Season of Secrets (8 page)

 

 

 

 

I go back to his barn this evening. I call and call, then
I go out into the field and call, then I come back to
the barn and I call again.

He doesn't answer.

He doesn't come.

He's gone too.

 

 

 

 

The rain gushes down the windows and pours down
the hill. My hair is plastered to my skull as I fight my
way back down the lane. It's a proper stream already. A
Molly Brook.

Grandma's serving Jack when I come through the
shop door.

“She's a little madam,” she's saying. “I don't know
how much longer—”

She breaks off as she sees me. “And where have you
been, Miss?”

“Out. On my bike.”

“All right. Go and take your wellies off, then. Don't
trail mud through the house. And don't wake your
grandpa up!”

She doesn't say anything about me being so wet. Or
why I've been out so long that the light has almost gone
and the sky is grey and heavy with night and rain.

I go and pull off my wellies in the hall. I can hear
sounds from the kitchen. Crashing.

“And the other one—” Grandma's saying.

I hesitate. There's a smashing noise from the kitchen.

I open the kitchen door and stop. The floor is
covered in broken glass and bits of bowls and plates.
Hannah's standing on a chair with her head in the
back of the top cupboard. When she hears me, she
turns, hands wrapped around Grandpa's extra-large
casserole dish.

“
Hannah!
”

Hannah gives me her flintiest, don't-try-and-stop-me
look. She holds the casserole dish high over the
side of the chair. Then she lets go.

I scream and jump back. Bits of ex-casserole dish
go skidding across the floor.

“Han
naah
! Stop it! What are you
doing
?”

“I want to go home,” says Hannah. She says it very
calmly. She picks a mug off the mug-tree.

“
Hannah!
” Grandma's come through from the shop.
She stands in the doorway beside me for a moment,
staring at the mess, then she's across the room,
grabbing Hannah by the wrist and wrenching the mug
out of her hand. Then she slaps her across the face.

Hannah gasps. No one has ever even smacked us,
ever, no matter what we did. I'm not even sure it's
legal. Grandma grabs her by the wrists, and Hannah
struggles to free herself, the chair rocking back against
the cupboard.

“Stop it!” I shriek. “Stop it!”

And then Grandpa's there. He hurries forward and
puts his hands around Hannah's waist, steadying her,
stopping her from falling.

“Come on,” he says. “Come on now. Come on.”

“Look!” Grandma waves her hand at the ruin that's
the kitchen. “Look what she's done!”

“I know,” says Grandpa. “I know.” He sounds like
he's calming an animal. He looks up at Hannah, still
balanced on the chair. Her face is white, with a red
mark where Grandma slapped her. “Hannah, go to
your room,” he says.

Hannah doesn't move. “She hit me,” she says. “She
hit
me!”

“I know,” says Grandpa. He holds out his hand.
“Come on now. Come on. There you go. We'll talk
about this later.”

He pushes Hannah towards the door and Hannah
goes, her eyes still bewildered, like she can't believe it.

I'm still standing in the doorway. I expect
Grandpa to say something to me, to ask if I'm all
right, if I had anything to do with the mess, but he
doesn't. He goes over to Grandma and puts his arms
around her.

Grandma is almost crying.

“I can't do this,” she's saying. “I can't. Don't ask me
to, because I can't.”

Grandpa tries to hold her but she beats her hands
against his chest, face red.

“Don't touch me,” she says. “Don't! I can't!”

I want Grandpa to look at me. I want not to be
forgotten. But this isn't my house: it's Grandma and
Grandpa's, and Grandpa is running his hands down
Grandma's arms – I wouldn't dare touch her, she's so
hot and furious – saying, “I know. I know, love,” and
suddenly I get scared. I'm not wanted here. I go and sit
on the stairs and wish as hard as I can for magic
wardrobes or fairy godmothers or just to be invisible
and as far away from here as it's possible to be.

In the kitchen, I can hear Grandma loud and
Grandpa quiet. Grandpa says, “If that's what you want
to do,” and Grandma says, “Someone has to.” Then she
scrapes her chair back and stands up. She's talking on
the phone, I can hear her talking but not what she's
saying or who she's saying it to. And I wonder if we're
going to be sent to Auntie Meg's or Auntie Rose's,
and if I'm going to have to share a room with horrible
grown-up boy cousins or messy baby ones, and if I'm
going to spend my whole life living in the corner of
someone else's family.

I don't want to go up to my room – I want
Grandpa to find me and see how sorry and miserable
I am. I hear pans clatter next door and the rain still
battering against the windows, and then the radio
starts playing
The Archers
music and I feel tears pricking
at the back of my eyes. They're making tea without
me.

It's Grandma who finds me in the end. She comes
through into the hall with her hands full of
newspaper and broken glass and sees me.

“Molly Alice!” she says. “Whatever are you doing
up here?”

“I don't know,” I say miserably.

“There's no use sitting there feeling sorry for
yourself,” says Grandma. “Come on. Get up. You'll
catch cold if you sit up there.”

