The Whispers of Wilderwood Hall (14 page)

And the only reason Mum decided to do this really is because there are about a dozen different sets of drilling going on back at the Hall, and the noise was like finding yourself locked in a steel drum with a bunch of metal ball bearings and being pushed down a hill. I think Mr Fraser felt bad, and suggested the outing to Mum, drawing a map to the Linn o' Glenmill on the back of an envelope. So here we are.

“Mum, are you OK with Weezy moving into that room in the main house?” I ask, dropping my voice, though Weezy's too far ahead to hear me.

“Well, there's dust everywhere and the builders are storing some tools in there … but if she's happy to camp out in it for now, I guess that's fine by me,” says Mum.

“
For now?” I repeat hopefully. “For now” doesn't sound too long.

“Listen, I still don't know what's happening, Ellis,” Mum answers, sounding tired. “RJ is trying to sort things out with Beth, which is never easy at the best of times. But the idea is that he wants to persuade Weezy to get back to boarding school after the holidays. It's what's best for her.”

A dark thought bobs into my mind … Shaniya “joked” about RJ sending me off to boarding school too. Just as quickly I shake it out of my head, remembering we're talking about Weezy here, not me.

“Hey, did you ever find out why she got so angry at the stable block yesterday?” I take the opportunity to ask Mum.

I know Weezy wouldn't say what was wrong when Mum followed her and caught her up at the ivy-covered fountain. So the flip-out over the star tattoo stayed a mystery … unless Mum had got her to talk about it since.

“I spoke to RJ about it when you guys were in bed last night,” she tells me. “He got his white star tattoo done on tour in Amsterdam last year. Weezy joined him over there for the weekend and went with him
to
watch. He told her it would always remind him of her…”

“But now it's a you-and-him thing,” I say, suddenly getting why Weezy might feel put out. Or
shoved
out.

“I guess. Anyway, come on, we'd better not lose her, or RJ'll never forgive me!” Mum says with a smile, speeding up as Weezy disappears from view over the brow of a wooded hillock. With a scurry and a scramble we end up coming to an opening in the forest … and it's completely beautiful.

The dense clutch of trees has thinned out and directly in front of us is a high outcrop of granite. A waterfall gushes and splashes over it, flowing down into a huge circular pool in the rocks. The water then rushes and darts noisily over boulders, and becomes a stream that turns into a river that runs towards Glenmill village and then off on its journey to the faraway sea. (Which way, which sea, I wonder, since we're right in the middle of Scotland, as far from the Atlantic as we are from the North Sea.)

Weezy is staring at the view, and then down at an information board planted in the ground. It only takes me and Mum a few steps to get to her side.

“
This is a bit special, isn't it?” says Mum.

Weezy, as usual, doesn't bother to reply.

“What does the board say, Weezy?” Mum asks as she pulls her jacket off now we're hot from the walk.

“It says ‘linn' is old Scots for
pool
,” Weezy mutters, idly drawing her index finger along the dusty lines of information on the metal board. “And the pool is an almost perfect circular basin, carved out of the rock by water during the last Ice Age…”

Wow. That's more words than I've ever heard her say, put together.

“Ha! That puts time into perspective, doesn't it?” says Mum. “It makes an old place like Wilderwood Hall seem as modern-day as the Shard!”

My mood lightens at Mum's mention of the Shard. She took me there as a surprise for my thirteenth birthday back in December, and I remember my shock, standing under this towering high-rise central London office block that looks like a giant glass splinter fallen from space. “We're going up
there
?” I'd checked with her. “We sure are,” she replied. “We get the lift all the way to the top, to the viewing platform.” So that's what we did. And I blew out a candle on a cupcake while we looked at
the
jaw-dropping view of London with snowflakes gently drifting over it…

That sudden happy memory makes me realize something. Flora will have her
own
happy memories of London soon. And New York soon after.

