Drawing with Light Read online

  Drawing With Light

  Julia Green

  For Rosemary

  Table of Contents

  Notebook 1: September to December

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Notebook 2: January to March

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Notebook 3: Summer, Pyrénées-Atlantiques

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Julia Green

  Notebook 1

  September to December

  1

  ‘Where are you? Kat? Emily?’

  ‘Em-il-y?’ Cassy’s voice echoes round the still, hot garden.

  I’m wriggling up, about to call back, but a hand grabs my arm.

  ‘Shh!’ My sister Kat pulls me down lower, under the tall grass and flowering plants and fruit bushes where we are hiding at the bottom of the garden.

  Lying on the hot ground so close, I can hear her heart thumping as if it is my own. The air is heavy and sweet with the smell of hot grass roots and the tang of blackcurrants: above us the ripe fruits hang in shiny black clusters along the branches. Too sour to eat raw: we tried earlier and had to spit them out. In any case my tummy is full to hurting with the raspberries and redcurrants we’ve been stuffing into our mouths all morning.

  ‘Ow. You’re squashing me.’

  ‘Shh, you great goon. Shut up or she’ll find us!’ my sister hisses into my ear. She’s pressing me down so hard my face is rubbed into the hard edge of the book she was reading to me. I try to lift myself up enough to tug it out from under me but she’s pinning me down too tight, as if she wants to be mean and hurt me. She’ll swear she didn’t, when I say, later.

  Why doesn’t she want Cassy to find us? Cassy has come to look after us. Cassy is soft and kind and when she reads stories she doesn’t hiss or frighten me like Kat does. But Cassy is not our mother, Kat says, and we must not like her. And then she might go away.

  When Kat says the words ‘our mother’, my head goes fuzzy. The stories make me scared but I have to keep listening anyway; it’s like I can’t stop.

  When Kat is at school, sometimes I get the book out of the blue drawer where Kat keeps it. There’s one picture about halfway through the book of a pretty lady with dark hair and a blue silky dress who is drinking water from a stream under some trees. I say the fuzzy words ‘my mother’.

  Cassy has stopped calling. She’s gone back into the house.

  ‘Sit up, then, silly,’ Kat says. ‘Look what you’ve done to the book! It’s all squashed.’

  ‘You made me. You did it on purpose.’ I start to cry.

  ‘Stop that right now, crybaby,’ Kat says. ‘I didn’t do anything to you. I’m reading you stories, aren’t I? So listen.’ She starts over again, reading aloud our favourite story.

  I lie down on my back so I can see the blackcurrants shining in the sun and the way the light makes patterns through the grasses when they move. I suck my thumb even though ‘you’re too big for that now you’re four’, Dad says. I twist the hem of my dress in my other hand, round and round. My favourite blue dress, all soft and comfy except it’s getting tight under my arms now and today it has red stains all down the front, from the berries.

  ‘At the edge of a big forest there lived a poor woodcutter with his wife and his two children . . .’

  Kat does her telling-a-story voice, which makes me sleepy, to begin with, until the horrid things start to happen. In the story, I mean. Not for real, though sometimes I get them mixed up.

  My earliest memory. It’s the first memory I have of something connected to my mother. So perhaps that is the right way to begin to tell this story.

  2

  Bit by bit, I’m writing down what happened, those months we lived in the caravan, Cassy and Dad and me. Kat was away, mostly, at university, but she is part of the story too. Kat was there from the beginning, of course.

  I want to include other things: fragments of memory, scraps from the past which help me make sense of it all. It’s like making a patchwork quilt, sewing together the pieces of my life, stitching in the squares and making something whole. I could add the photos: I’ve got more than enough of those now. The letters and emails too. And a painting.

  Perhaps it’s more like a scrapbook than a quilt, then. In any case, it helps, writing this down. But where to begin is hard. There’s the memory, which is the earliest moment. Or there’s September, and my first meeting with Seb. If it hadn’t been for Seb, I’d never have arrived at where I am, now. Meeting him made it all possible.

  You open up your heart and then things happen you couldn’t imagine, before.

  So here’s another starting point: an evening, in September.

  It’s dusk.

  Kat and me are picking our way over piles of stone and rubbish, into the middle of the big downstairs room in a house more like a ruined castle than a home. Tumbled-down walls, swathed in ivy; moss like bright green pincushions on the stones. It smells of damp.

  ‘It’s a total wreck,’ Kat says. ‘Dad’s really bonkers this time. He might as well build a new house from scratch.’

  I lean against the thick stone wall that divides the downstairs space. At the top, where the stone has crumbled, an ash sapling has taken root and sent thin pale shoots up towards the light coming through a hole in the roof. Ferns are growing out of the same ledge, filtering the shafts of grey light.

  I can hear the river even from inside. It sweeps past the house in a big curve below the mound the house was built on centuries ago, almost a moat. It’s easy to imagine ghosts: the people who lived here, over the years. Voices half caught, echoing off stone.

