Bringing the Summer

by Julia Green

  ‘That’s the point!’

  ‘I’m scared!’ Ellie whispers.

  And so am I, even though it is too ridiculous to say aloud. It is so completely dark that I cannot tell who is who. I’m waiting for the heavy-handed cross shape on my back, but even an arm brushing against mine feels frightening. Gabes mutters something, and Beth shushes him. The room is full of dark shadowy movement as we circle round, waiting for the Murderer to strike.

  We move round the room, giggling, trying to avoid bumping into each other. Beth – at least, I think it’s her – sits on one of the chairs and stays there.

  Someone’s breathing heavily, right by my ear. My body tenses. Prickles run down my spine. A hand strokes my cheek, and for a moment I can’t tell who it is. I turn towards the dark shadow: Theo’s mouth brushes mine. ‘Not now,’ I whisper. ‘Not here!’

  He moves away again.

  The suspense is horrible. It lasts too long, and then at last there’s a melodramatic, blood-curdling cry: Theo crashes to the floor.

  Kit turns on the lights. ‘No one move!’ He begins his questions, in best detective style.

  We play five times, and three out of those, Theo is the victim, murdered by first Gabes, then Kit, and finally by Beth. Is it random, a coincidence? Or are they all using the game, somehow, to express some deep-running emotion? Theo seems to think so. ‘You don’t have to hit so hard,’ he complains. Liu and Kit are the other two victims. I’m slightly miffed that no one chooses me.

  ‘Now what?’ Kit asks.

  ‘I’m going to get a drink,’ Beth says.

  ‘Let’s play Man Hunt.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Outside, with torches. We make two teams, and the aim is to be the first team back to base. You catch the others out by shining the torch on them.’

  ‘We’ll need coats. It’s freezing!’

  Neither Liu nor Ellie want to play, so it’s Kit, Laura and Tom, Theo, Gabes and me left. Two teams of three.

  ‘You pick first, Freya,’ Laura says.

  ‘Kit.’

  Kit chooses Gabes. So that’s our team.

  Theo pulls the back door shut behind us.

  Stepping into the courtyard it’s like entering a whole different world. It’s not as dark as I expected because the sky is clear, sprinkled with stars. A three-quarters moon shines silver over the trees and fields, the cobbles and stone walls. Frost glitters on the windscreen of the van parked up next to the barn. It’s icy; totally still. For a second we are all dumbstruck, magicked by the frozen silence.

  Laura kisses Tom: the sound seems magnified in the cold night and Gabes and Kit both laugh out loud.

  ‘Shut up, morons,’ Tom says.

  ‘Tom!’

  ‘Well, honestly.’

  ‘Come on, then, let’s decide where base is,’ Kit says.

  ‘The orchard, in the summerhouse.’

  ‘Everyone got a torch?’

  ‘Five minutes for everyone to spread out,’ Kit says. ‘Game starts when I shout.’

  Gabes tugs my hand. ‘Come on, Freya!’

  I follow him across the yard, up the drive and towards the copse. In the moonlight, we are clearly visible, but up under the trees the darkness absorbs us into itself. My breath makes smoke clouds. Already, my fingers are icy.

  An owl calls. Or a person pretending to be an owl. Shadows criss-cross the drive, the yard. My heart pumps warm blood round my body. I strain forward, all senses alert, listening.

  ‘Go!’ Kit yells.

  Gabes has crept closer to me. He holds me back by the arm. ‘Wait. Don’t rush.’

  Torchlight flickers out across the field: ‘Got you!’ someone shouts.

  ‘Now!’

  I step out quietly out from my hiding place under the trees. Someone moves across the yard next to the barn, and for a second I think of turning on my torch beam to catch them, but all my instincts are to stay safe, hidden by the dark. Gabes is still somewhere behind me: I can hear his feet rustling through dead leaves. I creep forward again.

  Something steps out of the shadows, a hand covers my mouth before I can scream as my arm twists painfully back. Theo’s hot breath comes on my face: the sharp stink of alcohol. ‘What were you doing up there? With Gabes?’ he hisses.

  ‘Nothing. It’s a game, Theo. Now let go of my arm. That hurts.’

  He loosens his grip.

  I pull my arm into my chest, rub the sore place. I can sense Theo’s agitation. It makes me afraid. I look back, but there’s no sign of Gabes now. Further down the drive, a light flashes, someone shouts out: Laura’s been caught.

