Scarlett - Cathy Cassidy [36]
‘What was that story you were telling me, about the swans?’ Holly frowns.
‘A wicked witch put some children under a spell,’ I remind her. ‘Do you think those are real swans, or enchanted ones?’
‘Enchanted, definitely,’ Holly breathes.
‘Honestly Holly, you’d believe anything!’ I scoff.
‘Will you be going to the senior school in Westport?’ Ros asks me as we watch the swans glide out into the lough. ‘I won’t know anyone in our year except Matty. I know some of the older kids, but that’s not the same, is it?’
‘You’ll be fine,’ I tell her. ‘Give it a week and you’ll wonder what you were worried about – you’ll make tons of new mates.’
‘So you’ll be going?’ Holly says.
‘Holly, you know I won’t. The minute I set foot in a school, I get myself knee deep in serious trouble. Home-schooling’s safer – nobody can expel me!’
‘Don’t listen, Ros,’ Holly says staunchly. ‘Scarlett’s cool, honest. I want to be just like her, except I’m having a pierced nose instead.’
‘You are not,’ I argue. ‘We’ve been through all this! Tell her, Ros – it’s a bad idea!’
‘For sure,’ Ros agrees. ‘Imagine the hassle when you get a cold! Yuk!’
‘I’m going to do it.’ Holly grins. ‘You’ll see.’
‘Yeah, right.’
I pick the shell off one of the hard-boiled eggs and flick it away into the grass. I’m sorry I dismissed Ros as a geeky country kid. She’s much nicer, much funnier than I remember, and if she thinks I’m mad, bad and dangerous to know, she’s hiding it well. I look at her shiny hair, her pale skin and goofy smile. She’s the kind of girl I’d have blanked, a month ago. The kind of girl I avoided like the plague because she reminded me of who I used to be.
We could be friends, maybe. These days, I need all the friends I can get.
‘What’s home-schooling like then?’ she asks, biting into a cherry tomato. ‘Is it a skive?’
‘It’s cool,’ I tell her. ‘I have to do two pages of maths every morning, but I get to study the things I want to as well, like crazy old Irish legends with swans in them. Dad and Clare let me work out here by the lough too – they trust me, I suppose.’
Would they still trust me if they knew I was meeting Kian every chance I got? Probably not.
‘Don’t you get awful lonely?’ Ros asks.
‘Not really. It’s good to have some time out. And it’s not like I don’t see anybody…’
‘So. This Kian – is he your boyfriend?’ Ros wants to know.
‘Kind of.’ He’s my best friend, anyhow. He makes me laugh, he makes me think, he makes me dream.
‘Sorry we spoilt your afternoon, chased him away,’ Ros says. ‘No wonder you were cross.’
Holly takes a swig of icy-cool lemonade. ‘Aw, come on, Scarlett,’ she says. ‘He wasn’t really here, was he? Not really! You just said that to make us feel bad.’
‘He was!’ I protest. ‘He was right here, till I went into the woods to meet you. Honest!’
Holly frowns. ‘Nobody could have disappeared that fast,’ she says. ‘We’d have seen him.’
‘I don’t know how he did it.’ I shrug. ‘And I wish he hadn’t, but I’m not going to argue about whether he was here or not, OK? He was.’
‘Fine,’ Holly sniffs. ‘It’s no big deal. I just wondered if Ros knew him, that’s all.’
‘I don’t know anyone called Kian,’ Ros says. ‘He must be a visitor, or a blow-in – you know, like you, new to the area. I’ve not heard of any new families, though, and my dad runs Heaney’s Bar in Kilimoor. If someone sneezes ten miles off, he knows about it.’
‘I think he’s a traveller,’ Holly chips in. ‘A gypsy. He’s got black hair and a horse with feathery feet, hasn’t he, Scarlett?’
That doesn’t make him a traveller,’ I point out.
‘No, but it might explain how he knows the place so well he can disappear practically into thin air,’ Holly muses. ‘And it might explain why he’s so secretive. C’mon, Scarlett, we’re not that scary – why did he have to leg it the minute he heard us coming?’
I don’t have an answer for that. Being