Drawing with Light (18 page)

‘Won't it?' Cassy starts laughing again, and then for some reason she's got tears in her eyes and is crying too, all mixed up.

I put my arms round her. She seems too young to be having a baby, even at thirty-one. There's something about her that won't ever grow up. Perhaps that's one of the things Dad loves about her. Cassy won't ever leave. She'll always need him.

‘Just look at me! What a state!' Cassy blows her nose and brushes herself down. Little bits of fluff from the carpet are stuck all over her trousers.

‘You'll need new clothes soon,' I say. ‘Bigger ones.'

‘You could come with me to choose,' Cassy says. ‘We could get some baby things too. Would you, Em? I'd love that. Please?'

‘OK,' I say. ‘If you like.'

I think about the baby in the basket. Baby Kat and then Baby Em. Perhaps stacked in the pile of all our things in the store is the same old Moses basket, and Cassy's baby will sleep in it too.

‘When will you know if it's a boy or a girl?'

‘I don't want to know,' Cassy says. ‘I want to wait till we meet face to face, when it's born.' She looks at me, her eyes still glittery with tears. ‘It's started to move around,' she says. ‘So I know it really is there, after all. To begin with, I couldn't quite believe it was real. That it would stay.'

Cassy gets up stiffly from the floor. ‘Rob'll be back any minute. Better warm him up some dinner.'

I stay in my room, so I can think about everything.

And just before I go to sleep, a text comes at last, from Seb.

Got your card. C U soon. 2 more weeks. xxxx

9

‘19th February. Twenty weeks.' Cassy is reading aloud from her pregnancy book. ‘You will notice your baby being more active and may even be able to see some of its movements. The baby is now about twenty-five centimetres long.'

I stop getting ready for a moment and find my pencil case and a ruler, so we can see exactly how big that is. Cassy's bump is really obvious now, especially when she pulls her stripy T-shirt down tight over her tummy.

‘Where're you off to?' Cassy asks me.

‘Meeting Seb.'

‘When did he get back?'

‘Today.'

‘Expect you've missed him. Six weeks is a long time.'

I don't answer. I check my hair and grab my bag from the table.

‘You look lovely,' Cassy says. ‘Have a nice time. But don't be too late tonight, Em. You've got school tomorrow.'

* * *

He's waiting for me at the gate. We said we'd meet at seven at the top of the lane, so he must've been early. Seeing him there, the real flesh and blood Seb with his dark hair and black jacket and stripy scarf wound loosely round, my brain does a kind of double-take. I've thought about him so much that seeing him for real is almost a shock, as if my imagined Seb and the real one have to merge together. He's so warm and solid and alive and beautiful!

‘Hey, you!' he says. He wraps me in his arms, and we hug tight. I bury my face into his chest, breathe in fully the smell of him.

‘Missed you!' he says into my hair, muffling the words.

We hold each other at arm's length so we can see each other properly.

‘Missed you too,' I say.

We kiss. It's like that first time. Like going underwater and coming up for air, my skin tingly, little shivers running up and down my backbone. His mouth is hot and damp and hungry.

‘Was it good? Did you learn lots? Did you pass?' I ask as we walk hand-in-hand up the lane to the car.

‘It was amazing,' Seb says. ‘Yes, I passed the Level One test. I can go back there at Easter and do the next level, and eventually I can get a qualification from the college, as good as a degree. Better, really, because I can get a proper job with it.'

‘Bet your mum's happy,' I say.

‘Yeah. She's over the moon. Dad too, except he doesn't say much. I can tell, though.' Seb grins. ‘Mum blames you. She thinks it's because of you that I got things together. She says you gave me
focus
.'

That makes me go all tingly and warm inside.

‘I made you something,' Seb says. ‘ A sort of sorry present. I thought a lot about you being so upset. And how I was. I don't want it to be like that again.'

I swallow hard. ‘Me neither. I'm sorry too.'

We've reached the car. Seb unlocks the doors and we climb in. He leans over to get something from the shelf under the dashboard. ‘For you,' he says, and puts a small paper parcel on my lap.

