Authors: Laura Jarratt
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #General, #Social Issues, #Friendship
You see, I knew you’d understand.
Silas
On the morning that Silas took Lara on their first date, Josie spent some time hanging out with her dad. He felt like making a chocolate cake, he said, if she had nothing else planned. Josie understood this was code. Whenever her dad needed to talk to her about something big, he did it while they baked together. When he’d broken the news that her grandpa had died, he’d done it while they made cornflake cakes. So she knew that baking with chocolate meant really big news.
It was with an uncomfortable feeling in her stomach that she joined him in the kitchen. He was smiling, though. Which was unexpected, but she didn’t drop her guard because his smile looked more forced than usual. Perhaps not awful news then, but certainly something important.
His voice was put-on cheery too as he got the ingredients out. ‘We need the cocoa powder next,’ he said consulting the cookbook as he weighed the flour.
Josie passed it to him silently and waited.
‘We haven’t done this for ages,’ he said, as if they were having some lovely bonding experience that wasn’t for any particular reason. But she knew better and marvelled that he didn’t realise how transparent he was.
It wasn’t until he’d weighed out everything and begun mixing that he finally got round to starting the conversation. Josie put the packets back in the cupboard as he beat the cake batter with a wooden spoon.
‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ he said, screwing his brow up with the effort he was putting into the mixing.
Yeah, he should just get on with it and tell her something she didn’t know.
‘OK,’ she said as she put the remains of the butter back in the fridge. ‘What?’
He looked at her. ‘That’s not a very encouraging tone of voice,’ he remarked.
‘I have a feeling you think it’s something I’m not going to like.’
He sighed, stirring harder. ‘Maybe not.’
‘Go on then, what is it?’ She felt in an odd way as if their roles were reversed here, like she was the parent waiting to hear what horrendous thing he’d done.
‘I’m going out next week.’
She waited for the rest, but he didn’t add anything.
‘Yeah, Dad, come on – that’s not it.’
He sighed more heavily and stirred still harder. ‘To the cinema.’
‘Great. And I need to know this because?’
It was ridiculous how nervous he looked as he met her eyes. ‘On a date.’
‘Oh!’
She was falling, that’s how it felt. That plunging feeling, that lurch in the stomach that you get when a lift drops away too quickly and you wonder for a second if the pulley cord has broken.
Her father had a date.
Her
father.
He watched her worriedly, waiting for her to respond.
But what could she say?
He hadn’t been on a date since . . . well, since forever because Josie hadn’t been around the last time for that had been with her mother. He’d never shown any interest in a woman since she died. He still had a photo of his wife by his bed and another on the wall of his study.
How could he be dating?
She opened her mouth to say something stupid about betraying her mother’s memory, and didn’t she mean anything to him, had he stopped loving her, and why, why, WHY?
But she stopped.
Two things stopped her. One was a Pinterest quote she’d snagged two days earlier that said: ‘A part of those we love remains inside us, so be careful who you love because they will change you forever.’ She’d pinned that as a warning, but it had occurred to her afterwards that it meant she carried a part of her mother inside her for always. And if that was true, then so did her dad.
The other was a memory. She was about ten and they were at the beach, in Devon she thought. She was playing on the sand and building a sandcastle with a moat around it while her father watched her. ‘Do you need help?’ he asked as she struggled over the sharp shale part of the beach in her bare feet with another bucket of water.
She looked at him in surprise. ‘No, I want to do it so then I’ll have made it all by myself.’
To her shock his eyes had filled with tears. She’d never seen her father cry, not that she could remember.
‘Daddy?’
He dashed his hand over his face quickly. ‘Sorry,’ he said thickly, ‘it’s just that sometimes you remind me so much of your mum.’
And she remembered how proud she felt when he said that, but it was only now she realised how much love and loss there was in those words. So Josie didn’t shout or rage at him about the date. She bit her lip and drew in a long breath, and then she sat on the kitchen stool and said, ‘So tell me about it.’
Hi again, Dad.
So I guess you want to know what happened after that. The next part was good. You’ll want to hear this.
Lara took it all in – the scene by both gates, the placards saying ‘Save the Symonds’ and ‘Where’s your heart, Loxton?’, the farmers and country people making a human barricade across the tracks in and out of the crumbling farmhouse. And the woman in the doorway of the farmhouse, her face lined with wrinkles from a life of hard work outdoors, now brushing away tears from her eyes as a man stood next to her and rubbed her arm before he went off to join the protesters at the front gate. As he reached them a cheer went up.
Lara looked so alive it was like a fire was burning inside her as she picked up one of the placards and held it high. ‘Who are the Symonds?’ she asked me.
‘The farmers who live here. They rent the farm off the Loxton estate. Have done all their lives. Now Lord Loxton and his estate manager want to turn them out because they fell behind a couple of months with their rent while Mr Symonds was ill with pneumonia and couldn’t work. Basically they want them out so they can bring in some rich people who have horses and will pay a higher rent for the grazing than the Symonds can afford with their dairy cattle. So a lifetime’s loyalty to the estate and they’re out on their ears.’
‘Scum,’ Lara snapped. ‘So how did you find out about this?’
‘I did a bit of digging around for somewhere to take you and found an online protest against Loxton. Thought it was right up your street.’ I could feel myself colouring up a bit and hoped she wouldn’t notice, would think it was the wind or something. ‘OK, it’s not a conventional date, but I thought it might appeal to you more . . .’
For the first time I saw what her face looked like when a genuine, wholehearted smile warmed it. ‘It’s a perfect date. You were so right.’
Inside me, all kinds of mushy stuff happened. You know, birds burst into song, orchestras played triumphant marches and the sun burned the clouds away to shine in a clear blue sky. Lara had smiled. She really smiled. I had made her happy.
