‘Thanks,’ I whisper. ‘It was sweet of you to come. They’ll be letting me out soon, but … thanks.’
‘Right,’ Alfie says. ‘I walked up to Tanglewood earlier to see how you were, but it was just crazy, what with the police and the newspaper people and everything, and obviously your gran won’t get in to see you till later now. So I thought I’d just jump on a bus and come say hi. In case you were worrying.’
‘Police?’ I echo. ‘Newspaper people? I am worrying now, Alfie. What’s happened?’
Alfie bites his lip. ‘They didn’t tell you?’ he says. ‘Right. No. They didn’t tell you, obviously. Because you’re ill in hospital with smoke inhalation and they don’t want to stress you out …’
‘Tell me what?’ I say.
‘I am a liability,’ Alfie groans. ‘I try to do the right thing, but then I just open my big mouth and put my foot in it, every single time …’
‘Alfie, tell me!’ I yell.
He goes a little pale. ‘It’s Honey,’ he says. ‘She went missing last night while the ambulance and the fire engine were there. Her passport’s gone and money’s been taken and your grandma is worried sick …’
My eyes widen. Mum and Paddy are due back any time. Will they return to find that a stable has burnt down and that one of their daughters is missing, the other in hospital? Nightmare.
‘Why would she do that?’ Alfie asks. ‘Run away?’
‘When I tried to put Humbug in the stable, Honey and Marty were in there,’ I say. ‘They’d been smoking – and, well, kissing, I think. Marty legged it and Honey chucked down her cigarette … We were arguing and didn’t notice the fire till it was too late. She went to get help, and I was trying to keep the flames down, but I went all woozy and passed out …’
‘I bet Honey blames herself,’ Alfie says.
I sigh. ‘She won’t know whether the workshop was saved, or whether I’m OK, or anything. She must be worried sick …’
Alfie settles himself in the bedside armchair. ‘She won’t get far,’ he says. ‘She can’t, can she? Where would she go?’
‘I don’t know.’
I think of the passport and my heart lurches. Surely nobody would sell an airline ticket to a fifteen-year-old? My sister is out there somewhere, a runaway … and all because of me. I pick up a daisy and pierce the stem with my thumbnail, pushing another flower through, linking the daisies together and willing my big sister to stay safe, to come home. By the time I’ve linked all of the daisies, my eyes are blurred with tears.
‘Epic fail on the cheer-up front,’ Alfie says glumly. ‘Useless, aren’t I?’
‘Not useless,’ I tell him. ‘Not useless at all.’
‘You know I’m here for you, right?’ he grins. ‘Always. Just ask, just text, I’ll be there. OK?’
The curtain flicks back and a nurse appears with a tray of food. She tries to chase Alfie away, but he says he is my cousin, then my brother, then my boyfriend, and finally the nurse takes pity on him and lets him stay. When she’s gone, he watches me pick out a single lettuce leaf and leave the rest.
‘Not hungry?’
‘Just tired,’ I sigh. ‘I feel like I haven’t slept for a month.’
‘You have to eat,’ he says, nicking a few forkfuls of pasta. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
‘I can’t,’ I whisper.
‘So tell someone,’ Alfie says. ‘Someone in here, someone who can help. Because I have waited a long time for you to notice me, Summer Tanberry, and I’m not about to lose you now.’
33
Alfie leaves, but before I can try to call anyone to find out what’s happened with Honey, yet another doctor, young and pretty, with shiny dark hair and bright red lipstick, comes to talk to me. ‘I’m Dr Khan,’ she tells me. ‘I specialize in working with young people with eating issues. Everyone is quite worried about you, you know.’
I bite my lip.
‘Summer, are you on a diet?’
‘Not exactly …’
‘Watching what you eat?’
I shrug.
‘Your parents have been out of the country for a while,’ she says, consulting her notes. ‘They’re coming in later to see you …’
‘I thought I was going home?’ My eyes brim with tears and the tears spill down my cheeks, on and on as if they will never stop.
