Read Online Bringing the Summer by Julia Green - Free Book Online Page B

practise with your crutches!’ I mean to be encouraging, but he gives me such a withering look I’m happy to leave him behind.
    I’m used to pottering in Gramps’ vegetable garden, helping him. This one is much more overgrown and unruly. I find a handful of courgettes under the big star-shaped leaves, and then start cutting spinach. Something makes me look up. Theo’s standing in the doorway to the walled garden, lurking there in the shadow. Not exactly creepy, but a bit . . . But perhaps I’m just imagining things because he comes over and is ordinary enough.
    â€˜Spinach goes to a mush when it’s cooked. So you need loads,’ he says.
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜I found that poem for you. Pike .’
    â€˜Thanks.’
    â€˜Are you staying?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Good.’
    I don’t say anything.
    He starts asking me questions. ‘So, Freya. You still at school?’
    â€˜No, college. I’m doing A levels there. That’s how I know Gabes.’
    â€˜Then what?’
    â€˜I don’t know. I haven’t decided.’
    â€˜University. Or travel. Like everyone does.’
    I look at him. Why does he have to be sarcastic? ‘Actually, Theo, no. I’d like to do something wild, and wonderful, and different. I want my life to mean something; to count. I don’t want to waste it. Not any of it.’
    I don’t tell him why. I don’t say, when someone you love dies young, it makes you think about all these things, over and over .
    There’s a long, awkward silence.
    â€˜And you? What do you want to do, Theo?’
    â€˜Write,’ he says.
    â€˜Like your mother?’
    â€˜No, not like her. Not like anyone.’
    â€˜That’s enough spinach,’ I say.
    He picks up the cut leaves from the path where I’ve laid them, and carries them into the house in both hands, like a dark green bouquet.
    Â 
    Just before supper, I go to find Gabes. I pick up one of the framed photographs on the piano, put it back, select another. ‘Tell me who everyone is,’ I say.
    Most of the family group ones are fairly obvious. I peer at a particularly beautiful black-and-white photo of Maddie and Nick on their wedding day, looking totally in love and amazing. There’s another wedding one with two bridesmaids that Gabes tells me are Beth and Laura. ‘Nick was married before, to their mum, Lorna,’ Gabes explains. ‘Maddie isn’t their real mother, though she’s looked after them practically for ever.’
    â€˜And this one?’ I hold up the square photo of the thin-faced little girl with short dark hair, the one picture that doesn’t fit with the others.
    â€˜Bridie, when she was about six.’ He starts hobbling to the door.
    Nick’s calling us from the kitchen: supper is ready and everyone’s starving. But I linger a moment longer, staring at the girl in the photograph. This is her. I’m face to face with Bridie . . . I study her face; look into her dark eyes. But of course there’s nothing there, nothing you can see, that is; nothing that says what will happen to her later . . .
    â€˜Freya?’ Gabes calls.
    â€˜Coming.’ Carefully, I put the photo back between the others and go through to the kitchen.
    We take our places at the table. Everyone’s there except Laura, this time. Maddie has cooked an enormous fish pie. Theo watches me across the table, but I keep my eyes on my food, and on Gabes, and let the conversations waft over my head. Someone’s bought an injured fox into the surgery, Nick’s saying. It will need a quieter place to recuperate: he might bring it back to the house next week, if Maddie doesn’t mind . . .
    Afterwards, Gabes practises going upstairs with crutches. I walk along the landing to find Beth bathing the twins. She’s red-faced and shiny from the steam. She sits on the floor, keeping an eye on both babies and playing with them.