Seed (15 page)

“That’s not fair,” I say, reaching for Sophie’s sponge to scrape at a bowl she’s struggling to get clean.

Kate licks her fingers and presses them onto the crumbs on the breadboard. “You could always nearly die and come join us,” she says.

“Did you really nearly die?” Ruby asks. Sophie takes her wet hands from the sink and stares at Kate.

“Maybe,” Kate says lightly. She hadn’t seen Sophie and Bobby in that airless tunnel, the terror sitting starkly on their faces.

“Everyone’s fine now though,” I say brightly, lifting Sophie from the chair and into my arms. She doesn’t stay there long. Even after all this time, she doesn’t really like to be held by anyone apart from Ellis or Linda. Her mother. “And we’re going to have a lovely day picking food for the market.”

“Can I come to the market?” Sophie asks.

“When you’re a bit older,” I say. I wonder if she misses the Outside. Did she have friends who wonder where she’s gone? I’m so lucky to have been born here, to know only this. I kiss my palm, hold it up to the window to face the sky. But nobody else joins me.

Out in the vegetable patch it’s too hot to put on a cardigan, so I’m just wearing Kate’s yellow dress. It feels like I’m wearing sunshine, but there’s a heavy stone sitting within me. I don’t know where it is, or why it’s there, and I try to wish it away but it stays, humming quietly to itself.

I pick the beans with their rough skin, snap them from the plant they grow from. With the soil and the sun and the wind and the rain, they have grown for us. Nature has provided.

My thoughts drift to Ellis, working right now in the barn. I try to crowd my mind with the blue sky and the biting sun so that I do not think about how it felt to sit so close to him on Kate’s bed. But he’s there and he’s taking so many of my thoughts. More than anyone else. I hope that Papa S. can’t see into my mind.

I try to concentrate on my task, and by mid-morning I have three baskets full. I can take a bunch of beans to Kate and Jack for their picnic. They can crunch the peas raw from their pods. I hook the baskets over my arms and walk back to the kitchen.

Ellis is bending over the kitchen sink. He’s taken his shirt off and he is rinsing his hair under the running water. He doesn’t
know I’m here. I watch the muscles click in his back, and the need to touch his skin is so strong that I have to hold my breath.

He squeezes his hair out and straightens up, and I am still watching him, the baskets of beans on my arms.

He smiles. “Do you want to help?” Water drips slowly from his curls onto his bare shoulder. I watch as they slide down his stomach and disappear into the top of his trousers. When I look back to his face, he is gazing at me.

“I’m taking beans to Jack and Kate,” I say. I walk to the table, lift up the two baskets and place them on the side. I must not look back at him.

“Can I come?” Ellis asks.

“I don’t know where they are.”

“Where are you going to try?”

I have to turn to him and he’s smiling, leaning back to squeeze the ends of his hair once more into the sink.

“The orchard? Maybe the dip?”

“I’ll come with you, then.”

“I’m going to join them for their picnic. I need to take food.”

“I’ll help get food, then.”

“Fine,” I say. I don’t know why my words come out so roughly. I’ll be walking in the fields in the yellow dress, with Ellis to talk to and food to eat. Where is the bad in that? “That’ll be good,” I add as I turn my back on him once more and take a
bunch of beans from the basket. I look out of the window quickly. There’s no one to see us.

Ellis cuts two wedges of bread from the loaf freshly made this morning. I take a small pot of chutney from the cupboard, as Ellis puts a chunk of cheese and a handful of tiny tomatoes into the bag he’s taken from the hook.

“Milk, or juice?” I ask, standing next to him by the fridge.

“Both,” he says.

As I put the bottles in the bag, he looks at me. “That dress suits you,” he says, but then instantly he’s walking to the door, grabbing the T-shirt from the chair with his spare hand. I’m left to follow him, wondering at the words and the smoothness of his back and the feelings he’s planted in me like seeds. I must not let them grow.

“Where to first?” Ellis asks. I don’t look back at the house, although I’m sure someone is watching us. I’m scared that it’s Papa S. I wish I was so small that he could not see me. If we walk quickly, I will only be a dot in the distance, a moving sunflower.

“The orchard?”

“Sounds good.”

We walk in silence for a while. I’ve put my sandals on and it’s strange not to feel the dusty grass beneath my feet.

“Do you miss your home?” I ask, without thinking.

“Isn’t this my home?” Ellis does that mocking smile again.

“Of course. I mean your old one, though.”

“My past life?” He turns his head away from me.

“Yes,” I say. But he doesn’t answer and we keep on walking. “Do you like it better here?”

“Mom does. And Sophie likes it too.”

“But do you prefer it?”

“I don’t know.” He moves the bag onto his other shoulder. “But if I hadn’t come here I wouldn’t have met you.” His words stumble into me and I don’t know what to say. Silence speaks for me instead.

“Do you like it here?” Ellis eventually says.

“Of course.”

“But do you really like it? Like Papa S. and all that.”

“I love Papa S.,” I say. I feel that sharpness settling in me again.

“That’s OK, then,” is all he says as we head toward the edge of the orchard.

Kate and Jack are sitting by one of the farthest trees. They don’t see us at first. Jack is lying in the grass and Kate sits, looking over him. As we get closer, we see her lift her hand. She starts to run her finger from the top of Jack’s head, down over his forehead, his nose, his mouth. She doesn’t stop at his neck, his chest. All the time, Jack is looking at her.