  ‘Come on,’ I say to Theo. ‘Shine the torch, seeing as you’ve caught me. That’s the game, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why didn’t you choose me first, for your team?’ Theo pulls me up close again.

  I shiver in the dark. ‘Theo, this is silly. We’re just playing. It’s supposed to be fun.’

  He’s so close I can feel the pulse of his heart against my hand. He puts one hand on my hair, winds it round, so it prickles and pulls against my scalp.

  ‘Ouch! Stop hurting me, Theo!’

  ‘I have caught you now.’ His voice sounds strange.

  ‘Let go or I will yell out.’

  He lets my hair trickle through his fingers. I run away from him, slipping on the frosty drive.

  ‘Caught!’ Tom shouts, shining his torch on my face. ‘Only Gabes to get, and we’ll have won.’

  I join Laura and Kit in the summerhouse. We huddle together for warmth. Laura has found an old blanket and wraps it round us. We listen as Tom’s footsteps get quieter, moving up towards the trees. Kit is furious that he was first to be caught, impatient for the game to finish so we can begin all over again.

  ‘It’s a strange sort of game,’ I say.

  ‘We played it night after night, when Gabes was about fourteen,’ Kit says. ‘I was only about eleven and I was terrified but also so happy and excited that they’d let me join in for once. We were all deadly serious. Waiting in the dark, it felt real. Not like a game at all.’

  Torchlight flickers through the trees, a zigzag of light. Lights tumble over each other. Tom yells out, ‘Gabes! You’re caught! Come back!’

  They walk slowly back down to join us. Theo’s with them.

  ‘We should change the teams,’ Theo says. ‘I’ll go with Freya and Laura this time.’

  There’s such a strange note in his voice that no one dares challenge him. That’s how he gets his own way. They’re all a bit scared of him. I run my hand over the back of my neck, where Theo hurt it.

  ‘It’s much too cold to play out any longer,’ Laura says. ‘I’m going in. Tom?’

  He follows her. The rest of us watch the bright square of light spread out over the cobbles as the kitchen door opens, and then fold back into darkness, as it slams shut.

  ‘Kit and Gabes versus Freya and me,’ Theo says. ‘Ten minutes to disperse, winners are first team back to base without being caught.’ He takes my hand. ‘Ready?’

  We run up the drive, feet slipping, and at the top of the hill where the drive meets the lane Theo stops for a second and pulls me in for a kiss. He seems fierce, almost: that glittery quality I’ve seen in him before. Slightly scary. But it’s exciting, too, and I don’t want him to stop. He slips his hands in the space between the buttons on my coat, and then up under my top. I shiver: his hands are freezing next to my bare skin.

  ‘Let’s run away!’ Theo says. ‘Let’s never go back! Come away with me, Freya!’

  I know he’s joking, don’t I? It seems stupid, feeble, to remonstrate, to say it’s too cold, too silly: where would we go, and why? I pull back slightly.

  ‘Where’s your sense of adventure, Freya?’ That edge is back in his voice.

  ‘I’m numb with cold. And we’re supposed to be playing a game. It must be ten minutes by now.’

  In the moonlight I can see his face, disappointed.

  ‘Come on. Let’s catch the others, Theo.’r />
  ‘Bridie would have said yes,’ Theo says, very quietly. ‘She’d have suggested it first.’

  ‘But I’m not Bridie,’ I snap. ‘And Bridie’s dead.’ I start running, slipping and sliding on the ice, tears beginning to spill. Once I’m in the yard, I turn the torch on.

  Kit and Gabes are both huddled under the blanket in the summerhouse. Kit looks at me in the thin beam of the torchlight. ‘What happened? Where were you? You just disappeared. We won, anyway.’

  ‘I’m freezing,’ I say. ‘I need to go inside.’

  ‘We’ll come with you,’ Gabes says. ‘Where’s Theo?’

  ‘Up on the lane, still.’

  ‘Typical. Shall I go and tell him the game’s over?’ Kit says.

  ‘Leave him to stew,’ Gabes says. ‘He can look after himself.’

