Cicada Summer by Kate Constable Read Free Book Online

must do Mo’s shopping every week. Then it occurred to her that Mo hadn’t gone out once since she’d arrived, days ago. She remembered Mo saying that first night that she didn’t like to leave the house. So she really meant it. But Mo wasn’t that old; she could walk all right; she wasn’t sick. Why would she want to stay home all the time?
    Eloise realised with a start that Tommy was looking at her. Not staring, just peeping sideways from under his long lashes. And she remembered something else that Mo had said.
    She scraped back her chair and slipped across the kitchen, not looking at Tommy. She didn’t want to, but Mo had said she must. She held out her hand.
    Tommy gazed at her, puzzled. Then a light of laughter came into his eyes and he gripped her hand and squeezed it. ‘Hello.’
    Mo looked up from the depths of the fridge where she was examining limp vegetables. ‘Hah!’ she said. ‘Well done, Eloise. Eloise is shy,’ she told Tommy. ‘She’ll be starting at your school next year, I suppose.’
    ‘Oh.’ Tommy let go of Eloise’s hand. He was blocking the door so she couldn’t escape. She stood there awkwardly for a second, then, because she didn’t know what else to do, she sat down again and poured out more cornflakes.
    ‘That’s the lot,’ announced Mo finally, and slammed the fridge door. ‘Hold on, I’ll get you that card.’ She marched out of the room.
    ‘The card to get her money,’ explained Tommy. ‘For the shopping. It’s easier for her that way.’
    Eloise nodded.
    ‘Mrs Mo’s your grandmother, yeah?’ Tommy moved closer and lowered his voice. ‘You know, she doesn’t go out? Never, since we came here. Only into the backyard. Panic attacks, she told my mum. Makes her heart go . . .’ Tommy’s hand fluttered like a fish. ‘You know what I mean?’
    Eloise didn’t, really.
    ‘It’s good you’ve come. Family, to look after her, eh? You and your dad?’
    Eloise looked down into her cornflake bowl. She felt uncomfortable and vaguely accused. But she was only a kid; it wasn’t her job to look after Mo. She wanted to go; she wanted to find Anna and get her sketchbook back. It wasn’t quite so hot today. She felt greedy to see Anna again, to look for
    Mum in the summerhouse girl’s face. She was glad when Tommy took the card and the list and left, and when she heard the study door click, shutting Mo in.
    Now she was free, and she hurried out of the house so fast her feet hardly skimmed the ground.

7
    E very day, if it wasn’t too hot, Eloise went to the big house. Every time, the ritual was the same. She’d drop her bike by the front steps, walk across the grass, and shut her eyes.
    Sometimes it took three steps, sometimes it was ten, before the noises of the present faded out. There was a dizzying moment of silence, of nothingness, and then the sounds of the other time faded in, as if the volume had been turned up – birdsong, the rustle of leaves, faint music from the house, laughter – and her eyes flew open, always just too late to catch the instant of changeover, the plunge into the other world.
    Anna was always there. If she wasn’t already waiting at the summerhouse when Eloise arrived, she’d soon come running, complaining that her father had made her finish her breakfast, or that one of the guests had kept her talking. She pulled a face when she talked about the guests. ‘I like it best when it’s just Mumma and Dad and me,’ she said. ‘But it never is. That’s why I’m glad you’re here.’
    At first Eloise thought that Anna was talking about friends who’d come to stay, but there seemed to be an awful lot of ‘guests’, and Anna didn’t always know their names. Then Eloise wondered if the house was a hotel in Anna’s time, too. It was strange that Dad had never mentioned it.
    Gradually Eloise pieced together that the house was not a hotel – not an ordinary hotel, anyway. Anna’s parents ran it. But this summer, because Anna’s mother was