Mostly Sunny with a Chance of Storms (27 page)

Before we knew it, winter had wintered and spring had clearly sprung. All the bony trees were covered once more with leaves, and the garden was coming alive with flowers. Not to mention the vegetables galore!

It was just days before the wedding, and Mum and Carl were going even more nuts than usual about doing things to the house, including finally getting new glass in my room.

I was up in the turret because Mum had asked me to vacuum the turret floor one last time after the glass people had fitted the new window. So I had a little bit of a spy on Settimio. I mean, it was really for Steph and Flora’s sake because they were spending so much time over there, and
I did promise Dad I’d help take care of them. I pulled the telescope into focus just as Steph was standing up to leave. Settimio gave her a kiss on both cheeks and helped release the brake of Flora’s pram. After she had left, he appeared in the kitchen and started looking along his shelf, as if he was trying to find a particular book. Finally, he pulled one down, dusted it off and flipped to the index. Then he opened out the book and laid it on the table.

I readjusted my focus to see what the book was. It was in Italian so I couldn’t understand it, but it looked like a recipe book. He was probably using it to make his speciality for Mum and Carl’s wedding like he’d said he would.

The recipe was headed
Torta di Piccione
and the rest of the left-hand page was full of words that I couldn’t understand. I shifted my focus to the other side of the double-page spread, which was a picture of a grey speckled bird.

Torta di Piccione!
Suddenly the words made a whole lot more sense.

Pigeon Pie! Can you believe it? Settimio’s speciality was
pigeon pie
!

I ran straight downstairs, hoping to catch Steph as she was coming inside. But she was already in the kitchen with Mum, and Flora was happily breastfeeding away.

‘Steph!’ I said. ‘It’s terrible. You have to help!’

‘What now, Sunny?’ asked Mum. She was up the ladder in the pantry sorting jars of preserves and relishes.

‘Settimio’s planning on making a pigeon pie for the wedding! That’s why he’s been taking such an interest in Finn’s pigeons. So they can fatten up and be
eaten
!’

‘Oh, Sunny, are you sure?’ said Steph. ‘He mentioned he had an old family recipe, but he never mentioned anything about pigeon pie.’

‘Where on earth did you get that idea, Sunny?’

I realised that the
only
way I could help Finn and his pigeons was to ’fess up about my spying. I had no choice. What if he was planning on killing the pigeons straightaway?

‘I know, Mum, because I was playing with Granny Carmelene’s old telescope and I happened to line it up towards Settimio’s kitchen window, and I happened to notice that Settimio had a recipe book on his kitchen table and it happened to be a recipe for pigeon pie. Why else would he be looking at
that
if he wasn’t planning on making one?’

Mum stepped down from the bottom rung of the ladder.

‘You mean you
spied
on Settimio? In his own home? Please tell me you didn’t. I’m still getting over the fact that you kids spied on our wedding proposal.’ Mum looked dead angry, and the angrier she got the more it made the
two big veins in her neck stand out.

‘Please don’t tell Carl, Mum. Besides, Lyall and Saskia aren’t involved.’

‘Sunny Hathaway, I just don’t know
what
to do with you.’

‘Can’t you work it out
after
saving Finn’s pigeons? Settimio will never listen to me. Please, Mum? Steph?
Please!
’

‘Well,’ said Steph, looking to Mum for some sort of approval. ‘If it’s all right with your mum, I could have a talk with him, I guess? I mean, no one
wants
Finn’s pigeons to end up in a pie, Sunny.’

‘Of course,’ agreed Mum. ‘Poor Finn would be devastated. Especially as he’s invited to the wedding.’

‘Alex, I’ll finish feeding Flora, then maybe you could watch her for me while Sunny and I go and set things straight.’

It was right at that moment that Carl got home with Lyall and Saskia. I could hear them squabbling about who was going to be sitting next to who at the wedding table.

‘Do we have to invite Uncle Lawrence, Dad?’ Lyall said. ‘He always gets drunk and falls asleep.’

