When she finally dropped the flower away from her face, I watched it fall to the floor. Hackett’s eyes followed the falling bloom too.
Caitlin grabbed my hand and pulled me past Hackett. As she did, my arm brushed against his. I looked back at him and saw that he was still looking right at me.
She held on to my arm as she led us towards the forest, her hand still clutching mine, an act I had quickly become used to. I saw a clearing up ahead and I hoped we would stop. Surely we had gone far enough away from the main house by now? This was the furthest away I had been from our cottage.
When Caitlin stopped at the edge of the clearing and dropped my hand and the picnic basket, I felt relief flood my body. I glanced back. I could just about see the edge of the cottage and that gave me a small sense of security. At the border of the woods, I could smell the coolness of the air coming from within: a mixture of earth and pine. A squirrel darted up a tall tree to my right and I jumped at the sound. Caitlin looked at me and laughed.
‘Come on, it’s cool in here. I know a delightful little spot we can picnic.’
‘Okay,’ I said, taking a final peek back at where we had come from. I reminded myself I could go back at any point; I didn’t ask how much further we were going to walk. I didn’t want Caitlin to think I was acting like a baby.
I took a deep breath and followed behind Caitlin.
‘Your mum won’t mind. This is all Saxby land as well – we’re perfectly safe.’ Caitlin swung around to look at me, then turned back. ‘You look like a rabbit caught in the headlights! Do you know we have over fifty acres of land here including all the woods? That’s a lot of land. I’m glad you’re here. Last year, when Mama let me start exploring a bit, it was stiflingly boring on my own. But now you’re here, I think we are going to have a most excellent time.’ Caitlin was speaking quickly as though she had been holding in her words for someone like me. Her words came at me with an alien tone, but one that was pleasant to listen to. I thought about all my friends back in Hackney who would probably laugh at Caitlin’s voice, but I didn’t want to laugh. I wanted to listen and maybe I could make my voice sound like that too.
I knew my voice had a slight Cockney twang, but Caitlin was from a different part of London and her voice was something different altogether. She pronounced every letter in every word and didn’t drag the middle parts.
I let myself smile because I was actually glad that I had someone to hang around with now, but I wasn’t sure if I was the sort of friend Caitlin was looking for. I only had to look at what we had and what she had. We didn’t even own a house of our own. Ours had been given to us for free as part of my parents’ position on the family’s staff. I felt weird about that, that my family worked for her and because of that, in a way, I was beneath her. I felt like I wanted to speak those words, but it would mean organising them in a certain way so they sounded normal and I didn’t know how to. So they fizzled on my tongue before I swallowed them down. I would feel them bobbing around in my stomach for the rest of the afternoon.
The incident with the man at the edge of the woods and the way Caitlin had watched him had made me feel uncomfortable. I wanted to tell Caitlin, but she had begun busying herself, pushing old leaves and ferns aside to make more space before she sat down. It looked as though other activities had played out here – camping, den-building and fires – as there were plenty of logs and branches which didn’t look as though they’d fallen or arrived by chance. It was pretty messy but already I envisioned this being mine and Caitlin’s special hideaway spot, somewhere we could make into a proper camp.
I sat down opposite her; the ground was scratchy on my legs, one leg still felt a bit itchy from the nettle sting.
I suddenly felt very thirsty after our dash through the fields in the summer heat and thought about the lemonade I had seen in the picnic basket. Caitlin pulled out the bottle and I felt a swell of joy rise from my gut to my chest. It was as though she had read my mind.
She pulled out the cork and took a long drink then handed it to me. I was used to passing a bottle around, but I expected Caitlin to not want to share germs with me. She didn’t seem like the type of girl to swig straight out of a bottle, but she surprised me.
I took a long drink of the lemonade which was an intense combination of sweet and bitter; it tasted home-made like the elderflower cordial Mum made.
‘So who was the man, just then. Do you know him?’ I finally asked.
‘Hackett? He works here. He’s staff, like your papa.’
I felt her words cut me; here we were swigging from the same lemonade bottle like two equals, but for Caitlin to suddenly refer to my dad as ‘staff’ felt as cold and as hard as the forest floor. I swallowed down my disappointment with another drink of lemonade then handed it back to Caitlin.
‘So why wasn’t he here before? Hackett.’ The novelty of the name played out across my lips.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I moved in a few weeks ago and my dad’s the head gardener, but he’s never
