Read Cherry Blossom Dreams Online
Authors: Gwyneth Rees
Cherry Blossom Dreams
In memory of Karen Cheylan
29th April 1974 – 17th April 2014
Hi there,
I just wanted to say hello and tell you a bit about myself.
I live on the very outside of London near the River Thames, with my husband (who is Dutch and makes great pancakes!) and our two young daughters. We also have a Siamese cat called Hamish who came to us as a very timid rescue cat and spent the first few weeks hiding up the chimney! Now he is a real family cat and loves sitting on my lap (and trying to sit on my keyboard!) when I’m at my desk writing.
I’m half Welsh and half English but I grew up in Scotland. Before I became a writer I worked as a doctor, mainly with children and teenagers. From as far back as I can remember I’ve always loved stories in any form – reading books, watching films, playing make-believe games. As a child I always had one fantasy world or another on the go and as I grew older that changed to actual ongoing sagas that I wrote down in exercise books and worked on for weeks at a time.
I really hope you enjoy reading this – and that you’ll write to me at
[email protected]
to let me know what you think. I’d love it if you told me a bit about yourself too!
Best wishes,
To be honest, I was feeling a bit nervous about telling Lily my big news. It’s not that I don’t trust her. After all, she’s my best friend and I know she’s always got my back, even if lately it seems like all she’s interested in is boys, fashion, soap operas and more boys. It was just that this was such a Big Thing and the consequences if she did spill the beans – especially at school – would be massive. And I’m not just talking a little bit massive. I’m talking volcano-erupting massive here.
‘So tell me
everything
!’ demanded Lily, closing her bedroom door as I went over to flop down on her bed. I hadn’t seen her this excited since I’d first dished out the news that Mum was dating our English teacher, Mr Anderson.
Or
Leo
as we call him now (except when we’re in school, of course).
‘I can’t believe you guys actually went
on holiday
with him!’ Lily dived on to the end of her bed like she used to do when we were much younger. Lily and I have been best friends since we were in the infants. Now that we’re older – Lily is already thirteen and I will be too in a couple of months – we aren’t really in the same classes and we don’t hang out together much in school. But the two of us still see each other in the holidays and at the weekends. ‘This is way beyond cool, Sasha,’ Lily informed me. ‘This is like the most amazing thing that’s
ever
happened to a kid in our school!’
‘Don’t be daft!’ I snapped. Lily tends to exaggerate when she gets excited about something – and my mum and our English teacher (who is generally considered to be pretty hot) spending the Easter holiday together in Greece with me and my twin brother, Sean, as witnesses, had to be … well … the most exciting thing ever to happen in our little town as far as she was concerned.
‘So
spill
,’ she said. ‘Don’t miss out a single detail. I bet he looks great in swimming trunks, doesn’t he?’
‘
Lily!
’ I hissed, feeling myself flushing.
‘You do realise your mother’s a total cradle snatcher?’ Lily declared. ‘Don’t look like that! It wasn’t a criticism. We’re all dead impressed that she’s got herself a boyfriend ten years younger than her. My mum says good on her and even my gran said “Way to go” when Mum told her you were all going on holiday together!’
‘He’s only
nine
years younger and you promised not to tell anyone!’ I suddenly imagined her entire extended family sharing the news about Mum and Leo with the whole planet on Facebook.
‘I thought you just meant don’t tell anyone at school. I don’t know why you want to keep it a secret though. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. After all, Leo is a total H.O.G.!’
‘Huh?’ I looked at her blankly.
‘Hot Older Guy,’ Lily elaborated impatiently. Lily can be pretty embarrassing the way she talks about guys sometimes. Mostly her crushes are on pop stars or famous actors, but just occasionally she gets one on an unobtainable person in real life instead.
I don’t think she has a proper crush on Leo but with Lily you can never be a hundred per cent sure. ‘Come on then,’ she prompted. ‘Tell me what happened!’
‘Well …’ I began. ‘Actually I’ve got some
really
big news but Mum wants to keep it a secret for now. I’ll tell
you
as long as you promise not to tell anyone else – seriously, Lily, not
anyone
. OK? Not your mum or your granny or your auntie or your cousins and definitely not anyone in our school.’
