Scarlett - Cathy Cassidy [31]
My eyes are wide. ‘You’re winding me up, right?’ I ask. ‘You don’t really expect me to believe that rubbish? No way!’
Kian laughs. ‘Aw, c’mon, everybody’s got to believe in a little bit of magic!’
He takes my hand and squeezes it tight, and I think of rainbows, the lough glinting in the moonlight, a dark-velvet sky sprinkled with stars. I think of a boy with tanned skin, raggedy hair, a boy who laughs and takes risks and tells tall stories, and I know that there’s more than one kind of magic.
‘See you, Scarlett,’ Kian whispers, and I slip inside the gate with mint and fuchsia flowers in my hair, a smile as wide as Lough Choill.
Holly is on the tyre swing, her back to me, her hair in bunches flying out behind her. She looks like something out of a TV ad for washing powder, squeaky clean and seriously cute. Then she looks over her shoulder and I see that she’s been at my make-up. She has painted her lips black, streaked purple blusher across her freckled cheeks. Scary.
‘Hi, Scarlett!’ she shouts, waving.
‘Hi, Holls!’ I look over my shoulder, but there’s no sign of Kian or Midnight. They have melted away, disappeared back into the woods.
I wander inside, pulling the mint and the fuchsias from my hair to bunch up like a posy.
Clare is at the sink, rinsing strawberries from the garden. She puts the fruit down to rub her back and I try hard to hate her, dislike her even, but somehow I can’t. She turns to me, smiling, cradling her tummy beneath the apron, and I hand her the mint and fuchsia posy.
‘Lovely!’ she says. ‘Wild mint. I wonder what that’d be like with the strawberries? Did you have a good day then?’
‘Good day’ I tell her. ‘Great day, Clare.’
And then I do something neither of us expects. I hug her quickly, shyly, because she may be my wicked stepmother but she cares about me, I know she does.
She has been infuriatingly kind and patient. She has let me shout and sulk and rage and tried her best to understand. I’m the stepdaughter from hell, pitched up out of the blue to mess up her quiet little life. I guess I am the last thing she needs right now, jumping out of windows, running away, turning her goody-two-shoes kid into a black-lipsticked mini-me. The funny thing is that in spite of everything, Clare makes me feel like she’s glad I’m around.
As I pull away, I see that her blue eyes are misty with tears. ‘Oh, Scarlett,’ she says. ‘That’s great. I’m so glad.’
‘Did I miss something?’ Dad asks, mooching through from his study. ‘Scarlett? What happened?’
‘Nothing happened, Dad,’ I say, and watch his face come to life because it’s the first time I’ve called him Dad out loud in almost three years. I fling my arms round him and he holds me tight, and he smells of Polo mints and apple shampoo, just like he always did, and I can’t believe how much I’ve missed that smell. How much I’ve missed him.
Clare laughs and takes a jug of home-made lemonade out of the fridge, and Dad calls Holly in and the four of us sit round the table, drinking lemonade and eating strawberries tossed in crushed mint and brown sugar.
‘Wow,’ Dad says. ‘Strawberries and mint. I never tried it before.’
‘Smells good too,’ I chip in. ‘You should make it into a soap. It’d be really summery, and you could package it with fresh mint leaves…’
Clare’s eyes widen. ‘You could be on to something.’ She grins. ‘I’ll play around with that idea tomorrow. Thanks, Scarlett!’
I shrug, but hey, it’s good to feel like I’ve done something right for a change. It’s good to feel part of things.
I live here now, in the middle of nowhere, with the three people (three and a half?) I once hated most in the world. It’s not so bad. They’re not so bad. It’s not like I belong, exactly, but it’s not such a crazy idea that I could. One day – maybe. If I wanted to.
That’d show Mum.
My project folder takes shape. I have painted a map of Lough Choill, complete with hills, woods, farmland. I have marked the altitude of the ridges I climbed the day I walked cross-country