It’s scribbled in pink felt tip.
Hi Freya! We are all going down to the field later. Football then fire/barbecue on the beach. Please come. xx Izzy (+ Matt, Danny, Maddie, Lisa, Will, Ben, etc, etc)
Evie reads it over my shoulder. ‘Sounds fun.’
‘S’pose.’
‘She’s a lovely girl,’ Evie says.
‘Who is?’ Gramps tips sand out of his shoes in a fine shower on to the garden path.
‘Izzy. Isabelle. The girl helping Sally with the campsite this year.’
‘With hair like spun gold.’ Gramps grins.
Evie sighs. ‘You don’t miss a trick when it comes to pretty girls, do you? See that, Freya? Not so muddled now, is he?’
Upstairs, I study myself in the mirror. Hardly spun gold, my hair. Nor ebony or anything else you’d find in one of those stories on Evie’s shelves. I think of Mum, holding that mirror on the landing, the day before I left, how thin and faded she looked. It comes over me in a sudden rush, this overwhelming need to see her and talk to her, to make her see me. I almost pick up the phone, but I don’t. I’ve tried it before. She’ll be busy. She won’t have anything to say. She’ll start worrying. There’s no point.
In the bath, I rinse off the sand and salt still stuck to my skin. My limbs look pale and thin in the dim light of the downstairs bathroom. Wearing my wetsuit on the beach today means I still haven’t got that first flush of sunburn. I lie back in the water. Last summer, I could easily float in this bath but now I’m too long: my toes touch the end. I hold my breath and dip my head right under. Bubbles come out of my ears. My hair spreads out. I start counting the seconds. One, two, three . . .
What shall I wear for the beach party? We’ll be playing football first, so jeans. Izzy will be wearing some crazy hippy thing as usual. And Matt will be there . . .
I imagine describing him to Miranda, even though I’m not intending to tell her anything right now because she’ll just go on about it. Tall. Slim. Blonde hair that sticks up at the front, longer at the back. The bluest eyes. Wide smile . . .
I come up for air, spluttering. Someone’s banging at the door.
‘All right in there?’ says Gramps. ‘Not gone down the plughole or anything? Some of us lesser mortals need the lavatory once in a while, you know.’
‘Sorry, Gramps,’ I call back. When I stand up, water sloshes over the edge of the bath. I wipe it up with the mat. Start to towel myself dry.
How long was it that time? I lost count. I need a stopwatch.
I’ve got one, in actual fact. On the watch I use which was his, of course. The watch which has a compass and everything you need for navigation, and which he wasn’t wearing either, along with the wetsuit that would have kept him warm.
Izzy waves as I come round the edge of the field. The game’s already in full swing. I join her end of the pitch.
‘Good you’ve come,’ she says.
‘Thanks for the note.’
‘I looked for you earlier. Saw you’d all gone out. Nice time?’
‘OK. Swimming and that.’
‘Cool.’
‘You?’
‘Worked all day. Really busy. The campsite’s packed.’
‘Oi! Stop chatting!’ Matt puffs past us after the ball. ‘Come on! You’re on our side, Freya.’
My cheeks go hot. Izzy doesn’t notice. She chases after Matt and I’m left standing there like a loser, so I make myself run too. Danny waves to me from the other end of the field.
‘Freya!’ a voice calls.
The ball bounces past me and rolls into the gorse bushes at the edge of the field. I run after it. Matt gets there first and we almost collide.
‘Whoa!’ he says. He puts his hand on my arm, and all the rest of the game I can feel the place, like a burn. I know it’s mad, but he’s so totally gorgeous. Then Danny comes over and I forget about Matt for a while. He’s caught a whole load of mackerel for the barbecue and he’s dead proud of himself. He’s OK, Danny. I like the way he gets enthusiastic about things. It’s so not how most boys are, back home.
Danny’s side win, but it doesn’t matter. We play until the sun’s gone down and it’s too dark to see the pitch. Izzy and Matt have left already to start a fire on the beach at Periglis.
