The Farm Beneath the Water (2 page)

Up the steps and on to the stage skittered the piglet. Hannah dived and seized it with both hands. As she scooped it up, it lifted its tail and produced a stream of warm, pungent yellow urine that soaked into Hannah’s white, oil-streaked dress and spread into a puddle on the stage all around her.

The hall erupted into hysterical laughter. Hannah stood frozen to the spot, unable to move or think.

Up the steps and on to the stage ran Jo and Sam. Jo made a grab for the pig, skidded on the wet patch and fell at Hannah’s feet. Sam tripped over Jo and landed on top of her. The piglet bolted down the steps stage left and back into the mass of students. Jonah and Ben set off after it, knocking over chairs and crashing into Lexie and Amber, who were chasing it from the opposite direction. Poppy barricaded herself into a corner with two of the upturned chairs, screaming and clutching at her hair.

At that moment, Dad burst through the patio doors, his eyes searching wildly for the runaway pig.

Suddenly, an authoritative voice boomed across the hall, cutting through the chaos.

“What on
earth
is going on in here?”

Hannah looked up from the writhing bodies on
the floor, over the hysterical crowd beyond.

At the far end of the hall, standing in the doorway in a pristine grey suit, with a murderous look on his face, stood Mr Collins, the Head Teacher.

Chapter Two

A Visitor

“What did he say?” asked Lottie, as Hannah emerged from the Head’s office at the end of the day.

Hannah made a face, but she waited until they were outside before she spoke.

“Honestly, the way he talked it was like I’d done it deliberately. Can you imagine?” She put on a mock-thoughtful voice. “‘Hmm, what I would really like to do today is cause absolute maximum public embarrassment to myself by having a piglet wee all over me in the school hall.’
Why
would he think I’d do that?”

“So what did he say?”

“Oh, he just banged on and on about threats to health and safety and school security and stuff.”

“Security! Did he think the piglet was carrying a bomb?”

“Dad told him it had nothing to do with me, but I’m sure he blames me for the whole thing. He hates me anyway, after what happened in the dining hall last term.”

“The worst thing,” said Lottie, “is that now Miranda will get exactly what she wanted. Just like
she always does.”

“Yes, and I’ll be standing in the back row of the party scenes,” said Hannah. “If I’m lucky.” She kicked a stone along the pavement. “I was so looking forward to the play, too. I mean, I knew I probably wouldn’t get the main part, but I never thought my audition would be ruined by a pig.”

“It’s so unfair,” said Lottie. “You would definitely have been better than Miranda if that hadn’t happened.”

“I just hope you still get to do the costumes. I mean, it’s hardly your fault my dress ended up in the state it did, is it?”

When they reached Lottie’s house, the front gate was open. Lottie’s mum, Vanessa, in immaculate jeans and a perfectly ironed white linen shirt, knelt in front of a flowerbed, pulling out minuscule weeds.

“You’re home early,” said Lottie.

Vanessa straightened up and smiled. “My meeting was cancelled, it’s a beautiful day and I thought I’d bunk off and see my darling daughter.” She hugged Lottie and winked at Hannah as Lottie squirmed away. “How are you, Hannah?”

“Don’t ask,” said Lottie. “It’s been a bad day.”

“Oh, dear, I’m sorry. Are you coming in?”

Hannah hesitated for a second. She would have loved to go in, but Lottie and her mum didn’t get much time together.

“Oh, thanks, but I’d better go.”

“All right,” said Vanessa. “Well, give my love to everybody.”

As Hannah walked away up Elm Lane, she could hear Vanessa saying, “Now, darling, I’ve bought loads of treats, so come inside and tell me all about your dreadful day.”

Hannah dragged her boots along the ground. Imagine having somebody at home, she thought, who asked about your day and was interested in what you had to say.

At the top of Elm Lane, Hannah crossed the road on to the track that led to Clayhill Farm. She passed the disintegrating wooden gate that sagged permanently open and tried to push Miranda’s smug face out of her mind. Taking a deep breath, she filled her lungs with the crisp fresh air that rose from the fields of her home.

The high arch of sky above the farm was a perfect pale blue. The farm was still in its summer clothes, with lush grass in the meadows and green leaves on the trees. It was only if you studied the leaves close up that the odd fleck of brown or gold was visible: a tiny reminder that autumn was on its way.

