Stormswept (20 page)

Mum looks tired and harassed. All the furniture is out of place and there’s a strong smell of soap and polish, so I guess that she’s been cleaning furiously. The only time our house gets spring cleaned is when Mum is upset. She must have been more shaken by the funeral than I thought.

“I’ll clean it later, Mum, I swear,” I say, sidling round to the door.

“Morveren! Will you please just for once do
what
you’re asked
when
you are asked to do it!”

Usually I’d give in if Mum spoke in that voice, but I can’t today.

“Morveren! Come back here!”

I scour the village to see if Jenna’s anywhere, but there’s no sign of her. She might be down at the harbour with Dad…

Neither she nor Dad is there. I even look in the fishermen’s shelter, but there’s only Billy Lammas and Charlie Cocking sitting there in caps and overcoats, as usual. The air is blue with smoke from their pipes. They are about ninety and they spend most of their lives in the shelter. They don’t know where Dad is either but they reckon he could be hauling seaweed over on the Menhir shore. The Tremough farm tractor’s over there, they do know that, and Johnnie Tremough was looking for help.

I suppose Jenna could have gone over as well, but it doesn’t seem likely. Hauling heaps of rotting seaweed isn’t her thing. Seaweed may be great fertiliser, but that doesn’t make it stink any less. 

I’m about to leave when Billy says, “If your dad a been here, he could a taken your Jenna over.”

“Over where?”

Billy jerks his head towards the mainland. “Got down here too early she did, like she didn’t know the tides. Water was slopping over the stones and still she was all for going cross the causeway but we told her ‘Don’t you take a chance my girl, you know better’n that. Wait an hour and you’ll walk with your feet dry.’ But she couldn’t wait a bare hour. Never seen your Jenna like that. Near enough crying she was. She could see as well as we could, the water was deep enough in the bay to wash her to glory, not to Marazance town. We told her, didn’t we Charlie?”

Charlie nods and draws on his pipe. “We told her.”

“The next thing, Jago Faraday comes over and he says he’ll take her. You’d think she’d died and gone to heaven when she hears that. She near kisses him I reckon. Be the first girl ever
had
kissed Jago Faraday.”

“Poor old beggar, he never had a way with them,” agrees Charlie. They’ll start on the life history of Jago Faraday any minute. That’s how they go on all day long. Sometimes I like to hear their stories…

“So Jenna went over in Jago Faraday’s boat? When?”

The men look at each other. “A half hour since I reckon. Look where the tide’s fallen. I reckon your sister’s got herself a young man in Marazance.” They laugh until their eyes water, as if it’s the best joke ever.

“She probably had to do some shopping for Mum,” I tell them.

Charlie and Billy swap knowing glances. “Shopping… Is that what they call it these days?”

“Used to call it courting when we was young, didn’t we Charlie?”

“Jenna’s not courting anyone,” I say firmly, but I know they’ll take no notice of me. The shelter is pretty much the rumour factory for the whole Island.

“I seen her with that Bran Helyer,” says Charlie. “She could do a lot better’n a Helyer, lovely-looking girl like your sister.”

“Jenna hasn’t got a boyfriend. We’re only thirteen.”

“Near enough fourteen. I remember the day you were born.”

As does everybody on the Island. Why not tell the full story of our birth and how Mum was meant to be having us in Truro because we were twins, but there was a storm and although Johnnie Tremough put his boat out, finest boat in the Island, he couldn’t get past the harbour wall. And even the helicopter from Culdrose couldn’t land. I’ve heard the whole dramatic tale of our birth a dozen times. In fact Mum is the only person who doesn’t make a big deal out of it. She just says, “Oh, I knew it would be all right. Anyway, I wanted you to be born on the Island.”

“Proper Island girls,” says Billy ruminatively, as if he’s been following my thoughts.

“
At Lammas tide shall she be fourteen
,” says Charlie suddenly.

“What?”

