Love Notes from Vinegar House (14 page)

“No,” I said. Then added, “I’ll wait for breakfast.”

I fell into my room, closed the door and leaned against it, waiting for my heart to stop knocking against my ribs. There were three things I knew for sure in that moment:

1. I was too old to be scared of someone like Mrs Skelton.

2. There were secrets in the locked trunk, and I was going to discover what they were.

3. I had seen grey shadows near the tree house and I was pretty sure I knew who they were.

I pulled the unread note from the dresser and read it by the light of my mobile.

I put the note away and hopped into bed. I listened to the sounds of the house as it breathed in the night and the shudder of the plumbing as if water had been turned off. Then I realised that had been the noise which had pulled me from sleep at 2.47 am. The sound of the plumbing.

It could have been anything – someone getting a glass of water, or flushing a toilet. Or just a tap not turned off all the way. Yet I couldn’t shake the memory of the empty bathroom with its fogged mirror and water splashing into the tub.

My hot water bottle was lukewarm, but I held onto it tightly to stop my body shivering. And I waited for sleep to come.

That holiday at Vinegar House, I discovered something about myself that I wasn’t proud of – if I wasn’t supposed to have something, then that’s the very thing I desperately wanted to have. There were two things out of bounds for me during that time. The first thing was the attic. The second was Luke Hart.

I thought about Luke night and day.

Day and night.

I imagined that he’d never met Rumer. That I was the one he’d spent the lazy hot days at Ocean Side with.

I invented clever conversations where I had just the right answer. Dreamed of us dancing closely. Amazing dances where we both knew all the steps.

I daydreamed how it would feel to hold his hand again.

To stroll along the beach leaning into his warmth.

I wanted to make him laugh.

Rumer spent more time out of her room than before, but there were hours when the door was shut and nothing could budge her. Not even Mrs Skelton’s infamous banana muffins. (In fact, I shut
myself
in my room when
they
were on offer.) Even when she was out of her room, we didn’t have much to say to each other. Rumer was distracted, and I didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want her confiding her love-life to me.

I tried to fill my days as much as I could. I couldn’t rely on texting. The mobile phone signal dropped out often – so much to the point that it was out more than it was in. Besides, there was hardly anyone to text. As usual, I’d hidden when things got too tough and now I was in no-man’s-land without a friend.

My day kind of went like this:

1. Up for breakfast every morning.

2. I’d clear the dishes. (Although I don’t know why I bothered because I never got it right. If I stacked them on the sink, Mrs Skelton moved them to the pine kitchen table. If I left them on the table, that’s the very place she needed to be doing something else. The woman drove me mad.)

3. Check the attic door. (Which was always locked.)

4. Then I’d go for a walk down to the beach to see if anything interesting had washed up on the sand overnight. (I’d gone back to collecting sea glass. I guess some things never change. Sometimes Rumer came with me, but usually she skipped breakfast and didn’t get up until much later.)

5. Back to the library for some homework. (I’d found that the desk in the library caught the morning sun. Once Mrs Skelton worked out my routine, she organised for Mr Chilvers to have a small fire burning in the fireplace by the time I arrived each morning. On the face of it, this was an unexpected kindness on behalf of the housekeeper. Of course I knew the real reason behind the kindness – this just added another chore to Mr Chilvers’s day and that would have made her happy.)

6. A cooked lunch. (Usually I was still full from breakfast.)

7. After lunch I’d try and do a chore for Mrs Skelton so I could cross that off my list for when the Colonel rang. (He was sounding quite cheery on the phone, which was making me cross. He and Mum had been doing some day trips – sightseeing around the place – and catching up with some of Mum’s old friends. Nice work for some.)

8. Next, check the attic door.

9. In the afternoon I’d take another walk to the beach. Or sometimes I’d walk up past the stables or climb up to the tree house or go through the photo albums in the library.

