Summer's Edge (4 page)

She told the others the next morning as they filed into Assembly. "There's a barbecue at some guy's house on Sunday. Loads of the players are going. We're all invited."

"I can't go," Jules said. "Kate's invited me to this thing in Lechlade over the weekend, some sort of festival at a quarry."

"Doesn't sound like your sort of thing," Alice said. Jules' stepsister's friends were much more crusty than they were. They went to folk festivals and eco protests.

"I said I'd give it a go." Now Jules and Kate would soon be going their separate ways at university it had defused some of the tensions between them.

"What about the cinema on Sunday night, can you still make it?" They were planning to see Basic Instinct which had finally been released in the UK.

"Sure, I’ll meet you there."

"What about you Alice? I can't go by myself to the barbecue. They're expecting a group of us," Becky said.

Alice was in two minds. On one hand she wanted to support Becky, but the thought of seeing all the cricketers again just reminded her of her humiliation with Mr Walker.

But if the roles were reversed she would have been desperate for Becky to support her. "Okay, I'll come," she said.

Becky was so profusely grateful that Alice felt bad for having wavered.

As they entered the Assembly hall Alice fought with herself not to look around for Mr Walker. In the end she lost her nerve and kept her head down.

"Mr Walker's here," Becky whispered to her so loudly that Alice thought he'd hear them from the far side of the room. She felt herself go red and tried to stoop down and hide even more. "He is really good looking isn't he?" Becky continued. She was saying it to return the favour to Alice as Alice was supporting her with Brett. Though it was undeniably true.

Alice couldn't help looking up and across at the cricket coach. His eyes met her for a split second, his expression unreadable, and then he turned abruptly.

"He's looking at you Alice!" Becky said.

"Shut up Becky. She's not blind and half the school can hear you."

Becky looked crushed but buttoned her lip.

Alice could only see Mr Walker from the back now as he went to the seating area at the reserved for staff. He was tall with amazing shoulders, the back of his head perfectly sculpted. She forced herself to sit down and face the stage, so he wouldn't see her looking at him when he turned round again.

All through Assembly she could feel his eyes burning into the back of her head. She tried to tell herself that he probably wasn't even looking at her.

Becky couldn't resist twisting her head round to see. "I can't tell if he's watching you but he looks really serious," she said, managing to whisper this time.

Jules could still hear her. "Stop looking around. He's already pissed off enough."

Alice wondered how he actually felt. Angry? Embarrassed? Disappointed? Maybe he had been really intending to call her before he discovered her real age?

She bitterly regretted having let him find out. Perhaps she could have hidden from him for at least another week at school and maybe gone on one date with him. Though that might have made it even worse when he did finally realise.

What's done is done, she thought. She wondered whether it was her age or being at the same school that bothered him most. Both probably.

Wednesday was a half day at school. The younger pupils had organised activities after lunch ranging from cadet force to various clubs and volunteer programmes. The Sixth Formers were left to their own devices so unless they had a match to play they were free to leave school after lunch. Often they snuck away before lunch but there was a risk of detention if you got caught.

Alice had a part-time job at a local veterinary practice. It had reaffirmed her desire to work with animals but also made her realise she didn't want to be a small animal vet. The problem wasn't the animals, it was the owners. Too many pets got put down because someone didn't want to pay for an animal to be treated. She also hated seeing supposedly loving owners mistreat or neglect their animals. Anything from failing to give them medication properly, feed them properly or get their claws clipped on a regular basis.

But seeing a sick animal gradually get better each week, and the owner’s growing relief and joy, that was wonderful. It made it all worthwhile.

Exotic pet owners tended to be among the better owners as they were more invested in their animals. The first patient that day was a lizard with a severe calcium deficiency. The man bringing it in had recently bought it from a pet shop in a nearby town.

"I could tell it was sick when I bought it but they just didn't care. I couldn't let it die," he told them. He owned several other reptiles and was experienced in their care.

