The Binding (10 page)

He stood up, and then we all stood up.

‘We have to do what the Lawmaker decides,' Hamish reminded everyone.

‘Don't eat much tea, and bring as much food as you can,' said Duncan. ‘Let's make this feast the best one we've ever had!'

We joined hands and the circle turned.

In the winding, round and round

What we wind can't be unwound

What we bind can't be unbound

The Binding

Tressa and Milo were really excited.

‘I wonder why it's called the Feast of the Ancestors,' she said, as we tramped up the track towards the house.

‘What is “ancestors”?' asked Milo.

I told them what Elspeth had told me, about Duncan being descended from the first King of Morna, who came from Ireland and rode through battlefields on a white charger up to its knees in blood.

‘Is that true?' asked Tressa. I shrugged. She said, ‘I hope he tells us the whole story at the feast!'

‘I'm going to take that big lump of cheese in the fridge,' said Milo.

Tressa said if he did that, Mum was bound to notice. ‘You've got to be clever. I'll help you.'

As soon as we walked in the door, we could tell Mum was fed up and Matt was trying to jolly her along.

‘How was the hotel?' asked Tressa. ‘Did you meet the new visitors?'

Mum said yes, they did, but they turned out to be total weirdos. All they wanted to do was go off on their own with their binoculars and cameras. If Matt noticed she was basically calling him weird, he didn't show it.

‘What did you kids get up to?' he asked.

‘We played some games,' said Milo.

‘Yes,' said Tressa, steering him towards the kitchen. ‘And we're really hungry now. OK if we get a snack?' She gestured me to go with them, but I didn't meet her eye. My stomach had started churning again, thinking about the horror of the field, and them laughing at me, and then the games night, like nothing important had happened. I was reeling like I'd just got off a rollercoaster ride.

Anyway, I wanted to stick around and talk to Mum and Matt. Going to the hotel and meeting people had seemed like the only way Mum might start enjoying Morna, and if that hadn't worked, what was going to happen now?

‘I was thinking,' Mum said to Matt. ‘Maybe the whole summer is a bit too long to be away? I mean, we've both got work to do at home before the beginning of term, and the children—'

‘It's the chance of a lifetime,' Matt interrupted her. ‘Something completely different.'

It was different all right.

‘It would be a shame not to make the most of it,' he said.

If she noticed he was basically calling her a grumpy-guts who ought to stop complaining, she didn't let on.

‘Jack!' Tressa called me from the doorway. ‘Don't you want to get some food?'

‘No, I'm all right, thanks.'

She gave me a look which clearly said, ‘They're busy trying not to have a row, and that means they're not going to notice—this is your chance!'

‘So you don't think we might go home a bit earlier than we planned?' said Mum, ignoring the interruption. Tressa disappeared back into the kitchen.

Matt said, ‘I know what we need—a plan! Let's make a list of all the places we haven't seen on the island yet, and try to visit them. I bet Jack could help us with that.'

Chapter 6

A cake f it for a feast

‘Oh, God, seriously?' said Mum, when she opened the curtains the next morning. ‘More rain?'

On the upside, me, Milo and Tressa didn't have any plans for the day; on the downside, Matt did, and there was no way he was going to get Mum out of the house to go and look at stacks and standing stones in the pouring rain.

Tressa and Milo were happy because more time at home meant more time to plot secret raids on the
cupboards and fridge. They had already taken lots of stuff and I hadn't got anything, so Tressa was giving me grief.

‘What's wrong with you?' she said. ‘We've had loads of chances. Look what me and Milo have already got, and Mum hasn't noticed a thing!'

She opened her bedside drawer to reveal half a dozen sandwich bags, neatly tied. A few handfuls of peanuts in one, a cheese sandwich cut into little triangles in another; a couple of biscuits, some currants and raisins, six squares from Matt's big box of home-made fudge.

Besides the sandwich bags, there were also the two packets of crisps she and Milo had asked for at snack-time that morning and their bananas from bedtime the night before. I'd eaten mine.