When Kate notices us, she pulls her hand back quickly, as if
she’s touched something hot. The spell that danced around them has been broken.

“We’ve brought you beans,” I say, pointing to the bag on Ellis’s back. Jack sits up awkwardly. I don’t think Kate wants us here. Suddenly I wish we hadn’t come.

“So, what have you been up to?” Ellis asks, laughter dancing in his eyes.

“Just talking,” Jack says, but his cheeks color slightly. Ellis sits down beside Kate.

We are here, but nothing is right.

Ellis tips out our bag of food. The bread lands in the grass and we’ll have to pick the strands from it.

“We’ve already eaten middle meal,” Jack says.

“We’ve brought you fresh beans, though,” I say. It feels like Jack wants to get up and go, but I don’t want him to leave. I want him with his happiness back.

Ellis passes some bread to me. “How’s your wound?” he asks Jack.

“Getting better.” Jack smiles and my little knot of worry begins to unravel.

“How come they didn’t take you to the hospital for the stitches?” Ellis asks, eating chutney straight from the spoon.

“They didn’t need to,” Jack replies. He reaches for the bottle of milk that we’ve brought. “Linda made it better.”

“Not properly.”

“She did it perfectly. Nature will do the rest,” Jack says. He opens the bottle and the white liquid disappears as he drinks.

“You could have had proper pain relief. You wouldn’t have felt a thing.”

“Why would he want that?” Kate asks. She stops shelling the beans in her lap. “To feel pain is to feel alive. It is a gift.” She’s looking hard at Ellis.

“That’s mad. The doctors would have given him an injection in the arm. Numbed the pain.”

“Now I think
that’s
mad,” Jack says, shaking his head. “An injection of what? Doctors are just the devil in disguise. Messing with Nature like they do.”

But I had wanted it. I had wanted someone to take his pain away.

“Are you serious?” Ellis asks, his eyes wide.

“We know it’s true,” Kate says, putting a bean into her mouth and crunching on it, hard.

“Jack’s fine, so that proves we’re right,” I say. I wish my bad thoughts had never happened.

“Then you’re all mad,” Ellis says. He takes a bean from where it nestles in its pod, pulls it out, and throws it high toward the tree next to us. It hits an apple hanging there.

“Bull’s-eye,” he says. When he smiles at us, I think about
his ability to make me so angry one minute and almost love him the next. Does that make Ellis bad, or good? I don’t think I want to know.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

K
ate has been asked to take Nana Willow her tincture. Heather does it most days, but as Kate says she still can’t work, she’s been given the task. I’m glad I don’t have to. Recently, Nana Willow has slipped into my dreams and sometimes, even when I’m sure I’m awake, I hear her rattling breath creeping around my bed.

Elizabeth and I are cutting up tomatoes in the kitchen. She pops a piece in her mouth and smiles at me. Today she has knotted her hair high up on her head. The skin on her neck has burned slightly from the sun.

“How long now, do you think?” I ask her.

“A month? Maybe less, maybe more.” She rubs her stomach gently. “You just come out when you’re ready.”

“Is the baby heavy?” I ask, scraping tomato seeds from my finger.

“No, it’s fine,” she says.

“Does it hurt at all?”

“It’s too beautiful a thing to make me feel hurt.” Elizabeth
scoops up the tomatoes and puts them in a bowl.

I want to ask her what it felt like when she carried me. If she carried me.

“You’ll know it one day,” she says, standing up to take the bowl to the side. But instead of happiness, I just remember the worms in that circle of dirt.

Kate comes in, not looking ill at all. It’s been less than a week since her accident, yet Nature has healed her almost completely.

“Mm,” she says, taking a chunk of tomato before Elizabeth can swat her hand away.

“How is Nana Willow?” Elizabeth asks.

“Barely awake,” Kate says, sitting down next to me. She picks the knife up, puts its tip into the wood and gently twists it around.

“Did she call you Sylvie?” I ask.

“Why would she call me that?” Kate laughs. Elizabeth stops moving.

“Because she thought I was someone called Sylvie,” I say.

“Stop doing that with the knife, Kate,” Elizabeth says. So Kate does, but Elizabeth still looks unsettled.

“Who’s Sylvie?” I ask her. I’m looking right at her, so I don’t miss the hesitation that crosses her face. “Do you know who she is?”

Elizabeth turns from us and starts to wash her hands in the sink.

“What are you talking about?” Kate asks.

I watch Elizabeth as she rubs her fingers through the water. She takes her hands out and dries them gently with the cloth hanging on the tap. She breathes in heavily. “Sylvie was Nana Willow’s daughter,” Elizabeth says finally.

I don’t understand, and by the look on Kate’s face, I don’t think she does either.

“Where is she? How come we’ve never heard of her?” Kate asks.

“She died,” Elizabeth says quietly. She’s looking toward the kitchen door, but it’s still closed.

“When?”

“A long time ago.”

“How?” I ask.

Elizabeth looks like she doesn’t want to answer, but she does. “She died giving birth,” she answers. How? How is that possible? Elizabeth must see the panic growing in me. “It is very unusual. I will be fine,” she says.

I know she wants to reassure me, but the thought is there now, and I feel sick with dread. I never knew you could die having a baby. “What went wrong?” I ask.

“Nothing went wrong. It was just Sylvie’s time and Nature wanted to take her,” Elizabeth says. I look at her pregnant belly and I imagine the child curled safely underneath.

“Did the baby die?” Kate asks.

“No,” Elizabeth replies.

“So where did it go?”