I need to find her when I we get back today and make the most of her company before the family and staff head off on their grand adventure…

“Hey, is that a seal?” Mum suddenly asks, frowning at a shape that's just bobbed up in the middle of the pool.

“It can't be,” I say, holding my hand above my eyes to shield them from the sun. “Seals live in the sea, not in—”

I stop dead mid-sentence at the sight of a hand lifting from the water.

If Flora was here by my side, she'd be claiming it as a selkie. But I know it's not a seal, or a selkie, or any other kind of animal, real or imagined. His messy hair might be lying flat and sleek against his head because of the water, but the waving boy happily gasping for breath after his underwater swim is Cam.

“Oh, it's Gordon's son,” Mum exclaims happily, waving back at him. “That's nice. You girls can go
chat
to him while I try and, you know, sort stuff out.”

My tummy instantly flips with irritation.

When Mum says “sort stuff out”, she means try and get through to RJ again. Why does she need to track him down all the time? Won't he call when he can, when he's got anything to tell her about what's happening? Can't she just spend time with me?

We could sit by that picnic table over there and chat, and let
Weezy
talk to the seal boy…

“Oi, Bella! Joe!” Cam suddenly yells.

Who are they? I wonder. Friends from school?

But it's not human voices that answer him.

“Arf! Arf! Arf!!”

Scattershot barking bursts into the quiet of the scene, and me, Mum and Weezy watch in surprise as two tongue-lolling dogs come hurtling out of the woods and jump straight into the freezing pool. Cam laughs at his doggy-paddling pets, then begins to swim to us humans.

“Hey, more company for you and Weezy!” says Mum, patting me on the arm. “Go on over!”

I turn and give Mum a puppy-eyed look of desperation that I know she'll recognize as “Save me!”

But
it seems she's not in the mood for doing any such thing. She's in the mood for staring down at her phone as if it's a lifeline, and heading over to the picnic table to be alone with it.

And so there's nothing much I can do, except start mooching over to the water's edge, where I settle myself cross-legged, feeling the prickles of pine needles niggling my bare ankles in the space between my jeans and socks. I scratch at the itchiness, just for something to do, as the splashing sounds from the water get louder and nearer.

But I can't ignore the “Hi!” that's said directly to me.

“Hello,” I say to Cam, who's treading water.

One of the dogs is still happily swimming in steady circles, while the other one has scrambled out and starts shaking itself dry horribly close to me.

“I know you're Ellis,” says Cam, “but who are you?”

Weezy must be standing right behind me, though I hadn't checked to see if she'd followed me over to the water.

“I'm Weezy,” she replies, but doesn't give up any more information than that.

“Interesting name. And are you an interesting person?”

There's
a sudden, surprising noise.

It's Weezy, bursting out laughing at this cheeky question.

“Well, let's see,” she says, stepping forward so her flowery Doc Martens end up parked next to my crossed knee. “If you asked anyone I know, they'd probably say no.”

“No? Well, they sound boring people themselves. I must remember never to meet them,” Cam says with a grin.

“You won't. They're all at my boarding school,” Weezy replies flatly.

“Is that Inverkellen? Just north of here?” asks Cam.

That's the name of the other school in the area, the one I saw on Google Maps when I was trying to spot Glenmill High.

“Nope. Mine's way,
way
down in the south of England, in Devon. But I'm not going back,” Weezy announces, and I see her determinedly digging the heel of one boot into the ground to emphasize the fact.

Uh-oh, that won't be good news for RJ. I quickly glance over at Mum, but see that she's looking serious and staring at me.

It
gives me the shivers.

I feel like I'm being discussed.

In fact, for all I know, Shaniya is right (for once) and RJ is at this moment trying to persuade Mum that the best option for me is a spell at Inverkellen boarding school. Then he'll have Mum all to himself when he comes back, won't he?

“OK, so now I know you're an
ex
-boarder. Tell me something else,” I hear Cam continue with his cheerful interrogation of Weezy.