Grandma tried to teach Rumer and me how to play a card game called five hundred, but Rumer couldn’t get the hang of bowers. Also it meant we needed Mrs Skelton as a fourth player, and she would grumble so much about not getting her work done, that we’d switch to a simpler game like Hearts or Up and Down the River. Playing any kind of game with Grandma was not fun. She always liked to dissect where a particular player went wrong or how something could have been done better. It was like playing games with the Colonel, and I now had an insight into what it must have been like for him growing up. Grandma and Rumer both liked to win, which didn’t leave a lot of space for me.

I only allowed myself two peeks of Luke Hart per day. If I was having a particularly boring time, I’d allow myself an extra peek just to get through the day. Sometimes I’d watch him go about his work as I sat perched in the tree house. Sometimes I’d see him from my bedroom window – bent over at the waist, steam rising from him in the cold air as he worked the garden beds that lined the driveway – or through the kitchen window, chopping kindling, as I was stacking dishes.

Then one morning he was in the library. I stumbled into the room on Tuesday morning, my arms filled with books and papers, to find Luke setting a fire in the grate.

“Hello,” he said. “Just getting this going for you.”

“Oh.” I tried to recall one of my incredibly clever conversations I’d been working on. “Thanks,” was all I could muster.

I dumped everything onto the desk and twitched back the curtains to let in more light. I fussed about, setting out my books, notebook and pens. Then I said, “So how’s the job going?”

“Good. Busy.”

“Well … that’s good.” I rearranged my pens.

One of Grandma’s cats swished into the room, jumped up onto the desk, and promptly sat on my notebook.

“How’s your grandmother?”

“Nanna,” I said automatically. “Good. Good, thank you.”

“So how are you going?” he asked. I watched him light a match and hold it against a balled up newspaper page. “Must be a bit boring?”

“It’s okay.” I pointed to my books. “Getting my homework done.”

Hmmm, good one Freya, I thought, nothing like stating the obvious.

“Probably good that you’re not at Homsea right now anyway,” he said.

I watched the flame from the paper lick at the dry twigs and kindling. I shifted in my seat. I could hear the cat purring. “What?”

“You know.” He seemed uncomfortable. There was a crackle as a twig caught alight.

“What?” I wanted to open the window. I needed air. All of a sudden the room was warm enough.

“That whole thing. With that Suzette girl. Probably good to let it all … you know … die down.”

“How …?”

“Facebook,” he said. “Haven’t been online since I’ve been here. Probably yesterday’s news by now.”

Luke Hart, the one person I’d been thinking of day and night, knew that I had been accused of kissing another girl’s boyfriend. There was a photo of it on Facebook. This was the big issue that I’d been avoiding. The whole reason I was happy to be staying away from Facebook. It’s not what it looked like, but that didn’t matter. Hamish Thomson, Suzette Crompt’s boyfriend, had kissed me as a dare at Tara Wilcock’s birthday party, and someone had taken a photo. Life was so boring at Homsea High that there was nothing else going on. The whole thing had blown way out of proportion.

And Luke knew all about it.

By now the fire was burning brightly. Luke added some larger pieces of wood and brushed the bark from his hands. I was so embarrassed I couldn’t look at him.

“Hamish is a nice guy,” said Luke. “I’ve played footy with him–”

Luke thought I was actually interested in Hamish Thomson?

“No …” Did I really want him to think that I was that sort of girl? The sort of girl that kissed her friend’s boyfriend? A Rumer sort of girl? But did I really want to tell him the truth – that I was stupid enough to be at the wrong end of someone’s ten-dollar bet?

“Thanks for the fire,” I said, and I turned back to my books as if I couldn’t waste another minute away from them.

The cat was looking up at me like I was a big liar – which I was.

Wednesday arrived with a bright shining sun, no wind in sight and another note. For a winter’s day it was positively hot. This time there was no envelope under Rumer’s door, just a piece of paper folded over twice, and the letter R in that same square writing on the outside of the note.

I tucked the note into my dresser drawer and practised my own smile in front of the mirror. One of Grandma’s cats, Cinnamon, watched with interest from the end of my bed.

