Cherry Blossom Dreams

by Gwyneth Rees

  In memory of Karen Cheylan

  29th April 1974 – 17th April 2014

  Hi there,

  I just wanted to say hello and tell you a bit about myself.

  I live on the very outside of London near the River Thames, with my husband (who is Dutch and makes great pancakes!) and our two young daughters. We also have a Siamese cat called Hamish who came to us as a very timid rescue cat and spent the first few weeks hiding up the chimney! Now he is a real family cat and loves sitting on my lap (and trying to sit on my keyboard!) when I’m at my desk writing.

  I’m half Welsh and half English but I grew up in Scotland. Before I became a writer I worked as a doctor, mainly with children and teenagers. From as far back as I can remember I’ve always loved stories in any form – reading books, watching films, playing make-believe games. As a child I always had one fantasy world or another on the go and as I grew older that changed to actual ongoing sagas that I wrote down in exercise books and worked on for weeks at a time.

  I really hope you enjoy reading this – and that you’ll write to me at Gwyneth.Rees@bloomsbury.com to let me know what you think. I’d love it if you told me a bit about yourself too!

  Best wishes,

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Books by Gwyneth Rees

  To be honest, I was feeling a bit nervous about telling Lily my big news. It’s not that I don’t trust her. After all, she’s my best friend and I know she’s always got my back, even if lately it seems like all she’s interested in is boys, fashion, soap operas and more boys. It was just that this was such a Big Thing and the consequences if she did spill the beans – especially at school – would be massive. And I’m not just talking a little bit massive. I’m talking volcano-erupting massive here.

  ‘So tell me everything!’ demanded Lily, closing her bedroom door as I went over to flop down on her bed. I hadn’t seen her this excited since I’d first dished out the news that Mum was dating our English teacher, Mr Anderson.

  Or Leo as we call him now (except when we’re in school, of course).

  ‘I can’t believe you guys actually went on holiday with him!’ Lily dived on to the end of her bed like she used to do when we were much younger. Lily and I have been best friends since we were in the infants. Now that we’re older – Lily is already thirteen and I will be too in a couple of months – we aren’t really in the same classes and we don’t hang out together much in school. But the two of us still see each other in the holidays and at the weekends. ‘This is way beyond cool, Sasha,’ Lily informed me. ‘This is like the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to a kid in our school!’

  ‘Don’t be daft!’ I snapped. Lily tends to exaggerate when she gets excited about something – and my mum and our English teacher (who is generally considered to be pretty hot) spending the Easter holiday together in Greece with me and my twin brother, Sean, as witnesses, had to be … well … the most exciting thing ever to happen in our little town as far as she was concerned.

  ‘So spill,’ she said. ‘Don’t miss out a single detail. I bet he looks great in swimming trunks, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Lily!’ I hissed, feeling myself flushing.

  ‘You do realise your mother’s a total cradle snatcher?’ Lily declared. ‘Don’t look like that! It wasn’t a criticism. We’re all dead impressed that she’s got herself a boyfriend ten years younger than her. My mum says good on her and even my gran said “Way to go” when Mum told her you were all going on holiday together!’

  ‘He’s only nine years younger and you promised not to tell anyone!’ I suddenly imagined her entire extended family sharing the news about Mum and Leo with the whole planet on Facebook.

  ‘I thought you just meant don’t tell anyone at school. I don’t know why you want to keep it a secret though. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. After all, Leo is a total H.O.G.!’

  ‘Huh?’ I looked at her blankly.

  ‘Hot Older Guy,’ Lily elaborated impatiently. Lily can be pretty embarrassing the way she talks about guys sometimes. Mostly her crushes are on pop stars or famous actors, but just occasionally she gets one on an unobtainable person in real life instead.

  I don’t think she has a proper crush on Leo but with Lily you can never be a hundred per cent sure. ‘Come on then,’ she prompted. ‘Tell me what happened!’