  When it’s all restored, Kat and me will have rooms right at the top, under the slope of the roof. Dad’s shown us his plans, drawn with his neat architect’s pen, black ink on thick white paper. We’ll have our own bathroom and sitting room, even: just the two of us. Dad and Cassy’s room will be on the first floor, with two spare bedrooms. The downstairs will be a huge kitchen and living room, and two studies: one each for Dad and Cassy. It’s hard to imagine, though. Kat’s right. It is a wreck. A ruin on a grassy mound in the middle of a field, miles from anywhere.

  ‘Is it haunted, do you think?’ I say.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ Kat says. ‘’Course not. You don’t still believe that rubbish, do you?’ She starts poking around the smaller room at the back, peering up the fireplace – what’s left of it.

  I wander back to the doorway. The sun’s gone right down since we first arrived, on bikes, but even so, it’s lighter outside than in the house.

  Someone’s opening the gate. It clicks shut behind him. My heart starts to thud. He crosses the field, towards the steps up to the house. He hasn’t seen me: I suppose I’m hidden in the shadow of the doorway, and he obviously isn’t expecting anyone to be here.

  If I’d been alone, I might have thought of ghosts, to begin with. He’s wearing some sort of black jacket. His hair’s shoulder-length, dark. His collar’s turned up, and his hands are in h
is pockets. I can see he’s real, now, as he comes closer: dark jeans, bright green trainers, nothing like a ghost from the past, but a really beautiful boy with fine features, a slim build, dark eyes.

  He’s only just noticed me.

  He stops, halfway up the steps. ‘Oh.’ He looks embarrassed.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Kat comes up behind me. ‘What’s he doing here?’

  The boy half smiles.

  I can feel the change in Kat immediately. She sort of melts and softens. ‘Hello,’ she says.

  I turn round to look at her.

  She’s smiling. With one hand she twists her hair back from her face and over one shoulder, like rope.

  ‘My dad’s going to be working here,’ the boy says. ‘He said about the house . . . I came to look. I didn’t think anyone would be here, this time of day.’

  Kat steps forward, pushing past me. ‘It’s our house,’ she says. ‘I’m Kat and this is Emily.’ She waits.

  The boy looks uncomfortable. So she prompts him. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Oh. Seb.’ He does that half-smile again.

  ‘Hello, Seb,’ Kat says. ‘We can show you round, if you want?’

  Of course he wants. Kat has this way of making people fall in love with her, just like that. It’s partly the way she looks: long golden hair, pretty, slim, smiley – all the usual things. But it’s also the way she takes charge: people love that. I’ve seen it loads of times.

  He follows her round the house, while she points out its features – stone mullioned windows, huge chimneys, massive oak beams, stone roof tiles. I suppose what with his dad being a builder he might be interested in that stuff. Most people his age wouldn’t be. He’s about seventeen, eighteen, I guess.

  I watch them: he’s dark, Kat so fair and golden. They look good together. He has this faintly amused look on his face while Kat chatters on, slightly mocking. Every so often he turns round and smiles at me.

  I seem to be unable to speak a word.

  ‘And while it’s all being restored to glory,’ Kat says, ‘I shall be happily far away at university.’ She gives a little triumphant grin. ‘While Dad, Cassy and Em have to rough it in the caravan for the winter!’

  Seb looks at me again. ‘Here?’ he says. ‘In a caravan?’

  ‘No, on a site with loos and showers, a mile away,’ Kat says. ‘Luckily. It’s too awful, living on a building site. Dad found this cute caravan on eBay. It’s proper seventies style, like the real thing, not retro.’ She goes on and on, practically explaining our entire life history, about moving around because of Dad being an architect and all that.

  I can see the boy’s getting edgy.

  Kat’s looking a bit manic. ‘This is Dad’s dream house. It will be, anyway, when it’s all finished. Six months. Do you think they can finish it in six months? Dad says that, but he’s always wrong. He’s always way too optimistic about how long things take for real.’

  ‘There’s going to be six stonemasons, I think, working full-time,’ the boy – Seb – says. He talks quite slowly, as if he is thinking carefully about what to say. ‘So they might manage it.’

  ‘What do you do?’ Kat turns the beam of her full attention on him.

  He looks awkward. ‘Not much. This and that. Odd jobs that come up.’

  His voice sends prickles up and down my skin, like goosebumps.

  The three of us walk to the door. It’s totally dark now. There’s no electricity of course, no street lights or any house lights for miles. The river sounds louder in the dark.

  ‘How did you get here?’ Kat asks him.

  ‘I ran. It’s what I do – running, I mean.’

  ‘We’ve got our bikes,’ she says. ‘But we could all walk back together, if you want.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ he says.

  He’s clearly itching to get away. I imagine he’d wanted to wander around by himself, not be given her guided tour and running commentary. Still, he can come again, another time, can’t he?

  ‘I wasn’t really trespassing,’ he says, going down the steps. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s, like, totally fine,’ Kat says. ‘Any time! Not that I’ll be here. I’m off to York tomorrow.’

  We watch him go. The darkness swallows him up.

  Kat gives a big sigh.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘He’s gorgeous! Isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Typical. Just when I’m leaving home, the most good-looking guy in the world shows up.’