As she approached the farmyard, Jo and Sam came racing up the track towards her, followed by Jo’s cocker spaniel puppy, Rags, wagging her feathery tail. Their school finished earlier than the community college and they had already changed into jeans and T-shirts.

“We saw you from the window,” said Jo. “There’s a surprise in the house. Come and see.”

Sam grabbed Hannah’s arm. Hannah pulled it
away. “You’re covered in mud. What have you been doing?”

In her soil-coated hand, Jo held a blue notebook with
Bean Arkealogicle Society
written on the cover. She and Sam were the sole members of the Society of Bean, a secret club whose activities seemed mainly to consist of calling each other bean names and drawing cartoons of various bean characters for their monthly magazine.

“We were excavating,” Jo said. “We found a Roman coin. Do you want to see it?”

Two years ago, an exploratory dig by the local archaeological society had revealed medieval pottery in South Meadow. The Beans had been fascinated by the dig, and since Sam had been given a metal detector for his birthday, they had spent a lot of time searching for treasure. Now Sam produced a muddy scrap of metal from his pocket.

Hannah glanced at it. “Looks like a squashed bit of tin to me.”

“Who knows?” said Jo. “It might be a Roman coin. We need to give it a professional clean and analyse it scientifically.”

“Come and see our surprise,” said Sam, pulling Hannah into the yard.

In her knee-high wellington boots, Hannah trudged through the muddy puddles and the chicken dung. Pigs snuffled and grunted in their sties behind the yard. The cockerel perched on the stable door threw back his head and gave an ear-splitting call.

An unfamiliar red hatchback was parked outside the cow stalls. Was someone visiting?

At the edge of the yard, Jasper, Jo’s enormous pet sheep, munched a clump of grass. His duck friend, Lucy, was nestled into his broad woolly back. Jasper looked up as the children approached and, with Lucy swaying gently on his back, he followed Jo to the garden gate, where he busied himself with another clump of grass while Jo put Rags in her kennel.

Hannah dumped her school bag on the rusty chest freezer in the scullery, then kicked off her wellies and added them to the heap already cluttering the concrete floor.

“Now, you have to be really quiet,” whispered Jo. “Follow us and don’t say a word.”

“What is this surprise, anyway?”

Jo gave her a stern look. “Don’t be so impatient.”

She opened the kitchen door and they crept across the tiles. Hannah heard a murmur of voices from the dining room. She started to ask Jo who was in the house, but Jo put a finger to her lips and pointed to the keyhole.

Hannah bent down and peeped through. Her mouth fell open.

Dad was sitting at the dining table with his back to her. He wore his best jacket, which was exactly the same as his everyday one except it didn’t have holes at the elbows and all the buttons were still attached. The change of jacket was unusual enough. But that wasn’t what made Hannah freeze at the keyhole, speechless with amazement.

Sitting at the other side of the table was a fairly young, very pretty woman with long dark wavy hair. She wore jeans and a pink cardigan and she was leaning towards Dad, talking animatedly. As Hannah watched, open-mouthed, the woman laid her hand on Dad’s arm.

Who was she? And what was she doing, touching Dad like that?

The woman said something and Dad threw back his head and laughed. Hannah’s insides twisted.

Jo reached for the doorknob. Hannah hardly had time to straighten up and adjust her face before Jo threw the door open.

Dad stopped laughing abruptly and turned round. The woman looked up and smiled at the children. A cup of tea stood on the table in front of her. Hannah stared at it. Surely Dad hadn’t made it? Dad had never made a cup of tea in his life. He never even opened a kitchen cupboard. How had he found the teabags?

Had
she
made the tea? Had
she
been poking about in their cupboards?

“Oh, hello,” said Dad. “Er, Sophie, these are my children.” He gestured to them. “Jo, Sam, Hannah. Er, this is Sophie.”

“Lovely to meet you,” said Sophie.

“Hello,” said Hannah coldly.

“Can we have a milkshake?” Sam asked Hannah.

“Yes, come on, I’ll make it.”

As Hannah closed the door, Sophie said something she couldn’t quite catch and Dad laughed again.
Rage stabbed at Hannah.

“Did you like the surprise?” asked Jo.

Hannah opened a cupboard door and fished out the milkshake powder.

“We’re spying on her,” said Sam. “Who do you think she is?”

“I don’t know,” said Hannah. “Maybe she wants to keep a horse here.”

The Beans seemed satisfied with this explanation. But, Hannah thought, as she went to fetch the milk from the larder, if this Sophie person wanted to keep her horse at the farm, Dad would be showing her the stables. He never invited people into the house.