‘You will,’ Dr Khan says. ‘But a few things have come up, and I’d like to talk to your grandma first, and your parents. I believe you’ve lost a lot of weight lately. I don’t think you’re eating much at all, and that’s almost certainly why you passed out last night. Your body is starving, Summer. I know you’re frightened, and I know you’re doing your best right now, but sometimes even the strongest and smartest of us need help. That’s what I’m here for.’
Don’t tell her, the voice in my head roars. Don’t!
And then I hear an echo of Alfie’s words, saying just the opposite. ‘Tell someone. Someone who can help.’
‘You don’t understand,’ I whisper. ‘I can’t help it. Any of it. I know it’s scaring people, but I can’t stop – I’m just trying to keep everything under control because it feels like nothing ever is! Is that so bad?’
Even as I say it, I begin to see that trying to survive on lettuce leaves and apples won’t make me a better dancer or a better daughter. It won’t take away the stress of competing for a place at dance school or a starring role, and it cannot turn the clock back to when I was seven years old or make my dad love me as much as I want him to.
‘I do understand,’ Dr Khan says softly. ‘I understand because I’ve been there too, and I came through. You’re clever, Summer, a perfectionist, a worker, just as I was. You like to have things under control, but trust me, this isn’t the way to achieve your dreams. It can only destroy them, destroy everything you’ve worked so hard for.’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say, the words salty with tears.
‘I do,’ Dr Khan says. ‘I can help you. I promise.’
It’s evening by the time Mum and Paddy arrive, their faces weary with jet lag and worry. Mum throws her arms round me and pulls me close.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers into my hair. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you needed me. Oh, Summer, what have you done to yourself?’
I cling on tight, my tears making a wet patch on the shoulder of her T-shirt, breathing in her familiar smell of coconut shampoo and love, letting her rock me, stroke my hair, hold me close.
‘It’s OK,’ I whisper over and over, like a mantra. And somehow it is.
Paddy tells me that Honey has been found, that the police tracked her down to Heathrow, where she’d tried to buy a ticket for Australia with the emergency credit card taken from the kitchen drawer. ‘She’s safe,’ he tells me, his face grim. ‘That’s something, I suppose.’
I look at the daisy chain made earlier, draped over the headboard of the hospital bed like a talisman. It is wilted now, but still, it’s a comfort.
We all talk again with Dr Khan, who asks me to come to a weekly clinic where she can help me with my fear of food. ‘Beating an eating disorder takes time,’ she tells me. ‘You need to be patient, determined. It will be hard work. But if you trust me, I can help you.’
‘What about when term starts?’ Paddy frowns. ‘She’ll be at boarding school then.’
‘No,’ Dr Khan says firmly. ‘She won’t. We have to tackle this first … Summer needs to get well.’
I wait for the pain of this to twist at my heart, but all I feel is relief. I cannot go to Rochelle Academy right now, I know that. I wouldn’t last a week, let alone a month.
The next day I am allowed home. There is no welcome banner, no celebration cake, just wide eyes and wary looks and hugs that are so gentle they make me feel like I am made of glass and might shatter at any moment. Honey isn’t there. Mum tells me she hasn’t left her room since last night.
‘Are you all right?’ Cherry wants to know. ‘Is there anything we can do?’
I shake my head, u
nable to find the words. I have taken our muddled, happy family and smashed it to pieces, painted blue shadows of worry under my mum’s eyes, etched deep lines of fear into Grandma Kate’s forehead. My twin is looking at me as though I am a stranger, as though she never knew me at all, and that hurts.
‘I just want things to be normal,’ I say. ‘Carry on with your usual things. Cherry, go and see Shay. Coco, hang out with your friends. Skye, you’re supposed to be working … don’t stay home on my account, OK? Do whatever you’d usually be doing. I’m fine, honestly … but I’m really tired …’
Mum sighs. ‘You’re right, Summer … you should probably rest.’
I go up to my room, close the door softly. I pick up a ballet CD and slot it into the player, slip on my pointe shoes and tie the ribbons carefully. I stand with one hand on the window sill, chin tilted high, arms curved, feet in first position. Then the tears come, and I slam a hand down on the CD player to stop the music, tear off the shoes. I’ve been waiting for the pain to hit and now it’s here, wave after wave of grief for a dream that will never be. I have ruined everything, sabotaged my future.
