This Northern Sky by Julia Green Read Free Book Online Page B

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    They’ll be waking up in the Manse. Coming down for breakfast together in the cosy kitchen. Perhaps Piers and Thea are still sleeping . . . are they girlfriend and boyfriend? I couldn’t tell yesterday. They seemed close, but I didn’t see them touch or hold hands or kiss. Maybe posh people don’t do that in public. Maybe it’s not polite.
    It begins to drizzle. I pull up the hood on my jacket. No one’s going to see so it doesn’t matter what I look like. The road narrows; there’s another cattle grid to cross, and a cluster of houses sheltering behind a thick hedge. The view opens up again suddenly: a ruined house, a broad stretch of flowering meadow above a wide sandy beach. The sea is turquoise-blue even in the rain. Fingers of rock dissect the white sweep of shell sand. Beyond, other islands: layers upon layers of islands, a whole archipelago.
    I shelter in the ruined house for a while to see if the rain stops. But it doesn’t, and so I go on in the rain, along the grassy path to the left, round the top of the beach, past a herd of black shaggy-haired cows and calves, along and on and on next to the sea. All the way, I find smaller beaches, sheltered sandy coves. I must have walked miles, and I’ve seen no one.
    The rain stops and I clamber down over rocks on to a small beach and sit there, watching the sea and the changing light, until even the birds stop noticing me. Little scurrying brown ones like I saw before, and black and white ones with red legs, and smaller ones that swoop and weave through the air like sea swallows.
    I pull my phone out of my pocket. No signal. I realise I haven’t checked my phone for over twenty-four hours.
     
    ‘A boy called,’ Dad tells me when I get back. He’s sitting outside the house at the wooden picnic table, reading the newspaper.
    ‘Was it Finn?’ I ask.
    ‘He didn’t say his name. Dark-haired, about your age.’
    ‘And? What did he say?’
    ‘I think he was going to invite you to something, but as you weren’t here, he didn’t.’
    ‘What was it? The something.’
    ‘He didn’t say. At least, I don’t think he did.’
    ‘Dad! How can you be so annoying! How long ago was he here?’
    ‘An hour ago? Where did you go so early, anyway?’
    ‘I went for a walk.’
    Dad smiles. ‘Yes, but where to?’
    ‘I don’t know! I don’t know the names of everywhere, do I? Just a walk across the island. Right to the other side.’
    I go inside to find Mum. She doesn’t know any more than Dad does. She makes me eat more breakfast, which I do, seeing as I only had toast and I’ve been walking for hours and I’m suddenly starving.
    ‘Would you like us to hire you a bike?’ Mum says. ‘Then you could get around more easily by yourself. It would only take about ten minutes to cycle to the Manse from here, and you could find out what Finn wanted.’
    But I’ve used up all my energy. And I don’t want to look so pathetically desperate, chasing after Finn. I lie on my bed and read one of the magazines from the pile under the telly table.
    I keep wondering what I’m missing. The boat trip? Another barbecue? The peat-cutting expedition? Now I wish I hadn’t got up so early and gone out for so long.
    ‘Kate?’ Mum calls upstairs. ‘We thought we’d get bikes for all three of us. After lunch. It’ll be fun. We can explore a bit further afield.’
    ‘No thanks,’ I call back. ‘You and Dad should, though.’
    Because maybe he’ll come back. Perhaps they’ll be driving somewhere, and will drop in here first, on the off-chance. I can’t help myself hoping.
    But no one calls. The day drifts away. I watch the bit of beach you can see from the front window. A fishing boat goes out, stacked high with red and orange buoys, and men in yellow waterproofs balancing as the boat bucks and tips. It begins to rain again. The sky is grey, except far out to sea there’s a strip of bright silver where sunlight must be shining through. Next time I look, it’s