The Making of May Read online

  Also by Gwyneth Rees

  Mermaid Magic

  Fairy Dust

  Fairy Treasure

  Fairy Dreams

  Cosmo and the Magic Sneeze

  Cosmo and the Great Witch Escape

  The Mum Hunt

  The Mum Detective

  The Mum Surprise (World Book Day 2006)

  My Mum’s from Planet Pluto

  Look out for

  Fairy Gold

  MACMILLAN CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  First published 2006 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This electronic edition published 2007 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-330-47168-8 in Adobe Reader format

  ISBN 978-0-330-47169-5 in Adobe Digital Editions format

  ISBN 978-0-330-47170-1 in Microsoft Reader format

  ISBN 978-0-330-47171-8 in Mobipocket format

  Copyright © Gwyneth Rees 2006

  The right of Gwyneth Rees to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.

  For Alice May Burden – friend, first publicist and wicked brainstormer!

  And with thanks to my brilliant editor, Sarah Davies

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  There are lots of orphans who appear in books. There’s Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, Pollyanna and even Bambi – but my favourite orphan in a book is definitely Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden. In case you’ve never heard of it, The Secret Garden is a book that was written nearly a hundred years ago about a girl who’s an orphan, who goes to live in a gigantic old house, where she finds a walled garden that nobody has been inside for ten years and which she sort of brings back to life again. The thing is that she’s ten years old too and she’s never been cared about until she comes to live in the house with the garden, so the garden and Mary sort of become friends.

  I like Mary because she’s not too sweet and she’s not too pretty, which makes her more like a real person – more like me, in fact. And we’ve even got the same name. I’m called Mary too – only nobody ever calls me that. They all call me May for short.

  On the day this book starts, I hadn’t read The Secret Garden yet, but I had already watched the video ten times. The Mary in the film looks a bit like me. She’s quite pale with skinny arms and legs and dirty-blonde straight hair that sits on her shoulders. And she’s got a nice face when she smiles but a really scowly one when she doesn’t get her own way.

  I had just switched the video to PLAY and had settled down on the sofa to watch it again when my big brother, Ben, walked into the room. I didn’t look up because my imagination had already been captured by the opening of the film. They play this beautiful haunting music and show pictures of the secret garden and then you see the grand house with a horse and carriage outside so you know it’s set in olden times. I know it’s an oboe that’s playing the music because at the end, when the credits come up, it tells you the name of the oboe soloist. I think maybe I’d like to learn to play the oboe one day if it can sound as beautiful as that. I’ve got a recorder but it’s kind of screechy – or maybe that’s just the way I play it.

  ‘How about we go to the park or something?’ Ben said. Ben thought I stayed indoors too much. ‘The sun’s shining outside. Why do you want to be sitting in here with the curtains drawn?’

  He went to pull them back and I screeched at him, ‘It’s too bright to see the telly if you do that.’ The television faced the window and when it was really sunny, you couldn’t see anything at all on the screen.

  Ben doesn’t like it when I screech, so he left the curtains alone. He was still standing looking at me though. In The Secret Garden, Mary was screeching at her ayah to go away. An ayah is a sort of nanny in India, which is where Mary lives at the start of the story.

  ‘She makes even more noise than you do,’ Ben joked, after watching it with me for a few minutes. Mary was now screeching at a soldier who had come to tell her that everyone she knew – including her parents – had just died of cholera.

  ‘Just go away. You’re spoiling it,’ I told Ben crossly.

  ‘Well, OK, but when Lou comes back I think we should all go out somewhere.’

  Louise is my big sister. Lou and Ben are a lot older than me – she’s twenty-two and he’s twenty-six. They’re only my half-brother and sister really because I’ve got a different father to them. They know their dad though they don’t see him much – whereas I’ve never even met mine. I’m eleven and I’ve lived with them since I was four because – just like Mary Lennox – I haven’t got any parents either. Lou and Ben had always looked after me together, though since I’d got older I reckoned I was pretty much able to take care of myself. Ben worked whenever he could during the day, doing odd jobs for people, and Lou worked in the evenings as a waitress.

  It was Saturday morning and Lou was due back from the supermarket at any minute. I knew she would turn off the TV just like that if she wanted me to stop watching it when she came in. She never cared how much I screeched. Sometimes she screeched back, and Ben hated that because he said the walls were really thin in the council flats where we lived and we’d have the neighbours coming round if we weren’t careful. Ben worries a lot about what other people think – too much, Lou says.

  I paused the videotape as soon as I heard the front door slamming and Lou yelling out that she was back. I’d got to the bit where Mary first meets the gardener and he introduces her to the robin who lives in the secret garden. I really like that bit in the story and I didn’t want Lou spoiling it. My sister swore as she tripped over the loose bit of carpet in the hall – we were meant to be saving up for a new one but so far we weren’t doing very well.