  ‘You’ll be back at Christmas,’ I say.

  ‘Suppose.’

  ‘And there will be millions of good-looking blokes at university, won’t there?’

  ‘Yes. And he’s a bit young, and he doesn’t have a proper job. So he’s not The One.’

  We pull the door closed. It’s so ancient and rotten it doesn’t lock. We get our bikes from the side of the house.

  ‘Did you bring lights?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘It’s not far. It won’t matter.’

  A strange thing happens to me that night, cycling in the total dark. I keep thinking I’m going to bump into a wall or a tree or something. The dark is so thick it seems solid, a physical thing. It’s as if all my other senses have gone too, along with my sense of sight. I wobble and fall off a million times and Kat gets the giggles. But after a while she realises I’m serious: I really can’t see where I’m going, and I can’t balance, either. We end up walking side by side, pushing the bikes.

  ‘If we hurry,’ she says, ‘we might catch up with Seb.’

  But we don’t. There’s no sign of him the whole length of the lane. We could just as well have dreamt him up: the product of our own imaginations. Or was he a ghost, after all?

  We turn left on to the main road for a short distance, then left again down the narrow tree-lined lane to the camping field. In the far corner, the white caravan glows in the dark, all lit up within. Dad and Cassy must be back with the takeaway. It’s our last night with Kat. She’s going on the train to York in the morning, and I won’t see her for eleven weeks. It’s the longest we’ve ever been apart.

  At bedtime, I’m still thinking about the boy. Seb.

  His dark hair, and his olive skin, and his brown eyes. And the way my heart beat faster, and my skin started to dance, little shivers running up and down my spine.

  3

  Right now I’m typing with my laptop on my knees, perched on the seat that runs along one end of the caravan. Dad and Cassy aren’t home from work yet, which makes it easier to get on without interruptions, questions, Dad looking over my shoulder with suggestions for improvements (spelling, grammar, style). I’ve just pulled the curtains at all the windows. When the lights are on, the caravan’s a bit like a ship lit up in a sea of dark, and I start imagining someone watching me, seeing I’m here by myself. From the inside, looking out, I can’t see a thing, so I wouldn’t be able to tell if someone was out there or not, would I?

  I’m missing Kat.

  She left on 29th September, which is exactly one month ago.

  The clocks went back at the weekend. It was already beginning to get dark when I was walking back from the bus stop after school this afternoon. I have to walk by myself, of course; no one else at school lives way out in the middle of nowhere like this. And no one else has a dad mean or crazy enough to make them live for six months cramped up in a tiny caravan in the middle of a field while he works on renovating a house.

  An ordinary newish caravan with a proper toilet and shower would be bad enough, but this is beyond a joke. Like Kat said, he found it on eBay: a bargain. Orange decor. Plastic table. Baby Belling cooker with two electric rings. No running hot water. A chemical loo that stinks, so we have to use the site toilet – and shower block – instead, which means going outside. The living room is tiny: if I hold out my arms I can almost touch both walls. Dad and Cassy have to sleep on the pulled-out sofa seat because there’s only one bedroom, with bunk beds. Dad thinks
it’s fun, like being on holiday, but that’s because most of the time he isn’t here. He’s at work, in a warm office, or doing site visits or whatever.

  Even with my feet hunched up under my big woolly jumper I’m still cold. Back in sunny September, the caravan was too hot all the time. Now it’s freezing. We’re the only caravan left on the site.

  I switch on the kettle, make tea so I can warm my hands up on the mug. I ought to be doing homework. I’ve got loads. I’m doing three subjects for AS level: Photography, English, Geography. I check emails: nothing from Kat. I check her out on Facebook and find a load of new photos: Kat at parties, mostly, looking slightly drunk and happy, with her arms round different people. Friends I don’t know.

  It’s pressing on my mind, what happened in the Photography lesson today. Something my teacher said . . .

  I start off by doing the actual homework, which is researching a famous landscape photographer: Ansel Adams. Millions of sites come up. I make some notes in my photography journal:

  1902–1984

  California; B & W photographs; landscapes (wilderness)

  Realistic approach: sharp focus; heightened contrast; precise exposure.

  And then I type my own name in, the way you do: searching out different identities, the other Emily Woodmans I might have been. The zoologist Emily Woodman, or the one who won a sailing regatta, or the daughter of some peer . . . and then I look at Emily Carr, because she’s one of the famous Emilys I’m named after, along with Emily Brontë (novelist) and Emily Dickinson (poet). According to Kat, it was my mother’s idea. My real mother, that is: Francesca, not Cassy.

  Cassy’s our stepmother, but we don’t call her that because it makes her sound wicked, like in stories, and she’s not at all. She came to look after us when I was about four and Kat was six. She married Dad when I was seven. She’s much younger than Dad; people sometimes thinks she’s our big sister, even though she’s got wild, wavy red hair and pale skin with freckles and doesn’t look anything like either of us. Kat’s hair is long, golden and gorgeous; mine is short, dark and spiky. When I was little I wanted it long like Kat, but Dad said it took too much time in the morning, what with all the combing and plaiting for school.