Hazel Wood Girl (4 page)

I almost
fainted
. It was eight o’clock in the morning and I was in the kitchen in my red long t-shirt that I wear to bed, and my old sweat pants from four years ago that are really too small, and the tall guy walked through our farmyard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

He talked to Adam for a few minutes and then walked off back down the lane. I couldn’t even
move
. I’m just so grateful that (especially with me in my PJs) he didn’t come into the house or he would never have spoken to me again. Not that he ever has, or would, but you know what I mean. 

There are some guys that speak to you, and some that don’t. I bet he’s the kind that only talks to whatever girl they want to snog that night, or whoever is the most popular or can do something for them. So that’s me out on all counts, but him walking through the farmyard is still the best thing to happen since that day in early spring when Dad finally worked out the heating.

Anyway, I am now dressed (too nicely dressed for an ordinary day – sad and pathetic or what??), and am going to find out what he was doing here. Maybe he is one of the people stealing the veggies and eggs and stuff. Mum thinks the magpies are doing it, but I think that’s the defense lawyer in her coming out again.

OK. Maybe, just
maybe
my life is not completely cursed! I just now went and asked Adam and Dad what that guy was doing in the yard and Dad said,

‘You mean Christophe Hooper?’

And then I got it. The tall guy is Mrs Hooper’s other son. I AM IN SHOCK!! Real shock, the kind they give you brandy for when you’re older.

But it’s all a bit messed up in my head because I thought Christophe was about ten and the tall guy is 
at least fifteen, so I was really confused. I think that because there’s two years between me and Mindy I presumed that Christophe must be two years older than Sammy-boy, or something. Maybe it was because Adam said ‘little boys’, and suggested I babysit. I suppose he didn’t know either at the time.

I have no clue really.

Anyway, once Mindy gets back they will be best friends because they are both about the same age and she’s popular, and I’ll be left out. I’m not going to even try to be friends with him because I’ll just end up being disappointed.

So the tall guy is Christophe Hooper and he is my neighbour. I wonder if maybe he knows Barbara and she got him to collect notes from me so that she could use him to help make a fool of me.

I bet he’s The Watcher.

I’m not going to write back.

I was up and dressed and staring out the kitchen window by seven and finally gave up at eight-thirty with a big, long day stretching in front of me. So I was lucky that FINALLY I’ve got something to do. Dad is way more of a softie than Mum, and when I begged him, he let me help get some papers together for a business meeting to do with ownership of the farm.

Adam is not exactly a business genius and I spent the morning scrabbling around for contracts and letters in the dining-room/office, and found most of 
them inside old farming magazines and between unpaid bills from the last century almost.

It was a bit of a shocker to realise that Dad is now in charge of the whole farm. I presumed Adam would be here forever, and that Dad would get so frustrated with the whole muddy mess of farming that one morning he’d wake us up and tell us to pack to return to the city. But, as well as finding out that the farm is now Dad’s, Adam told us at lunch that he’s got a job in the Far East teaching English-as-a-foreign-language. He’s going at the end of the summer.

This is beyond horrible, my worst nightmare. It feels like a stone sitting in my stomach and like my head is full of nothing but air. Maybe I can run away and become a film star and divorce my parents or whatever they call that. I really hate it here, more than I have ever hated anything, even more than I used to hate violin lessons with the old shouty lady. Farms are fine for little kids, boring people, and old people, but not for teenagers and not for people with dreams and an imagination. I cannot spend a whole summer looking out the kitchen window in case my cute neighbour (who, as if I need reminding, laughed at me like I was the fool of the universe the only time we met) might decide to walk past. 

I think Dad could tell I was in a not-good way, and he brought me to the meeting in the town hall with his lawyer and some other people; I don’t really know who they were. The lawyer made a joke about us being there to sign me over to a new family and I found the idea appealing.

The town hall was a good place to get away from things because it looks like it’s from somewhere far away, even though it’s on the main street. It’s like a red-brick, German-fairytale castle from a horror movie, super-old and small with turrets, arches, carved wooden banisters and panelling, and mosaic tiles on the floor.