  ‘Is Greg here yet?’ she called out as she went straight to the kitchen with the shopping.

  Greg was her boyfriend – her first ever serious one – and I didn’t like him, chiefly because he was always wanting to see Lou on her own, which meant she spent most of the weekend seeing him instead of us. She even stayed the night at his place sometimes. She’d met him at the restaurant where she worked and they’d been going out for six months now. He was going off travelling very soon though, so he wouldn’t be around much longer, thank goodness.

/>   ‘No,’ Ben answered as Lou came into the living room. ‘You expecting him?’

  ‘Why can’t he hurry up and leave the country like he keeps saying he’s going to do?’ I grunted.

  ‘He will,’ Lou said. ‘In a couple of weeks. The thing is . . .’ Her voice dried up and she came over to sit on the sofa beside me. ‘Sit down a minute, will you, Ben? I’ve got something important to tell you both.’ Her voice sounded a bit funny. She frowned as she pushed her hair out of her eyes. Lou has got blonde hair too, only it’s lighter than mine because she colours it. She’s also got exactly the same colour eyes as me – light brown with green flecks in them.

  I knew it was bad news when I saw how nervous she looked. Lou isn’t a nervous person normally. Lou is always talking or laughing or crying or shouting at you, but she hardly ever goes all anxious and quiet like she had gone now.

  ‘Well . . . ?’ Ben, who can’t stand it when Lou makes a big drama out of things, was starting to look like he could stand it even less when she was all anxious and quiet. ‘For God’s sake . . . What is it?’

  ‘Greg phoned me on my mobile while I was at the shops. He’s been asking me to go travelling with him and . . . and I’ve just said yes.’

  ‘What?’ I was confused. ‘Go travelling where?’

  ‘Well . . . to start with we’re going to India but—’

  ‘India?’ I was about to tell her that she couldn’t go there because of the cholera, but then I remembered that wasn’t actually real. Though, for all I knew, they might still have cholera in India in real life too.

  Ben didn’t say anything. He looked at my sister as if he’d just had his tongue forcibly stuffed down the back of his throat.

  Lou was looking at me, and I got the feeling she was avoiding looking at my brother. ‘Yes, and then we’re going to Australia for a bit because Greg’s got family there. I’ll only be gone for a year altogether, May.’ (Like I said before, even though my proper name is Mary, I’ve always been called May. My mother was the only one in our family who liked the name Mary, so after she died there was nobody left who called me that. I’d always thought the name May was much cooler and that Mary was really old-fashioned – until I’d started watching The Secret Garden. Now I quite liked the name Mary too.)

  ‘A whole year!’ I couldn’t believe I was hearing this.

  ‘It’s a perfectly normal thing to do. Lots of people my age take a year out to go travelling. If Ben wasn’t here it would be different.’ She looked at my brother then, a little guiltily.

  ‘Good old Ben,’ my brother replied drily.

  Lou went red then. ‘Well, you’re her guardian.’

  ‘I know that.’

  I looked from one face to the other, starting to resent the way they were talking about me. Like I was a burden.

  I scowled. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know they’d both be free to do whatever they wanted if it wasn’t for me.

  I stood up. ‘Go away if you want! I don’t care.’ And I stormed out of the room into the bedroom I shared with Lou and slammed the door.

  They weren’t paying much attention to me though. As I left Ben said sarcastically, ‘And you’d be taking a year out of what, exactly?’ And then they started to argue.

  A minute or so later, in among the raised voices coming from the other room, there was a loud rapping on the front door. Our doorbell needed a new battery, but Ben never wanted to spend money on things that weren’t essentials. I heard Louise go and open the door and say something in a low voice to Greg. She didn’t invite him inside. I knew if she was going out with him today, she’d need to come into the room to get her things so I sat stiffly on my bed, waiting for her.

  Maybe she wouldn’t really go. Maybe it was just an idea that sounded nice, but when it came to it she’d stay here with us.

  But when she came into the room I could see by her face that she was determined about this. In fact, she had a look on her face as if she had already left us behind.

  ‘Lou, you haven’t got any money to go on holiday,’ I pointed out. The three of us hadn’t had a proper holiday for as long as I could remember because we never had any spare cash.

  ‘This isn’t a holiday – it’s travelling,’ she replied. ‘I’ll get work. We’ll be staying with Greg’s aunt and uncle in Australia for a while – Greg reckons we can get work in bars and stuff. And he’s paying for my ticket to start with.’

  Greg had bought her quite a few things since they’d started going out – meals in restaurants, tickets for the cinema, a weekend away in Brighton. Once he had bought her a new pair of boots that she had seen in a sale and fallen in love with. Ben and Lou had had a row that day because Greg had offered to buy me a pair of boots in the sale too. Apparently, they had seen these cute little red ones that they thought would really suit me, but Ben had argued that we weren’t so hard up that we needed to accept other people’s charity.

