Butterfly Summer Page 4

  “School’s for losers,” she said, her eyes gleaming. “Life’s way too exciting to be stuck indoors all day, learning a load of stuff you’ll never need to know!”

  I stretched out in the grass, grinning. Hanging out with Rosa May made me feel as if my life might turn out to be exciting too. I’d always been the quiet one, the timid one, the one who watched everyone else having fun, but not any more.

  We were still talking as the sun dropped in the sky. It was difficult to tear myself away, but I had to get home. I hadn’t left Mum a note or anything, but apart from that, I still needed to talk to her about the photo, however difficult it might be.

  We agreed to meet at the Garden early the next morning. Rosa May said she had something special to show me. I pleaded with her to tell me what it was before I left, but she said I’d have to wait. “It’ll be worth it,” she promised, as we made our way over the bridge and across the field. “Just get here as early as you can.”

  I hurried out of the Garden and back up Amble Cross, but the closer I got to home, the more uneasy I began to feel. I wasn’t sure why – I used to let myself in to an empty house all the time before we moved, but it felt different here, more lonely. I slowed down, taking tiny little pigeon steps as I passed the Jacksons’ shop. Mr. Jackson was out front doing his crossword again.

  “Need any help?” I offered.

  He shook his head. “I’ve just finished, thanks, Becky, although I never did get that clue I was stuck on yesterday!”

  “What was it again?”

  “Seven letters, first letter was A. To cast away, leave or desert.”

  I stood there for a bit, as if I was trying to work it out. Anything to delay going home. “Sorry,” I said in the end, shrugging. “I bet it’s something really obvious, but my mind’s gone blank.” I waved goodbye and made my way up the lane to our house, praying Mum would be back even though I could see the car wasn’t there.

  “I’m home,” I called, turning the key in the door. “Mum?” But the house was just as silent and empty as when I’d left.

  Mum was still in bed when I got up the next morning. I made her a cup of tea and drew back the curtains but she burrowed further under the covers, muttering something about her head. She’d got back really late the night before, staggering through the door with a stack of files. I’d stayed up, determined to ask her about the photo, and about my dad – to find out if he knew we were back in Oakbridge – but she said she had a report to finish by the morning and that it was urgent. She didn’t even ask me where I’d been all day. All I could do was make a deal with myself to ask her in the morning instead.

  I poured myself some cereal and sat in the kitchen, looking through the pictures I’d taken with Rosa May. I’d got some really good shots of a bright yellow butterfly resting against a jagged green leaf; I think she said it was called a Buttercup. And there was a great one of her little ant family. I was certain she’d been in the shot with them but she must’ve wriggled out of the way just before I took it. I smiled to myself, thinking about what a brilliant time we’d had.

  After a while, I noticed the time – Rosa May would be waiting, but I had to talk to Mum before I left. I popped my head round her door, but she was still fast asleep. The room was hot and stuffy, thick with the smell of sleep.

  “Come on, Mum.” I leaned over the bed to give her a shake. “Come on, you’re going to be so late. It’s nearly half nine.”

  She shot up suddenly, kicking back the covers. “Oh my god, Becky! Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “I did. I came in ages ago. I made you a cup of tea but it’s probably cold by now...”

  She leaped out of bed, grabbing at her clothes. “This is a nightmare. I must’ve slept right through the alarm and it’s only my third day! What am I going to say? My head’s killing me. I was up doing that report for hours and then I started messing about with the puzzle... Hand me my hairbrush, would you?”

  “Listen, Mum, I know you’re in a hurry, but can I talk to you for a minute? It’s really important...”

  “Not now, Becky, for goodness’ sake, can’t you see how late I am? My brush! Hand me my brush!” She pushed her arm through her shirtsleeve, hopping into her skirt at the same time, pausing suddenly to look across at me. “What are you up to today?”

  “Nothing special, just going down to the green...” I passed her the brush and backed out of the room before she could ask any more questions. I hated lying, but there was no way she’d let me go to the Butterfly Garden by myself, not if she knew about the lake.

