“About time, too!” says Grandma, but Grandpa busies himself with the tea things and doesn’t say anything.
“Won’t you miss us?” says Hannah, and Grandma snorts.
“Hopeful, aren’t you?” she says. Then she sees the look on Hannah’s face and softens. “Maybe a bit. We’ve got used to having you around, messing the place up.”
“You’ll have to come and stay, in half term,” says Grandpa, and Hannah says we will.
At school, we’re allowed back out on to the playing fields and we have a giant grass fight with all the cut grass. The little ones build nests in it, for Barbie and Sylvanian Families and Action Men. Sometimes Emily and I help them, though we’re much too old for baby games, of course.
When we aren’t playing with the littlies, we go off on our own, Alexander and Emily and I. We climb the trees at the edge of the field and tell secrets. Emily tells us how her dad is going to teach her to drive a tractor, because you don’t need a driving licence if you have your own field, and he’ll teach us too when we go round to her house. Alexander tells us how he hates playing football, because the other boys always make him goalkeeper and he always lets the goals in.
“What’s it like living with your gran?” says Alexander, and I screw up my nose.
“It’s nice living in the country,” I say. “But I miss my dad.”
“What’s it like not having a mum?” says Emily in her soft voice. I think about it.
“Lonely,” I say. “Better now Dad’s coming back. But still lonely.”
“You’ve got us now,” says Emily, but it isn’t the same.
When we’re not telling secrets, we’re making plans. We’re going to write a book – have a club – build a treehouse. We get very excited when we think about the summer, then Emily says, “But Molly won’t be here. She’ll be in Newcastle.”
“I’ll visit,” I say. But who knows when that will be?
We go back down to Newcastle for the weekend, twice. The house isn’t as clean as I remember it being, but all the mouldy peppers have gone. Dad takes us out to the pub to meet his friend, who owns a newspaper and lets us lose all his money on the fruit machines. We go ice skating, and we go for a walk in the park and pick up snails and bits of wood like we used to with Mum, and we try to remember what living with each other was like.
“At the end of term,” Dad says, “we’ll be home together again.” And I lie in bed at night in the lightness of summer evenings, watching the shadows from my leaf mobile sailing across my wall, and try to imagine having a home again.
So many things are happening that I don’t have time to think about my man. He seems to have gone now, anyway. As the summer goes on, he gets further and further away, like someone I invented or a game I stopped playing. I went back to his barn once after the wild hunt, but it was empty. Half of the wall had fallen in, and no one could live there now.
End
But I do see him again.
It’s my birthday in May. We go to Kielder Forest for the day. Dad, Grandpa, Grandma, Hannah, Emily, Alexander and me.
It was never going to be perfect, but it’s enough.
The world seems to know that it’s my birthday. The sky is blue from one edge to the other, with fluffy little clouds like lambs’ wool. The forest is full of birds and green leaves and dappled sunlight. My present from Auntie Meg is a new grown-up skirt with beads on it and little mirrors. It’s almost exactly the same green as the trees and it makes me feel like something magical, something not exactly human.
We spread out our picnic by a stream. Hannah lies in the grass and reads her magazine, but Emily and Alexander and I go paddling. We splash Hannah and she squeals. We splash her again and she runs down to the stream and splashes us back.
Soon, Hannah’s leaving primary school for ever. She’ll be even more grown up than she is now. It’s nice to have her join in with us for once, while we still have her.
After lunch, Grandpa and Grandma settle down under the trees and the rest of us play tag. Dad’s It. He chases us all around the grass and into the edge of the forest. We go up as close to him as we dare, teasing him, and then run away again before he can catch us.
Dad’s chasing me, but I run and he gets Emily instead. Emily gets Hannah and Hannah gets Alexander and Alexander comes after me.
I’m bubbling up with happiness. It’s my birthday and no one can catch me. I run straight into the forest, then round again to confuse Alexander. The light is dappled and mysterious and the air is full of a green, living smell, of leaves and moss and tree-bark. I can feel the earth sinking under my sandals and the breeze against my skirt. Behind me, Alexander has given up and is chasing Emily, but I carry on running.
Somewhere in front of me is movement. Feet running, or dancing. Trees rustling. I burst forward into the clearing, and suddenly I’m part of the dance.
It’s like it was in the storm, when the trees held me, but this time they are dancing. I can feel the joy shivering through them. I am lifted and spun and passed to other arms, which lift me and spin me again. Shapes move – shadowy, laughing dancers, almost human.
I’m placed down on the ground again. I land awkwardly, and almost fall. Hands reach out and take mine, strong and warm. I look up, into the eyes that I know go with the hands.
His hair is thick and brown and curly. His trousers are a greeny brown, like the trees. A wreath of leaves and yellow flowers fall over one ear. His face is laughing but his eyes are the same as they always are, deep and brown and kind.
He takes my hand and leads me to the centre of the clearing. He dances me, very slowly and carefully. Around us the trees bow and sway. The air is full of the smell of flowers and leaves. Even the sunlight seems to be dancing.
He bows to me, once, not dropping his eyes, and lets go of my hand. I know what’s going to happen, and I watch for as long as I can, but he whirls around and is gone.
I am left there breathless, green leaves in my hair, sunlight swirling around me, alone.
Behind me in the trees, Emily and Alexander and Hannah are calling. Mingled with them is Dad’s voice, deep and familiar and full of laughter.
I stand for a long moment there in the clearing, one arm still out before me.
Then I turn and run back into the game.
Acknowledgements
Thanks go to Nicola Bowerman, who first gave me the Oak King myth, and to Christina Oakley Harrington of Treadwell’s Books for reminding me that every story is told and retold, and showing me some of the places people have taken this one. Thanks to Tara Button for all those afternoons writing in coffee shops and to Tom Harris for being understanding about the need to take a laptop on holiday and other writing-related traumas. Also for repeated computer-fixing and general loveliness.
Many thanks to everyone real and virtual who listened to me burble and complain, who told their friends about my books or who read versions of this one in production. Thanks to my editor, Marion Lloyd, for saying nice things about the manuscript and then pointing out all the ways it could be improved. Thanks to Caro Humphries, Phil Hoggart and Emma Wiseman for letting me play Cinderella and pay rent by cooking them lentil moosh. And thank you to everyone at Scholastic for coming over all Fairy Godmother-ish, and changing everything.
Sam wants to know about UFOs and horror movies and ghosts and scientists, and how it feels to kiss a girl. He also needs answers to the questions nobody will answer.
WINNER of the 2008 Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize
“Powerful, inspiring and courageous... the début of the year”
Waterstone’s
1 If I could be absolutely anyone including made-up people, I would be Pippi Longstocking, because she lives on her own with a horse and a pot of gold and a monkey called Mr Nelson, and if anyone tries to make her do something she doesn’t want to do, like go and live with someone else, she just picks them up and carries them down the garden path and dumps them there.
And usually then they go away.
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2 Not exciting stories. More things like people winning cleanest toilet competitions, or hospitals not spending money on what they’re supposed to.
First published in the UK in 2010 by Marion Lloyd Books
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Marion Lloyd Books
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Copyright © Sally Nicholls, 2010
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eISBN 978 1407 13278 5
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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