  Lou came and sat beside me on my bed. ‘Please don’t be angry. This is a big chance for me. I’m really excited about it.’

  ‘Really excited about leaving us, you mean,’ I said crossly. ‘Thanks!’

  ‘Oh, May, you know I’ll really miss you.’ Lou reached out to touch my arm.

  ‘Do you love Greg?’ I demanded, pulling my arm away.

  Lou smiled. ‘I’ve never felt this way about a guy before, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘Do you love him more than you love us?’ I knew it was a babyish question but I didn’t care.

  She was frowning now. ‘Listen, May . . . you and me and Ben have all got much closer to each other than we would’ve done if Mum hadn’t died. And I’m really glad we’ve stayed together and been a family all this time. But now I want to leave home like normal people my age do, OK?’

  I scowled. I really didn’t like what she was saying to me. ‘But what if Ben wants to leave home too?’ I said stroppily. ‘What if he decides to go off travelling as well?’ Just saying those words made me feel sick. Imagine if I didn’t have Louise or Ben here to look after me . . .

  ‘Don’t be silly! Ben is home as far as you’re concerned. Until you’re grown up, anyway. He might as well be your dad.’

  I nodded, because it was true that Ben was more like a dad than a big brother to me. ‘And you’re like my mum,’ I added.

  But she shook her head then. ‘No – that’s the whole point! That’s what I’m trying to say!’ She sighed. ‘Listen . . . me and Ben and you . . . we’re a bit like a mum and a dad and a kid half the time, aren’t we? But that’s not really what we are, May, and I don’t want it to be like that any more. Because one day I want to have a family with someone who’s not my brother . . .’ She flushed. ‘. . . maybe even with Greg, if it works out. Can you understand that?’

  I looked at her, finding myself feeling stuff that scared me. I felt like I could feel all her hopes for the future inside me all of a sudden and I could feel how much she wanted things to turn out right with Greg. But for things to work with Greg, she had to leave us.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Listen, we’ll talk some more later. I’ve got to go now or we’ll be late for the doctor’s. Greg’s got me an appointment to get some travel vaccinations.’

  So she wouldn’t be dying of cholera then. That was something.

  ‘Try and understand, May,’ she said as she stood up to go. ‘Life hasn’t been that easy, so far, has it? I just want to do something fun.’

  Ben came into my room after Lou and Greg had gone out, and I could tell he was in a strange mood.

  ‘Come on. We’re getting away from here for the day. We’re going to the seaside.’

  ‘I’d rather just watch the rest of my video,’ I told him.

  ‘Just do as you’re told for once, OK?’

  I sulked the whole way to the train station. I really wanted to be inside watching my video, not outside with no way of escaping all the upsetting thoughts that were whirling round in my brain. I couldn’t believe that my s
ister was leaving us. Louise was the person I had always thought understood me best of all. She was the one who had bought me the videotape of The Secret Garden in the first place. She’d discovered it in a charity shop and we’d watched it together the same day, curled up on the sofa with a packet of chocolate biscuits.

  I couldn’t imagine not seeing my sister for a whole year. I didn’t think I could actually bear to be separated from her for that long. OK, so I was still going to have Ben, but he just didn’t like talking about feelings – his or anybody else’s – the way Lou did, which meant that when I was worried about stuff, Lou tended to be the person I went to.

  I dragged my feet as I walked along the road, feeling really sorry for myself. I especially felt sorry that I was an orphan, because if I wasn’t – and Lou was my mum instead of just my big sister – she wouldn’t be leaving me, would she?

  Sometimes, when you’re feeling really sad and you don’t know what to do, it really helps just to know that someone else is in the same situation as you. The trouble is, nobody else I know is an orphan. I’m not saying that nobody else in the whole world is – obviously lots of children are – but the thing is, I don’t know any of them. So the nearest thing I had right then to a friend who knew how I felt was Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden.

  Up until today, I’d always thought I was better off than Mary Lennox, because she didn’t have anyone who’d ever loved her – even before her parents died they didn’t care about her – whereas I had Lou and Ben. But now that Lou was leaving me, I almost wished that, just like Mary at the start of The Secret Garden, I didn’t have anyone or anything important in my life either. At least that way you’d never have anyone or anything important to lose. Except that it must be pretty horrible not caring about anyone or having anyone who cares about you.

  As I trudged along the road beside my brother I started to think how that’s what The Secret Garden is all about really. I mean, it’s about Mary finding the garden and bringing it back to life and everything, but it’s also about how Mary learns to care about things for the first time there. She starts to care more and more about the garden itself, and at the same time she’s making friends with the robin and the old gardener and a boy who knows all about growing things. And as the garden gradually comes back to life again, Mary sort of comes alive inside too.