  It was such a sparkly day, as if the sun had turned everything it touched to gold. I couldn’t wait to see Rosa May, to find out what she wanted to show me. I practically ran the whole way. My talk with Mum would have to wait until the weekend, when she had more time. It was so frustrating but there was no point hassling her about my dad, or about the photo, when she was already in such a state about sleeping in.

  “Oh hello, Becky,” said Maggie as I burst through the door to the Garden. “You’re in a hurry! Rush, rush, rush. We saw you taking lots of photos yesterday, wriggling through the grass. Did you get any good shots?”

  “Loads,” I said. “I’d better go through though – I’m really late to meet my friend.”

  “Don’t worry about that, you’re our very first visitor this morning. It’s always quiet first thing.”

  I was about to explain that Rosa May always came in with her dad, and that they’d probably arrived much earlier than Maggie and Joan, but there wasn’t time. Joan was in the shop, holding out her little red stamp. She said she had something to show me, some prints of the Silver-studded Blue.

  “You will tell us if you spot one, won’t you, dear? It’s ever so important.”

  I promised I would and edged towards the back of the shop, anxious to get through the door and into the Garden before Rosa May gave up on me altogether.

  She was waiting on the bridge when I finally got outside. There was a cloud of yellow butterflies above her head, and from a distance she looked like an angel with a golden halo. I was so relieved to see her. I knew we’d only been friends for a few days but I kept expecting her to realize suddenly, that I wasn’t quite as much fun as she’d first thought.

  I’d never found it that easy to make friends, not with the really popular girls anyway. At my old school, some of them would be friendly as anything one week, and then completely blank me the next. I never understood why, or what the complicated rules of friendship were, but I somehow managed to break them without even trying. Laura was my only proper friend. We both loved photography which was great, but when it came to the other girls in our year – the cool girls – we were always on the outside looking in.

  It was different with Rosa May. Not only was she the coolest person I’d ever met, but she seemed just as happy to see me as I was to see her. As soon as she spotted me by the entrance, she flew off the bridge, the halo of butterflies melting into the sky above her. We skipped through the field down to the shadiest area we could find, under some very tall trees, and lay back in the grass. It was warm and the air hummed with insects.

  “Have you been here long? My mum overslept and I wanted to make sure she was okay before I left, and then I got stuck with Joan in the shop. What’s this special thing then? Remember, yesterday you said you had something special to show me.”

  Rosa May shrugged as if it was no big deal. “I’ll show you later, I promise. But tell me about your mum first. Is she ill?”

  “Not really,” I said, a bit disappointed – I so wanted to know what the surprise was. “Well, she said her head was hurting, but I think she’s just stressed about her new job. She was up really late finishing an urgent report, and then she slept right through her alarm.”

  Rosa May sat up, clasping her hands around her knees. “I don’t know how anyone can sit in an office, especially on a beautiful day like this. I’m never going to get a job and go to work.”

  “Don’t be silly, you’ll hav
e to one day. I’m going to be a wildlife photographer or I might even be a vet. I don’t really care, as long as it involves animals.”

  “But that takes years and years of studying,” she said, pulling a face. “How boring would that be? Perhaps I’ll get a job right here at the Butterfly Garden like my dad. Then I can spend all my time outside and I won’t have to study at all.”

  “That’s a brilliant idea! I know, let’s pretend I’m visiting the Garden for the first time today and you’re my guide.”

  Rosa May giggled. “Okay,” she said, jumping up. She changed her voice so that it sounded posh and grown-up. “Welcome to the Garden, madam, and how can I help you this morning?”

  “Erm...” I looked around, trying to think of a good question. A delicate white butterfly fluttered about between us, landing on Rosa May’s shoulder.

  “Come on, ask me anything you like,” she said. “Ask me which species of butterfly lives the longest, or how butterflies use camouflage to protect themselves from predators, or – I know – ask me how the first butterflies ever came to be!”

