Scarlett - Cathy Cassidy [25]
I wash quickly, drag on some clothes and hobble downstairs. In the kitchen, Dad is frying eggy bread like he used to do when I was little, and Clare is dishing out baked beans, grilled mushrooms, tomatoes, fried onions, potato cakes. There’s not a sausage or a bit of bacon in sight, and my mouth twitches into a smile before I can hide it. It’s a vegetarian brunch, and it looks fantastic.
‘We’re eating outside,’ Clare says. ‘Go on and sit down.’
I mooch out into the garden, where Holly is setting the table with a red spotted cloth and pouring orange juice into glasses. I look around for evidence of Kian and Midnight, but there’s nothing. It’s like last night never happened.
Dad and Clare come out, carrying mismatched china plates laden with food.
‘French toast!’ Holly exclaims. ‘Yum!’
‘Eggy bread, we used to call it,’ Dad says, trying to catch my eye. ‘It was your favourite, Scarlett, remember?’
‘Think you’re mixing me up with someone else,’ I say coldly. Does he think he can buy me with a cooked breakfast and a shared memory?
‘Well, it’s definitely my favourite,’ Holly says chirpily. ‘From now on, anyhow. I think I might go vegetarian, like Scarlett. I wouldn’t miss meat, except for sausages, and you can get ones made out of tofu or something, can’t you? Do smoky bacon crisps count?’
‘Let’s not do anything hasty.’ Dad frowns.
‘Why not?’ I chip in, just to bug him. ‘If Holly wants to give up, I’d say the sooner the better. The average person eats over a thousand chickens, twenty-three lambs, eighteen pigs and four cows in a lifetime. Think of the lives you’d be saving, Holly!’
‘Right,’ says Holly, looking slightly alarmed. ‘And do crisps count, did you say?’
‘Absolutely,’ I say with conviction. ‘Everything counts.’ I spot a couple of chickens scratching about under the table for scraps. ‘Why would anyone want to eat these little guys?’
‘I don’t,’ Holly decides. ‘I won’t. I’m going to do it – go veggie. Will you help me?’
‘Of course I will,’ I tell her, and I’m rewarded with the kind of bright-eyed, adoring look I’ve only ever seen on spaniels before. ‘It’ll be cool – you won’t regret it, Holly.’ But Dad and Clare will, and that, of course, is half the fun.
Dad scoffs the last of the eggy bread, eating it spread with strawberry jam, the way we used to.
‘Jam?’ says Clare. ‘Disgusting.’
‘You’d be surprised.’ Dad grins, winking at me.
Holly rinses the empty jam jar with the garden hose, and wafts around the garden picking flowers to arrange in it. She has some seriously sad habits. ‘Mum,’ she calls up from the end of the garden. ‘Something funny’s happened to the flower bed!’
Everybody wanders down to take a look. The flower bed is full of crater-like holes where Midnight’s hooves sank into the soft soil last night, and the flowers are either eaten or trampled. It looks like a small herd of elephants has been to visit.
‘What on earth…?’ Dad exclaims, baffled.
I could tell them all about the carnage, of course, but would they believe me? No. Would they blame me? Yes.
‘I told you to fix that broken bit of wall down by the workshop,’ Clare huffs. ‘Something’s been in here – cattle, or deer, or something.’
‘A horse,’ I chip in helpfully.
‘Don’t be silly, Scarlett,’ Dad says. ‘There are no horses nearby. It’ll be deer.’
‘I don’t care if it was wolves or wild boar,’ Clare grumbles. ‘It’s ruined my garden. Get that wall fixed, Chris. Today.’
Dad sighs, and I remember that DIY was never his strong point. I think of the pine shelves that he put up in the kitchen in Islington. He huffed and grumbled all afternoon, making me hold the spirit level and find the right Rawlplugs, and after all that Mum still said it was wonky. It didn’t look so bad once we’d camouflaged it with pretty plates and dishes, though. And then, at half-past two in the morning, the whole shelf collapsed and every single plate was smashed to pieces. I remember the three of us standing there, in pyjamas, surrounded by broken cups and dishes and serving bowls, laughing till the tears ran down our cheeks.
‘Don’t worry about