Death Wish (The Ceruleans: Book 1) (6 page)

I had expected my first weekend to be a quiet one – and
after the excitement of the last few days, I was badly in need of some rest. I
had vague plans to rummage in the attic of the cottage to see what family
treasures I might unearth, and to have an email session. But other than that,
the sum total of my weekend would be lounging on the sofa in my pyjamas working
my way through my
Tudors
box set.

A hammering on my door at ten o’clock on Saturday morning
soon put paid to that plan. I was still in bed – still asleep, in fact – and as
I threw on clothes and dragged myself blearily down to the door I cursed
Mother, who had texted me the night before telling me to expect a package in
the post; this was the special delivery guy, no doubt. I cracked open the door
slowly, squinting in the brightness of the sunlight that streamed in.

‘Scarlett!’

I blinked groggily. Nope, not the special delivery guy.

‘Scarlett! I’ve got a cunning plan!’

I staggered back to let Cara – rosy-cheeked and bubbling
over with energy – sweep into the hall.

‘You don’t mind me turning up like this, do you? Only I knew
where you lived, of course. And I remembered you said your Chester-walking for
Bert was weekdays only. So I figured you’d be in. And bored. And on your own.
And I’m stuck at home on my own all day as well – my brother works Saturdays,
you know. So I thought, why not hang out?’

Cara’s protracted speech had given me time to come round,
thankfully, and while I wasn’t used to having such an excitable wake-up call, I
realised time spent with Cara today would be far more fun than loafing about on
my own.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Coffee?’

‘Gasping for one!’

She followed me down the hallway into the kitchen. ‘Oh, this
place is gorgeous!’ she exclaimed, taking in the old pine table and the painted
free-standing units and the Aga and the gingham curtains and the sign on the
wall that read
Nanna’s kitchen: Everything made with love and an extra spoon
of sugar
. ‘So quaint and homely!’ She sat herself down at the table as I
put the kettle on and fished around in a cupboard for supplies. ‘Our house is
lovely, of course, but Dad was an architect, so it’s really modern – all angles
and glass and space. Grandad used to say it looked more like an art gallery
than a home.’

I noted the use of the past tense and looked at her. ‘I’m
sorry, did your grandad pass away?’

‘Yes, just last year. He was ninety-one, mind, so he’d had a
good innings. We still have Grannie, but she’s in a home.’ She shook her head
sadly. ‘You get a moment or two when she’s clear as a bell, and then… poof…
gone… she’s away with the fairies.’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, my grandfather was a little like that
towards the end. Kept talking about being at one with the sea and the sky.’
Realising the mood had taken a turn for the sombre, I spooned instant coffee
granules into two mugs and asked brightly, ‘Milk? Sugar?’

‘Both,’ said Cara. ‘Lots of both.’

I fetched the milk from the fridge, gave her coffee a
generous slug and set it in front of her along with the sugar pot. I sat down
across the table from her with my coffee and tried not to count as she spooned
sugar into her mug.

‘So, you mentioned a cunning plan…?’

At this Cara lit up. ‘Shopping!’ she declared with relish.

I groaned inwardly. When it came to shopping, I was a
get-in-and-grab-the-nearest-jeans/t-shirt/cardie kind of girl. Cara, I
suspected, took a more reverent approach. Still, the point of being in Twycombe
was to push myself out of my comfort zone and to get to know people here. I hadn’t
anticipated getting too close to anyone; after all, I was off to university in
just under three months. But Cara’s energy and humour and openness were
impossible to resist. Plus, I had to admit that being around her made me
conscious of just how lacking my wardrobe was. Today Cara was wearing a pair of
black jeans so tight she must have laid down to zip them up and a delicate pink
strappy vest embellished with tiny pearlescent beads. I was wearing jogging
bottoms with baggy knees and a faded, misshapen t-shirt. But before I could
pull together a response that indicated a passion for shopping, she beat me to
it.

‘Look at your face!’ she said, laughing and then taking a
sip of coffee. ‘Not much of a shopper, hmm? Well, I am, and I have enough
energy for both of us. It’s all about military-precision organisation. It’s a
well-worn circuit we’ll tread, with two cafes for recharging. Manelli’s serves
the
best paninis in Devon. Fact. And Cafe Luna is the place to go for a full-caff,
extra-shot, extra-foam mochaccino. Which’ – she looked down at her coffee –
‘tastes a heck of a lot better than this.’