  “Okay then,” I laughed. “How did the first butterfly ever come to be?”

  “But that’s easy!” she cried. “Haven’t you heard of the Papago legend?”

  We lay back in the grass and Rosa May began to speak.

  “There’s a Native American legend, the Papago legend,” she said, her voice dreamy now, as if she was staring right into the past. “One day, after the Earth Maker had shaped the world, he sat watching the children play. He saw their joy and youthful beauty and he felt sad as he realized how, as time passed, the children would grow old and die. Their beauty would fade and they would no longer be strong enough to run around in the sunshine. It was such an awful thought that the Earth Maker decided he must make something to help them enjoy life, even as they grew frail and weary. Something that would lift their hearts and spirits...”

  Rosa May paused for a minute.

  “Come on then, what happened next?”

  “This is the good bit,” she said. “He took his Bag of Creation, and he put in the blue from the sky and the white from the freshly ground cornmeal. He added the brown of the falling leaves, some spots of sunlight and the green of the pine leaves. He gathered red, orange and purple from the flowers and he put them all in his magic bag.

  “Then when he was ready, when all the beauty he could find had been mixed together, he called the Children of the Earth around him and opened the bag. Behold my new creation! he cried. Angels of nature! And out flew hundreds of exquisite butterflies, each one more colourful than the next.”

  “What an amazing story,” I breathed, rolling in to face her. “Do you believe it’s true?”

  “Of course! How can you even ask? There’s more to that legend actually, but I’ll tell you another time.”

  We spent the rest of the morning roaming the meadows, searching for a Silver-studded Blue. We chased every blue butterfly we saw, wading through the tall, dry grass from one part of the Garden to the next. Rosa May talked non-stop the whole time, teaching me the names of all the butterflies we passed. We saw a Black-veined White, and a Clouded Yellow, an Essex Skipper and a Comma. She told me a little story about each one; their favourite flowers, or how they got their names, to help me remember. We must’ve seen every species of butterfly except the Silver-studded Blue.

  Later that afternoon, Rosa May led me down a tiny path running between rows of thick, tangled bushes. The path was so narrow and the bushes so overgrown, it was practically impossible to get through. “Close your eyes for a second, Becky,” she ordered, a little way along. “Now keep them closed and no peeking at all.” I clasped hold of her hand, stumbling forward a few more steps until she stopped.

  “Right, you can open them now, but don’t make a sound.”

  I stood there blinking as the sun hit my eyes. The secret path had taken us into a dusty clearing with a big rock in the middle.

  “This is what I was going to show you,” she whispered. “When I said I had something special to show you yesterday. This was it.”

  I took a step towards the rock. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. The entire surface was covered in a multicoloured velvety blanket of butterflies. It was actually impossible to see the rock at all. I felt strange suddenly, confused, as if the path had led us into a different time; different but familiar. A name bubbled up from somewhere deep inside.

  “It’s Butterfly Rock,” I breathed.

  “What?”

  “That’s what it’s called: Butterfly Rock.”

  I turned towards Rosa May. She was staring at me, her face pale.

  “How do you know that?” she said. “Who told you? My dad named it for me. It’s his favourite area of the garden, but no one else knows it’s here. No one.”

  I shook my head, shrugging. “I must’ve overheard someone talking about it. Joan in the shop, or someone in the Garden. I’m not really sure, to be honest; the name was just there, in my head.” But it was more than that, a fragment of something from long ago. Rosa May was still staring at me.

  “Maybe you mentioned it?” I said, trying to reassure myself as much as her. “Remember, that first day when you showed me round?”

  She nodded slowly, her eyes fixed on mine. “Maybe,” she said, but she didn’t look convinced.

  I took about a hundred photos, tiptoeing right the way round to make sure I caught the rock from every angle. The butterflies fluttered occasionally but they were clearly far too comfortable to bother flying away. Rosa May followed behind me, whispering the different names, and species, and other bits of information, but otherwise she was quiet, deflated, as if I’d ruined her big surprise.

