Last summer
We’re sitting in the overgrown garden next to the old lighthouse, our backs against the sun-warmed wall. Joe’s eyes are closed, his face lifted to the sun. He’s so brown! He’s been off school since his exams finished in June, and even before that he was on study leave, revising in the garden (not!) and getting a tan.
I study his face. He doesn’t look so much like my brother these days. There’s a line of dark stubble along his cheek and under his chin. He leaves a razor in the shower. He spends hours in the bathroom, door locked. He shuts his bedroom door.
He’s stripped off his T-shirt. His chest is all muscly and his stomach is flat as a board. Dad teases him about the six-pack. Dad’s jealous: when he sucks in his stomach it still sticks out and Mum laughs, but in a nice way. Joe works hard at being fit. Sometimes I go into the living room and he’s on the floor doing press-ups and stomach crunches, red in the face like he’s about to explode. Since we came here for the summer, Joe’s been running almost every morning before I’m even up. I seem to be sleeping longer and longer. Evie say it’s my age. I’m growing fast.
Not as fast as Joe, though. He’s taller than Gramps, and changing all the time. This is the first year he hasn’t wanted me tagging along. He’s worse at home: he won’t even walk to town with me any more, in case he meets someone he knows. But here, because all the kids – all ages – play out on the field in the evenings, Joe can’t stop me joining in. The first couple of weeks this summer he let me go fishing with him too, as long as I was quiet. He even showed me how to cast a line and we made spinners together. But lately that’s changed. Joe’s changed. He’s not mean, exactly, just different to how he was before. And sometimes he’s still lovely, the person I love best in the whole world. Miranda can’t believe I feel like that. She and her brother squabble all the time.
‘What are you looking at?’ Joe growls, one eye open and squinting at me.
‘Nothing.’
He stretches his legs out. They’re all tanned and hairy. The sun has bleached the hairs. He closes his eyes again.
We’ve trampled down the weeds to make a place big enough to sit, hidden from the lane. It smells rank: hot roots, crushed stems and leaves. The pink flowers stink something rotten when you squash them. We stopped off here on our way back from the shop because Joe wanted to explore the garden: he’s always on the lookout for old junk and stuff other people have thrown away. I just followed and he didn’t say I couldn’t.
‘Why doesn’t someone buy this place?’ I say. ‘Imagine living in the lighthouse! You could have your bed at the top. All the furniture would have to be round.’ We often think about different places to live. Joe wanted a tree house, for ages: not a play house but a real one, big enough to live in. ‘This could be a lovely garden. There are roses and fruit trees and everything.’
‘The house is a wreck,’ Joe says. ‘You’d have to spend a fortune doing it up. Bringing everything over by boat. It’s not worth it.’
He gets up and I follow him. We beat a path through nettles and long grass to one of the windows and peer in. Hard to see through the dirty glass: I can just make out wooden floorboards, a fireplace, some sort of cupboard against the end wall.
Joe pulls at the window. Part of the wooden frame comes away in his hand. He laughs. ‘See? The wood’s all rotten. It’d be easy to get in.’ He starts edging along to the door.
‘Don’t,’ I say, suddenly uneasy. ‘We shouldn’t be here. It’s private property.’
‘No one’s been here for years,’ Joe says. ‘Who’s to know?’ But he walks away from the house, back to our warm spot against the wall.
I pick off dead flowerheads from the rose that sprawls through a crab-apple tree. Joe looks like he’s asleep. Next year he wants to do a boat-building course, instead of A levels, and leave home. He talks about crewing yachts round the world. He wants to travel, have adventures. He’s full of plans and dreams. He tells me these things, but not Mum or Dad. They won’t be happy about the no-A levels plan. Dad thinks Joe should be an architect, like him. I try to imagine home without Joe. My last birthday, he made me a cake with icing and everything. Not many brothers would do that.
‘Will we swim, then?’ I say, eventually. ‘It’s warm enough now. We can dump the shopping and then go to Beady Pool. Or the sand bar.’
‘If the tide’s low enough,’ Joe says. We both know it’s dangerous to swim there at high tide.
Joe doesn’t move. Time stretches out. We might have been here for hours. The garden’s hot and dusty. It hasn’t rained for days, which is unusual, here. Even in high summer there are storms.
I’m desperate to go to the beach now. ‘Come on, then,’ I say.
Joe stretches his arms above his head, hands interlocked. His fingers crack. He yawns like a sleepy cat, and gets up.
‘I’m going sailing this afternoon,’ Joe says. ‘I just remembered. Sorry, Freya.’