It's heavy for such a small thing. I unwrap the layers of newspaper.

‘It's Portland stone,' Seb says.

I cradle it in my palm: a small mouse made of limestone, smooth as an egg, with ears and paws and lines for whiskers and a curled-up stone tail and everything. It's the perfect shape to sit in my hand. After a while, the stone seems to warm up, as if the mouse is coming alive.

‘Thank you!' The words don't seem big enough, to say what I really feel. ‘It's perfect.'

‘It took ages. But it isn't perfect. It's hard to work on such a small scale. And you have to go with the stone. There are fossils and stuff in it. See?'

I keep the stone mouse in my hands all the way to his house. I shall keep it safe for ever.

‘Will your mum and dad be there?' I ask, as we get to the edge of the village.

‘Later. But they're down the pub at the moment.'

* * *

I'm a bit nervous, still. We lie on Seb's bed and listen to music. We lie close, and we kiss, and we talk a lot. He tells me more about Portland, and Auntie Ruby, and about the course. I tell him about Francesca, what I've found. He listens and doesn't interrupt. We are both on our best behaviour, I think; scared of making another mistake. But we can't carry on like that. So I launch in.

‘I know you wanted to help me, before,' I explain, ‘with finding Francesca. But I worked out that I have to do it my own way. Like, I have to be in control of it all. The timing, and everything.'

He nods, as if he's trying to understand. ‘Well,' he says. ‘I still will help, if you want me to. But you'll have to say, if you do. And it's OK if you don't.'

We hear his parents come home. When we go down to the kitchen Avril dances over and puts her arms round us both. ‘Hello, lovebirds!'

Seb pushes her away. ‘Leave it out, Mum. How much have you had to drink?'

But I don't really mind. I fill the kettle and Seb gets four blue spotty mugs out for tea. It's cosy in the kitchen, and everything looks shiny and bright.

‘Good to see you here again, Emily,' Nick says to me in his gruff way, before he goes through to the lounge and switches on the telly. Avril goes upstairs to run a bath.

‘Shall I take you back, then?' Seb says.

He stops the car at the gate to the caravan field. He puts his arms round me, and we kiss again, but it feels different, this time. What would it be like, I wonder, to spend all night together? Not now, not yet, but sometime?

‘I'm so glad you're back,' I say. ‘I missed you so much.'

‘I'll have to go away again,' Seb says.

‘Yes, I know. You said at Easter. And that's OK too. That's just the way it has to be. But next time we won't argue and not make up, first. I don't want us ever to do that again.'

‘OK.'

‘And it's not as if I haven't got my own projects to do,' I say. ‘So don't think I'll be moping at home all the time you're gone. I'll be getting ready for my exams. Photography practical: eight hours of it. As well as English and Geography.' I get out of the car, lean forward to talk to him through the open window. ‘And soon after that, I'll be moving into Moat House. Imagine that!'

Kat and Rachel and I have talked loads of times, about how you'll know when you find true love. The chance in a million of meeting the right person for you, the one you want to be with for ever. Rachel reckons that there must be hundreds of people who could be right, with a bit of effort that is, on both sides: she says it's what you make of a relationship that counts.

Kat thinks some people are a lot more right than others, obviously, and maybe there
is
just one who is the perfect match, the one who is your soulmate, the other half of you that makes you whole.

And if Kat is right, how lucky does that make me? Because with absolute certainty I know I have found him.

Seb.

Our one-in-a-million chance, and we've found each other.

Lying in bed, my hand on the stone mouse next to me on the sheet, that's what I'm thinking as I slip towards sleep.

It's a cold, clear night with a moon. The vixen is calling across the field. The sound makes me shiver. It seems so close I must surely be able to see her this time. I lift the curtain edge, peer out into the moonlit night. My breath mists the window glass. I rub it clear again with the corner of the sheet.

Is that her, stepping out of the shadows at the edge of the field? I can't be sure. The eerie cry of the fox weaves its way into my dreams.