  ‘Well …’ I began. ‘Actually I’ve got some really big news but Mum wants to keep it a secret for now. I’ll tell you as long as you promise not to tell anyone else – seriously, Lily, not anyone. OK? Not your mum or your granny or your auntie or your cousins and definitely not anyone in our school.’

  ‘OK, OK, I promise,’ Lily said. ‘You know you can trust me with a real secret.’

  ‘Well … Mum and Leo got engaged on holiday.’

  Lily practically screamed. ‘No way! You mean he actually proposed? Did he get down on one knee? Did he already have the ring? Tell me everything, Sasha – and I mean everything! Oh my God, this is awesome!’ Lily is a bit of a drama queen in case you hadn’t noticed. In fact her mum says ‘hyperbole’ is her middle name (I had to look it up, but she’s right).

  Actually, it was Mum who proposed to Leo. But Leo said yes straight away and went out and bought her a ring from a little jewellery shop in the seaside village where we were staying. And now me and my brother are going to have Mr Anderson as our step-dad. And no one at school – absolutely no one – is allowed to know. At least not until Leo has worked out how to tell our head teacher, Mr Jamieson.

  ‘You know Clara has a major crush on him, don’t you? She’ll be so jealous!’

  ‘No, Lily! You promised not to tell anyone at school!’ I said fiercely.

  ‘I don’t mean now, but eventually, when people find out. I mean, they will have to know some day, won’t they? They’ll be having a wedding! You can’t do that in secret.’

  I muttered something under my breath.

  Lily frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘I said if it actually happens. This is Mum we’re talking about here.’

  Lily shook her head at me. ‘You’re such a pessimist, Sasha. This is, like, the best thing that’s happened to you in forever … and you’ve got to be all gloom and doom straight away.’

  ‘I’m just being realistic,’ I said hotly. ‘Mum’s always been unlucky when it comes to love. Even Granny says so and she doesn’t even believe in luck and fate and stuff like that.’

  ‘Unlucky? You mean because your dad died?’ Lily sounded genuinely puzzled before adding quickly, ‘I know that was pretty unlucky, but –’

  ‘It’s not just that,’ I told her. ‘Mum is always falling in love with the wrong people! Remember when she met Gambling Gordon?’

  ‘How could I forget Gee-Gee?’ Lily said with a grin. She was especially proud of her pet name for the boyfri
end who was always borrowing money off Mum to bet on the horses. ‘That didn’t last long. What was it? Six months, tops? Your mum’s not that daft!’

  ‘I know, but then there was Married Michael …’

  Lily had named him that in retrospect. Mum had met Michael when Sean and I were nine (four years after our dad died) and we had all really liked him. After he had been in our lives for a whole year we found out that he didn’t actually travel a lot for work as he’d always claimed, but that he had a wife and kids in another part of the country. Mum had been devastated. I still can’t think of that time without getting butterflies in my tummy.

  ‘I’m telling you, Mum is totally jinxed when it comes to romance,’ I told Lily. ‘So I don’t want to get too excited about Leo just yet, OK?’

  Lily sighed. ‘But this is different. She’s been dating Leo for over a year and they knew each other way before that, the whole time he was tutoring Sean. They’ve actually had a chance to really get to know each other. Sean trusts him, doesn’t he?’

  I nodded. Sean thought the world of Leo. It had been Sean’s Year Five teacher who had first encouraged Mum to employ Leo as a tutor, saying that my brother was a lot more capable academically than he let on. (I’ve always worked hard and done well at school without needing any extra help – a fact which I sometimes think Mum doesn’t appreciate enough.)

  Anyway, thanks to Leo, Sean had managed to get through the entrance exam for Helensfield High (the grammar school just down the road from us), where Leo is one of the English teachers. And later, when Sean had been struggling to cope with Year Seven, Mum had asked Leo to come and give him some more help. Mum was single again at that point and Leo had started staying for a drink and a chat with Mum after Sean’s lesson was over.

