When I woke the following morning the memory of Hazel insisting I leave her house the previous night still stung. I couldn’t imagine what she needed to speak to Dee, Leo and Jack about that I couldn’t hear. Hazel had never shut me out before. I felt nauseous and had a strong sense of foreboding that something was going to happen.
Before Mum was awake, I dressed and ran over to the farm, not caring that it was barely past seven in the morning and no one would probably be up yet. I’d sit on their porch and wait for one of them to stir. I couldn’t stand the thought of pacing around my bedroom willing the hands on my alarm clock to move.
As expected, no one else was up, so I made myself comfortable on the shabby wooden armchair outside their back door. It had been there for as long as I could remember. The farm was peaceful. Too peaceful. Not wishing to annoy Hazel, I stayed where I was and stared at her terracotta pots filled with the scarlet geraniums she loved to display either side of the steps to her front door.
I must have dozed off, because when I checked my watch again it was almost ten o’clock. I listened for voices, but the only noise came from the chickens.
I opened the back door, which was never locked and nervously walked in through the hall to the kitchen. Plates and cups littered the sides. A box half-filled with plates wrapped in newspaper stood by an opened cupboard door. Strange, I couldn’t understand why Hazel would pack away her plates. I returned to the hallway and stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Dee?’ I called, wanting to be heard, but hoping not to disturb anyone. She was never this quiet; always up first and making some sort of racket somewhere at the farm.
When she didn’t answer, I forgot about making a noise and ran up the stairs to her bedroom. The door was wide open, and her favourite jeans lay across her bed. She’d strung her new leather belt through the denim loops. I thought that she must have changed her mind about wearing them because of the uncharacteristic heat. Unusually, her bed was unmade.
I listened for any movement. Feeling uneasy, I decided to look in Leo’s bedroom, this time knocking before I entered. I was met with another untidy room; his wardrobe doors open and the hangers empty. Unable to ignore the sense that something was terribly wrong, I hurried across to Hazel’s room. Her bedclothes were half pulled onto the floor. Her open wardrobe doors displayed mostly empty hangers. Several scarves pooled on the floor nearby.
I tried not to panic and ran down the stairs, out to the barn. I pulled opened the heavy door to check if I’d made a mistake. Maybe they had held an impromptu party the night before and were still asleep in there. Painfully aware I was kidding myself, I pushed away the image of the empty wardrobes, certain there must be an alternative explanation. Just because I didn’t know what had happened, didn’t mean I should imagine the worst. Or so I told myself time and time again as I looked for any sign of the family.
Only the usual detritus from their day-to-day living was in the house. I spotted another half-packed box. They wouldn’t have packed their things to leave them behind, surely? Bolstered by this thought, I shouted for Dee as loudly as I could. My heart pounded with the effort of waiting for the answer that I suspected by now would not be coming.
Where were they? I retraced my steps to Dee’s room. Bracing myself for the inevitable, I discovered that she, too, had taken most of her clothes. They had gone. Left me behind. By the look of their home they had no intention of ever coming back. Why would they do such a thing?
Sobbing, I dried my eyes with the hem of my T-shirt. I desperately searched for anything precious to her that she might have left behind, and spotted a small photo album. I picked it up and put it on the bed, then opened her dressing-table drawer to check inside. I scooped up two bangles, a necklace with a daisy pendant and a silver ring with an enamel bluebird I recalled her mum buying her for a birthday. I threw everything down next to the album. The jeans were her favourites and she knew how much I loved them. I swallowed back tears when I realised her leaving them on the bed had been her goodbye message to me. So, she had considered me, after all.
I rolled up the jeans and pushed them into Dee’s old school satchel lying at the bottom of her wardrobe. I lifted the leather strap over my head, so it lay across my chest and put the rest of Dee’s possessions from her bed inside it. As an afterthought, I peeled several photos of us both taken on previous summers and Christmases off the walls, slipping them deep into the outside pocket.
Sun rays cast long golden shafts across the familiar room. How many lazy days had I spent in this house daydreaming that I was part of this family while Dee persuaded me to misbehave in some way? She was strong and the instigator of all our adventures. I didn’t know how to pass a day without spending time with her.
I shivered as an eerie feeling seemed to invade the house. I needed to go, but unable to leave just yet, I took hold of several colourful silk scarves that reminded me so much of Hazel. I breathed in the familiar patchouli and sandalwood mixture and remembered how she used to joke about being my second mum. I scrunched the material in my hands and shoved them into the bag, pushing away memories of Dee holding my hands and swinging me round outside in the yard as we swore we would always be best friends. Then I grabbed Hazel’s silver-backed hairbrush set from her walnut dressing table and packed that, too.
Why had they disappeared so suddenly? Something must have frightened them badly, otherwise they would never have left without saying goodbye, or leave such treasures. But what?
My heart ached as I looked at a small silver frame surrounding a picture of Jack hugging Hazel from behind. She was laughing, her head thrown back as she gazed up at him. The sheer joy of that moment captured forever behind glass made me sob. It was Dee who had taken the photo, whispering for me to stand behind them and make bunny ears over their heads. I didn’t, of course, just as she had expected. I wasn’t leaving this precious memento behind for some faceless auctioneer to hand over to the highest bidder. One of these days, I promised myself, I would give these possessions back to Hazel and Dee. If I ever discovered where they were.
Unable to think what else I could do, I began walking home. I was halfway across the hot, dusty field when it dawned on me that something my mother had written in her letter could have been the catalyst that set this unexpected exodus in motion.
The note.
Hope swelling through my veins, I ran back to the farm. I was out of breath, but determined to find my mother’s note to Hazel. If she wouldn’t tell me what was in it, I’d find out for myself.
I let myself into the house. Stopping in the hall, I tried to recall the events of the evening before when I’d delivered it to Hazel. I hadn’t thought to go into the living room earlier, so went to see if I could find it in there.
I scanned the room. I couldn’t see it anywhere. Then, noticing there had been a fire in the grate, I went over and crouched. I heard a distant rumble of thunder just as I spotted a corner of my mother’s cream vellum paper. I picked it up, but there was only the first two letters of a word. The rest had been burnt. Now I’d never know what she’d written in it.
Desperate to get away from there, I ran as fast as I could across the fields, not keeping to my usual path, or caring that my legs were being stung by nettles. Finally, breathless and in the safety of my bedroom, I quietly locked the door and slumped onto my bed. My legs itched and burnt, but I barely felt the pain. I angrily brushed away tears and unbuckled the two straps holding the satchel closed, tipping the contents onto my eiderdown.
It dawned on me that this was all that was left of a precious period in my life.
I couldn’t imagine a world without Dee’s laughter, constant singing and bossiness. My life was going to be much greyer without her in it. I wondered how long it would take me to get used to coping without Hazel’s family because it was obvious, even to me, that they weren’t intending on coming back.