The vet, a woman about ten years older than Alice, prescribed a course of calcium injections and supplements and ensured the lizard had access to proper UV-B lighting.

"Yeah, that's no problem," the man said. He looked to be in his late thirties, scruffy with long hair and a stubble that was nearly a beard, but he clearly cared about his animals. "I've got an empty habitat all set up."

The vet also took the name of the pet shop. The man had already reported it to animal welfare but she liked to make her own investigations. The practice kept a blacklist of problem pet shops and breeders and cooperated with prosecutions when necessary.

The man held the lizard when it was injected. Usually Alice did this but experienced owners could generally be trusted to hold their pets firmly enough and it kept the animals calmer. It was actually the thing she'd found hardest at first: keeping the animal still without hurting it. "You can nearly always hold them much more firmly than you think," Jo, the vet, had told her. "Better that than they flip out and jump off the table with a needle in them."

Alice and Jo had become quite friendly over the couple of years that Alice had worked there. Jo was impressed that Alice was serious about becoming a vet and had written her letters of recommendation as well as lending her various books and veterinary journals.

Jo also hated selfish owners. She had even kept alive a litter of kittens when someone brought in a heavily pregnant cat and wanted the pregnancy terminated. "It's only about a day from giving birth," she told Alice and the veterinary nurses that worked there.

They had had to keep the four kittens alive around the clock for the first weeks, each taking a kitten and doing their best as the mother cat was now back with its callous owner. It had been an eye opening experience for Alice, feeding her kitten every few hours with a syringe and special formula. Happily they had all survived and homes had been found for them. One of the nurses had taken two.

Owners like that were a strong reason why Jo was thinking of giving up the practice. Her fiancé was South African and there was a possibility they might relocate there.

"Won't you find it hard to leave all your friends and family and move so far away?" Alice had asked her.

"Yes, but being with Pieter makes up for it. And I'd love the chance to work in a wildlife sanctuary over there," Jo had said.

Jo's future move had influenced Alice's own travel plans with Jules. She had been researching wildlife organisations in South East Asia where you could volunteer. Alice planned to write to some of them in advance. Jules’s travel plans were more beach-and-party oriented, but Alice wanted to do something worthwhile if she could.

Alice had originally hoped Becky would come with them, but she hadn’t been interested. Becky didn't like the idea of roughing it at backpackers' hostels and wanted to start physiotherapy straight away. She came from a medical family - father a GP, mother a nurse - and was more of a home town girl. She had only applied to physiotherapy courses within an hour's radius of their town.

Alice's mother hadn’t initially been in favour of her taking a gap year. "Vet science is such a long course, darling, don't you think it would be better to get it underway?" But Alice wanted a break before she threw herself into it. It was going to be even more intensive than school, and once she graduated she'd have to find work rather than be free to travel.

Only Alice's stepfather Richard had understood. "Travel can be a very educational experience," he said. "It may give you perspective on your own future path."

* * *

Everyone was out except Richard when Alice got home. Her mother was taking her younger brothers to swimming club so the house was quiet.

Alice always felt she'd struck lucky getting Richard as a stepfather. She held no resentment towards him for taking her father's place. After all, she'd never known her father. He was just a nice looking man with seventies hair in the wedding photos her mother kept in a drawer.

Richard was more like a godfather than a stepfather, Alice thought. He was a quiet, scholarly man who was quite a few years older than her mother. He had been some sort of old family acquaintance and Alice's mother had married him when Alice was ten. In the next couple of years two little brothers came into Alice's life, both turning out to be well-behaved and serious like their father.

Having heard some of the stepfamily horror stories of her friends, including Jules and her early battles with Kate, Alice considered herself fortunate.

She stopped by his study. Other people's parents had home offices, but Richard had a study.

"Back from work?" he asked.