  Now my brother and I were about to start our final term of Year Eight I could hardly believe that Mum and Leo had been dating for more than a year. I mean, it’s pretty weird seeing your teacher in his dressing gown, knowing what his favourite pizza is and even seeing him snog your mum on the odd occasion you walk in on them and they can’t jump apart quickly enough. But we’d eventually started to get used to it, and I was getting so accustomed to Leo being around at home that I had even stopped noticing how good-looking he is. Until someone like Lily draws attention to it, that is.

  ‘Right then, so it’s just you that’s being all negative as usual,’ Lily concluded.

  ‘It’s not just me! Granny’s worried too,’ I pointed out, thinking how right my grandmother’s instincts had been where Married Michael was concerned. In fact our grandmother had once told Mum that maybe she should stop looking for love and concentrate on bringing up me and my brother instead. That had gone down like a ton of bricks, because if there’s one thing Mum can’t stand it’s the thought of staying single for the rest of her life.

  ‘Yeah, well, she’s meant to worry,’ Lily responded impatiently. ‘She’s an old lady. You’re not, in case you hadn’t noticed. Honestly, why can’t you just lighten up and enjoy life for once?’

  ‘I do enjoy life!’

  ‘No, you don’t. You’re so cautious, Sasha. You never do anything outside your comfort zone.’

  I sighed loudly. I should have known she would turn the conversation round to this. It was getting to be a recurring topic with Lily, who wanted me to do more stuff with her and her new friends outside school. Frankly, her persistence about it was starting to get on my nerves. Why should I like all the same things they liked? I decided to try a new tactic.

  ‘So what’s wrong with that? I like my comfort zone. It’s … well … comforting!’ I gave her a grin to cajole her but her frown didn’t budge.

  ‘Look, Sasha,’ she went on with feeling, ‘you’re practically a teenager and you don’t act the least bit like one. You’re not even interested in clothes. Look at you – you’ve got a really great figure and yet you dress like … well … like you want to hide it or something.’

  I just gaped at her because this was over the top even for Lily.

  ‘Who’s got a great figure?’ said a teasing male voice. I nearly died of embarrassment when Lily’s fifteen-year-old brother Rafferty – or Raffy as everybody calls him – pushed open the door and stuck his head round. He was wearing jeans with a tight black T-shirt on his top half. I couldn’t help staring at his chest and thinking that it was quite a bit more muscly than my brother’s. It was then that I found myself beginning to blush.

  I stood up in a rush and made a grab for my big baggy cardy that was lying on Lily’s bed. ‘I’d better go,’ I muttered. I couldn’t bring myself to brush past Rafferty, who was still watching the two of us from the doorway, looking amused.

  ‘She’s right. You do have a nice figure,’ he told me with a grin. I’m sure my face was like a beetroot by then, and my palms felt clammy. ‘I mean, a lot of girls your age still have loads of puppy fat – like Lily here.’

  ‘WHAT?’ Lily screamed, hurling a shoe at him. ‘I HATE YOU! GET OUT OF MY ROOM RIGHT NOW!’

  As she picked up a second shoe I made my escape, not looking back as I bolted down their stairs, shouting, ‘See you at school!’

  As I walked back from Lily’s house clutching my cardigan round me protectively, I kept thinking about what she had said about me having a nice figure. On holiday we had mainly been sightseeing, but on a couple of warm, sunny days we had gone to the beach. I had worn a bikini until a boy who was slightly older had wolf-whistled at me. I don’t know why, but it made me feel really uncomfortable. After that I had made sure I kept my T-shirt on the whole time. I’d never thought much about what I looked like on the beach before. I mean, I’ve never been fat, and it wasn’t like my shape had changed that much in other ways yet, but the bikini sort of emphasised what little change there was, I suppose.