My backside was in bits waiting on the hard mahogany benches in reception because Dad is always on time for things and the rest of the world is always late. The secretary was really lovely to us, and even in the middle of the meeting she came in with more tea, and gave me the last of the chocolate wafer biscuits.

Meetings are where people take two hours to say things that could be said in two minutes. The best I can tell, it was about some legal contract with the Egg Farm Grangers, who own the stone barn at the edge of our farm, the one right across the little road from their house and chicken sheds. They lease out 
the big, stone barn to us (like renting it to us) and Dad says it’s the best one for storing hay.

For all their shiny shoes they didn’t know much. The lawyer has no clue if the Grangers even
own
the barn that we are paying them to use. That would be like me collecting rent money for hiring out the café. A bit on the cheeky side to say the least. If that
is
true than the person that
really
owns the stone barn could find out and run us off with hunting rifles. Well, they didn’t say that last part, but I bet that could happen. People get funny about their stuff. Like the way Mum is getting pissed off with all the food disappearing from our kitchen garden.

We have started calling it, ‘The Murderous Mystery of the Vanishing Vegetables’. Dad thinks that it might be a homeless person passing through, except now it’s been happening for more than a week. I think it must be animals. It’s not the same as dogs in the city that eat tinned dog food, or stuff from the deli if their owners are rich enough. The animals here are not polite. A whole row of the early spinach went missing this morning and some of the broad beans. Dad says that small clumps of green wheat have been disappearing too.

Anyway, the
actual
real news of the day is that the secretary at the town hall said that she has a 
daughter my age, and why don’t I come for dinner tomorrow night. Dad said, ‘Yes’, for me, because I didn’t know what to say. I must learn to just say something and then sort out how I feel about it later.

I
do
want to go, but I’m scared, in fact terrified, in case her daughter is someone from my school, someone who calls me The Farmer and expects me to scratch my head with my knife and fork. Idiot me didn’t think to ask her daughter’s name. It might be OK, the mum seems really nice and who knows, I might get a few chocolate-wafer biscuits for my trouble.

It’s not much to ask. Just one full day with no surprises. Please.

The Watcher a note left on the greenhouse door, which
weirded
me
out
. I mean, how did they know that I hang out there?

It started with –

Then The Watcher answered the question from the last note, which made me feel bad for not replying.

It said –

Right. Now I think it
must
be Christophe, but what if it isn’t? I have no clue what to do. No clue whatsoever. I think I just want it to be him because I know he’d never talk to me.

Sammy-boy was wandering like a lost lamb again so I invited him to join me in the greenhouse and gave him some markers and drawing paper. He drew me this amazing picture of a hedgehog and we stuck it up on the wooden tray. I asked him how old his brother is, and he said,

‘Just turned sixteen.’

I’d bet every chocolate biscuit in the known universe that it is Christophe sending the notes, 
pretending to want to be my friend. I bet he’s doing it to get in with Barbara and her lot. But why would he say things about himself if it was all just to get me in trouble with Barbara? I am now even more extra confused, and that’s saying something.

I have been writing in this to take my mind off the fact that Adam is driving me to that lady’s house in about ten minutes to have dinner with her and her daughter. I really wish I didn’t have to go, nothing is ever worth the worry. Adam is seeing ‘Liza’ again (Miss Dobbs, who I remember had a habit of wagging her foot until it almost came off) and when I asked him about going to the Far East and leaving her here, he just said that the end of the summer is a long time away. That is so like a man!
So
not romantic. They think romance is something you buy, like chocolates and flowers, when your woman gets too whingy.

OK. Good stuff! All marvellous enough for the meantime! Yes, I think I might even have my first … well not
friend
exactly, but at least someone to hang out with. And it’s the famous Emma-Jo of all people. Talk about strange and weird and everything. It turns out she’s the town hall secretary’s daughter, 
and I felt this huge mix of thrilled and freaked when I saw her perched up by their kitchen table. But she looked OK with me being there, so I could tell that she didn’t know she was supposed to hate me, so at least I have a little bit of time. Fingers crossed she doesn’t talk to Barbara on the phone too much.

