2: Chocolate Box Girls: Marshmallow Skye (24 page)

The doctor is talking to Mum and Paddy in a hushed voice about breaking the fever, about what would happen if the antibiotics don’t work and they have to take me to hospital.

‘I’m scared,’ Mum says, and Paddy tells her to be strong, for me.

The clock ticks on endlessly, painful, louder than my heartbeat.

Summer is here again, telling me to come back because she needs me, she can’t be without me, I am the other half of her.

‘Stay,’ she whispers, in the middle of the night when my dreams pull me backwards to another time and place. ‘Stay with me, Skye, please?’

But the dreams are too strong. When I close my eyes a kaleidoscope of images crowd in unbidden, a jumble of snapshot memories from a life I never lived, jigsaw pieces that make no sense and can never be fitted together.

A gypsy caravan, a smiling girl with wildflowers in her hair, a young man in the firelight, a toddler with fluffy curls, a piebald horse, a skinny dog chasing rabbits, a blue sky with a linnet swooping and soaring, birdsong, laughter. The dream girl puts an arm round me, offers me a hot, sweet tea that tastes of marshmallow and honey. ‘It’s healing,’ she whispers, and I swallow down the thick brew obediently although my throat feels like it is full of knives.

Another voice drifts across my sleep.

‘Come back,’ my twin whispers. ‘I need you …’

But I am lost in dreams.

‘You found her ring,’ Summer tells me, hours, maybe days, later. ‘Was it in the coat? And her letter. You solved the mystery, Skye, do you remember?’

My eyes flicker open. ‘I did?’

And Summer reads to me, but the words are Clara’s and as I listen the pain in my chest softens and lifts away.

‘I am sorry, Harry, so sorry,’
she reads. ‘
I thought I loved you, but I was too young, in love with the idea of love. By the time I realized, it was too late. I was trapped, like the linnet in its cage, afraid to disappoint you … and then I met Sam. He is not rich, like you, or from a well-connected family. He is as different from you, Harry, as night is from day. But I love him, and I am so, so, sorry for that because there is no way out of the mess I have made without hurting you, and that was never what I wanted, I promise …’

Summer strokes my hair. ‘Shall I go on?’ she asks, and I open my eyes and nod my head and the rest of the story spills out, into the open where it should have been all these years.

‘Father found out about Sam three months ago and sent him and his family away, telling me that I must forget him and go ahead with our wedding as planned. It was my duty, Father said. But as the weeks and months went by I knew that I could not marry you, Harry. I could not deceive you. Sam sent a message to me and we agreed to run away together, to marry and give the baby I am expecting a home and a family bound by love. I could not trick you, you see. I could not marry you and ask you to raise another man’s child, even to save myself and my family from shame.

‘I am leaving you this letter and my engagement ring, and I have let the linnet fly free as all wild birds should. Perhaps in time you will come to forgive me, although I fear that Father and Mother never will. Do not be afraid for me. I am with Sam and I am happy, and I hope one day you will find it in your heart to understand.

Yours with true regard always,

Clara Jane Travers

May 31st 1926.
’

Summer squeezes my hand. ‘Do you see, Skye?’ she whispers. ‘It’s not a suicide note. Clara didn’t drown. She really did run away.’

My forehead creases. ‘I don’t understand … the stories … why?’

Summer shrugs. ‘To save the family name?’ she says. ‘To spare Harry the truth, make sure the villagers never knew about the scandal of a rich man’s daughter who got pregnant out of wedlock and ran away with the gypsies? They
covered it all up, hid away her things, invented a story so sad and so shocking that nobody ever dared challenge it. Things were different then, Skye.’

My eyes well with tears, and Summer wipes them gently away.

‘You’ve been miles away, these last few months,’ she whispers. ‘In some sort of dream world. I never thought I could be so jealous of a box of velvet dresses! And now all this … it’s spooky. Like it was all meant to happen, so you’d find the letter, so the truth would come out …’

‘It was meant,’ I say softly. ‘I know it was.’

‘Maybe,’ Summer says. ‘But you’ve had us all so scared. These last few days … and before that too. I don’t know why … I just knew something bad was going to happen.’

‘But nothing bad has happened,’ I point out. ‘I’m OK. And now we have the letter, and we know the truth … there’s nothing to be scared of any more. I can’t believe I had the answers all the time – hidden in the coat you hated so much.’