“Oh, you wrote this note for me? How sweet!” I moved my hands about as I spoke, but just looked like I was being attacked by a plague of flies. I gave up trying to be like Rumer.

The only thing I found on my early morning walk to the beach was a slightly battered styrofoam surfboard with a big chunk out of one end. It made me think of the movie
Jaws
, and I shuddered a little as I threw it up onto the rocks near the track – planning to take it back with me when I left. The sand looked so soft and inviting that I lay down and let the sun’s warmth soak into my bones.

I was trying to work out how I would open the lock of the attic trunk. Maybe bolt cutters or a key. One of the keys hanging from Mrs Skelton’s neck would probably do the trick. I wondered if she ever took the keys off, or if she slept with them – even showered with them. I wouldn’t put it past her.

How to get those keys?

I wished I could talk to Luke about my problem. He’d have a good idea.

I felt myself slipping into that place that isn’t quite awake and isn’t quite asleep, when a shadow fell over me and I looked up to see Luke. He was standing watching me, his work cap pulled low over his forehead. I couldn’t see his face properly. My heart set up a clumsy gallop.

“You
are
down here!” he said.

“Yep,” I said. I closed my eyes against the sun’s glare and felt the sand shift next to me as Luke sat down.

“Your grandmother’s after you,” he said. “Something about peeling potatoes or something.”

“Wonder what her last slave died of,” I said.

He laughed.

It wasn’t that funny.

“Why didn’t she send Rumer down to get me? Actually, why doesn’t Rumer do the potatoes?” I threw my cousin’s name into the air twice – a challenge that Luke ignored.

What I really wanted to say was, “How can you be interested in someone like Rumer after she was so mean to you?”

What I really wanted to say was, “How can you not be interested in me?”

But sometimes it’s hard to say what you really want to.

“Dunno,” he said. Then he laughed again. “Do you remember when you swam out to Seal Rock?”

I opened my eyes to see him looking out over the waves.

“I wasn’t trying to swim to Seal Rock.” I sat up and leaned on one elbow. “I was just … It doesn’t matter.” I shaded my eyes and looked out to the rock, which was covered in seagulls.

“What doesn’t matter?” he asked.

I lay back and shut my eyes. “I can’t remember.”

My head hoped Luke would go away.

My heartbeat quickened and hoped he would stay.

I cranked one eyelid open and watched him lie down on the sand. He was so close our shoulders were touching.

“Do you remember that holiday at Ocean Side?” He shifted a little closer. I could feel the heat of his shoulder branding mine. “The one where it rained for two weeks solid?”

“Hmm, mmm,” I said. The sun was beating down nicely and making me feel drowsy. I wished I could forget about Rumer and Luke. Luke and Rumer. Together again.

“Your dad taught us how to play canasta,” he said.

“Ruleman,” I said.

“Remember how the parents kept pretending to lose so we’d keep playing?”

“Not the Colonel,” I said. “‘Winning isn’t everything, Freya, but losing is nothing’.”

“He does hate to lose,” said Luke. “Remember that Easter? We went camping and lost all our chocolate eggs? Rosie ate them–”

“Silver paper and all.”

“I was sure your dad was going to shove his hand down her throat to get them back.”

“I loved that dog.” I giggled.

“Yup. Do you still collect sea glass?” he asked.

“No. I don’t do that any more,” I said, thinking about the nice collection I had lined up on my dresser.

The dresser. The notes …

I shifted slightly away from him.

“Oh, I’m playing in the Firsts football team this year.”

“I know.” I didn’t want Luke to think I was stalking him. “I heard. I think Isabella told me.”

“How’s your
Nanna
?”

I noticed that he’d gotten her name right and I smiled. “Much better. Thank you.”

“When are your parents coming home?” he asked.

“Not sure. Next week sometime, I think.”

I didn’t want to think about going home. I just wanted to be where I was forever, lying on the beach next to Luke, talking like we used to before everything got messed up.