Mum will have to make awkward phone calls, talk to Miss Elise and Sylvie Rochelle. Another girl will get my scholarship place, my dream. Maybe Jodie? I hope so. At least then some good would have come from it all.
There’s a knock at the door and Honey appears, her blonde hair ruffled, eyeliner smudged. ‘We need to talk,’ she says.
We sit at opposite ends of the bed, cross-legged, the patchwork cover stretched out between us.
‘I’m an idiot,’ she begins. ‘The worst big sister since time began. I’m so sorry, Summer. I was sick with worry when I found you in the stable, and then the ambulance came and it was all my fault …’
I shake my head. ‘If I hadn’t disturbed you, argued with you, none of this would have happened. And I fainted because I’d hardly eaten anything all day, not because of the smoke.’
Honey shrugs. ‘I’ve been worried about you for weeks,’ she says. ‘I’m just not good at showing it. It’s anorexia, Summer; you have to face up to it.’
I nod. ‘There’s a doctor at the hospital, a specialist. She’s going to help me.’
‘I hope so,’ Honey says. ‘Because I can’t bear it, watching you disintegrate. I’m the disaster in this family, OK? I’ve just proved it once and for all, so don’t even try to pretend you can come close. Running away sucks by the way. I met so many creeps I was almost glad when the police showed up.’
‘Were you trying to get to Dad?’
She shrugs. ‘I wanted to be as far away from here as possible, and I thought Dad might understand. As if. I spoke to him on Skype last night, and he was furious.’
‘He’s pretty hopeless, as dads go,’ I say.
‘I guess,’ Honey says, and that’s how I know she is really hurting because I have never heard her say a word against Dad before, not ever.
‘I’ve crossed a line this time,’ she goes on. ‘Smoking, starting a fire, letting my little sister almost burn to death …’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ I argue.
‘It was a bit like that,’ she says. ‘And what do I do? Stay and face the music? No. I run away and end up in the middle of a major police hunt with headlines in the newspapers and everything. That’s bad, even for me.’
I smile sadly.
‘I’ll be grounded until I’m about sixty, I suppose,’ Honey grins. ‘My life is over. Marty will never look at me now, or JJ. I might as well sign up for extra maths class and start dating Anthony.’
‘Anthony’s OK,’ I say. ‘You haven’t treated him very well …’
‘I don’t treat anyone very well,’ Honey admits. ‘It’s not my style. I’m a bitch, right? I don’t care about anyone else …’
I squeeze Honey’s hand. ‘You do care … I know you do.’
She wipes a hand across her eyes, fierce, furious. ‘Just be careful, Summer,’ she says. ‘I’m the rebel and you’re Little Miss Perfect, but it’s just the same. You act a certain way and people expect you to go on doing it. It becomes the only way you know, and then you’re trapped …’
I blink. All these weeks I’ve been looking for someone who might understand how I was feeling – I just never guessed it could be Honey. Both of us feel the same hurt; we just react to it differently. I bottle up the pain, get angry with myself, push myself harder and harder, looking for perfection; Honey rebels and lashes out, angry at the world, making the wrong choices time after time. So different, yet so alike. I wish I’d seen it before.
‘We can change, can’t we?’ I say. ‘I feel like I’ve been on a treadmill for years, pushing the whole time, trying to be perfect … but I can’t quite get there. And right now, I’m tired of trying. I just want to be well again.’
My big sister holds me close. ‘You will be,’ she says.
34
Mum has made a huge feast of a dinner, a farewell meal for Grandma Kate and one designed to tempt me into eating. She makes all my one-time favourite foods: chicken pie and roast potatoes and gravy, with every kind of vegetable. Even Honey has helped, concocting a huge tower of meringue, whipped cream, strawberries and nuts. The table is heaped up like a Christmas feast, and my heart sinks because I know I can’t eat this, can’t even try.
‘It’s great to be back,’ Mum says, breaking the silence. ‘Peru was amazing, absolutely incredible, but … there’s no place like home.’
‘Trip of a lifetime,’ Paddy says. ‘And finding an organic cocoa supplier was the icing on the cake. It’s a real family set-up. Our involvement will make all the difference to them, and we get the boost of having an organic Fairtrade product too …’
‘Wonderful,’ Grandma Kate says. And then the conversation crashes.