Martha burst into the hall from the dining room just as Hannah emerged from the larder. She followed Hannah back to the kitchen.

“Have you seen that woman? Has Dad gone and joined a dating agency or something?”

“Shh, he’ll hear.”

“What’s a dating agency?” asked Sam.

“I just walked in,” said Martha, “and he was saying, ‘They recommended you very highly,’ and she said, ‘Well, I’m delighted to have been asked. I’m very excited about it.’”

Hannah felt as though someone was tying her stomach into knots.

“Are they going to get married?” asked Jo, her eyes huge. “Are we going to get a stepmother?”

“No way will she marry him,” said Martha. “She’s really pretty. And young.”

“How was your day, Martha?” asked Hannah, to
change the subject.

Martha gave her a withering look. “Great, thanks. Really good. I just love it when my entire family turns up at school with the sole aim of totally shaming me.”

“Are they really going to get married?” asked Jo.

“No,” said Hannah.

“She looked nice,” said Sam.

Hannah handed the Beans their milkshakes. “There you go. Take those upstairs.”

“Yum, thanks.” They took the drinks and left.

Without looking at each other, Hannah and Martha both edged closer to the dining-room door.

“Another cup of tea?” Dad was saying.

“No, thanks, that was perfect.”

“Do you want to come and see the loft now?”

The
loft
?

“Oh, yes, please,” said Sophie. “Then I can think about where to put my stuff.”

Martha gasped, her face a picture of outrage.

Why on earth, thought Hannah, would this woman be putting her stuff in their loft? The loft was where Mum had stored all their baby things, and her own things from before she got married. Why would Dad let a strange woman anywhere near their loft?

Chairs scraped across the tiles. The door into the hall opened. Something licked Hannah’s hand and she spun round.

“Jasper! You know you’re not allowed in the kitchen. Come on.”

“Ugh!” shrieked Martha. “Get that disgusting
thing out of here!”

Hannah gave him a shove, but Jasper was like a solid wall.

“Ugh, it’s dribbling on the floor!” screeched Martha.

“Well, you help, then.”

“Are you mad? No way am I touching that.”

Hannah gave up. “There’s no point trying to push him. The only way to move him is with food.” She looked around the kitchen. “Pass me a couple of those apples.”

“Get them yourself.”

With a murderous look at her sister, Hannah crossed the kitchen and took two apples from the basket of windfalls that Sam had brought in from the orchard yesterday. They weren’t really ripe yet, but Jasper wouldn’t mind.

She held an apple out in front of her.

“Come on, Jasper. Good boy, come on.”

Jasper craned his neck towards the apple and Hannah moved slowly backwards, through the kitchen and scullery and out of the back door.

The shiny red hatchback squatted smugly in the yard.
Their
yard. With the back window left casually open. As though she
belonged
here. What a cheek.

Martha followed Hannah into the scullery and took her school bag from its place on the freezer.

“Guess that’s her car, then,” she said.

“Guess so,” said Hannah. She led Jasper into the yard and fed him the apple.

Martha stepped gingerly across the yard, dodging
the chicken dung and giving Jasper a wide berth. She peered through the open car window.

“She’s got food from that posh place in Massingham. Snob.”

Suddenly her eyes widened. Then they narrowed thoughtfully. She turned and looked at Jasper. Chunks of saliva-coated apple fell from his mouth and dropped to the ground. Martha shuddered. But then she seemed to brace herself.

“Give me that other apple,” she said to Hannah.

“Why?” asked Hannah, handing it to Martha.

“Come on, Jasper,” said Martha, holding out the apple. “Come over here.”

“What are you …
oh
,” said Hannah, suddenly understanding.

Martha gave her a warning look. “If you say one word…”

Hannah widened her eyes in mock innocence. “One word about what?”

Their eyes met briefly. Then Hannah turned and walked indoors. As she shut the scullery door behind her, she heard Martha say, in an encouraging tone quite unlike her usual voice, “Here, Jasper. Here, boy. Good boy. That’s right, come on. Lots of yummy treats here.”

* * *

Two minutes later, sitting at the desk in her bedroom, her history book open in front of her, Hannah heard footsteps descending the loft ladder. Then Sophie’s voice. “This is so exciting. It looks absolutely
ideal
.”

Hannah felt sick. This woman wasn’t really going to move her things into their house, was she?

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