“Don’t they teach you nothing at that school?
Romeo and Juliet
, that is.
At Lammas tide shall she be fourteen.
I always remember it cos of the name, Lammas, same as mine. You think on that, Morveren. Juliet was your Jenna’s age when she found her Romeo.”

And when she died
, I think.
Why are you telling me this stuff? I’m scared enough anyway
. I feel as if I’m trapped, like a fly in a spider web, listening to stories I don’t want to hear. The tide’s nearly low enough for me to cross the causeway. I can’t waste another minute.

Billy takes his pipe out of his mouth, and points it at me. He’s not smiling any more. His face is stern. “You find your sister, Morveren, and you bring her back home. Those Helyers are no good and never have been.”

Those Helyers are no good and never have been. Those Helyers are no good and never have been.
Billy’s voice echoes in my head as I hurry away round the harbour wall to the slipway. Below me the cobbled causeway that leads to the mainland glistens with water, but it’s shallow enough for me to cross now. I start to run.

Marazance is quiet out of season. Even at half-term there’s only a handful of visitors, wandering up and down. I see a few people I know from school, but I don’t stop. Where would Jenna have gone? I’ve never been to Bran Helyer’s house and I don’t even know where it is. I go up and down the High Street, searching shops and cafés, and then I think maybe she’s gone to the market. It’s an early market and they are packing up the stalls already, but there’s no sign of Jenna.

This is stupid. I could wander up and down the streets for hours and keep missing her. I’ll wait for her back down by the causeway. She’ll have to come home that way. Even Jago Faraday’s not crazy enough to hang around in Marazance until Jenna’s ready to go back across to the Island. I could get some chips. At the thought my mouth starts to water, and I dig into my pocket for my purse. I’ve got enough. I cross to the chip shop but just as I’m about to go in, I stop. Something’s pulling me away. Something inside me won’t let me stop searching for Jenna. She needs me, and I have to find her.

Jenna won’t let me into her thoughts any more but she can’t push me right away. I can sense that she’s scared, or unhappy, or maybe both. Suddenly I know what I’ve got to do. It’s not only Jenna who has been raising a wall between us: I have done it too. I’ve started treating my own sister almost as an enemy. How could I have done that? All our lives Jenna has been closer to me than I’ve been to myself. I’ve often liked her more than I’ve liked myself. I’ve trusted her with everything. But I didn’t trust her over Malin and that has changed everything.

It was so much easier when we were little. We played with everybody on the Island, but Jenna and I always had our own world where no one else came, not even Mum or Dad. Digory was too young even to try to enter it. Things between us have been changing for a long time, but I only realised how much when I found Malin hidden in the dunes. Now I realise that Jenna changed long before I did.

I can’t let the wall keep growing, higher and higher, until we can’t see each other over the top of it. I don’t even know who is building the wall any longer. Is it me, or Jenna, or Bran, or Malin? Maybe none of us, or maybe all of us. Maybe we all wanted it. But it has grown too high.

“Jenna,” I say, not aloud, but in my mind. “Jenna, it’s me, Morveren. I’m here. I want to help you.”

A sheet of newspaper flaps down the street and a passing man glances at me curiously. I walk on slowly, head down, reaching out for Jenna with every fibre of my being.

“Mor?”

It’s Nancy from our class, with her mum.

“Oh – hi, Nancy.”

“Is Jenna OK?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve just seen her in the churchyard.”

“She didn’t look very well, Morveren,” says Nancy’s mum in a parent way. “Why don’t you call her?”

“We haven’t got mobiles. There’s no reception on the Island so it’s not worth it,” I gabble automatically. I am so sick of having to make this explanation, which makes us sound as if we live in the Stone Age. “Where in the churchyard?”

“She was – um – she was sitting on a grave by the yew tree,” says Nancy, looking embarrassed.

Sitting on a grave?
“She’s probably tired. We were up really early,” I say quickly.

“If she’s in any trouble—” begins Nancy’s mum.