“Like what?” replies Weezy.

“Well, describe yourself in three words,” says Cam.

“Nope,” says Weezy, but the tone of her voice is edging on friendly.

“Ah, go on,” Cam urges. “Everyone can do that. Here's mine: Glaswegian, drummer, idiot.”

“Well, I can see
one
of those three is true,” Weezy teases.

Mum sees me watching, and drops her eyes. (Ripples of anxiety start to rise.)

“You go first,” I hear Weezy say, then realize she's talking to
me
, when her boot nudges up against my knee.

“I don't want to,” I say, because I'm swamped
with
sudden worries and nerves and all I can think of right now is “anxious, shy, mad”, and I'm not prepared to say that out loud.

“OK,” says Cam, who doesn't seem interested enough to push me for my list of three. “So, are you two coming in, then?”

“Coming in?” I hear myself bleat in a squeaky-with-surprise voice.

“Well,
yeah
,” Cam laughs at me. “The Loch Ness Monster doesn't live in here, you know.”

I can't stand that snidey, sarky sort of humour, even though I should be used to it, being “friends” with Shaniya for so long.

“I
know
that. I just don't want to, and anyway, I haven't got a swimsuit or a towel with—”

Cam has stopped looking at me. He's not even listening. He's too busy grinning at something happening right beside me.

Weezy's parka has just flopped on to the ground, followed by a black hoodie.

“OK, OK; I've got my three!” Weezy suddenly announces, and bizarrely tugs her loosely fastened boots off. “Giant.”

She's making a joke about her height. Is she self-conscious about it too, like me? I wonder.

I
don't wonder for long; I'm too confused by the fact that she's now peeling off both her black ankle socks. And in that second I see something on the inside of her wrist – a white star tattoo. It must be fairly recently done; the skin around it looks pink and a little sore. Whoa; no wonder she didn't like it when she saw Mum's.

Bent down now, Weezy's gaze meets mine – she knows I've seen. Her deep brown eyes seem to be daring me to say something about it, but I'm too shy and wary of her to say anything at all. So Weezy turns back towards Cam, her face becoming animated again as she calls out her next word.

“Failure.”

What? Why's she said that?

But omigod, she's wriggling her jeans off now…

“SWIMMER!”

“Go, Go, GO!” chants Cam, and I feel a rush of air beside me as Weezy leaps from the rocky pool's edge – wearing only a black vest top and purple knickers – and hurtles herself into the water. Cam cheers her on, the dogs bark madly, and Mum, spotting what's gone on, whoops and applauds from the picnic bench.

As for me? I feel a dull, hard chill settle in my
chest.
Even a practically silent, gloomy stranger can make herself at home here better than me.

I can't stand to look as Cam treads water by Weezy's side, laughing and congratulating her on her cannonball, while she grins and shrugs back at him, wiping tendrils of now dark red hair back from her face. You know, RJ and Mum might as well pack me off to boarding school, I think as I lean over and gaze down into the water, swirling it with my hand.

What is it about me that makes fitting in so difficult? Everyone else seems to find life so easy.

A while ago, Mum said it's because I haven't found my “tribe” yet. That I'll probably stop feeling so anxious when I meet people who are like me – and
like
me – and then I can relax. But I don't feel like that's going to happen anytime soon. And I can't even remember what it feels like to be totally relaxed. Even on good days, even hanging out with Mum, the waves are always just in sight, ready to roll in…

Then I remember this morning, laughing till I could hardly breathe with Flora. There were no waves then.

Oh, I wish I was back in Wilderwood, where I have one friend at least…

Then
a sudden movement from below catches my eye. Something is lurking in the depths of the dark water. It's moving fast, rushing up towards me. A face. Just like the altered refraction I saw over the side of the boat, the day Mum married RJ.

“No, no, NO!” I scream as the face bursts out from the surface of the water, eyes locked on mine.