I grinned. ‘Sorry. Percolator’s a bit beyond me. So, what
are we shopping for?’

Cara’s eyes twinkled and she rubbed her hands together.
‘Bargains!’ she declared with glee.

*

A day out with Cara, it turned out, was an absolute blast.
Her idea of shopping wasn’t ploughing through busy chain stores, to my relief,
but heading off the beaten track – the queen of bargains and an aspiring
fashion designer, she rummaged regularly in small vintage-wear boutiques and
charity shops. She rooted out a sixties minidress, a pair of silk trousers, an
original Frankie Says Relax t-shirt, a sequined belt and a Hermès scarf circa
1950, shelling out a total of twenty-one pounds thirty-six for her finds. I,
meanwhile, found some bargain knitwear.

Cara’s eyes bulged. ‘
That’s
what you’re getting?’

‘Er, yes. What’s wrong with it?’

‘It’s plain. It’s grey. It’s a
cardigan
!’

‘I like plain. And grey. And cardigans…’

‘Huh,’ was her response.

It was after lunch (and I had to admit that the paninis at
Manelli’s were pretty good), as we were rooting about in a cluttered
second-hand clothes shop called Trash or Treasure?, that she found The Dress.
The first I knew of it was an alarming gasp and a low moan that had me dropping
the polystyrene tiara I was examining in bemusement and spinning round.

Cara was holding up a floor-length, blood-red dress.

‘Ohhhhhhhhh, look,’ she said. ‘Just like Kirsten Stewart’s
dress at Cannes that time…’

I looked blankly at her.

‘You know, in the Dark Ages when she was with RPatz. It was
the premiere of some film. What was it called?’

I shrugged.

‘Cosmo-something… You must have seen the pictures? She
nearly popped out. A Reem Acra, it was…’

I shook my head – not a clue.

‘Reem Acra? The fashion designer? Lebanese? God, do you ever
pick up a magazine!’

‘Nope. I’m more of a book person.’

‘Well, anyway, it was a beautiful dress. All flowing lines
and lace. And this one has the same cut, see – and a lace back. It’s got a nasty
rip down the back seam, but that’s easily fixed. And that daft bow on the side
can come right off.’ She looked me up and down, appraising my figure, then held
it up against me. ‘It would be
perfect
for you!’

I eyed the plunging neckline and tiny waist on the dress.
‘Um, it’s really not my style….’

‘Pffft,’ was her response. ‘What style?’ She grinned at me.
‘Go on. A bit of Custom Cara and it’ll look great on you!’

I’d tried to resist, but Cara was determined, and I figured
there was little harm in buying a dress I’d never wear when the price tag read
seven pounds fifty. Delighted, Cara swiped the bag and added it to her
collection.

Shopping done, we settled in at Cafe Luna with tall coffees
and a muffin each. Over the next hour I learned lots about Cara. Her passion,
it was clear, was for fashion. Through her bargain rummages she had amassed a
collection of clothing so big she was struggling to contain it in her house,
and she had quite a business going customising clothes and selling them on
eBay. Now that she was seventeen, with just a year left at school, she was
struggling to know what to do next: stay in Twycombe and focus on Custom Cara,
or leave and take a course in fashion.

In return, I shared a little of myself. Cara listened
attentively as I told her about the history degree at University College London
that I was due to start at the end of September. Cara was surprised I was
heading to uni – she’d thought, because I was seventeen and Sienna eighteen, I
had another year yet at school. I explained that my sister and I were in the
same school year because with an August thirty-first birthday I just scraped
in.

‘We were only ten months apart,’ I explained.

‘Blimey,’ was Cara’s response, ‘your parents were frisky!’

I shuddered at the mental image that sprang to mind.

‘Why history?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t that kind of dull? Tweedy
blokes. Frowny women. Books – dusty books. And all that looking backwards, not
forwards. Where’s that degree taking you? What’s the future hold for Scarlett
Blake?’

I bristled, but then struggled to find a defence. The truth
was, I’d picked history because I didn’t know what else to do, and because it
felt safe, easy, containable, tangible. Unlike the future yawning ahead, which
felt… well, a little terrifying. How was I meant to know at seventeen what to
do, what to be?