“Oh no, she’s fine. I said I’d meet her there. See you, Nancy,” and I hurry off before they can ask any more questions. Jenna must have been looking awful, for Nancy’s mum to have that look of concern on her face. I glance back when I reach the steps up to the church and they are still watching me.

Jenna, I’m coming. Stay where you are.

There’s the yew tree. We used to pick up its pink and purple berries when we were little, until Mum told us they were poisonous. The shade is so dark that I don’t see Jenna at first, but there she is, hunched over with her arms wrapped around her knees and her head down. She looks like a widow sitting on her husband’s grave. Or like Juliet… I always find it hard to remember who dies first in
Romeo and Juliet
, because I get the real and fake deaths muddled up.

Of course she doesn’t look like a widow. And stop thinking about
Romeo and Juliet
, just because of what Charlie Lammas said. I silence the jabbering questions in my head and tread softly towards her, across the turf.

“Jen?”

She doesn’t look up. Maybe she hasn’t heard me.

“Jenna?”

Very slowly, Jenna lifts her head. She doesn’t seem at all surprised to see me.

“Morveren,” she says in a small, flat voice. Her face is pale and her eyes are red.

“What’s wrong, Jenna? Why are you here?”

“I needed to be somewhere quiet,” she answers.

“Move up and let me sit down.” She shifts a bit and I sit down on the cold stone. “It’s freezing, Jen.” Her hands are in her lap and they are purple with cold. I put my arm round her, very gently as if she might run away. It’s like putting your arm round a statue, she is so stiff.

“Let’s go home.”

“I don’t want to go home,” she mutters.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

“You can’t do anything, Mor.” But she sounds a little bit less desperate.

“Even if I can’t, I still want to know. You’re my sister.”

The faint ghost of a smile touches her face for a second before it vanishes.

“Did you come over to see Bran?”

She nods.

“Have you seen him?”

“Sort of,” she says, looking down at her hands.

Surely Jenna can’t be this upset, just because of Bran.

“Jen,
please
tell me.”

Tears spill out of her eyes. “I went to his house,” she blurts out. “I was scared there was something really wrong. He was so weird when I saw him this morning. You know, before the funeral. He wouldn’t talk to me. He was like a different person.”

“I didn’t know you’d seen him.”

“I went out while you were asleep. I thought he was waiting for me but he wasn’t. He didn’t want to talk to me. He said he was leaving the Island and coming back over here, to his dad’s.”

“So that’s why you were crying at the funeral.”

“I’d forgotten that—“ Jenna looks at me with such a lost expression that I wish I hadn’t said anything.

“You were scared something was wrong,” I prompt her.

“I thought maybe his dad— You know what I told you about his dad beating him up.”

“Yes.”

“Well.” Jenna heaves a deep breath. “I thought maybe it was getting worse. Bran was so strange. He wouldn’t talk to me and he always talks to me. I was scared his dad had got worse with him, and he was putting pressure on him – forcing him to come back home, somehow. I wanted to say—” she breaks off and looks at me as if she doesn’t quite trust my reaction.

“You wanted to say what?”

“Swear you won’t get angry, Mor.”

I sit back, shocked. First Digory and then Jenna. Why do they think I’m going to get angry all the time? A horrible feeling sweeps over me, as if I don’t belong, not even in my own family.

“Tell me, Jen,” I say as calmly as I can.

“I tried to talk to Mum a bit. Not about Malin or Bran or anything. Just asking what she’d do if she knew someone who was being hurt in their family.”

“What did Mum say?”

“Was I just asking or was there someone I was worried about? I said I was a bit worried about someone at school. Mum thought you should always tell, and so I asked her, what if the person doesn’t want you to? She said, that’s even more reason to make sure that somebody else knows and can give advice. She started talking about Childline or maybe a teacher at school or the school nurse. So I was going to say to Bran that even if he couldn’t tell anyone what his dad was doing to him, I could.”

“But you didn’t say anything else to Mum? You didn’t tell her it was Bran?”