2: Chocolate Box Girls: Marshmallow Skye (15 page)

Carrying a handful of empty glasses back to the kitchen, I pass Paddy talking to Joe the farmer in the hallway about the best diet for orphan lambs. A little further on I spot Fred the dog eating a stash of stolen sausage rolls behind the sofa and Honey kissing Joe-the-farmer’s son on the stairs. I am guessing this means the Year Twelve boyfriend is history now.

I dump the glasses next to the sink, grab a random jacket from the rack and head out into the darkness, crunching across the frost-white grass to the gypsy caravan. It looks just like the one in my dreams, and right now that dream world is where I’d rather be, so I just about jump out of my skin when I see a hunched figure sitting on the caravan steps.

This is not dream territory, though, trust me.

‘Alfie,’ I sigh. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Keeping a lookout for flying reindeer,’ he says, deadpan. ‘How about you?’

‘Same, obviously,’ I reply, sitting down beside him. ‘The party’s winding down. No luck with the mistletoe?’

‘Nah,’ he says. ‘I am invisible. I stood there so long a bit of the stuff dropped off, and I took it over to where Summer was standing and waved it in the air … she told me to get lost.’

‘OK. That’s probably a no, then …’

Alfie fishes the sprig of mistletoe from his pocket. ‘Can’t interest you, Skye, can I? Might be a cool way of keeping warm!’

I jump back, horrified.

‘Me?’ I squeak. ‘That’s not funny, Alfie. Summer and I may be identical twins, but we are very different people. You can’t kiss me instead of her just because it’s dark and we look alike!’

‘OK, OK, just asking!’

‘You fancy Summer, not me!’ I argue. ‘It would be wrong, Alfie, in all kinds of ways. Let’s just say that whole irresistible-to-women thing hasn’t quite kicked in yet.’

‘Worth a try,’ he sighs, chucking down the mistletoe. ‘I
wasn’t trying to be funny. It’s just … well, I’m alone and you’re alone, and I have never actually kissed a girl before, so … I thought it could be another life lesson, maybe – like the stuff about the hair and the practical jokes and not stuffing 103 sausage rolls into my mouth at the same time. We could help each other.’

‘My life lessons don’t extend to kissing practice,’ I say sternly.

What is it with boys? Alfie still has a whole lot to learn if he thinks I am about to be his Christmas Eve consolation prize. Why am I always, somehow, second best to Summer, destined to pick up her cast-offs? When we were little, it was toys and dolls and ballet books she’d finished with; these days it is nail varnish and blue fringey scarves and boys.

Finch, at least, is nobody’s cast-off. He is mine alone, even if he does exist only in my dreams.

‘I still love Summer,’ Alfie is insisting. ‘She is definitely the only girl for me. It’s just that sometimes I get disheartened. I wonder if I’m fooling myself … if it’s all completely hopeless. You’ll understand one day, Skye, when you fall for someone.’

I grit my teeth, exasperated.

‘Who says I haven’t?’

Alfie gawps at me in the moonlight. ‘You’re crushing on someone? Who is it? Tell me!’

‘I can’t tell you,’ I say. ‘It’s nobody you know. And it’s all completely pointless because I can’t have him anyway. If you think your situation is hopeless, forget it. Mine is downright impossible.’

‘Oh, man,’ Alfie marvels. ‘I am guessing it must be someone a good bit older than you, if he is so out-of-reach and impossible. Am I right?’

‘No, I think he’s my age,’ I say. ‘Maybe a year older at most. It’s not that simple, Alfie, trust me …’

I trail away into silence, frowning. Something’s not right, but I can’t work out why. Over the last few weeks, even without the proof the missing letters might provide, I’ve pretty much convinced myself that Finch is a ghost boy, that I am dreaming fragments of memory from Clara’s life. I don’t know why – maybe I am a little bit psychic, like Mrs Lee has always said, and I’m picking up faint memories of the past from Clara’s velvet dresses, her locket, her bracelets?