10

Late February. Seb and I climb over the stile and then let Mattie off the lead. She runs in excited rings around us and then bounds ahead down the footpath. She knows the way, we've taken her that many times since the weather got better. It's half-term; Rachel's in Paris with Amanda. I'm glad, now, that I haven't gone with them. I'm saving up all my money for another trip, in the summer: a journey just beginning to take its shadowy shape in my mind.

Some of the trees are beginning to get the first flush of green. The wood smells of wild garlic. I want to take a new sequence of photos, today, now it's almost spring. I chuck a stick for Mattie and she chases after it half-heartedly, before finding some more interesting scent to follow. We go after her, off the path down the smaller animal track downhill under the trees to our special place with the fallen log, where the sun shines on to a patch of mossy grass and no one ever comes but us.

Seb takes his coat off and lays it down for us to lie on. ‘Got your camera?'

‘Of course.'

He dozes while I take my photographs. Already the light is different, the sun higher in the sky. In three weeks it will be the spring equinox, and the clocks will go forward, and it will be light later into the evening.

The sun falling through the canopy of branches and twigs and tight-curled leaf buds makes a criss-cross pattern on the grass. I make Seb move so that the pattern falls on his face. He closes his eyes again. I click and click, a whole black and white film. He lies on his back, one arm curved above his head, the way a baby sleeps: open and trusting. The light shifts, edges away.
Click. Click
. I watch him through the camera lens, see him in microscopic detail. Eyelashes on his cheek. The curve of his neck. The edge of his upper lip, the dark shadow round his jaw.

Mattie curls round tight against his back, and she sleeps too.

It's the hardest thing, taking her back to the dogs' home and leaving her. I hear Mattie whine as she's shut back in her pen.

‘I wish we could bring her home right now, instead of waiting,' I say to Seb.

Back in the car, I get my photo of Francesca out again, smooth out the creases. ‘It looks a bit like a farmhouse, doesn't it? There's a hay meadow at the side, I think. And the huge woodpile. And it looks hot.'

‘Why don't you write to the gallery where her work was displayed?' Seb says. ‘They must have her address. It's not rocket science, Em, if you really want to find her, this time.'

‘I do.'

‘You're sure?'

‘Yes.'

‘Will you tell your dad?'

‘Not yet. I want to find her first. By myself.'

I know my way of doing things sometimes makes Seb impatient with me, but that's the way it's going to be. He has to get used to it.

I go round to Rachel's when she's back from Paris, so she can help me with the words on the French website for the Musée d'art moderne in Céret, near the Pyrenees.

‘I looked for photos by Francesca in the museum we went to in Paris,' Rachel says. ‘But I didn't find anything.'

I scroll down the list of references to Francesca to show Rachel. We click on the museum website.

Rachel reads it out for me. ‘OK, then. We'll send them an email, yes? What do you want to say?'

I dictate, and Rachel translates into her best A-level-standard French, which is a million times better than my GCSE grade C. I keep changing my mind what to say. In the end, I say,
I'm a student of Photography. I'm doing a project. I want to see more of Francesca Davidson's work and would like to contact her. Please let me have her address
.

‘Everything is true,' I say to Rachel. ‘Even if it's not the whole truth.'

‘You're sure? Final chance?'

‘Yes.'

We click Send.

No reply comes whizzing back, of course. We lie on Rachel's bed, and she talks about Luke, and Paris, and Amanda. Eventually it's time for me to get the bus home.

I'm working on my English homework, three days later, when the
new mail
message flashes up.

It's from the gallery, I can tell that much, but I can't read what it says. I forward it to Rachel.

It takes her a while. Then her email translation comes through.

It is our policy not to reveal the private address of artists. We will however be pleased to forward your request of interest to the artist concerned who may contact you directly.

I think that's right,
Rachel has typed underneath.
More or less, anyway. Result! One step closer! You might be getting an email from your real mother any time now!!!!! Only she won't know it's you, will she?

Just a student.

We move from email to MSN messaging.

– Hmm, I type. Don't you think she just might recognise my name???? ‘Emilywoodman' might jog her memory. Or do you reckon she is so off the planet she won't even notice that????