My mum would never say anything like that if
she found me on the stairs in the dark. My mum
used to get angry – she tipped a whole bowl of
spaghetti over Hannah's head once – but she always
said sorry afterwards and then you'd eat ice cream
or something to show you still loved each other.
And you'd
talk
about things: what you'd done, what
she'd done, what you were both going to do next
time. Mum liked talking. She would never leave me
sitting on the stairs all night. Neither would my
dad. Probably. I feel tears rise in my eyes, and I turn
my face away so she won't think I'm feeling sorry
for myself again. But at the same time I
want
her to
see them. So she knows how bad she's made me
feel.

“Come on,” says Grandma. “Come on, now. Get
up. Get up, Molly,” and I clench my lips, but the tears
are running out of my eyes and down my cheeks and
there's nothing I can do to stop them.

“Oh
. . .
” says Grandma. “Oh, love. None of that.
Hey. Grandma's sorry. Come on. Come on, love.”

She hustles me into the kitchen and sits me on a
chair. Grandpa looks up from his chopping board.

“Molly? Are you all right?”

No, I want to say, can't you see? But Grandma
doesn't let me answer.

“She's just tired,” says Grandma. “It's not nice
hearing Grandma and Grandpa shouting, is it?”

I rub my eyes. Just because I'm crying, doesn't mean
I like being treated like I'm five years old. Grandpa
looks at me worriedly, but doesn't say anything. He
carries on chopping potatoes. Grandma makes me a
cup of tea in a baby mug with rabbits on it. I wrap my
hands around it and watch Grandpa kitchening about
and Grandma wiping her hands on a bit of cloth.

“I've been talking to your dad,” she says, abruptly. I
jerk my head up and nearly drop my tea over my skirt.

“Are we going back home?”

“He's going to have you for the weekend,” says
Grandma. “And see how you all get on.”

“This weekend?” I say. There's a dull ache in the
bottom of my stomach. I ought to be glad, I know I
ought. But all I can remember is what it was like last
time we were there. I remember the way Dad used to
stare at us, like he'd forgotten who we were. How
Hannah used to push and push and push him until he
turned into someone I barely knew, someone who
could just switch off the part of him that loves us.
And this time there won't be any Auntie Rose. There'll
only be us.

I'm frightened, I realize.

“Aren't you pleased?” says Grandpa. He looks very
like Dad, suddenly. I'd never noticed it before. Like
Dad, except he's not so lopsided and his skin is
looser and paler; you can see it hanging off the bones
under his skin. He's pale all over, Grandpa; white,
wispy hair, light, watery eyes, like life has washed
through him and washed him half-away. I wonder
suddenly if the same thing could happen to my dad.
Sweep right through him and take him away from us
for ever.

Yes. It could.

“A whole weekend with your dad!” Grandpa says.

I clench my lips together and nod.

A whole weekend with Dad.

It's what I want, more than anything.

I nod my head up and down, trying not to cry.

 

 

 

 

Hallowe'en comes. At school, we do a wall display.
A witch with stripy orange-and-black tights,
a vampire in a purple bow tie and a mummy
made from toilet paper stolen from the cleaning
cupboard.

“If the cleaners ask, it was nothing to do with me,”
says Miss Shelley, and Mrs Angus shakes her head
and pretends not to see.

We make pumpkin-lanterns, with jagged mouths
and Chinese eyes. Miss Shelley shuts the curtains and
lines them all up on the window sill. They look
wonderfully creepy.

“In medieval times,” she says, “They used to carve
turnips, not pumpkins. To keep evil spirits away.”

“Did they have them always,” says Alexander, being
intelligent again. “Or just at Hallowe'en?”

“Just Hallowe'en,” says Miss Shelley. “People
believed that on certain nights of the year, the barriers
between worlds were weakened. Other – things –
could come through.”

“Cool,” says Josh. “Let's call them up!” But Mrs
Angus says we have to wait till secondary school for
that sort of thing.

“What kind of things used to come?” says Matthew.

“Oh, ghosts and spirits,” says Miss Shelley. “Your
wild hunt, Molly. Halloween was one of the nights
they used to ride.”

“When else?” I say. “When else are they going to
come?”

Miss Shelley pushes her fair hair back behind her
ears. In the half-light, she looks very much like my
mum. “Solstices and equinoxes,” she says. “The
longest and the shortest days of the year. And the
days when day and night are of equal length.
September the twenty-second was the autumn
equinox. The nights keep getting longer and darker
now until the winter solstice.”

In the dark classroom, with the curtains drawn and
the pumpkin lanterns glowing, even the boys are quiet.
I shiver. September the twenty-second. Was that when
the huntsmen came before? Are they coming tonight?

 

When Grandpa suggests we might want to go trick-or-treating, Hannah groans.

“How old do you think I
am
?” she says.

Grandpa's face falters.

“Moll?” he says.

“I'm too old too, Grandpa,” I say, even though I'm
not, and neither is Hannah. At home, even kids from
the comp will put on a mask if it gets them sweets.
But I'm not going out on my own if the Holly King is
riding again.

Grandpa tries not to look disappointed.