  When the heat got too much for us, we left the secret clearing and hiked back to where we’d started, collapsing down under the trees. I’d packed some sandwiches and fruit but Rosa May said she wasn’t hungry.

  “It’s way too hot to eat. It’s too hot to do anything except lie here in the shade or go for a swim.” She looked at me, her eyes gleaming suddenly. “I know, let’s go swimming together! Come on, I’ll race you down to the lake!” She jumped up, pulling my arm. “I’m not kidding, Becky; we’re going swimming, now!” She was challenging me. Almost as if she knew.

  “I’m just eating,” I said, shaking her off. “You go for a swim if you want and I’ll wait for you here.”

  “I don’t want to go on my own,” she said. “Why won’t you come in with me? We’d have so much fun. And anyway, I showed you Butterfly Rock, so you owe me.” Her voice had changed. She was getting fed up. Losing patience.

  “I will,” I lied, “just not right now.” I felt awful. I would’ve done anything she wanted, anything, except go for a swim. “Listen, why don’t I take some photos of you instead?” I pulled out my phone. “I could go up on the bridge and take some really cool shots of you diving in and floating. Or we could even go into the village, to the green. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”

  She shrugged, disappointed. “Not as fun as swimming together. And anyway, I’m not allowed to go into the village. My dad doesn’t mind what I do all day as long as I stay in the Garden. He likes to know where I am.”

  She flopped back down in the grass. “I’ve never had a proper best friend, you know, Becky. I couldn’t stand the girls at my old school. They were all so boring – scared of breaking the rules, sucking up to the teachers all the time. You should’ve seen them, it drove me half-mad.”

  I stared at her, mesmerized. “What do you mean your old school? Where do you go to school now?” I crossed my fingers, praying it would be Farnsbury High, the school I was due to start at in September.

  “I told you yesterday, school’s for losers.” Her eyes dimmed for a moment, as if she was remembering something sad, but then she shook herself and jumped up.

  “Well I’m going for a swim, even if you’re not!” she said, and before I could say anything she was racing towards the lake, a streak of blue di
sappearing into the distance. I threw down my sandwich, feeling sick suddenly. I didn’t want Rosa May to think I was boring. I was desperate to be her best friend; she was easily the most amazing person I’d ever met in my life. But however desperate I was, however much I wanted her to like me, the one thing I couldn’t do was go swimming.

  Mum was so busy over the next week or so I hardly saw her. She left for work really early, usually before I was up, and got back late into the evening. She said her job was okay, but she seemed to be stressed all the time. She hadn’t been shopping for days and she was barely eating, as far as I could tell. It was awful when she came home late. The hours seemed to crawl by and I could never quite relax enough to fall asleep until I heard her key in the door.

  I tried to find the right time to ask about the photo, but it was tricky. She was snappy, on edge – either too tired or too busy. I could’ve just come out with it, told her I’d found the box under her bed, but every time I had the chance, something made me clam up. The truth is, I was scared. The more I thought about the photo, about what it could mean, the more uneasy I felt.

  If the baby in the photo was my sister – and I couldn’t really think of any other explanation – then where was she now? Was she with my dad? Did she know about me? It was one thing rehearsing the questions in my head, but what would happen if I actually said them out loud?

  I did try asking her about my dad one night, about whether he was still living in Oakbridge, but she freaked out. “Why don’t you ask me where he was when I needed him, not where he is now? Seriously, Becky, I’ve got enough on my plate at the moment without you dredging up the past every five minutes. Just drop it, can’t you?”

  But I didn’t want to drop it. I wanted to know everything there was to know about my dad. I wanted to know where he was and what he was doing and if he knew about the baby in the photo. I was desperate to know, but Mum was the only one with the answers and she wasn’t telling. She’s always found it difficult to talk about the past, but she seemed to be even more uptight about it since we moved to Oakbridge.