  It’s late. Theo still hasn’t come back. No one else seems worried; the adults don’t seem to have noticed, and I can’t be the one to tell them. Gabes says to stop worrying, that Theo often goes off, it doesn’t mean anything. But I can’t help my stomach churning with anxiety about him, about what he might do. It brings back what happened with my brother, when he disappeared that night . . . and even though Theo is nothing like Joe, and we are nowhere near the sea, or boats, and nothing is the same . . . despite knowing all of this, a horrible sense of dread seeps into my bones.

  I join the few people still in the sitting room. Nick and Maddie and the aunts and uncles have gone to bed already.

  Beth pats the sofa next to her. ‘Your cheeks are bright pink from the cold, Freya! And your eyes look all sparkly!’

  Laura puts another log on the fire. ‘We’ve all got drinks. Do you want one? Or Gabes will make you something hot, won’t you, Gabes? Hot chocolate?’

  ‘Yes please,’ I say.

  ‘And for me,’ Kit says.

  I turn to look at Beth. ‘Theo is still outside,’ I start to say.

  She humphs. ‘He’s probably gone for a midnight commune with nature, or a swim or something equally mad.’

  ‘He wouldn’t. Swim? When it’s this cold?’

  Beth laughs. ‘Who knows? He’ll be fine.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we go and look for him? It’s so dangerous, in cold water, by yourself.’

  ‘I don’t think he’d really be so stupid, not even Theo.’ She looks at me. She’s speaking very quietly, so no one else can hear. ‘He’ll be trying to impress you, one way or another. How brave he is, or something. You know he’s . . . he’s a bit obsessed with you? I was confused at first, because I thought you and Gabes were together . . . But when I gave him a lift home from Oxford, Theo talked about you the whole way, practically.’

  I don’t know what to say to that. I could tell her it’s Bridie he’s obsessed with, really. Not me. But I don’t.

  ‘I’ve watched you both, today,’ Beth says softly. ‘You like him too, don’t you?’

  Before I can answer, the door swings open and Gabes comes in carrying a tray of steaming mugs of hot chocolate. I take mine, sip it slowly. My hands and toes begin to thaw. I’m relieved that Gabes came in and interrupted Beth and me. What could I have possibly said to her about Theo? I do like him, yes, but he scares me, too . . .

  Kit pulls the box for Pictionary from under the coffee table and starts sorting out pencils and paper. ‘Everyone going to play?’

  ‘Freya and me can be a team,’ Beth says. ‘You and Gabes, and Tom and Laura, yes?’

  Kit throws the dice and the game begins.

  I give a huge yawn. I’m warm and cosy now, and very sleepy.

  ‘You look ready for bed!’ Beth laughs. ‘Do you want to go on up?’

  ‘Which room am I sleeping in?’

  ‘You can choose; there’s a spare mattress in our room, if you don’t mind being woken up really early by the babies. Or there’s the space between the two halves of the house, where we played murder in the dark. Near Theo’s room.’

  ‘Did Theo come in?’

  ‘I don’t know. Shall we see?’

  I pad upstairs behind Beth.

  She checks the babies as we go past, and then goes on down the passage way to Theo’s door. She knocks, waits, opens it. Empty. ‘Why don’t we bring the mattress along here, in the space on the landing? Then you’ll hear him when he comes back. I’m sure he will. It’s much too cold to sleep outside tonight.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t? If he’s hurt or something?’

  Beth yawns. ‘I haven’t got the energy to go traipsing off in the dark looking for him now. And he’d be furious. He’ll be back in his own time, Freya. Really.’

  We tiptoe into the babies’ room so I can get the mattress and sleeping bag. Both of them are sleeping soundly on their backs, their little hands up by their heads, totally relaxed and open. Beth leans over the cots and strokes their soft heads gently. We carry the mattress between us and put it down on the carpet in the corner under the eaves.

  ‘Now get some sleep. See you in the morning. Breakfast will be help-yourself, any time you want.’ Beth kisses me; she strokes my hair too, as if I’m one of her children. ‘Night night.’

  The heating has gone off hours before; the house is cold. I clean my teeth quickly in the bathroom, hurry back and slither down into the sleeping bag. I’m meaning to stay awake, till I hear Theo’s safely back, but I can’t . . . my eyes are heavy, I’m drifting. I have that odd sensation of dropping . . . falling . . .

  Twenty-three

  I wake in the darkness with a lurch. My heart thuds with heavy fear. I lie awake in the dark, straining to hear sounds – any small clue that Theo’s home. His door is ajar, like it was before. Is there a light on downstairs? Perhaps the noise of the kitchen door woke me?