We disappeared off into the den after eating, while her mum stayed in the kitchen, so we could talk
really
, not just that way you do in front of parents. Emma-Jo is easily the best person I have EVER met. Before now I’ve never come across anyone who is so, I don’t know, so
in charge
of themselves. I know that sounds stupid, but she really knows what she likes and doesn’t like and she says it. She’s crazy into all these old rock bands from when our parents were young, and new ones that have that same guitar sound. It felt like a few minutes, but really it was two hours that we sat and listened to their stuff, with Emma-Jo almost exploding with excitement telling me the deep meaning behind all the lyrics. It’s a bit different to the indie bands we all used to listen to in the city.

Her life’s big dream is to be a rock star and to live exactly in the same area where we used to live, and I told her all about the shops and people and how much there was going on there, and she couldn’t get 
enough of it. I think it was the first time that I actually said out loud how much I miss being busy and excited about stuff. She feels the same way as I do about so little going on around here. We agreed that if someone made a film about this place it would have to be one of those very boring arty films with a Norwegian voiceover and dodgy subtitles and lots of gaps and silences with wind blowing and bad clothes.

Just as we could hear my dad driving up outside, she told me a huge secret, that she and her boyfriend Beau are starting up a rock band so they have something fun to do this summer. Emma-Jo already looks like a rock star, even the way she sits and talks and everything. When I think back right now about how much I was talking tonight, I’m a bit worried that maybe I sounded boring or silly. But then, maybe what I said was OK because she kept listening and she’s not the sort to let herself be bored.

She asked me did I play any instrument, but I don’t (thanks to the violin devil lady).

I
so
wanted to offer to help out, to maybe make posters or help them think of a name for the band, but I didn’t think she would want me involved so I said nothing (big surprise there then!). I also didn’t
ask her about knowing Christophe because I wouldn’t know what to say if she asked me if I know him.

I am trying not to think of him at all. But not doing all that well, it would seem.

When we woke up this morning there was a bunch of HUGE fish on our doorstep! Luckily they were in a basket with a lid, so Trug didn’t get to them. I knew in a second that The Watcher was at work. Mum is a bit freaked out because so many of the strawberries have gone missing and now these big, fat fish have landed on her. Well, not
on
her, but she feels she has to fillet them and cook them for dinner so they don’t go to waste. Dad says we’ll have a barbecue tonight and make the fish the main course. I used to love when we’d have them back home, and everyone we
knew would come over and we’d take over the lounge with all our friends while the adults were on the balcony.

Emma-Jo just phoned, and asked me to help her set-up the auditions to find a lead guitarist and a singer for her band! She said she reckons I’m really good at thinking things through, which
I
reckon is another way of calling me shy and mousy. Emma-Jo plays bass guitar (which is so cool, I would give anything to be that cool, although I don’t want to play guitar because I tried it once and it killed my fingers), and Beau plays drums. Or as Emma-Jo says,

‘Well, he hits them, bless him.’

I said that I’d ask my dad if we can hold the auditions in one of the barns. I’ll ask him tomorrow after he’s had breakfast and done that thing where he pats his stomach with both hands and goes, ‘Ah yes, this is the good life!’ Sometimes when my dad is being a complete embarrassment like that, Mum sees me making a face and whispers, ‘At least he’s not dancing!’, which always makes me smile again. He dances like he’s pulled several important muscles and flaps his arms around with his mouth hanging open. We have geese that dance better than Dad.

I’m
ridiculously
excited now that I have a task, and 
finally know some people. I hope Christophe won’t tell Emma-Jo that I’m a loser who drops bags of sweet potatoes and wanders about in the wood, because that would ruin everything. I have decided that he
must
be The Watcher, must be.

I still haven’t answered the last note.

They gave me the job of asking the Hoopers over for the fish barbecue at our place tonight and I am
dying
at the thought of it. I asked Adam would he do it and he said he had to get the fence-mending finished and then go and collect Liza. So basically, I have to eat fish and listen to my mother getting tipsy on red wine, while the most fanciable guy in the world, and a teacher from my school watch me.

Okaaaaay, brilliant.