Catching Falling Stars (6 page)

But then I spot something through the cottage window.

Miss Saunders is sitting stone still, owl that she is, while Mum is smiling and has her hands clasped in front of her chest.

I don’t need to read her lips to realize she’s saying a heartfelt thank-you to Miss Saunders.

And I don’t need to be a mind reader to know that a decision has been made while we were away.

It’s one that I really don’t think I’m going to like…

“Bye! Bye, Mum!” Rich yells, waving as the bus pulls away. “Bye! Bye!”

Mum’s hand is pressed on the window and she’s frantically blowing kisses at us. She’s all smiles, but crying too.

I’m not smiling, or crying, because I’m in shock; shocked at Mum for leaving us here. I know that was the plan. I know that’s why we came here. But everything feels upside down and awfully wrong.

“Well, then,” Miss Saunders says briskly, as the bus chugs off past the church.

She doesn’t say any more than that or appear to be about to do anything.

I think Miss Saunders might be in as much shock as I am. And Rich is bouncing up and down, waving too fast, like a mechanical toy that’s been overwound.

“Rich, shh, steady,” I murmur, resting my hands on his shoulders to help calm him down. To anyone watching, he might look happy and excited, but I know he’s acting this way because he’s anxious and agitated.

The last thing Mum had said to me was “I love you”, but the second-last thing was “Take extra-good care of your brother, Glory”. And that’s what I have to do, starting now. I mustn’t let Miss Saunders see how odd Rich can be, or she might go straight back to the vicar we all met with earlier and tell him she’s changed her mind. That he should get out all his documents about local evacuees and their host families and take her name off his register.

Or maybe I should
encourage
Rich and his oddness, so that Mum or Dad will
have
to come back and collect us…

Oh, how wonderful would that be?

“Can we go home to the cottage, please?” Rich turns and asks Miss Saunders. “Now?”

Miss Saunders looks bemused, as if she’s wondering what on earth she’s agreed to. She pushes her spectacles further up her nose, although they’re up as far as they can go. I know what she’s doing; a fidget can give you a moment of thinking time. And faced with two unexpected house guests, Miss Saunders, I suppose, definitely needs a moment to gather her thoughts.

Especially when one of them has just described her cottage as “home”, as if he’s settled in already.

“Er, yes, of course,” says Miss Saunders, and begins to stride off.

Rich does his funny little skip-hop to keep up with her, while I follow behind.

“
Oh, butterfly, butterfly, high in the sky, high in the sky! Oh, butterfly, butterfly…
”

I stiffen, suddenly uncomfortable.

“
…high in the sky, high in the sky!
”

Teachers don’t have much patience with Rich when he does his sing-songing. Last year’s teacher, Miss Arnold, gave him a smack on the back of his legs with a ruler for “not calming down when I asked you to”.

“
Oh, butterfly, butterfly, high in the sky, high in the sky!
”

Miss Saunders is a teacher. What will
she
be like with my brother? Impatient, weary, same as the others?

“
Oh, butterfly, butterfly…
”

“Rich, Rich!” I hiss at him, trying to get his attention before Miss Saunders becomes irritated. I know I wanted to go home just now, but we can’t let Mum and Dad down. I’d never want them to be ashamed of either of us.

“
…high in the sky, high in the sky!
”
he carries on regardless, throwing his arms in the air this time.

With cheeks aflame, I glance at Miss Saunders and see her give Rich a sideways frown; the sort that everyone does when they’re thinking he’s … unusual.

“
Oh, butterfly, butterfly—
”

“It’s rather silly to make up a song about a garden pest, Richard,” Miss Saunders interrupts him sharply.

“Butterflies aren’t pests, they’re beautiful!” Rich laughs, watching the cabbage whites dip and dance over the green.

“Not when they’re destroying the vegetable crop that the villagers have grown for the war effort,” she tells him sniffily. “At least it’s nearly the end of the season. They won’t be around much longer.”

“Oh! Where will they go?” Rich asks her, as if he expects her to say the Isle of Wight or India or somewhere.

“They will die, naturally. And meanwhile new chrysalises will grow and the life cycle will start again.”

Miss Saunders sounds exactly like the teacher she is. Rich blinks up at her, taking this information in.

“Miss Saunders?” he says, still skip-hopping beside her.

“Yes, Richard?”

“Can we go and see our bedroom
the minute
we get home? Can we?”

Miss Saunders is taken aback, unprepared for this switch of topic. She’d better get used to it; that’s Rich all over.

“Well, yes. Your room,” says Miss Saunders, a little flustered. “You children mustn’t expect too much. I haven’t had a chance to sort it out, since my mother only very recently…”

Her voice cracks a little.

“Died.” Rich says the cold, hard word in too loud and bright a voice. “Like Mrs Mann.”

“Rich!” I hiss.

