3: Chocolate Box Girls: Summer's Dream (22 page)

What are you doing?
the voice in my head sneers.
You must be crazy. He won’t want you. Who would?

I pull away, confused.

‘Summer?’ Alfie says. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘N-nothing,’ I stammer, blushing furiously in the darkness. ‘I just … I’m not sure …’

I stand up, poised for flight. Honey was right – I am a mess, a girl in trouble, kidding herself she can control a life that is spinning wildly out of control. I spot JJ drinking cider alone in the firelight, Marty’s girlfriend talking to her mates, Shay and Cherry, Skye and Finch, Sid and Carl and Tia and Millie. Honey and Coco are nowhere to be seen. Humbug the lamb trots up to me, butting my leg with his head, bleating softly.

‘Where’s Coco?’

‘Think she went to bed,’ Alfie says. ‘Looks like she forgot Humbug. Summer, where are you going?’

I loop my skinny pink scarf round the lamb’s neck and lead him to the cliff steps. ‘I’ll take him back,’ I say over my shoulder. ‘He’ll be scared down here. Coco must have been really sleepy; she’d never normally leave him …’

But Alfie and I both know I am running away.

I climb the steps and walk across the moonlit garden, Humbug at my heels. An owl hoots and I can hear Fred the dog barking from inside the house, but the lights are off and I’m guessing Grandma Kate has gone to bed too. She trusts
us. She doesn’t know Honey is drinking cider shandy, flirting with two or three boys at once.

All is quiet as I push the door to Humbug’s stable open and step from the bright moonlight into the darkness. Then Humbug pulls free and bolts out into the night, bleating. There’s a scuffle, a cough and a yelp, two pinprick glows of red, the sound of someone swearing in the dark.

That’s when I scream.

31

‘Shut up, Summer! You’ll wake the whole house!’

Honey has me by the shoulders, shaking me a little, her voice a hoarse whisper, her breath stinking of cider and smoke.

‘What were you doing?’ I squeak. ‘You scared me half to death!’

‘I wasn’t doing anything,’ she snaps. ‘I just wanted a few minutes on my own! Is that a problem?’

‘Of course not!’ I argue. ‘I just didn’t expect …’

I trail away into silence, my head struggling to make sense of this. Honey hides out in a pitch-black stable in the middle of a beach party because she wants a few minutes on her own? It doesn’t quite add up. Then I notice the shadowy figure in the doorway behind her, and it all makes sense again.

‘Hello, Marty,’ I say. ‘I think your girlfriend was looking for you. Come to think of it, Honey, JJ was looking for you too. And hey, here you both are …’

Marty holds his hands up in a gesture of surrender, a lit cigarette dangling from his fingers.

‘Jen’s not exactly my girlfriend,’ he says. ‘Not serious anyway. And Honey and I were … just talking really. No big deal. But … yeah. Whatever.’

He closes the stable door and walks past us in the moonlight, and I notice a smudge of Honey’s red lipstick smeared across his cheek. Just talking? Not a chance.

‘Marty, hang on,’ my sister says. ‘There’s no need …’

‘This wasn’t a great idea,’ he says over his shoulder. ‘You’re too young, and it’s all too complicated. See you around …’

Honey’s eyes brim with tears. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ she growls. ‘The first boy I’ve really liked in ages, and you have to ruin everything!’

‘He’s not exactly a boy,’ I point out. ‘He’s a student – he must be at least nineteen. Besides … if Marty’s so special, how come you’ve been wrapped round JJ all evening? That’s wrong, Honey. You can’t do stuff like this!’

‘Watch me.’ She leans forward, pushing a finger towards the top of my chest, backing me up against the half-height stable door. ‘I can do whatever I like. JJ doesn’t own me! What’s up, Summer, jealous because I’m having fun?’

‘No, I …’

I catch the smell of smoke on her breath again, remember the pinpricks of red in the darkness. Two pinpricks of red.

‘You’ve been smoking!’ I whisper.

Honey laughs. ‘So what? It was just a few drags. Not a crime, is it?’

Actually, smoking is pretty much a crime in our family. Mum’s dad – Grandma Kate’s first husband – died of lung cancer before we were even born, and Mum has always drummed it into us that smoking kills.

‘Honey, no!’ I wail. ‘Smoking is really, really bad for you. Look what happened to Grandad. Are you trying to make yourself ill?’

My big sister laughs out loud. ‘Listen to you!’ she snaps. ‘Little Miss Perfect, lecturing me about the dangers of smoking. Well, what about the dangers of starving yourself to death, Summer? The dangers of anorexia?’

Anorexia? The word slips under my skin like poison, seeping into my bones. That’s not what has been happening to me, of course. It couldn’t possibly be.

‘Shut up!’ I yell. ‘I don’t have … well, anything like that. You’re crazy!’