I manage a faint smile. And I wonder how much of the conflict between Summer and me has been because of this, because she was trying, all along, to protect me? The
more she tried, the more I pulled away from her, and the secrets piled up between us, pushing us further and further apart.

‘You’re stronger than I am, Skye, you always have been,’ my twin sighs. ‘I need you. You know that, right?’

I think of the photographs on our birthday collage, of light and dark, sunshine and shadow, of me ready to run, Summer hanging on to me. I thought it was to hold me back, but perhaps she is right, and it was just because she needs me?

‘We need each other,’ I whisper. ‘But sometimes, Summer … well, you have to let go. We’ll always need each other, but we need our freedom too.’

‘I’ve been stupid,’ Summer says. ‘Stressed out. Selfish. Jealous too … of how close you are with Cherry, with Alfie. The way you can stand up to Honey and actually get through to her while I’m still treading on eggshells, scared to upset her. Things are changing, aren’t they? We’re changing. We used to do everything together, think the same, feel the same …’

‘Did we?’ I ask. ‘Maybe once … a very long time ago. Not for a while now.’

Summer rakes a hand through her long hair. ‘Oh, God … I’m sorry, Skye. I’ve really messed up.’

‘We both have,’ I say. ‘But so what? We can fix it. Change isn’t always bad.’

We have a lot of sorting out to do, my twin and I. We need to talk, more honestly than we ever have, and there will be no more room for secrets or lies. I think of my marshmallow dream world, of Summer’s dislike for all things sweet and sticky.

‘You don’t think I’m plain and boring and nothingy then?’ I ask, and Summer’s eyes widen as if I am crazy.

‘Plain?’ she echoes. ‘Boring? Are you kidding me, Skye? Trust me, you’re the least “nothingy” person I know! You’re cool and creative and soft and sweet and kind …’

I let the fears drift away. I think we can do it. Somehow, over the coming weeks and months we will find a way to stay close without anyone having to stay in the shadows or anyone feeling second best. We will both have to work out how to let go a little, unpick the little jealousies, spread our wings, learn to trust. I’m pretty sure we can do it.

Summer isn’t perfect, but I don’t need her to be. I just need her to love me.

She curls up beside me, her cool hand wrapped tightly round mine, the way it always used to be. ‘We never do this any more,’ I whisper. ‘Hold hands.’

‘I’m always holding your hand, Skye,’ Summer says softly into the darkness. ‘Whether you know it or not. I always will.’

I close my eyes, and this time no dreams crowd in to torment me.

The fever breaks and the doctor says I am well enough to have visitors. Cherry brings me jasmine tea in a tiny china cup and Coco smuggles Humbug up to see me and plays a long, creaking solo on the violin that almost makes me wish I was still curled up in a snowdrift. Honey paints me in watercolours, pale and waif-like with smudges of blue beneath my eyes.

Millie turns up with flowers and rebukes. ‘You frightened us all to death, Skye. Once we realized you were missing from the party the place went crazy, seriously. What was all that about?’

‘I think I was delirious,’ I say.

‘If Summer hadn’t found you, lying in the snow …’

‘I know,’ I sigh. ‘But she did.’ And my heart-to-heart with Summer inspires me to be honest with Millie now.

‘Millie,’ I say carefully. ‘We’ve been best friends for a long time, haven’t we?’

‘Ages,’ she agrees. ‘Since forever.’

‘And … do you think we’ll carry on being best friends? Because sometimes I feel like we are drifting apart, and I know that everyone changes a little as they get older, but … well, things seem a bit shaky right now. I hate it.’

‘I’m not very good at being a teenager,’ she says in a small voice, and when I look up I see that her cheeks are pink and her eyes are misty.

‘What do you mean?’

Millie bites her lip. ‘It’s just – I’m no good at it,’ she repeats. ‘I didn’t think any boy would ever really like me, until Alfie at the party. I’m not even sure he’s all that keen, really. Boys never notice I’m around, and I never know if I’m getting the fashion thing right at all. It’s all right for you, Skye.

‘I’m not like you. I’m just ordinary. You’re not, and you never will be – people notice you because you’re pretty and friendly and kind and you wear all that cool vintage stuff,
and I know I moan about it sometimes but the truth is you always look great, and I’m jealous of that. I tried borrowing some of your stuff, remember, last year? I looked like I was going to a fancy-dress party. A really bad one.’