But if Clara Travers fell in love with a gypsy boy, he must have been at least seventeen, like she was. Maybe older.
Definitely not thirteen or fourteen, or whatever the boy in my dreams seems to be.

This means Finch can’t be the ghost of a long-dead gypsy boy … he must be made-up.

I know it doesn’t make any difference whether he once existed or not. I know the facts are the same; I can never meet him, not outside my dreams. But even so, a little stab of sadness twists inside me at the thought that Finch was never real, never as alive as he appears to me.

I sigh in the darkness, and Alfie sighs with me.

21

‘Wake up, Skye!’ Coco yells, dragging my duvet off. ‘Summer, wake up! It’s Christmas!’

‘It’s still dark!’

‘It’s half eight!’ Coco insists. ‘We have never slept so late on Christmas Day before! Come ON!’

‘I’ve been awake for hours,’ Cherry says from the doorway. ‘I’m so excited … my first Christmas at Tanglewood!’

Coco runs off to wake Honey, and there really is a Christmas miracle because she gets up, short blonde hair sticking up all over the place, and slinks out on to the landing with an outsized jumper pulled over her mini nightie. ‘Happy Christmas,’ she says sleepily, and we all go downstairs together.

Mum and Paddy are already up. All traces of last night’s
party have been cleared away; Paddy has lit the fire, switched on the Christmas tree lights and put a CD on in the background. The knitted stockings we hung from the mantlepiece last night are lying down on the hearth, bulging with little presents, and the mince pie and the whisky Paddy said we should leave out for Santa are gone, leaving nothing but crumbs and an empty glass.

I can’t help smiling.

We open our stockings, which are filled with little things like oranges and chocolate coins and glittery eyeshadow and stripy socks. Honey gives us all an instant makeover with the glittery stuff, even Cherry, and we sit in front of the fire eating chocolate coins and segments of orange and wearing our stripy socks. Then Coco begins to eye the prezzies under the tree and Mum shakes her head and says that we need to eat first, and we have half an hour to be dressed.

There’s a scramble for the bathrooms but we are all ready in time, me in layered cotton petticoats with a moss-green jumper, the silver bracelets from Clara’s trunk jangling, Summer in a pretty chiffony dress and pink cardi, and Cherry and Coco in variations of jeans and
outsize jumpers. Honey is model-girl cute in a flower-print minidress and purple tights, her sad eyes rimmed with eyeliner.

Paddy has made pancakes for breakfast, which was one of Mum’s special requests, and we eat them with sugar and lemon juice and chocolate spread, which is normally outlawed but is allowed today because it’s Christmas and because Cherry asked for it specially.

Then it’s present time.

Mum gets a dress and a pair of suede boots and Paddy gets new jeans and a scarf and a bunch of CDs. Cherry gets a string of cherry-blossom fairy lights for her room, and a cute mini-kimono wrap and a little blue Netbook to write her stories on. Honey gets poster paints, sketchbooks and a mobile phone to replace the one she dropped into a rock pool on the beach, back in the summer. Coco gets a book of violin tunes, a riding hat and a voucher for six riding lessons, and just about brings the roof down with excitement.

Summer gets the pointe shoes she tried on last week in town, along with a gauzy practice skirt and a fluffy pink jumper, and I get the black fringed shawl with roses
embroidered on it and a huge, heavy, weirdly shaped parcel wrapped in giftwrap and tied up with ribbon.

‘Careful,’ Paddy says. ‘You need to be gentle.’

I peel the paper away to reveal what looks like a giant shell or a horn of some kind.

‘What is it?’ Coco asks, screwing up her nose.

‘No idea!’

My eyes widen as I pull off the rest of the wrapping to unveil an ancient gramophone with a little stack of elderly jazz records.

‘Wow!’ I say. ‘This is amazing … it must be really old! I’ve seen pictures of things like this!’