‘Pull your finger out,' said Tressa. ‘Me and Milo have done our bit, now you've got to do yours.'

Milo came bounding in holding up his two fists proudly. He emptied his hands on the bedspread with a rattle of dried macaroni. Tressa said that was no good, you couldn't eat it uncooked, but Milo said, ‘Yes, you can—I've tried it! But you can't eat dry lentils.' He stuck his tongue out in disgust.

‘Have you been trying everything in the cupboard?' Tressa was horrified. ‘You'll get us caught! That's enough now, Milo. You've found lots of food and Duncan will be really pleased with you. It's Jack's turn to get some now.'

She put the macaroni in a new sandwich bag, tied the top and placed it beside the others in the drawer.

‘Come on, Jack—me and Milo will distract them for you.'

Mum and Matt didn't need any distracting because they were already in the middle of something. Mum had made a decision.

‘This really isn't working for me, Matt. I've decided I definitely want to go home.'

That took him by surprise. You could see he was wondering what to say. You could tell Mum was expecting him to say, ‘All right then, Dee, in that case, we might as well all go.'

He didn't. Which meant Mum kind of had to push on.

‘The children will have to come with me, of course. It wouldn't be fair to ask you to look after them up here on your own.'

He'd have to say it now, otherwise he'd be breaking up their very first family holiday together, plus he'd have to stay up here in the middle of nowhere with no-one to keep him company.

But he still didn't say anything.

‘This is your chance!' Tressa hissed at me, trying to steer me into the kitchen. I shook my arm free.

‘I'm not saying it hasn't been good,' Mum said to Matt. ‘It's been. . . well. . .'

Matt found his tongue.

‘But the children are having a lovely time.'

He was going to argue it!

‘Come on!' Tressa said, grabbing my arm again.

I shook her off. She shrugged and disappeared into the kitchen. We could hear Milo foraging out there and she probably wanted to stop him before he taste-tested anything else, such as, for example, the raw dirty vegetables.

‘The children always enjoy their summer,' Mum said to Matt, ‘even when we don't go anywhere.'

I thought she was going to mention Dad. That would be a low move, to say we'd be happier at home because we could get to see him, when here we were on our first ever family holiday with Matt. Besides,
Dad was totally cool with us spending the summer holidays here; we were going to spend every weekend in September together instead.

If she mentioned Dad, what would Matt say? I couldn't guess because I didn't know him well enough yet.

‘But we're here now,' Matt said. ‘And everyone's happy. . .except you.'

Was he going to say she should make an effort, for the sake of the children if not for him? That would be his low move, suggesting she didn't care about her children as much as herself. Dad had tried that when she got Head of Department and, believe me, it hadn't turned out to be a good idea.

‘Look, I don't want us to fall out over this,' Mum said.

I pretended I was Googling stuff on Mum's laptop and not sticky-beaking their conversation, waiting for everything to kick off. I didn't really need to pretend though—they seemed to have forgotten I was there.

That's how it felt before Dad left to live with Donna. He and Mum couldn't even talk about what to have for tea without it turning into a massive row, and
when they were yelling at each other they didn't seem to notice us at all.

That was when Nee-na got superglued into Milo's fist, and Tressa started doing those deep-dives into books. I had
A thousand super-funny jokes for kids
that Uncle Max had given me for my birthday, and it wasn't like a story, where your mind could wander, but pictures you could see straight away in your head, like the flea prowling on the hairy and the elephant eating the candle and the rabbits wearing glasses.

What's more, with jokes, you didn't need the book. You could remember them, and make those pictures in your head whenever you wanted to. By the time Dad left, I knew all the thousand super-funny jokes by heart.

Matt said, ‘Look, I get it, Dee. This isn't your kind of holiday. But it is mine. What say we stay here now and do whatever you'd like to do next year?'

‘But we've already been here a couple of weeks, and that's enough for a holiday.'

Matt said he didn't understand why Mum was in such a hurry—they had the whole summer. ‘Like you always say, it's the one good thing about teaching.'

