Summer With My Sister (37 page)

‘Er . . .’ she said, playing for time. She was beginning to feel on edge, being in the absolute middle of nowhere with this man. Anything could happen, he’d said. This wasn’t some grim dogging venue, was it? She sneakily reached down to find her mobile in her bag and kept her hand on it, just in case.

‘Whistledown tree-planting day?’ he prompted. ‘Come on. You must remember that!’

‘Whistledown . . . Oh! This is Whistledown Hill?’

‘Yeah, we’re at the bottom of it, anyway. I thought we could go and look at our tree, then take a stroll up the hill to see the sun go down.’

Our tree
. Why was he saying it like that? It was only a
tree
, only a spindly little sapling they’d planted on some boring council initiative all those years ago. Images were spooling through her mind now, the memory having been tracked down. They’d been – what? sixteen? seventeen? – and the whole sixth form had been taken out for the afternoon on a coach and split into groups. She and Jay had been together with Carolyn Dawson, Polly’s best friend at the time, and her boyfriend, whatever his name was . . .

‘Who was Carolyn seeing back then?’ she asked, getting out of the car.

‘Donno,’ he replied. ‘Ian Donnelly?’ He was looking at her as if hoping for a better reaction to the excursion he’d arranged.

‘Donno Donnelly, that was it. It seems so long ago.’

‘Twenty years,’ he said, heaving a small rucksack onto his back. ‘Provisions,’ he explained when he caught her staring at it. ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

They went through the car park together, and it was like stepping back through time. She half-expected to see glimpses of her teenage self running ahead, ponytail swinging, not a care in the world.

After a short walk along a stony path, they emerged into what Polly had remembered as being a field. ‘Oh,’ she said faintly, blinking and staring around.

The field they’d been sent out into all those years ago, with their spades and compost and weedy little baby trees, had been transformed. Polly and Jay were standing at the edge of dense, dappled woodland, with broad oaks and ash trees forming a high canopy above, and smaller trees planted between them to make a second tier of light and shade. The evening sun shone warm and golden through the leaves, lending the woodland an almost magical serenity.

‘Wow,’ she said, gazing around. ‘A lot can happen in twenty years.’ She could still visualize how puny their sapling had been, with the little plastic tubular surround protecting its young, vulnerable trunk. And now . . . ‘We planted an oak, didn’t we?’ she said, recalling the distinctive jigsaw-piece leaves. ‘I wonder which one was ours.’

‘It’s down here,’ Jay said, and took her hand. ‘Ours was the very furthest one, do you remember? We deliberately went for it so that we could have a crafty fag away from Mrs Morris.’

He was right, but she was distracted by the sensation of Jay’s warm, strong fingers wrapped around her own. Her heart thumped as they walked between the trees together, and suddenly she wasn’t sure if they should venture any further into this memory forest. She’d left the past behind for good reason, after all.

They passed spiky hawthorns and pretty hazels, then Jay stopped in front of a tall, sturdy oak that towered over their heads. ‘This is it,’ he said, slapping its trunk.

Polly put a hand to it wonderingly, gazing up and up at the broad, strong branches arranged like the spokes of a wheel above her. She could hardly believe the tree had been standing here, quietly growing all this time, after the half-arsed way they’d bunged it in the earth. She’d been more interested in trying to look cool in front of Jay, she remembered, lying back on the grass with her sunglasses on, watching as he bent over to dig a hole for the sapling. And now look at it.
Our tree
.

‘Wow,’ she said again. Then she tried to laugh it off, not wanting Jay to see how vulnerable the flashback to their teenage years made her feel. ‘Well, you can tell it was brilliantly planted, just looking at it. Excellent horticultural skills we had, obviously.’

Jay was smiling at her, his eyes soft and amused. He had a hand on the rough bark too, and his gaze felt worryingly, yet thrillingly intense.

A shiver went through her – was he about to kiss her? – and she quickly pulled away from the tree, rubbing her arms, which were prickling into goose-bumps. ‘It’s a bit cold in the shade, isn’t it?’ she said, taking a step back to break the spell. ‘Shall we go and have that drink then?’

There was a moment of silence. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Let’s take a wander up Whistledown.’

Whistledown Hill was a well-known local beauty spot, famed for its views over the county. Polly had been dragged up there many Sunday afternoons
en famille
when she’d been young, usually moaning about wanting to stay indoors and sulking about how
boring
going for walks was, but she hadn’t been back since she’d become an adult. How come she had never noticed just how lovely it was around here? Her parents had always droned on about the beautiful views and how lucky they were to live in the valley of the hill, but at the time Polly had been unable to see any beauty. She’d just whinged on about wanting an ice cream, and attempted to amuse herself by pushing her siblings into the bracken wherever possible.

‘Gorgeous,’ she said, with a little sigh as they walked up its steep slope, the grass freckled with daisies, their heads closing up for the night. It was still light and clear, and you could see far out into the distance, towards Andover and Salisbury Plain, with mile after mile of rolling hills, old flint churches and lush farmland. ‘It’s your quintessential English countryside scene, isn’t it?’ she added, then stumbled as she put her foot in a rabbit hole.

Jay caught hold of her arm and she fell sideways into him.

‘Oops,’ she said, aware of how close they were. ‘Sorry.’

‘That’s your quintessential rabbit hole,’ he joked, steadying her. ‘Don’t get many of them in London, do you? Mind you, you don’t get views like this, either.’