‘Yes, we do have to invite Uncle Lawrence, Lyall,’ Carl said. ‘He’s my brother, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘Yeah,’ said Saskia. ‘If brothers weren’t compulsory, Lyall, I could get out of having you …’ Ouchhh!’ she said as Lyall punched her in the arm.

Mum lowered her voice so that only I could hear her. ‘I’ll deal with you later, Sunny,’ she said. ‘Just let me get through this wedding first.’

Steph and I went down to Settimio’s right after she’d finished feeding Flora and had given the little sleeping bundle over to Mum.

‘Try to be sensitive, Sunny,’ Mum said. ‘It’s just a very big misunderstanding.’

Settimio’s front door was open and Steph called out, ‘Knock knock! It’s just me, Settimio.’

‘Ah, Stephanie. You are already back? Come inside. Oh, and Sunday too, come in. You forget something?’

He still had the cookbook open and was halfway through writing a shopping list. ‘For my speciality,’ he said,
Torta di Piccione.

‘Pigeon pie?’ I asked.

‘Si, they are ready now. Tomorrow …’ And he made a cutting action across his throat to show exactly what he had in mind for Finn’s pigeons.

‘No, Settimio!’ I shrieked. ‘Those pigeons belong to Finn. They are
not
for making pie.’

‘But Finn, he leave them here for me to make ready, for the eating.’

‘Settimio,’ Steph said patiently. ‘There seems to be a small misunderstanding. They’re homing pigeons. Sunny and Finn are in the middle of training them to become
messenger birds. They’re not for eating.’

Settimio looked confused. ‘But the children ask me to feed them, and they visit me and I tell them they are not ready, but that soon they will be ready – for the wedding.’

‘I thought you meant ready for the wedding, like
love doves
, Settimio. You know how people release them at some celebrations? That’s what I thought you meant when you said they’d be ready for the wedding. See?’

‘But these are not doves. These are pigeons. Pigeons are for eating. For many generations this recipe has been in my family.’

‘No no no!’ I wailed. ‘You just can’t eat Finn’s pigeons, Settimio.

‘But the
Torta di Piccione
. This is my speciality.’

‘No no no, Settimio. You can use chicken, duck, turkey, quail. I don’t even care if you use a magpie – anything. But you can’t make a pie out of Finn’s pigeons. It just won’t do. Finn raised them from hatchlings. Understand? They’re Finn’s babies, Settimio.’

‘I understand,’ he said disappointedly. ‘But still I don’t know for why you need these pigeons to be messengers. Why not your friend Finn just use a telephone, uh?’

Finally, it was
the night before the wedding. Saskia and I were in her room where she was parading her outfit for possibly the twenty-seventh time.

‘And I thought I’d wear these too,’ she said, holding up a pair of dangly earrings. ‘Or will they clash with my shoes? What do you think, Sunny?

‘Oh, that reminds me,’ I said. ‘I have to go up to the attic and get something.’

‘I’ll wait here,’ Saskia said. ‘Who knows what sort of monster wildlife might be lurking up there.’

Carl had left the ladder to the attic down and I climbed towards the darkness, before finding the light switch. I found the box labelled
miscellaneous
. And as I was feeling about for the things I’d hidden inside it I realised
that thinking about Granny Carmelene didn’t make me feel sad any more, not one little bit. It occurred to me that I hadn’t needed Bruce and Terry in weeks, not since I’d made
nowhere
into a kind of
somewhere
(and not the type of somewhere I needed proof of).

‘That’s exactly what we were thinking, Ms Hathaway.’

Bruce’s voice gave me a fright, but not half as much as other frights I’d had lately. Bruce and Terry were sitting on two old chairs that clearly needed re-upholstering.

‘Oh, hello, you two,’ I said, just as I found Granny Carmelene’s locket. ‘I thought I could clean this up a bit and wear it to the wedding. Maybe I could even wear one of Granny’s dresses too.’

Terry cleared his throat and said, ‘Sunny, we need to have a little talk. Don’t we, Bruce?’