What do you get when you cross a snowman with a vampire? That's what I was thinking. Frostbite! Why did the traffic light turn red? You would too if you had to change in the middle of the street!

‘Well, I think we should be at home for at least some of the holiday because. . .'

No, Mum—don't!

‘. . .because the children are missing their days out with their father.'

Matt looked stunned, as if she'd slapped him in the face.

What do you call a doctor with eight arms? A doctopus! Imagine that. An octopus in a white coat, wearing a stethoscope. He could listen to your heart at the same time as taking your pulse, feeling the glands in your neck, answering the phone, scratching his chin and writing a prescription.

‘Are you sure that's what this is about?' Matt asked. ‘If you think the children want to go home, let's ask them. Jack?'

I glanced up from the computer, trying to look as if I had no idea what they'd been talking about.

‘I'm looking for. . .' An ad for cupcakes popped up on the screen. ‘I'm looking for a recipe.'

‘A recipe?'

‘Yes, I want to make a cake. Can you show me how?'

‘Of course,' said Mum. ‘We can do it later, when Matt and I have finished talking.'

I didn't like them talking. I didn't want them to go back to talking.

‘But I have to do it right now.'

‘Why? What's the rush?'

I felt like I was running into trouble, same as when you're dribbling up the field, eyes on the ball, not noticing you're heading straight for a defender.

‘I need it for later on.'

‘You need it?'

‘Yes. . .' I glimpsed Tressa in the doorway out of the corner of my eye.

‘Why?' said Mum.

I had to have a reason and, come to think of it, I did have a reason. I needed to get some food and I didn't want to steal it, especially when Mum and Matt were arguing.

‘We're having a feast.'

As soon as the words were out, it was like the huge birds came swooping down again. My heart raced and my stomach lurched, but it was too late to run away.

Mum got up with a sigh. She wanted to keep on talking to Matt nearly as much as I wanted her not to. I Googled ‘cakes' and clicked on a recipe site, so I had a coffee sponge up on the screen when she came over. I tilted the laptop towards her.

‘No need for that!' she said. ‘It's very simple. Eggs, flour, sugar and marge—we've got everything we need in the cupboard.'

There were little spills of flour on the shelf around the bag. Really, Milo—flour? Mum absent-mindedly wiped them up and then went on to wipe up the sprinkles around the sugar.

These days, she said, you would use the food-mixer to make a cake, but as there wasn't one in Jean's house, it was a good thing she remembered how to do it by hand, the way her own mother had taught her.

We weighed out some sugar and marge and took turns beating them together with a wooden spoon. Mum could do it really fast, but the spoon didn't seem to work for me. I felt slow and clumsy.

We measured the flour and beat the eggs in a jug, and added them bit by bit, alternately, until the mixture was thick and creamy. Then Mum divided it between two tins and let me lick the bowl. She asked
me if it was someone's birthday and that was why we were having a feast, but I said no and changed the subject.

‘What can we decorate it with?'

‘We'll need some icing sugar and perhaps some sweets from the shop. You could ask Matt to pop down there with you while I stay and watch the oven. He loves going out in all this drizzle and rain.'

Milo was having a snooze on the bedroom floor among his cars, probably worn out from the excitement of turning into a sneaky little thief, but Tressa wanted to come with us. I thought she was on the snoop, in case I gave her anything else to tell on me for. But as it turned out, she had a different reason for coming.

Matt bought some icing sugar and a packet of chocolate buttons, plus a tube of coloured sprinkles which we found out when we got home were four years over the date stamp. Then he stood around chatting to the shopkeeper while I had a look through the books and games on the shelves by the door.

Instead of looking through them with me, Tressa stayed beside Matt, pretending to be interested in what he was saying. It was odd. I mean, being polite
and doing what you're told was one thing, but there was absolutely nothing in the rules that said you had to suck up.

I was wondering what she was up to when I saw her hand drop down from inside her coat cuff, scoop up a carrot from the sack on the floor and pull it up inside her sleeve. Matt noticed the movement, but didn't see what she'd done.