Read Online Butterfly Summer by Anne-Marie Conway - Free Book Online Page A

Mrs. Jackson, smiling her crinkly smile. “I didn’t know you and Mack were friends.”
    “We’ve only just met,” I said, grinning. I felt like I’d been grinning non-stop ever since Mack turned up on the doorstep. “He’s showing me around the village.”
    “Isn’t that nice. We missed you at church this morning. And you, Mackie Williams.”
    Mack held his hands up. “To tell you the truth, Mrs. Jackson, I couldn’t make it to the service this morning because I was taking a very important call from the Prime Minister.”
    “Get away with you,” she said.
    “I kid you not,” said Mack seriously. “But don’t ask me what it was about, because if I tell you I’ll have to kill you.”
    Mrs. Jackson’s shoulders shook with laughter. “I think the sun’s affected your brain,” she said. “Why don’t you take an ice lolly to cool yourself down – and you take one too, Becky. You deserve it, walking about in this ghastly heat.”
    Mack led me out around the back of the shop and across the road into a small wooded area. It was slightly cooler there, and as we wove our way through the tall, leafy trees, I felt as if I was in the middle of a fairy tale where absolutely anything might happen. Mack stopped suddenly in front of a den. Tree stumps and old branches and planks of wood nailed together to make a small, secret hideaway.
    “Wow, what’s this?”
    Mack laughed. “ This is where I come when I need to get away from my nagging mum! I built it years ago with my dad and I’m pretty sure no one else knows it’s here. Except for my dad, of course – and now you.”
    My tummy flipped over again. It was crazy. I was standing in the middle of a wood with the cutest boy I’d ever met in my life. It should’ve freaked me out, but for some reason I felt okay. Like I could trust him. We crawled into the den and sat with our knees up, facing each other, finishing our ice lollies. The ground was hard and covered in old leaves and twigs, but it didn’t matter.
    Mack drew noughts and crosses in the dust with his lolly stick and we played best-of-three and then best-of-five. He won every time, cracking joke after joke to distract me and then accidentally-on-purpose rubbing out the entire grid on the one go I actually came close to beating him.
    “I have never met such a cheat in my life!” I cried, grabbing the lolly stick and drawing another grid.
    “My mum taught me that, years ago. Always bring the game to a close if you’re in danger of losing! Hey, did you know that according to my mum we actually knew each other when we were babies?”
    I stared at him.
    “In fact you could say that this is The Big Reunion .”
    “We couldn’t have known each other when we were babies. There’s no way. My mum left Oakbridge before I was born.”
    Mack shrugged as if it was no big deal. “Maybe my mum used to visit your mum then, after she moved. At her new place.”
    I frowned, racking my brains. Every time I tried to think of the past it was dark and murky, filled with difficult, unanswered questions.
    I shook my head. “She can’t have. We’ve never met before, Mack. I’m sure of it.”
    “I know it’s hard to imagine anyone forgetting someone like me,” he laughed, “but you were probably, like, two months old at the time.”
    “Big-head!” I swiped him with the lolly stick. “How did your camping trip go, by the way?”
    Mack rolled his eyes. “Survival in the wild – my dad’s idea of fun. You should’ve seen us trying to build a fire, it was the biggest joke. We ended up eating cold baked beans out of the tin for three days in a row!”
    I smiled but my tummy clenched up. I’d eat cold baked beans out of the tin for the rest of my life if it meant I could go camping with my dad. “How often do you see him? Is it only in the holidays?” I looked down, worried I was being too personal, but Mack seemed totally unfazed.
    “No, I see him most weekends,” he said. “He’s really into rugby so