I never knew my happiness could depend so much on someone else’s.
I picked up a placard too and took my place by her shoulder, and it felt like the only place in the entire universe that I wanted to be now.
Have you ever felt like that?
There’s more, but I have to stop for a while. I’ve got work that has to be in tomorrow so I’ll finish the rest another day.
Silas
The cake was in the oven, filling the kitchen with the delicious smell of baking and chocolate, and Josie’s dad poured them some freshly made coffee.
‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘Your mother would tell me it’s been long since time. She’d have no patience with me spending my life alone because I’d rather live with the memory of her than another woman.’
‘Really?’ It was so difficult to remember enough of her mother to know her. It was so long ago and Josie had been so little. She ate up others’ memories of her as if she was starving, which she guessed she was really.
He nodded. ‘She told me something just before she died. When she knew she was going and there was no fighting any longer. And that was right before the end, Josie, because she battled so hard to stay alive, as if she could scare the cancer away by how strong the fight in her was.’
‘What did she say?’
He swallowed. The words were not easy to get out. ‘When I said I’d love her forever, as much after death as in life, she told me I should find someone else to be with. I was angry with her. Didn’t she understand? I couldn’t love another woman like her. There is no other woman like her.’
‘So what did she say when you told her that?’
He laughed, one of those small, broken laughs people give when they remember something beautiful that’s left them. ‘She said don’t be a damn fool. A ghost can’t give you a hug after a bad day, and everyone needs a hug after a bad day.’
Josie felt the lump form in her throat instantly. ‘You managed a long time on ghost hugs,’ she said.
‘I had you.’ He reached over and hugged her. ‘Ghost hugs and baby daughter hugs.’
‘So why now?’ she said when he let her go.
He kept hold of her hand. ‘You’ll be gone before I know it, sweetheart. To university and then on to your own life. And that’s how it should be. How your mother and I wanted it to be for you. We wanted so much for you, you know. Wanted you to have every good thing we could think of. That was what upset her most at the end, that she’d not get to see you grow up.’ He closed his eyes as if holding the memory tight to him.
‘Who is she?’
‘A colleague. She’s new. Came up from the Met a couple of months ago.’ He gave Josie a wry smile. ‘She asked me out. A movie and a meal, she said. I got on with her fine, but I hadn’t thought of her in that way. Then I thought about it, and you know I reckoned maybe I should. Just to see if it was possible to be with someone who isn’t your mother.’
Josie felt as if she grew up in the moment between his words and her answer. ‘Yeah, Dad, perhaps you should give it a go. Try it. You might have a good time.’ She made a smile appear, even though she had to force it, because she had a feeling her mother would have told her to damn well do it.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said –
‘I love thee true.’
(John Keats – ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’)
Dear Dad,
OK, this is the rest of it. And I swear to you, nothing happened that night, nothing!
The last train home was cancelled. I swore as I read the message on the screen at the deserted platform. There wasn’t another going through until morning.
Lara’s eyes were still shining from the battle. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.
‘No, it does. I can’t believe I didn’t get us back on time for the 6.30, and then the 8.30 is cancelled!’
She shook her head. ‘What we were doing was important. Much more important than making a train.’
‘Did you enjoy it?’
For one beautiful, perfect moment, she leaned her head against my shoulder. ‘Yes. I felt like I made a difference today. You know, we were there for those people and having their community come out for them like that, and having people travel miles to join in, that really meant something to them. And when the TV cameras turned up that was fantastic.’
‘And what about the result?’
She tilted her head to look up. ‘That was just the best thing. When that agent from the Loxton estate turned up and said to the cameras it had all been a misunderstanding and they weren’t going to be thrown out after all, and you could see it written all over his face that he was lying about the misunderstanding and had had to back down because of the bad press.’
‘Yeah, that was pretty phenomenal. I get what you mean about this stuff now. I felt kind of high at that moment.’
‘Me too.’
We stood in silence for a moment on the empty platform.
‘So what do we do now?’ I asked, and then wished I hadn’t because I should be the one who had a solution.
‘There’s a shelter.’ She pointed at the perspex tunnel further down the platform. ‘There’s a train at 7 a.m. It’s a warm night. We’ll sleep here.’
Every square millimetre of my skin began to tingle at the thought of sleeping beside her.
‘There was a pub half a mile back down the lane,’ I said. ‘We could go and get some food first.’
She nodded. ‘Sounds like a plan.’
We left the station and walked back the way we’d come. There was still plenty of light in the summer evening and the breeze blowing across our faces was warm. I sent a brief text to Mum as we walked, which she probably wouldn’t even see until morning as half the time she never knows where her phone is or if it’s charged. And I sent another to Rafi, who would be worried if I didn’t show up.
When we got to the pub, lots of the other protesters were there and waved us over to sit with them. I watched Lara’s face as she laughed with the wife of one of the local farmers – something about the pathetic statement given by Loxton. This was the real Lara. The stiff, defensive front she showed sometimes was totally dropped.
‘So why did you come?’ the woman asked her.
Lara grinned. ‘I didn’t know I was until today, but Silas knew I’d want to get involved.’ She shrugged and gave a wry smile. ‘I guess I’m just a scrapper, you know. I believe in people’s rights and I believe we should fight for them when those rights are abused. But, you know, I just can’t not fight. There’s something inside me that has to.’
The woman laughed and Lara turned back to me.
‘Well, it’s true,’ she said, flushing as I couldn’t help laughing at her.
‘Yeah, I know it is.’
She eyed me. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. That stunt you pulled with your sister’s friend’s guy – why did you do it?’