Some of the younger kids go back to the campsite. The rest of us join Izzy and Matt on the beach. We gather round the fire in a rough sort of circle. Danny comes over to sit next to me. We watch the sparks spiralling into the sky each time someone adds another log to the fire.
After a while, Izzy stops people piling more wood on. ‘It needs to be white-hot for cooking, not flaming like this.’
Matt and Lisa lay sausages and burgers on a grill balanced between two rocks over the glowing logs. Danny adds the fish, tail to head alternately. He sprinkles herbs on them.
‘Freshly picked?’ I say.
He grins. ‘’Course.’
A dog comes nosing along the beach. It’s Bonnie, from the farm, snuffling out the crisps and bread people have dropped. She can smell the meat cooking. She comes when I call her, and sits right close to me, leaning into my legs. I smooth her head and she wags her tail in circles. Her ears are warm and silky under my hand.
Everyone watches Izzy. Her hair is frizzy from sea-spray, from the heavy dew that fell those last minutes on the field after the sun went down. It’s spotlit by firelight, an orange glowing halo around her oval face. She’s stripped down to a thin sleeveless T-shirt. Each time she leans forward, I glimpse the curve of her body. I can’t help it. Matt sees too. Danny, Will, everyone. Joe too, if he was here. My skin prickles. I bend down and hug Bonnie.
Everyone helps themselves to food. Some of the older kids pass round cans. Some of them light up cigarettes. Danny and I go quiet, watching and listening. We’re the youngest people left, now. The lighthouse beam goes round: two sweeping beams every twelve seconds, lighting up the rocks, guiding ships to safety. As the night gets darker, the beam seems stronger and brighter.
Matt and Will are talking about this theory that humans evolved from apes who lived in water, not land, and that’s why we don’t have fur and why we can control our breathing when we dive, and need to eat fish, and walk upright and stuff. I listen. It makes a lot of sense.
‘It’s late,’ says Danny. ‘I’ve got to get back.’
‘Me too.’
Izzy gives us a little wave but no one else notices when we get up to leave. We walk single-file along the narrow footpath at the top of the beach, back to the campsite.
Danny peels off towards his tent. ‘See ya!’ he says. ‘Sweet dreams.’
Electric light from the washrooms floods the top field. I make my way through the gate. After that, the lane seems extra dark. A dog barks as I go past the farm. My Tilly?
It’s pitch-black, but not scary. The dark seems gentle and soft, folding round me. There’s no wind, and no moon. The first part of the lane is overshadowed by the hawthorns either side, but as it goes up the hill the hedge falls away, and suddenly I see the sky above me like a huge canopy, studded by a million stars.
Nearly there. I can see the house.
Something light and feathery brushes my arm. For a second I hold my breath. Joe? But it’s just a moth, flitting towards the light in the window. Evie never draws curtains. Who’s to look in, after all?
She must have heard me come in. She calls from the top of the stairs. ‘Everything OK? Did you have a good time, Freya?’
‘Yes. Fine.’
‘Night, night, then.’
I flick on the bedside lamp. Evie’s turned down the sheet ready for me. There’s a jug of flowers from the garden on the chest of drawers. Two pale rose petals have already dropped. A faint smell taints the room. Not the smell of stale water, something else. Different, but familiar, somehow.
A memory comes. Me and Joe, quite small, making rose petal perfume in the garden. We’re squashing the sweetly-scented petals into a jam jar, topping it up with water from the can in the greenhouse, stirring the pink mixture with a teaspoon. The next day the pink water has become sludge and is beginning to go brown, and each day it smells worse, stinky and foul and nothing like the scent of a rose.
Joe must be about eight. He’s already too old for the game. He sneers at me. ‘You didn’t really think we’d be making real rose scent, did you?’ He’d known all along it would go smelly and rotten. I’m furious. I cry.
I shut the memory out of my mind. I don’t want to think about my brother like that.
You can’t always do that so easily. Memories come back, pressing in on you, like ghost faces in the darkness pushing up against the glass, trying to get into the lit room. And sometimes the ghosts come in the night, in dreams, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.