“Lilly, you’re a champion.”
I’m not sure if I’m Elise or Lilly. We are so similar nowadays, it’s hard to tell us apart. Most of the time it doesn’t matter anymore. He’s rearing to leave. The bright morning sun is bringing out the warm copper streaks in hair. Scottie gets up too, reaches for his floppy hat, pushes it to the back, and gives us a long kiss.
I have little to compare him with, but I’ve got to say his kisses are … Elise said once his kisses are a revelation, full of promise and tender love. Me? I just like them. They make me feel wanted and give me shivers all over my body.
After what seems like a long time, he lets me go. Grabbing his backpack, we leave the house. At the truck, he gives Prince a goodbye rub behind the ears.
“Look after them for me.”
Prince is thumping his tail, which I’m convinced, means okay boss.
Minutes later I watch him drive away.
A sudden chill in the air drives me back inside the house. I grab my jacket and shoulder bag. Yep, Lilly, the champion is now getting ready to work down our to-do-list. We seldom go to Port Somers although it isn’t all that bad at the tail end of summer. By then the tourists are on their way home and our little township is ours again.
I can’t believe I use the pronoun ours. But it’s true, despite everything that’s happened, I feel at home. There is even the possibility that I might belong.
Belonging.
I’m saying that with a lot of hesitation as if I’m treading on untested waters. Who would have thought it’s so scary? I want to belong and at the same time, I’m petrified of it because if you belong, people can also expel you.
Port Somers in fall is a pleasant place. You now meet more locals than foreigners and in the shops, you don’t have to queue with hikers wielding their backpacks about. You can even stop and have a chat with the stallholders at the Friday Farmers Market. Even Freddy Stanmore, our local painter and gallery owner, world-famous in Port Somers, has time for a cuppa. Freddy and Elise spend hours chatting about all things arty.
I? Not so much. With art, I’m clueless.
I use the title ‘gallery’ in it’s most humble form because Freddy exhibits and sells only his paintings, Alice Winter’s pottery, greenstone and jewelry carved by Spencer Tupene’s family, Elise and Maddie’s weavings, and Tip Top Ice cream. And I say that with no malice; he makes as much money with the ice cream as he does with all the art and craft pieces put together.
Over the summer months, it always appears like the place only exists for the tourists. Most of them are gone once the gentle summer rain turns into a deluge and placid streams grow within hours into raging rivers, hurtling about rocks and debris and washing fertile soil, seized from the upper slopes of the mountains into the sea.
But I’m not complaining. Tourists bring progress. Without them, we would still be getting blown about or freeze waiting for the bus to arrive. Those times are over. Last winter a cozy café with the intriguing name Vanilla Bean opened opposite the Intercity bus stop.
They should have called it the Whistle Stop Café like the one in Fried Green Tomatoes because they used the old rundown railway station. But then busses don’t whistle, do they? They rather groan and rattle.
With the grocery shopping in the truck and Prince asleep on the backseat, after he had his vaccinations, I park the car and hop over the road to the Vanilla Bean. It’s not busy yet, and I sit down while I wait. They make good coffee here, not that I’m an expert. But it’s miles better than Ama’s brew. And I say that with lots of love in my heart and the hope she’s not listening to my thoughts.
I wash a bite of tasty quiche down with the coffee. The bus is late. The Tribe is impatient to see Tom again. We all like him now. It was different when we first met him a little over a year ago. Within five minutes we’d sacked him. It took a huge amount of goodwill and Scott’s reassurance that he was okay before he became a friend. Amadeus still thinks he’s a wuss. That’s his new word because Sky doesn’t let us use swearwords.
Tom owes it to Maddie that he was allowed into our inner circle. Not that we knew we had one. It was always us, the Tribe, against the world. Then Scottie happened, the murder and the kidnapping happened, and after the trial, our inner world had changed in ways nobody had foreseen.
So now there’s Scott, and sometimes Annabelle our journalist friend when she’s around, and of course our therapist Charlotte McFarlane aka Miss Marple, who we all call our friends now.
Elise said the other day, “Lilly, I don’t know how you do it, it gets really crowded.” But that’s Elise for you, our super introvert.
I still remember how Tom became our friend. It happened before the court case last year. He caught Maddie one afternoon weaving; only he didn’t know he was talking to a child part. He didn’t know we were multiples. Don’t assume she’s just a five-year-old girl who does little girl things and has little girl thoughts. That would be a huge mistake. When Elizabeth went away Maddie and Toby took over from her but soon Sky the wise one, Ama the mother, me the person getting things done, and Amadeus the warrior came along.
Kind of like the Famous Five, just that we were six and didn’t feel famous at all. It was pretty hard back then and each of us needed helpers to deal with the things life threw at us. It didn’t take long and we became