‘Aren’t you eating, Summer?’ Mum cajoles. ‘Just a little? I want to feed you up now that I’m home …’
I hang my head, panic rising inside me. There is just too much of everything, and besides, I don’t want to be ‘fed up’. I spear a green bean and try to eat it, fail. I put my fork down.
I thought I would feel better, facing up to the problem, agreeing to get help. Isn’t that meant to be the hardest part? I thought some kind of magic switch would flick on and I would begin to get better, that the fears would lift and I could eat again, but that hasn’t happened.
‘You’re scaring her,’ Skye says, picking up on my mood. ‘This isn’t going to work.’
I scrape my chair back roughly and get up, pushing out of the kitchen. I run up the stairs, find my mobile and punch out a message. A reply pings back almost at once, and I smile.
I push a small bundle into my pink shoulder bag and go downstairs again, sneaking out of the front door and across the grass, beneath the trees and down to the cliff path. I pick my way down the steps, kick off my shoes, walk down to the sea. The tide has turned, leaving a margin of damp sand, ridged and ribbed, edged with surf. I wade into the water, shivering as a swirl of seaweed tangles around my ankles, feeling the push and pull of the ocean.
I reach into my pink shoulder bag and my fingers close round the new satin pointe shoes I had for my audition. My eyes blur with tears. I lift out the shoes, flinging them in a graceful arc across the waves so that the ribbons fly out behind them like streamers. They land randomly in the surf, buffeted backwards and forwards by the tide, getting further and further from the shore.
I am not going to ballet school, not now, maybe not ever. I’m not sure I even care any more. Mum mentioned something about studying dance after A levels, taking a performing arts course or training to be a dance teacher, but right now, I can’t think that far ahead.
The girl most likely to succeed … that’s a laugh. The dreams are over, shot down in flames, and I have nobody to blame but myself.
I feel like my heart is breaking. I turn away from the ocean, and in the distance I see Alfie walking along the sand towards me.
‘You came,’ I say, once he is close enough to hear me.<
br />
‘Of course I came,’ he says simply. ‘You asked me to.’
‘I messed up,’ I tell him. ‘Already. I want to get well again, I really do, but Mum made a special meal for me and everyone was looking at me and I couldn’t eat any of it …’
‘Hey,’ Alfie says. ‘Early days. You have to take it slowly. Give it a chance – this doctor person hasn’t even started helping you yet. You can do it, Summer. Believe it.’
He pushes a rucksack into my arms. ‘Anyhow, I brought supplies …’
We spread a blanket on the sand, unpack strawberries, apples, hard-boiled eggs, even a strange-looking cake that dips a little in the middle. ‘It’s carrot cake,’ he explains. ‘My own recipe. Wholemeal flour, no sugar, extra-low-fat cream cheese frosting …’
We sit side by side on the beach, looking out to sea. I eat a hard-boiled egg, an apple, and it doesn’t feel scary and the voice in my head stays silent. I bite into a strawberry, letting the sweet juice stain my lips. Alfie slips an arm round my shoulder and I lean into him, relaxing. I wonder if he will kiss me again, and if the kiss will taste of strawberries.
If I look hard enough, I can still see the pointe shoes, bobbing slightly on the current, far out to sea.
‘I won’t be going to ballet school now,’ I tell Alfie. ‘That dream bit the dust.’
‘OK,’ he says. ‘Plan B then.’
‘There is no Plan B,’ I sigh.
‘Better think of one then. And if Plan B falls through, move on to Plan C. There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet, right? You’re not a quitter, Summer.’
‘I guess.’
Alfie slices a piece of carrot cake, the tiniest piece ever, and offers it to me. I break off a corner and take a bite. It’s lighter than it looks, moist and sweet and fresh-tasting.
‘It’s good,’ I say, surprised.
‘Yup,’ he grins. ‘I’ve given up on the celebrity chef idea. I’m aiming more for the healthy wholefood market now. Plan D I think that is, for me.’
Broken dreams … maybe they’re just stepping stones to new possibilities? I like that idea.
3: Chocolate Box Girls: Summer's Dream Page 15