‘You can’t even say it, can you?’ Honey taunts me. ‘But it’s the truth, whether you like it or not. It’s anorexia. You have an eating disorder, Summer. Fact. You’re painfully thin. You look awful, you’re tired all the time, and you’re exercising way too much …’

‘Stop it!’ I protest, clamping my hands over my ears.

‘I won’t stop,’ Honey says. ‘You’re wasting away, yet you’re making all these mad calorie-laden dinners for the rest of us. Pizza, cupcakes, macaroni cheese … it’s weird, Summer! Freaky! You don’t eat a bite. I was watching you earlier, trying to choke down two measly mouthfuls of Grandma Kate’s cake – anyone would think she’d given you rat poison to eat!’

I close my eyes. I want Honey to go away, shut up, leave me alone. She doesn’t.

‘I know what you’re doing,’ she says. ‘I’ve watched you feeding your dinner to Fred, pushing stuff around your plate
so it looks like you’re eating. I’ve been worried sick. Skye has noticed too, and Grandma Kate will catch on soon …’

‘I’ve been stressed out, I know, but it’s over now,’ I argue. ‘I’ll be fine once Mum gets back!’

‘She’ll get the shock of her life when she sees you,’ Honey says. ‘So what – I had a drag on a cigarette. Big deal. You’re the one who’s making herself ill! You’re throwing your life away!’

I take a deep breath, swaying slightly. I don’t feel well. There is a knot of panic in my belly, the crackle of fear in my ears, the stink of smoke on every breath I take. Honey’s eyes widen, and suddenly, the crackling sound, the stink of smoke, the sick feeling of panic begin to make sense.

‘Oh my God … come away!’ Honey screams. ‘The hay’s on fire!’

She pulls me away from the stable door, but not before I’ve seen the bright flicker of leaping flames, felt the heat on my face.

‘Get help!’ I yell. Honey and I both know that the stable’s right next door to the chocolate workshop. ‘Wake Grandma Kate, get the others, call the fire brigade …’

My sister is gone in a flash, running towards the house.

I could run to the cliff steps, yell for the others, but every moment wasted fetching help means the fire takes hold more. The stable is filled with hay, soft and dry and sweet. It will burn like paper. By the time the fire brigade arrive, the whole stable block will be burnt to the ground, including the workshop and all the stock and machinery Mum and Paddy have worked so hard for.

I remember the hosepipe Mum uses to water the vegetable garden, permanently hooked up to the outside tap. I run to the side of the house, open up the tap and drag the hosepipe towards the stable. I may not be able to put the fire out, but if I can damp it down, stop it from spreading, I could still save the workshop.

I open the stable door and a roar of flames, a wall of heat, leaps out at me. I have never been more scared in my life, but as long as I stay outside the stable, I should be safe. I point the hose and a jet of water arcs out, hissing as it sprays the orange flames. I can hear shouting from the house, the sound of feet on gravel.

The heat subsides a little and the flames shrink back. I step forward, into the doorway itself, my eyes streaming, stinging from the smoke. My fingers are ice-cold on the
nozzle of the hosepipe, my lungs clogged. I feel light-headed for a moment, wobbly. I pull a deep breath in and struggle to hang on because this is the very last place I want to faint. That would be bad. Very, very bad.

‘Summer!’ Voices are calling me through the darkness. ‘Summer, where are you?’

Then the ground tilts beneath my feet and I reach out for something to lean on, but the doorframe slides away from my grasp and I fall down on to blackened, sodden hay, the flames closing around me.

32

‘Smoke inhalation,’ the nurse says. ‘That’s probably why she passed out, although we can’t be certain. There’ve been no known dizzy spells, no tendency to faint?’

‘Not that I know of,’ Grandma Kate answers. I know better, of course.

I am on a trolley bed in A & E, exhausted after being poked and prodded at and quizzed over and over. I reach up a hand to tug at the oxygen mask, but someone swats my hand away. ‘It’s there to help you,’ the nurse says. ‘How are you feeling? Not so woozy?’

I try to speak, but the oxygen mask gets in the way. ‘Mmmm …’

‘Perhaps we can do without that now,’ the nurse decides.
She turns to Grandma Kate. ‘We’ve found a room on the wards for her so we can keep her under observation. You go home, get some sleep … I expect they’ll discharge her in the morning.’

‘Sleep tight,’ Grandma Kate says. ‘You gave us all such a fright, Summer. My mobile’s been bleeping all night – the girls want you to know that the fire is out and the chocolate workshop is safe. You’ll be home tomorrow, and Charlotte and Paddy too … no harm done.’

No thanks to me, I think. Honey may have dropped the cigarette, but only because I disturbed her; it flared up unseen because she and I were rowing.

A porter comes to wheel my trolley bed away from the bright lights of A & E, through antiseptic corridors to a curtained cubicle in a darkened ward. A different nurse comes to settle me in. ‘Rest,’ she tells me. ‘Everything will look better in the morning.’

I wish I could believe that.

I close my eyes and the voice is in my head, whispering, taunting.
You’ve really messed up this time
, it says.
Idiot. Fool
.