‘Oh, Millie,’ I sigh. ‘I thought you were fed up with me. I thought I was losing you.’

‘I thought the same about you!’ she says.

‘I thought you were dumping me for Summer!’

Millie’s shoulders droop. ‘Summer’s brilliant,’ she says. ‘I’d love a sister like that. But you – you’re my best friend!’

Relief floods through me and I don’t care any more about Millie’s crushes and her crazes and her snippy words because best friends can forgive each other anything.

‘You’re right – I am. Best friends forever.’ I manage to give her a weak hug.

‘So …’ I grin. ‘Are you going out with Alfie now?’

Millie frowns. ‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘We must be, right? He is playing it cool, but he seemed to be interested, at the party. I think we make a great couple!’

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘I expect you do.’

Alfie turns up soon after Millie leaves, with a packet of marshmallows, half-eaten. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ he says guiltily.
‘I was just testing them, but they’re sort of addictive.’ I guess it is the thought that counts.

‘I hear you have a new girlfriend,’ I say.

‘You hear wrong,’ Alfie huffs. ‘Did Millie say that?’

‘Let’s just say she’s hoping …’

Alfie shakes his head. ‘I am in love with Summer,’ he says, lowering his voice and glancing awkwardly over his shoulder in case my twin is lurking somewhere. ‘And I am a one-girl kind of boy.’

‘I noticed,’ I say.

‘Millie grabbed me!’ he argues. ‘I swear, I didn’t stand a chance. She is a man-eater!’

‘Who knew?’ I laugh.

The next day, when I am properly on the mend, Mrs Lee comes to visit with a brown envelope full of photographs. ‘I promised I’d look out Mum’s pictures of the old days,’ she says. ‘The Romanies, the travellers. And then I heard you were ill, and I thought I’d call in.’

‘Oh!’ I blink. ‘Thank you!’

She spreads the photos across my quilt, a patchwork of black-and-white images from the past, and as I look my heart begins to beat faster. I have never seen these pictures
before. The people in them must be long gone … and yet they look familiar.

A young woman with mallow flowers in her hair, a man with dark skin creased with smiles, a toddler with dark fluffy curls … groups of children with muddied knees and Sunday-best clothes, bow-top wagons, piebald horses, camp fires. There are later snapshots of a young woman in a 1950s dress, an older couple smiling at the camera, sitting on the steps of a bow-top wagon. Just like my dreams.

‘Who are these people?’ I whisper.

‘This was my mum, Lin,’ Mrs Lee explains, pointing at the toddler with the fluffy curls. ‘And her parents. Here’s a later one of her, after she met my dad, and one of my grandparents with their
vardo
. They travelled all over Somerset and beyond in those days, but times got harder for the Romanies after the war … my mum lived in a house once she was married. Even my grandparents had a council house towards the end. They never forgot the old ways, though.’

I pick up the photograph of the middle-aged couple on the caravan steps, an earlier one of the same man smiling, the young woman with mallow flowers in her hair.

‘What were their names?’ I ask. ‘Your grandparents?’

Mrs Lee smiles softly. ‘Sam Cooper, my grandad was called,’ she says. ‘And Jane.’

Jane … A jigsaw piece falls into place. Clara Jane Travers … who ran away and reinvented herself as Mrs Jane Cooper. I am looking at a ghost, and my eyes brim with tears.

I have worn her dresses, played her music, felt the rich scent of her marshmallow-sweet perfume drift around me. I have even dreamt her dreams, her memories, or something very close to that. And now at last her story has unfolded.

Clara Travers. She lived, and she loved, and she was happy … and she ended her days in a council house near Exeter with the man she adored. Happy endings don’t get any better than this.

‘And what was your mum’s name again?’ I ask, thinking of Clara’s last letter to Harry, the baby she was carrying, Sam Cooper’s baby.

Mrs Lee picks up the photo of the fluffy-haired toddler. ‘Lin,’ she tells me. ‘Short for Linnet. It’s a woodland bird, a kind of finch … very rare now. A beautiful name, don’t you think?’

I think of a small brown bird with a red breast, trapped in a pretty cage. I can almost feel its wings fluttering within my cupped hands, see it soar upwards towards the sky, towards freedom. A linnet, a finch.

‘A beautiful name,’ I agree.