I didn’t mean to sound as cross as I did.
They looked at each other with wide eyes and expressions that mocked a child who had been scolded. “Wow!” Alexander pointed at me, “Don’t anybody stick a pin in her!”
“Right then! That’s it!” Oliver reached over and flipped my text book shut.
“Why did you do that?” I squealed. I slammed my hands on to the table.
Alexander yanked the book away from the front of me. I made a grab for it, but Oliver swooped down and scooped me up from around the waist. “Hey! Put me down!” I cried as he lifted me and out of my chair. “Hey! Hey! Stop it! Put me down!” I screamed again as he hoisted me over his shoulder and began to carry me out of the room. “I’m in a skirt, You Twit!”
He clapped his hand on my bum as if to keep the skirt decent and continued walking. The crowd roared and cheered. I could feel my face burning blood red. I looked up through the hair covering my eyes to see everybody in the room laughing and pointing.
“Bring her back safe!” Alexander beamed as he called out over the clapping and howls that filled the room.
“Oh, I will, don’t you worry!” Oliver replied. Without looking back he continued through the door, down the corridor and straight out of the building.
“Put me down!” I hit him on his back. It had no effect. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I wasn’t angry, exactly, but I was a little more than annoyed and confused. Oliver ignored my protests. “Put me down or I’ll scream!”
“You’re already screaming,” He told me. “Nobody’s coming, yeah?”
Oliver walked with me over his shoulder all the way to the lake before he set me down ankle deep in snow. “Don’t you say a word!” He put his fingers over my lips. “I know it’s cold. Just give me a minute-like.”
“Can I go back in where it’s warm if I do?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then, make it quick.”
He put his hands on my shoulders, “We’re playing a game. You do what I say.”
“Doesn’t sound fair.” I crossed my arms in front of me. I was freezing.
“Trust me, Sil. Shut your eyes.” I did. He walked around me and wrapped his arms around me from behind. “Now, relax and take a few deep breaths. Not like that! That’s more like hyperventilating! Do it for real! Deep, long breaths. Feel the cold air in your lungs.” I took a few deep breaths, “Let your shoulders fall. Relax your neck,” He put his chin on my shoulder and moved us in a half circle. “Now, pretend that Cardiff University does not exist. Pretend that nothing exists at all. Pretend that nothing is real but you and me, Sil, standing in the snow on a cold December’s eve just before Christmas. Just you and me in the still keeping each other as warm as we can. Let yourself be quiet and listen to the night. Tell me what you hear.”
We stood there for a long time. “I can hear an owl,” I whispered. “What’s that creaking?”
It’s the ice on the lake,” He whispered back.
We stood there for another moment. “I can hear you breathing.”
He laughed quietly.
“It’s like I can hear the air. It’s like I can almost hear the cold buzzing in my ears.”
“Good. Now I want you to open your eyes and look up, but remember that it’s just you and me…just us…”
I opened my eyes. The sky above us was unbelievably beautiful, filled with millions of stars. In the middle of it all, right above us, was the largest, silver moon I had ever seen. Without thinking about what I was doing, I lifted my arm and reached out to touch it.
“This is what it means to be alive, Silvia,” Oliver whispered into my ear, “The cold on your skin, the owls hooting and the ice creaking. That mind blowing black sky with a zillion sparkles in it. That big old moon in the middle shining down…that’s what it is to be alive. All of that and you and me and the rest just doesn’t matter.”
I turned. As beautiful as it was, all I wanted was to see was his face.
He took my hands in his and warmed them with his breath, then put them against his chest, “I love you, Silvia. I have always loved you. I loved you before forever began and I’ll love you still after forever ends.”
“I love you, too, Oliver. I always have.”
“Then come back to me?” His voice was as soft as his eyes, “Stay with me this time? I miss you when you go.”
I buried my face into his shirt, “I’ll stay with you for always if you’ll keep me.”
“Ah, Silly Sil,” He massaged the back of my head with his fingers, “I’ll keep you for always and then some.”
We stood in each other’s arms looking up at the sky for a long time.
“Silvia?”
“Yes?”
“I can’t feel my toes.”
“Me either. Let’s go inside.”
“One promise first?” He stared down into my eyes.
“Anything.”
“It’s Friday night,” He said gently, “Everybody’s in a good mood. Promise me no books until Sunday. Sit around with me. Let me have my Sil back.”
“That sounds like the most wonderful idea ever.”
We walked back to the school hand in hand. As we entered, Headmistress Pennyweather was passing through the hall with a pile of file folders in her arms. “Good evening,” She smiled and nodded her head at
us, “The opinion of most from the seventh year common room is that you would make a fine caveman, Mister Dickinson, carrying your best girl off on your back out into the snow. I hope that the cold air has brought you back to your senses.”
“Yes, ma’am. Both of us it has.” He replied.
She gave him a look that said she was amused, but he needed to watch his step. “I am glad to see you made it back by the curfew bell. You two should return to your common room. The other Mister Dickinson has pilfered a large beach ball from the gymnasium and Merlyn Pierce has managed to wire a portable karaoke machine up to a loud speaker. There is…pardon me for using a phrase I am far too old to be using…a party banging up in the house.”
“Bloody excellent!” Oliver exclaimed with a grin that would have taken any woman off her feet.
Headmistress Pennyweather’s catlike eyes moved from Oliver to me. She continued to smile pleasantly as she shifted the files in her arms, “I really must go. Please inform Mister Pierce that that tampering with school property is a punishable offence. I am very busy, however, and I might forget that he did it at all if the loudspeaker is fully functional in the morning. We do have amplifiers in the music room that may be used with permission from Professor Adkins, for future reference. As well, Mister Dickinson,” Her eyes flashed back to Oliver before she turned on her heel to leave, “Tell your brother to return the ball in the morning and that I want the painting he made on the inside of his cupboard door removed tonight. He’s quite a clever artist, but it cannot remain. If word of it got out he was creating new depictions of professors he could wind up in detentions again. I am certain you didn’t have anything to do with it yourself.”
“I’ll be sure to tell him,” Oliver gave her a wave, admitting nothing, “Have a good evening, Headmistress.”
“See you two at breakfast,” She sang as she strolled away.
Oliver had been right. Sitting around our common room laughing hysterically at our fellow seventh years belting out karaoke was all the medicine I needed to sort out my priorities. Well, that and shamelessly snogging him on the couch in front of the entire student body. The highlight of the evening was when Alexander, Nina Jacoby and Deidre McDaniel, did a searing rendition of Doctor and the Medics “Spirit in the Sky”, complete with Alexander “going on up” by climbing the tapestry. Later, accompanied by Merlyn and Lance, they danced the entire dance from the Cure’s Why Can’t I Be You? video while Ian Phelps sang it. Quite well, too. When the final bell rang at a quarter to midnight signalling us all that it was time to return to our dorm rooms, Oliver and I were the last to leave. He reluctantly walked me to the entrance of the girl’s dormitory and gave me one last lingering kiss on the lips.
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