‘OK, OK, I promise,’ Lily said. ‘You know you can trust me with a real secret.’
‘Well … Mum and Leo got
engaged
on holiday.’
Lily practically screamed. ‘No way! You mean he actually proposed? Did he get down on one knee? Did he already have the ring? Tell me everything, Sasha – and I mean
everything
! Oh my God, this is awesome!’ Lily is a bit of a drama queen in case you hadn’t noticed. In fact her mum says ‘hyperbole’ is her middle name (I had to look it up, but she’s right).
Actually, it was Mum who proposed to Leo. But Leo said yes straight away and went out and bought her a ring from a little jewellery shop in the seaside village where we were staying. And now me and my brother are going to have Mr Anderson as our step-dad. And no one at school – absolutely no one – is allowed to know. At least not until Leo has worked out how to tell our head teacher, Mr Jamieson.
‘You know Clara has a major crush on him, don’t you? She’ll be so jealous!’
‘No, Lily! You promised not to tell anyone at school!’ I said fiercely.
‘I don’t mean
now
, but eventually, when people find out. I mean, they will have to know some day, won’t they? They’ll be having a wedding! You can’t do that in secret.’
I muttered something under my breath.
Lily frowned. ‘What?’
‘I said
if
it actually happens. This is
Mum
we’re talking about here.’
Lily shook her head at me. ‘You’re such a pessimist, Sasha. This is, like, the best thing that’s happened to you in
forever
… and you’ve got to be all gloom and doom straight away.’
‘I’m just being realistic,’ I said hotly. ‘Mum’s always been unlucky when it comes to love. Even Granny says so and she doesn’t even believe in luck and fate and stuff like that.’
‘Unlucky? You mean because your dad died?’ Lily sounded genuinely puzzled before adding quickly, ‘I know that
was
pretty unlucky, but –’
‘It’s not just that,’ I told her. ‘Mum is always falling in love with the wrong people! Remember when she met Gambling Gordon?’
‘How could I forget Gee-Gee?’ Lily said with a grin. She was especially proud of her pet name for the boyfriend who was always borrowing money off Mum to bet on the horses. ‘That didn’t last long. What was it? Six months, tops? Your mum’s not
that
daft!’
‘I know, but then there was Married Michael …’
Lily had named him that in retrospect. Mum had met Michael when Sean and I were nine (four years after our dad died) and we had all really liked him. After he had been in our lives for a whole year we found out that he didn’t actually travel a lot for work as he’d always claimed, but that he had a wife and kids in another part of the country. Mum had been devastated. I still can’t think of that time without getting butterflies in my tummy.
‘I’m telling you, Mum is totally jinxed when it comes to romance,’ I told Lily. ‘So I don’t want to get too excited about Leo just yet, OK?’
Lily sighed. ‘But this is different. She’s been dating Leo for over a year and they knew each other way before that, the whole time he was tutoring Sean. They’ve actually had a chance to really get to know each other. Sean trusts him, doesn’t he?’
I nodded. Sean thought the world of Leo. It had been Sean’s Year Five teacher who had first encouraged Mum to employ Leo as a tutor, saying that my brother was a lot more capable academically than he let on. (I’ve always worked hard and done well at school without needing any extra help – a fact which I sometimes think Mum doesn’t appreciate enough.)
Anyway, thanks to Leo, Sean had managed to get through the entrance exam for Helensfield High (the grammar school just down the road from us), where Leo is one of the English teachers. And later, when Sean had been struggling to cope with Year Seven, Mum had asked Leo to come and give him some more help. Mum was single again at that point and Leo had started staying for a drink and a chat with Mum after Sean’s lesson was over.
Now my brother and I were about to start our final term of Year Eight I could hardly believe that Mum and Leo had been dating for more than a year. I mean, it’s pretty weird seeing your teacher in his dressing gown, knowing what his favourite pizza is and even seeing him snog your mum on the odd occasion you walk in on them and they can’t jump apart quickly enough. But we’d eventually started to get used to it, and I was getting so accustomed to Leo being around at home that I had even stopped noticing how good-looking he is. Until someone like Lily draws attention to it, that is.