‘Terry’s right,’ said Bruce, looking uncomfortable. ‘It’s just that, well, we’ve been feeling a little under-utilised lately. And well, it’s like this …’

Terry stood up, being careful not to bang his head on the low sloping ceiling. ‘It’s like this, see, Sunny?’ he continued. ‘We’ve been offered what you might call
another assignment
and all things considered …’

‘Are you sacking me?’ I asked. ‘What about the Woe-Be-Gone grief repellent?’

‘We’ll be taking that too,’ said Bruce. ‘Like I said, we’ve been offered a new assignment. But it’s, ah, confidential.’

I’d never considered being sacked by a figment of my very own imagination, but Bruce and Terry seemed dead serious. ‘What about if I need you back again?’ I asked, just to make sure I could still have a little control.

But their answer came back all muffled, as if they were talking under water, and I couldn’t understand a thing. And at the very same time, Bruce and Terry went all fuzzy, like when there’s no aerial in the TV, and soon I could hardly see them. Then they became just an outline before disappearing completely.

‘Guys?’ I said, just to be sure. ‘Hello!’

I switched off the light and went downstairs to polish up Granny Carmelene’s locket. Bruce and Terry were right. I really didn’t need them any more. And I was even a little relieved that
they
had sacked
me
, because, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m really not very good at saying goodbye.

I was woken the next morning by Flora noises, so I hopped straight out of bed and headed for Steph’s room. Flora had a brand-new formal baby-dress especially for the wedding, with tiny little flowers embroidered along the front.

‘When can we put it on her?’ asked Saskia as Steph was changing Flora’s nappy.

‘Let’s wait until just before the guests arrive,’ said Steph, checking her watch. I could tell she was feeling a little nervous because Dad wasn’t home from the airport yet
and I guess she was worried he’d be late and miss the wedding.

‘It’s only ten o’clock, Steph,’ I said, hoping to make her feel better. ‘He’ll be here soon. Don’t worry.’

I was excited for Dad to get home too, because Steph was seeming more herself than ever, more like the person she was before Flora was born and she somehow forgot who she used to be. (Privately I thought it was probably because of the rose-petal medicine.) Nothing seemed to matter to me quite as much as making sure Steph was feeling okay. It was as if she was at the top of the family food pyramid. Steph had to be okay for Flora to be okay, and Flora had to be okay for me and Dad to be okay, and for everyone else in our little odd-bod world to be okay.

Carl was blasting Nat King Cole music (in Spanish) while the catering people and the linen people and the flower people and the bar people traipsed in and out of the house.

‘We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day,’ he said, whizzing through the kitchen in his bathrobe. ‘Just glorious!’

Saskia bounded in carrying a shoebox full of place cards she’d made for the table. ‘Finished!’ she said. ‘Look, Dad!’

Carl managed to slow down for a millisecond to pick a tag out of the box.

‘They look wonderful, darling, but I’m afraid this one
has a slight spelling error. You seem to have your ‘p’s and ‘b’s a little mixed up.’

Lyall looked up from his bowl of cereal.

‘Gee, Saskia,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘Isn’t that just what
dyslexic
people do?’

Carl pulled a handful of cards out of the box and spread them on the table. Sure enough, practically all of them had mistakes.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Saskia, holding up a card saying
puster conroy
. ‘They look perfectly normal to me.’

Just then Mum appeared looking frantic. She had a mud pack all over her face which was at various stages of drying and cracking. I wondered how she could let Carl see her like that. On her wedding day! I mean, what if he changed his mind and unproposed?

Lyall must have been thinking the same thing. ‘Hey! I didn’t think you guys were meant to see each other until the ceremony,’ he said, shovelling down some more cereal. ‘Isn’t it, like, bad luck or something?’

Mum chuckled (as best she could with her dry-mud skin.) ‘Second time around you kind of free-form it a little more. Lyall, did you empty all the bins? And I want you kids to stay out of the caterers’ way. They’re going to need full reign of the kitchen soon.’

Carl swept the place cards back into the box before Mum could see them.

‘They’re perfect,’ he said to Saskia. ‘Thank you for all your hard work.’ Then he turned to Mum and gave her a hug and said, ‘I’d still marry you even if you did turn up to the wedding like that, darl.’