‘No,’ she said, and kicked off her sandals. The ground was cold under her bare feet, but it felt safer that way. ‘I’d forgotten about this place. It’s beautiful.’ The words seemed insufficient somehow. It was
so
beautiful. She felt as if she hadn’t looked properly at the world for the last ten years. She hadn’t stopped and gazed at a panoramic view like the one that was unfurled so gloriously before her. It gave her the creeping, unnerving sensation that maybe, just maybe, her priorities had been askew. Maybe the path she’d taken hadn’t been the best one after all.

She shook herself briskly, not liking the thought. What was done was done. Regrets were for losers, right?

They’d reached a bench and Jay gestured to it. ‘Shall we?’ he said and then, without waiting for an answer, unhitched his rucksack, plonked it on the aged wooden seat and opened it. ‘I have wine,’ he said, producing a bottle swathed in a freeze-pack, ‘I have glasses – mercifully unsmashed – and I have raspberries that are only a bit squashed.’

Polly smiled at him dazedly. The whole evening was starting to feel surreal. There was a fluttering sensation inside her and she felt like a kite whose string had been cut loose and was floating up into the air, going who knew where. He’d done all this for her. She couldn’t remember a man ever doing a sweeter thing. Why was he being so nice? ‘Sounds lovely,’ she managed to say, sitting next to him. There was a clump of bobbly-headed dandelion clocks at the side of the bench and she kicked a bare foot through them, shaking the gossamer-like seeds from their stalks, and sending them floating away into the evening, like wishes on the breeze.

Jay uncorked the wine with a pop, then unwrapped two wine glasses from a tea towel and poured. ‘Cheers,’ he said, passing her a glass. ‘Good to have you back in town, Polly.’

‘Cheers,’ she said, clinking her glass against his. ‘It’s good to
be
back.’ But as she said the words, she could feel herself shrinking away. Where was this leading? she wondered in sudden alarm. Perhaps a drink in The Green Man would have been safer after all. It felt too soon and too intimate for them to be sitting side by side in the middle of nowhere, drinking wine and eating raspberries on their first evening out together in twenty years. And Polly hadn’t done intimate for a long, long time. Intimacy scared the hell out of her. If you let your guard down for a second, you could lose everything.

She swung her face away, remembering Michael. Her own brother had died the last time she and Jay had been in such close proximity, and all of a sudden the thought of history repeating itself between them felt like it would be a betrayal, as if she hadn’t learned anything from her mistakes. ‘Well, it’s good to be back for the time being, anyway,’ she found herself amending hastily, edging away a fraction and tucking her skirt around her legs. ‘Just until I can get back to the wonderful pollution and crime stats of our glorious capital city, of course.’

He looked at her quizzically, then recovered himself in the next heartbeat. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Do you miss London then?’

‘Miss it? God, all the time,’ she said, swigging at the wine without tasting it. She felt a pang of loss for her flat, now with a SOLD sign above its picture on the website. ‘I feel like one of my limbs has been hacked off, not being there. I can’t wait to go back.’

She could feel his gaze still upon her, but couldn’t bring herself to look at him. ‘Must be difficult,’ he said after a while.

And then because she felt guilty for going cool on him when he was trying so hard, and muddled because she no longer knew what the hell she wanted, she clicked into flirtatious mode by default. ‘Well, it has its compensations,’ she said, tilting her head coquettishly.

He looked confused and sipped his wine, and she felt like the biggest faker ever.

The evening she and Jay had broken up had been imprinted so vividly in her memory, it was as if it only happened the week before. Churned up with guilt and grief in the wake of Michael’s death, she’d pushed him away from her, telling him she hated him and never wanted to see him again.

He’d looked at her helplessly as she railed furiously at him, blaming him, shouting at him, weeping and wild-eyed, punching at his chest like a madwoman.

‘I know you’re upset about Michael . . .’ he kept saying, grabbing hold of her fists.

‘Upset? UPSET?’ she’d screamed, thrashing in his grasp. ‘You have no idea how . . .’ And then the fury had vanished, like a flame snuffed out, and she’d broken down in sobs, shaking and unable to stop.

‘Oh, Polly,’ he’d said, patting her gingerly as if scared she would erupt again. ‘It’ll be okay.’

‘It’ll never be okay,’ she’d said, the savageness returning to her voice. ‘Don’t you see? Don’t you get it? That’s why we’ve got to split up. Because it’ll never be okay again.’

Well, she’d got that one right, at least. They’d gone their separate ways, had seen out the rest of their A-level year in haughty silence towards one another. He’d gone off with bloody Big-Tits two weeks later and she’d simmered for the rest of the term, her face a permanent scowl. The sooner she could get out of Elderchurch and leave the revolting pair of them behind, the better.

And she thought she’d managed it, she thought she
had
left him behind. But spending the evening with him now, sharing wine and raspberries and memories with him . . . whoa. It had brought her up short, given her a jolt. It turned out that she still had strong feelings lurking just beneath the surface, after all, which had sent her spinning back twenty years to happier times, before everything had gone pear-shaped. Perhaps she hadn’t left him behind as successfully as she’d thought.

When Jay dropped her off later on, she felt herself stiffening as he parked the car. What now? A kiss, an embrace? A smouldering look as he leaned over and took her hand?

Her heart skipped a beat as he pulled on the handbrake, but he merely smiled. ‘There,’ he said politely. It was barely ten o’clock.

She swallowed. ‘Jay, about what happened . . .’ she began haltingly. ‘I’m sorry about . . . you know. How it turned out between us. The things I said.’ There was a massive lump in her throat as she spoke. ‘I was just . . . upset. I think I went a bit mad.’