“It’s all right, Gloria,” Miss Saunders says, glancing at me over her shoulder with her cold, grey owl eyes. “He’s only using the correct word. I just happen to prefer the term ‘passed away’.”

“
Glory
,” I mumble under my breath. Mum told her I only answer to that.

“Moany Mrs Mann passed away of a bomb blowing a wall down on top of her,” Rich babbles on. “What did your mother pass away of?”

I feel another sudden shudder of embarrassment, same as Dad feels when Rich talks or acts just that little bit differently from everyone else. And then I’m immediately angry with myself. Me and Mum understand Rich, no one else. And with Mum gone, I’m the only one here who can stand up for Rich, translate for him, even.

“Rich doesn’t mean to be rude,” I begin, hurriedly catching up with them both and putting a cautioning hand on Rich’s shoulder.

“Yes, well. It’s very sad about your neighbour, Richard,” Miss Saunders cuts in tersely before I can say any more. “Your mother explained what happened. It must have been very frightening for you all.”

“Very frightening,” Rich repeats, wriggling free of my hand and skip-running slightly ahead of us.

Miss Saunders suddenly does something I almost hate her for; her nostrils flare.

It’s such a tiny movement, but I’ve see it often enough to understand what it means. Already, she’s confused by my brother to the point of dislike. I bet she doesn’t approve of the sing-songing and skip-hopping, when a “normal” child would be sobbing at his beloved mother leaving, clinging on sadly to his big sister’s side.

But
I
know Rich is covering up his feelings, not sure how to let them out without scaring himself. He did it back home, after the blast, when he was well enough to leave the flat. Schoolteachers and neighbours would ask if he was all right and he would just start whistling some song he liked on the wireless, or worse still, laugh and do these crazy aeroplane impressions, arms wide, running around, making the “whee!” noise of a bomb dropping. If Dad was there he’d hang his head, not knowing where to look. If it happened in class, Mum would be told by Rich’s baffled teacher.

“My mother was very lucky, Richard,” says Miss Saunders, taking up his question again in her faintly sergeant-major, matter-of-fact voice. “She had been very, very ill for many years, and in the end she died quietly and peacefully in her sleep.”

“In our bedroom?” Rich asks, glancing up at Miss Saunders.

“Er, yes … you will be in her room. That’s the only place I can put you.”

Miss Saunders’ poorly mother had been the reason the vicar – who was also the evacuation officer for Thorntree and surrounding area – hadn’t been able to place children at the cottage when everyone left London this time last year. I’d heard that much when I was in the vicarage sitting room, while Mum and Reverend Ashton and Miss Saunders had discussed me and Rich as if we were a couple of parcels to be signed for and handed over.

“So your mother die—
passed away
in
our
bed?” Rich carries on questioning her.

Oh, no. Now he’s realized that, Rich will
never
go to sleep in there! He’ll have a tantrum and Miss Saunders will see the worst of him and—

“Well, yes,” Miss Saunders says crisply.

“Quietly … peacefully…” Rich repeats the words Miss Saunders used about her mother’s death. “That’s nice. It sounds like a nice room.”

I think I know my brother, and then he goes and surprises me. How can he like the idea of cuddling under the blankets in a bed where a dead lady lay? It gives me the creeps.

“Actually, Mother’s room
is
nice, Richard,” Miss Saunders replies. “It has a lovely view of the garden. The apple tree is right outside and the blossom is very beautiful in May.”

“I’ll like seeing that!” Richard smiles up at her.

I don’t know who’s more surprised and unnerved by what Rich has just said: me or Miss Saunders. Blossom time is another eight months away. Surely we won’t be here by then?

“Ooh, look! There’s that girl; hello! Hello!” Rich calls out, spotting the cheeky girl from the pub, dangling from a branch of the oak tree by her arms. In reply to my brother, she just grins and then sticks out her tongue.

“Who is she?” I find myself asking. I must be pulling a face, because I feel a tug on the tight skin of my scar.

“I don’t know her name,” Miss Saunders says, sounding uninterested. She’s quickening her pace now we’re in sight of the cottage door.

At least Miss Saunders and I have something in common: neither of us thinks much of the girl from The Swan.

“She’s just some evacuee,” Miss Saunders adds dismissively.

And just like that we
don’t
have anything in common.

This tall, straight-backed, unsmiling woman is simply doing her civic duty, like Harry Wills the farmer’s son said she should. And she’s only doing it because my mum charmed her, and very possibly begged her to take us in.

The truth is, me and Rich, we’re about as welcome in Miss Saunders’ spare room as an invasion of cockroaches…

Tick …
tock …
tick …
tock …
tick …
tock
…

The sound of the clock on the mantle is as loud as pebbles on a tin roof.

Rich doesn’t notice. He was so bone-tired that I took him up here after tea and he was practically snoring before I buttoned him into his stripy flannel pyjamas.