  But the house is silent, all except for the creaking and rustling of an ancient house where the wooden floorboards, the solid beams and rafters sigh and settle as the temperature drops.

  How long is it till morning?

  The sense that I’m not in my house, with my own family, steals over me, bit by bit. I long, suddenly and totally, to be somewhere more familiar and safe. The place I’m longing for at this moment isn’t the new house with Mum and Dad, but the solid stone house on St Ailla with Evie and Gramps. In my mind’s eye I can see it vividly: the slate-tiled roof and the thick walls, the wooden gate and the path through the front garden to the door. I imagine the wind blowing a gale, the booming sound of the sea crashing on the rocks. It is never silent.

  And if I was there now, I’d be getting up and going downstairs; Evie would hear me, and she’d come down too, and I’d tell her . . .

  Tell her everything.

  About Theo, and Bridie. About Gabes, and Beth . . . this family that isn’t my family, however much I wish it was.

  There! It must have been the sound of the back door, after all, that first woke me. The stairs creak as someone treads heavily up them, and along the landing. I wait, holding my breath, but eyes tight shut, pretending to be asleep.

  Theo brushes against my mattress as he squeezes past and goes into his room. I listen to him undressing, pulling the duvet up around him, moving his pillow to get comfy. The bed squeaks every time he shifts or turns over.

  It goes quiet.

  I open my eyes.

  Theo’s standing at the bedroom doorway, watching me. His eyes glint in the dark. It’s seriously spooky.

  ‘You are awake. I knew you were!’ he says.

  ‘I was worried about you,’ I whisper. ‘When you didn’t come back.’

  ‘That makes a change,’ Theo says. ‘I don’t suppose anyone else was.’

  ‘Where have you been all this time?’

  ‘I went to see if the stream was frozen. It wasn’t, or only a tiny bit at the edges, not thick enough to take my weight.’

  I suck in my breath, imagining him walking on ice, slipping through . . . People die, doing that.

  ‘Then I just walked for hours. Ended up at the railway.’

  He’s deliberately frightening me.


  ‘Why?’ I whisper.

  ‘She told me to.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Bridie, of course.’

  I don’t speak. I remember what he said before, about hearing voices. Her voice, telling him to do things.

  He laughs, a hollow laugh. ‘But there were no trains. Because it’s Christmas Day.’

  ‘Theo,’ I say. ‘Stop this.’

  ‘Stop what, sweet Freya?’

  ‘This crazy talk. You don’t mean it. You’re winding me up. Very successfully, if you must know.’

  ‘But you were worried?’

  ‘Yes. I told you before. I wanted to come and find you, but Beth said . . . she said you often went off, and you’d come back. And I didn’t know where to start looking, in any case.’

  He wants to know I was worried. It’s as if he wants to push things to the limit, to test people. Me.

  ‘Theo?’ I say. ‘It’s not fair, making people worry just for the sake of it, to prove something. It’s a cruel thing to do.’

  He’s silent.

  I turn away, wriggle further down into the sleeping bag and pull the hood up to cover my face. I don’t like him looking down at me like that, watching me.

  Eventually he goes back into his room. He leaves the door open. It isn’t very long before I hear the slow, rhythmic breathing of someone deeply asleep.

  Gradually, I calm down.

  I so wanted to believe that somehow I could save Theo from himself, just by being normal and loving. By understanding what it’s like to feel sad, and to miss someone who’s died. I could offer him that, at least. That’s what I thought. But it’s not enough, I realise now.

  Everything seems different by the morning. I wake, late, to a strange, pale light. I crawl along the mattress and pull back the curtain on the little window next to the roof beam.

  ‘Theo! Come and look! It’s snowing!’

  Theo groans. ‘I’m asleep! You’re too loud!’

  ‘No, come here and see. It’s amazing! Proper snow that’s settling.’

  He wakes up fully after a while; he wraps himself in his duvet and joins me at the window. ‘You’re cold!’ he says. He holds out one edge of the duvet so I can cuddle in next to him, in the warm. He puts his arm round me and pulls me close. I’m acutely aware of his body, in a creased T-shirt and old pyjama bottoms, next to mine in my thin pyjamas. For a while, neither of us speaks. We watch the snow falling, piling on to the window ledge. It seems eerily quiet.