‘It’s old all right,’ Paddy says. ‘I looked it up, and I reckon it could be from round about 1910. The records are called 78s … they’re fragile, so be careful. There was a whole box of them, but most were broken.’

‘You said you wanted a surprise,’ Mum said. ‘Something vintage. It’s a real collector’s item, I reckon!’

‘I love it!’

Paddy shows me how to lift out the little handle and fit it into the side to wind up the gramophone, place a record on the turntable and lift the heavy arm across. Suddenly
the disc is spinning round beneath the spiky needle and a crackly tune, surprisingly loud, spills out of the horn-shaped speaker.

‘It’s awesome,’ I grin. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘You won’t believe it, but it was in with all that stuff from the attic,’ Mum says. ‘Paddy had it in the workshop storeroom, and when you mentioned wanting something special, something vintage … well, we thought you’d like it, so we got it fixed up!’

‘I do!’ I say, and I let my fingers trail across the glossy walnut casing. 1910. If this gramophone has been around since then, the chances are that Clara used it. Did her fingers stroke the wood, wind up the turntable, choose a record from the collection? I imagine her laughing, dancing in her flapper dresses, before the walls closed in around her and the dancing stopped.

Summer catches my eye, her face pale.

‘It was hers, wasn’t it?’ she says tightly, touching the glossy walnut case. ‘Clara’s. I can tell. You can feel a sadness around it … like the dresses, the violin. Am I the only one that can sense it?’

Mum laughs. ‘A sadness? I don’t think so, Summer.’

‘Spooky,’ Coco says.

Honey rolls her eyes. ‘It’s just a piece of junk,’ she says bluntly. ‘No offence. Quite pretty, maybe worth something, but trust me – there is nothing spooky about it.’

Mum puts an arm round Summer’s shoulders. ‘They’re just things, love, beautiful things – they don’t hold memories or feelings. I think that silly ghost story has upset you. It’s nonsense, you know that, don’t you?’

‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ Summer says firmly. ‘I’m not crazy! But I’m telling you, there is something weird about all this stuff. It makes me uneasy.’

The record comes to an end, and I take it off and slide it back into its slipcase. ‘I love it,’ I tell Mum and Paddy. ‘Really I do. But I won’t play it when you’re about, Summer, not if it upsets you.’

An awkward silence settles around us.

‘There is one more present for you two,’ Mum tells Summer and me. ‘You mentioned that you’d like a birthday party. And thirteen is a landmark age, so we thought … why not? We haven’t had birthday parties for years because of the B&B, but Paddy’s suggested hiring the village hall so there’d be no problem of disturbing the guests …’

‘No way!’ Summer squeals, her subdued mood evaporating instantly. ‘A party! A proper, grown-up thirteenth birthday party! Seriously, that is the best present ever! Thank you!’

‘Thank you,’ I echo as Summer flings her arms round Mum and Paddy in turn. I dredge up a smile, but it’s a shaky one. I feel like I have just unwrapped a badly knitted cardigan in bobbly orange and turquoise wool, two sizes too small, from a well-meaning great auntie. A Christmas gathering is one thing, but a birthday party – where Summer and I are centre of attention? It’s the last thing I want, and I am pretty sure I said so too, when Summer first mentioned the idea. The thing is, when Summer is around my feelings and opinions seem to fade into the background.

‘We can plan it all out,’ Summer is saying. ‘Draw up a guest list and ask everyone … decorate the hall. Oh, it’s going to be amazing! I cannot wait! Skye, isn’t this awesome?’

‘Awesome,’ I say, trying to inject at least a little enthusiasm into my voice. Mum and Paddy are trying to be kind, I know. And it has chased the shadows from Summer’s face and put her in a great mood, which means I can stop feeling so guilty about the gramophone.

Mum starts folding up wrapping paper and Paddy says he’s left something out in the workshop and slips away, and when he gets back he winks at Mum which means they are definitely up to something.