"Yes. Mainly cats and dogs, but we did get a very fat rabbit and a bearded dragon.
Pogona vitticeps
." Alice had looked up the Latin name in one of Jo's books. "Have you had supper?" Richard often forgot to eat if he was by himself, lost in his work.

"Your mother said something about bringing fish and chips home." This was good, since Alice hadn't eaten either.

"Richard, I was wondering about something," she began. She always called him by his first name, never Dad or Father.

He waited patiently for her to continue. He never hurried them out, he always made time for all of them no matter how busy he seemed to be.

"You and my mother. Was the age gap ever a problem?" There were twelve years between them.

Richard considered the question. "No, I can't say it was, not from my side. We were both adults with life experience. You might have to ask your mother for her view."

Alice liked how he took her seriously. "When you say life experience, would it be different if she had been my age?" she asked.

"Your mother was already a widow with a child. So yes, I expect it would have been a different situation if she was at an earlier stage of her life." He didn't ask her why she was asking this which Alice was grateful for. Her mother would have instantly freaked out and assumed Alice had some unsuitable boyfriend who was taking advantage of her.

Which wasn't the case at all. But Alice rather wished it was.

* * *

Alice sat in her bedroom. Something about it seemed different, but she wasn’t sure why. She looked around the room. Her corkboard was covered with photos: of her family, of Jules, Becky and her doing various things.
 

There was a poster of some pop star on the wall by her bed. Jules had cut it out of a magazine and stuck it up as a joke. Alice had left it up because she secretly found him attractive, but now she took it down. The Blu-Tack left marks on the paint when she picked it off. She would have to put something else there to cover it.

There were also some things on her dresser that an ex boyfriend had given her. She wasn’t sure if they held sentimental value or not, it had been an amicable split. But seized by an urge to clear things away, she found a shoebox and packed them into it.
 

A stuffed toy won at a fair. A friendship bracelet. A couple of beermats. She couldn’t even remember the night they were from or their significance.

She didn’t want to put all her childhood things away, but she wanted less clutter. If it wasn’t for the fact that she was leaving to go travelling soon, and then university, she would have asked her mother if she could redecorate. Except she wasn’t sure what she really wanted to change.

Some things would come with her, of course, to furnish whatever student accommodation she ended up in. Pretty much nothing would go backpacking with her. She and Jules were competing to take the least amount of gear so they could travel as light as possible and bring back more souvenirs at the end.

Souvenirs that would probably never end up here. She was leaving this room behind. It would still be hers, she didn’t imagine Richard and her mother would take on a lodger, and the boys were quite happy with their rooms. But it would be her old room. It wouldn’t quite be hers in the same way any more, even if it was kept for her.

Alice felt a pang of nostalgia: for her childhood, for the early days when it was just her mother and her, for Christmas and Easter with grandparents who were now dead. For the safety of it all, for the comfort. Despite not having her father she had enjoyed a very happy time growing up.

Of course she hadn’t thought of it as easy at the time, who does? She had just taken it all for granted, but it had been easy. Compared with the future which at times seemed terrifying. Terrifying, but exciting as well.

Having buried herself in schoolwork that week and after revising most of Saturday, Sunday came as a relief. It dawned clear and sunny, holding all the hope and promise of a beautiful English summer. Of course the chances of another poor, rainy year were no worse than any other year but there was something about the start of summer that made everyone joyful. It hadn't failed yet.

It was warm enough for summer clothes so Alice wore a white vest and jeans. A sundress seemed a bit too much in May, particularly for a barbecue.

Becky picked her up. She had deliberately chosen to drive so she couldn't drink too much. She was incredibly nervous about seeing Brett again.

"Thanks so much for coming, I couldn't have gone by myself, not knowing anyone else there."

Alice was glad she had been persuaded into going as it was such a nice day. She read the map and they made their way to a house in a village a few miles out of town. Cars were parked on both sides of the road and up the driveway which ran alongside the house. They could hear voices and smell barbecue smoke so they walked around the side instead of knocking on the front door.