‘Er… Henry Cavill,’ I said finally. ‘And Jonathan Rhys
Meyers.’

‘Superman and the dad in
City of Bones
?’

‘But also Charles Brandon and Henry the Eighth in
The
Tudors
.’

‘You picked a history degree so you could ogle hot men on TV
shows?’

‘Well…’

‘That. Is. A. BRILLIANT. Plan.’

*

It was teatime by the time Cara navigated her silver Peugeot
through the lanes leading to Twycombe. As she took the final turn into the lane
that ran right to the cottage, her legs, flexing and stretching, caught my
attention. Cara’s car was specially adapted to allow her to drive with her
hands only. It had been surreal, at first, to find the car braking and
accelerating with no movement from Cara’s legs, but I’d soon got used to it.
Now, though, her shifting legs made me wonder whether she was in pain.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

‘’Course. Just dandy.’

‘Your legs… do they ache from the walking?’

‘They should. But actually, they feel pretty good.’ She
broke into a smile. ‘It’s like I always say – bargains heal all: body, mind and
soul.’

We rounded a bend in the road and the cottage swept into
view.

As Cara pulled to a halt outside the door she frowned. ‘Will
you be okay? I don’t like to think of you alone up here. You could come to
ours. You know, have dinner.’

I reached over and gave her a light hug. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

‘But what about tomorrow? A whole day to yourself…’

‘Really, Cara, I’ll be fine. I have plenty to do in the
house, and I’ve never minded my own company.’ It was true; Sienna was always
the sociable sort, not me. But I didn’t want to offend Cara. ‘Coffee next
week?’ I offered.

‘Definitely. Text me.’

I got out and watched her execute a perfect three-point turn
and then head back down the lane, somehow managing to simultaneously steer and
clap happily along to Pharrell Williams on the radio.

As I walked up to the cottage I rummaged in my bag for the
keys, and it was only when I was on the doorstep that I realised two surprises
awaited me there. The first was a cardboard box with my name and the cottage’s
address printed neatly on the front; Mother’s package, I guessed. The second
was a dying bird.

I dropped to my knees, horrified. It was a magpie and it was
deeply distressed, feebly thrashing against the stone of the step, its beady eyes
staring up at me in terror. Instinctively, I reached out and touched it on the
wing, desperate to soothe it. The bird calmed a little. I slipped my hand under
its stomach and brought it onto my lap. I turned it over slowly, searching for
a wound, and found it at once – chest feathers clogged with blood around a
small tear. A predator attack, I thought; perhaps the ginger wildcat I’d seen
stalking through the weeds in the garden.

The bird was shuddering now. I’d seen the look in its eyes
before in the dying. As a child I’d spent many summers roaming the headland and
in that time I’d encountered at least a dozen injured animals – birds and
rabbits, mostly. With each I had sat as I was now, cradling the animal and
stroking it until its eyes clouded and it stilled. It was not enough, of
course, but what else could I do but be with the poor creature in its last,
pain-filled moments?

It was my grandfather who’d taught me – and Sienna too – how
to soothe the passing. One balmy summer’s evening Sienna and I came across a
dying bat outside Grandad’s tool shed. I couldn’t have been more than five,
Sienna would have been six, and our limited life experience to that point had
not equipped us to deal with a wild, wheeling bat, frantic in its pain, veering
in crazy spirals that nearly brought it into collision with us. How we’d
screamed! The fuss we made, you’d have thought we were being attacked by
Satan’s minion. Grandad came running, of course, and he sent Sienna to grab one
of our fishing nets leaning against the house after an afternoon’s rock
pooling. We’d huddled behind him as he expertly captured the beast. But to our
astonishment, no sooner had he caught it than he released it into his lap, and
the bat calmed and stayed there as Grandad stroked it. There were tears on his
face when the bat finally stopped moving. It was the only time I ever saw my
grandfather cry.

My thoughts had drifted, I realised, and I had been gazing
down the garden at Grandad’s shed and stroking the magpie. The bird, meanwhile,
had quietened. I looked down. The magpie was limp and staring. I sighed, and
slid my hand under it – I would take it into the house for now, until I could
dig a hole in which to bury it. But as I moved the bird, I froze.