Scarlett - Cathy Cassidy [55]
The air is clean and fresh, and the grass is sprinkled with dew. In the hedge beside the gate, a dozen little spiders’ webs shimmer. I walk down the lane, through the woods, to where the lough is sleeping beneath a soft blanket of mist. I sit down on a rock, empty my rucksack out on to the stones. Three red dresses, Clare’s dressmaking shears.
I pick up the scissors and chop the skirt of the red velvet party dress away from the waistband. I slice down one seam, snipping the skirt’s soft fabric into strips of raggedy scarlet. I do the same with the crinkly silk dress and the rich red cotton with the embroidered hem, then I gather the pile of rags up in my arms and take them over to the wishing tree.
I tie them on to the branches, one by one, making wish after wish for my new baby sister until the tree is filled with red rags, fluttering scraps of scarlet, crimson, cerise. Then I sink down on to the grass and rest my back against the tree, looking out at the mist and the lough.
The rider comes out of the mist, at a canter, slowing as he reaches the tip of the lough, reining in the big black horse, turning him so that the pair splash along towards me through the shallows. My heart races.
Kian and Midnight stop a few metres in front of me. Midnight scuffs at the grass, snorting and shaking his head. Kian just sits astride him, brown hands knotted into the horse’s mane, face half hidden behind a soft fall of dark hair.
‘Where were you?’ I ask, surprised at the anger in my voice. ‘Where were you yesterday?’
Kian slides down from Midnight’s back and turns to me. ‘You know where I was,’ he replies. ‘I had to find my dad, let him know I was OK.’
‘But you promised!’ I fling at him. ‘You lied to me! I needed you, and you weren’t here.’
Kian drops down into the long grass beside me, hugging his knees in faded jeans. His tanned arms glint with little golden hairs, and the plaited leather bracelets on his wrists drop down over his hands, revealing a sliver of paler skin.
‘Looks like you managed OK,’ he says carefully.
‘What would you know?’ I protest. ‘Yesterday was awful. Clare fell and went into labour early, and the storm knocked our phone out so we couldn’t ring for help. I looked for you everywhere, but you weren’t around!’
Kian rakes a hand over his face, pushing the hair back. His eyes look shadowed, haunted, like the eyes of the boy in the photograph yesterday. ‘Is she OK now?’ he asks softly. ‘Clare, and the baby?’
‘What do you care?’ I cry, ashamed at how childish that sounds. ‘Everything’s messed up. My baby sister is in special care, and Clare won’t stop crying and Dad looks so lost…’
Kian lets out a long, ragged breath. ‘I do care, Scarlett,’ he says. ‘More than you know. My mum died in Castlebar Hospital, this time last year.’
That stops me. ‘Your mum died?’ I echo.
Kian nods. ‘She had cancer – by the time she found out, it was too far gone to do anything, and Mum was never one for doctors or hospitals anyway. We came out here, the whole family my uncles and aunts, all of us. We stayed by the lough, did a bit of casual work for the local farmers, swam in the lough, ate rabbit stew. We partied every night, lit fires, told stories, danced, played music. Mum used to sing – she had the loveliest voice. We made the most of last summer, lived it one day at a time.’
‘The travellers by the lough,’ I whisper. ‘Holly and Ros told me about it – big shiny caravans and horses and dogs. That was you?’
‘That was us. Your cottage was just up the lane, so of course Holly would have known we were there. That’s why I couldn’t risk meeting her at the lough the other week – things would have got complicated.’
‘That’s how you knew about my dad, that first night at the lough,’ I whisper. ‘That’s how you knew where I lived.’
‘That’s how’
‘What – what happened? About your mum?’
‘We pretended nothing was wrong,’ Kian says. ‘We pretended, right up until the point when we couldn’t pretend any more. Then it fell apart. Mum was too ill, in too much pain. My dad couldn’t stand