  I’m certainly not as developed on top as Lily, who has already started her periods. When I mentioned to Mum that I wished I would hurry up and start mine, she laughed and told me that the day would come soon enough. Mum started when she was eleven – the same as Lily – so she doesn’t know what it’s like having to wait and worry about it. I’ll be thirteen in a few months, so it’s got to happen soon and the whole thing is stressing me out. What if it happens when I’m at school? Will everyone know? Will it be really embarrassing? Will it hurt? I’m one of the youngest in our year and Lily makes me feel like such a baby if I try and discuss it with her. Mum doesn’t help either. She says that since she’s totally forgotten where she was (or how she felt) when she started her very first period, then it couldn’t have been all that traumatic. And she just rolls her eyes at me impatiently when I point out that people sometimes completely suppress their memories of really traumatic childhood events.

  My feet suddenly felt a bit chilly and I looked down at the silver and blue flip-flops I’d bought in Greece. Now that I was back home I didn’t want to stop wearing them, but I had to admit that mid-April at home was a lot cooler than in Greece.

  Fleetingly I wished we were still on holiday. We’d had the best time ever with Leo there to keep Mum in a good mood and to make us all laugh. As we explored the ancient Greek temples and other historical sites, he kept joking that it made him feel like he was in an Indiana Jones adventure, except that there were no baddies.

  Mum kept saying that it was wonderful to watch Sean and Leo getting on so well together. Mum always says that not having a dad is especially hard on Sean because it means he has no positive male role model (our grandfathers both died before we were born). I try not to let it bug me that she never appears so concerned that I don’t have a dad. Her take on daughters seems to be that if they have a mother then that’s good enough, with a dad being a kind of very nice luxury. I know Mum didn’t see much of her own father when she was growing up – not because he was dead like ours, but because he was always away at work. But she tells me this as if it therefore follows that it’s no big deal for me not to have a dad, which is actually pretty hurtful because really it’s a massive deal, especially when I se
e how protective and proud Lily’s dad is of her. And the way Mum doesn’t seem to get that is just … well, horrible. In fact it sometimes makes me feel like I don’t have much of a mum either – not one who bothers trying to understand me, at any rate.

  When I got home, Mum was in the hall doing yoga. It wasn’t odd for her to be doing yoga, but it was odd for her to be doing it in the hall where anyone could trip over her.

  ‘Mum, do you think I’ve got a nice figure?’ I asked, even though I know I’m not meant to speak to her if she’s in the lotus position with her eyes closed.

  Mum has a really nice figure. She’s tall and slim – but not too slim as she’s always quick to point out (she’s never approved of all those size zero models and she’s always telling me how important it is for a woman to have some curves). She has long, straight black hair, pale skin and very striking blue eyes. When I was little I used to think she looked just like Snow White.

  ‘You will have,’ she answered, opening her eyes to look at me, ‘when you fill out a bit.’

  ‘Fill out a bit?’

  ‘In the right places, I mean.’ She sighed and shifted position on the floor. Clearly she hadn’t been properly into her meditation. ‘Why? What has Lily been saying about your figure?’

  ‘Nothing … it doesn’t matter … Mum, since when did you try to meditate in the hall?’

  ‘It wasn’t planned, Sasha. I was about to phone your grandmother and I suddenly thought it might help if I tried to centre myself first. But I think where Granny is concerned, my anxious thoughts are meditation-resistant!’ She stood up, smiling at her own joke. ‘Now you know, Sasha, that girls go through puberty at different rates and just because Lily has already –’

  ‘Mum, stop it!’ I said, feeling embarrassed. ‘It’s not that. It’s –’

  But then Sean walked into the hall and I shut up abruptly. There was no way I was continuing this discussion with him listening. Not that my brother has got anything to celebrate yet as far as adolescent development goes. OK, so he’s nice enough to look at, I suppose – like me, Sean has our father’s brown hair and brown eyes, and sometimes when you look at a photo of our dad it’s like imagining Sean when he’s grown up – but he’s pretty small for his age. We were born prematurely – apparently that happens sometimes with twins – and Sean was the smaller out of the two of us. Even now, people who don’t know us tend to assume he’s my younger brother, which drives him mad.