Sally had written the letter. She’d cycled to the town, bought a stamp from the machine there and then posted it a couple of villages further on. Hello don’t worry I’m staying with a friend for a while no need to look for me it’s fine. The kind of stuff you write when you don’t want to write at all. Writing the word friend had been strange.
But it gave her a funny feeling all the same. She’d been here for over three weeks now. Nothing special, actually. She’d been away for much longer and had never written a letter. The summer camps that she hadn’t liked. Nearly every year. Since she was twelve. And then the clinics, most of which weren’t called that, but health centres or rehabilitation centres or whatever. Then it had been six or eight weeks and she hadn’t written, even though you sometimes weren’t allowed a mobile phone at the start, and she hadn’t felt like phoning. The funny feeling was different.
She was in the pear orchard, thinking. The morning was the kind she liked. Others always wanted it to be hot and sunny. She liked it when it was windy and cool; just cool enough that you could feel the wind on your skin without shivering. And today the wind was strong. It moved the crowns of the pear trees even though most of them weren’t very tall and they were sheltered by the wall of the engine shed. The fluctuating sunlight came and went rapidly as the clouds were driven at pace over a blue sky by the wind, as if it were hurrying to drop them off somewhere. Now and then an overlooked pear fell into the grass with a muffled thud. The bees were sometimes carried a little way backwards by a strong gust of wind. Yes, she thought, maybe that’s why. Maybe the funny feeling was because it was the first time since her childhood that she’d spent so long in a place she didn’t immediately want to leave. She picked up a pear from the tall grass and looked at it. She’d never see pears the same way again. It was striped red and yellow, and Sally was trying to remember the name, although that didn’t actually matter. There was a dent where it had hit, but otherwise it looked perfect. She bit slowly into it, let the juice run down her chin and recognised the taste at once. It was the same kind of pear that she’d fished out of the bowl of fruit that first morning. Suddenly she found herself grinning. OK, she thought, Liss is a witch with pears instead of gingerbread.
Liss. What was up with her? She took another bite then threw the pear away even though she’d felt like finishing it. Or maybe exactly because of that. Whatever. What was up with Liss?
‘Hey, you, what are you doing there in that garden?’
Sally whirled round with a jump, and immediately felt annoyed at herself. There was no reason for alarm. She was entitled to be here. The shout had come from the school side. There was a middle-aged man standing there in a green knitted jacket that made him look kind of like a hunter. He had thin hair and a long face. Sally didn’t like him.
‘I’m allowed,’ she said quickly and aggressively. ‘This is Liss’s garden.’
‘Liss? Liss?’ The man said her name in a disdainful way. ‘Oh right. Why do you call her Liss? Who are you anyway?’
‘What’s it to you?’ Sally retorted. ‘Who are you for that matter?’
The man just stared at her for a while. Sally held his gaze. Her anger helped.
‘I asked you,’ he said, slowly and emphatically, as if she weren’t quite all there, ‘who you are and what you’re doing in that garden.’
‘Yes,’ said Sally, ‘you did. So just go fuck yourself.’
She walked out of the garden, trembling inwardly, not running. She heard the man yelling after her:
‘Are you crazy? Are you crazy, you … you little…’
Sally turned back, before she’d rounded the machine shed.
‘Just say it,’ she shouted back, daring him. ‘Just you say it. Maybe it’ll make you feel better. Bitch? Slut? Wasn’t going to be “girl”, was it?’
She headed back down to the farmyard, past the hens, who ran out of her way, clucking quietly, as if they could sense her mood.
Why was it like that? Why was there always someone to bring you down, to have a go at you? Why were you always surrounded by people who were as brainless as animals? More brainless, actually – at least the hens noticed. And why did she always react like that? Why wasn’t she like Liss, who she’d yelled at too? She always stayed calm. Kept cool. Or if something fazed her, didn’t show it, at least. That arsehole. What was it to him who was in the pear orchard? Did he think she wanted to nick something off him? Or set fire to something or something? Oh, no. She was just behind a fence in a garden where that idiot thought she didn’t belong. Wasn’t even his garden. It wasn’t like she’d been in his shithole living room or anything. Furious, she picked up a piece of gravel and threw it at a chicken. She hadn’t meant to, but the stone actually hit it. The hen staggered, cackled a loud protest and flew off. Shit. It was all the fault of that shitting arsehole who had nothing better to do than keeping watch over other people’s gardens.
‘Such underestimated creatures.’ She heard Liss’s voice float down, mildly amused. ‘Did the hens attack you?’
Sally looked up. Liss was standing at the open bathroom window, wrapping a towel around her hair; she must have seen. Steam billowed out.
‘Your neighbour seems to have a problem with me being in your garden. Had a go at me for no reason at all.’
Sally almost shouted it. She really wanted Liss to understand her, but all that came out was reproach and her anger that even here she couldn’t be left in peace.
Liss said nothing. She vanished from the window for a moment, and when she returned, she’d chucked on a shirt and was casually buttoning it up. Sally had sat down on the wall along the old midden, which now housed nothing but planks and the wheelbarrows leaning against the wall. Still furious, she whacked her heels against the plaster. Liss leant out of the window and looked over at the hens.
‘Nothing happened to it,’ Sally shouted. ‘It’s fine. I didn’t hit it hard.’
Liss twisted her lips a tiny bit. It was almost like she was smiling.
‘The hen,’ she said, ‘is currently standing on a post, in a complete state, cackling to the other chickens: “Shit, ladies, you know what? That new girl is such a bitch. She just lobbed a stone at me. Hey, I didn’t do a thing. She just threw stones at me.”’
‘What?’ Sally didn’t understand.
‘That’s all,’ said Liss, shutting the bathroom window.
Than Sally twigged, and she jumped off the wall.
‘That’s not the same!’ she screamed at the window, but then she found herself laughing as she imagined the hen telling the others about her. She didn’t want to laugh, she wanted to be angry, but she couldn’t help it.
Laughing angrily.
Fuck. What was the woman doing to her?