Cherry Blossom Dreams Page 2

  ‘Haven’t you done it yet?’ Sean asked Mum, sounding impatient.

  ‘Do I look like I’ve done it?’ she snapped.

  ‘Come on, Mum – stop procrastinating,’ Sean said.

  Mum glared at him. ‘I didn’t realise you even knew such a big word.’

  Sean grinned. ‘Blame Leo. He’s on a mission to improve my vocabulary. But come on, Mum. If you’re going to tell Granny you’re engaged, you might as well get it over with. Stop panicking. It’ll be fine.’

  I just looked at him. Fine? Was he crazy?

  As you’ve probably worked out already, Sean and I are very different in some ways. I’ve always been the sensible one. I like to think things through and make the right decision. I hate getting into any kind of trouble and Mum’s always been able to rely on me when she needs someone to lean on. Sean, on the other hand, is a bit of a show-off. He likes to play the clown and he always has the ability to make people laugh, even when things are tough. Unlike me, Sean definitely isn’t a worrier.

  For example, if someone says something bitchy to me in school, I’ll spend that whole evening stressing about it, whereas if that happens to Sean, he’ll say the other person is an idiot (or worse) and forget about the whole thing in five seconds flat.

  There are times though, when I reckon it is just being realistic to be worried sick about something – like now, for example. I mean, if you’d met my granny you’d totally get the whole emergency meditation thing. You see, Granny always has an opinion and she invariably thinks it’s her duty to pass it on in its purest form.

  Her reaction when Mum had first started dating Leo was typical. ‘Are you seriously telling me he’s only twenty-eight? You have to be out of your mind, Annabel! You need a boyfriend who can be a father figure to the children – not one who can double up as their playmate!’

  Ouch!

  Oh yes – I could well imagine the horribly tactless and offensive things Granny would say to Mum now.

  ‘The trouble with Granny is that she’s way too honest,’ I said with a sigh.

  Mum nodded. ‘It wouldn’t be so bad if only she’d impart her opinions with just a modicum of sugar coating.’

  I nodded again. But even though that is definitely true, I don’t want you to get the idea that Granny’s all bad. OK, so Mum and her have always argued a lot – mainly because Granny is so bossy and thinks she knows what’s best for everybody. But whenever Mum’s feeling very low, she’ll still phone her to ask for her advice – and then get upset when Granny dishes out far too much of it. The thing is, whenever Mum is really in trouble, it’s always Granny who comes to the rescue. She practically lived with us for the first year after we lost our dad and she also stayed with us a lot during the first few months after Mum split up with Michael. And I have to admit that it was very comforting back then to believe that Granny always knew what to do, because I don’t remember ever feeling that way about Mum after our dad died.

  ‘Mum, you can always let Granny find out later,’ I suggested now.

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ Sean added. ‘It’s not like she’s going to congratulate you in any case. All she’ll do is freak out and launch into her “toy boy” speech again …’

  ‘That’s enough advice from you, Sean,’ Mum responded sharply. ‘And you’d better drop the word “toy boy” from your vocabulary, young man. You know the effect it had on Leo the last time he heard you use it.’

  Sean went all sulky then, like he always does when he gets reminded of that. The thing about my brother is that even though he acts like he doesn’t care about anything half the time, as soon as you get to really know him you find out that there are a few things – and people – that he cares about massively.

  I first realised Leo was one of them six months ago when I saw a side of my brother that I hadn’t seen in quite a while.

  It began one Friday evening when Mum arrived home from work. We’d just started to realise that Mum and Leo were getting serious, and he was spending more and more time at our house.

  ‘Hey, Mum, how does it feel to have a toy boy?’ Sean greeted her jokily the second she walked in through the front door.

  Unfortunately she wasn’t alone. Leo was right behind her. His expression turned icy cold.

  My brother immediately blushed so awfully that his entire face went pink and both of his ears turned bright red. ‘Sorry …’ he mumbled, looking like he might be about to throw up. And that was when I first realised how important Leo was to him.

  For the rest of the evening, Leo stayed cool towards Sean. He went home really early, which Mum blamed on Sean, making my brother feel even worse. When Leo came back the following lunchtime, Sean made a more direct attempt to engage him.

  ‘I’m just doing my English homework, Leo,’ he said. ‘Please can I ask you a question about it?’

  Normally Leo would have been delighted to see my brother taking his homework so seriously. And he’d have been more than happy to switch back into tutor mode for a bit.

  But instead he gave Sean a reprimanding sort of look. ‘I think you should be trying harder to do your homework on your own, Sean,’ he stated crisply. ‘Perhaps if you tried keeping your bottom on your chair and your eyes on the page in front of you for longer than a few minutes at a time, you’d actually find you could do it by yourself.’

  Sean was totally humiliated and he beat a hasty retreat to his bedroom. Even Mum looked a bit surprised by the put-down, though she didn’t say anything.

  Much later that day, after Leo had relaxed and watched one of his favourite films on the sofa with Mum, he went upstairs to talk to my brother, and things were fine afterwards.

  But by that time I had come to understand two things I hadn’t realised before. First, maybe Mum was right about Sean wanting a father figure. And second, Leo was clearly hugely embarrassed and uncomfortable about the age gap between Mum and him. And we were going to have to keep our mouths firmly zipped on that subject from now on if we wanted to keep him in our lives.

  I may not be confident and sophisticated like Lily, or good at making people laugh like Sean, but the one thing I’ve always been able to do well is work out what people are feeling, even when they try to hide it. For instance, I can always tell when Mum is starting to feel down, or when she’s scared and trying to pretend she isn’t, or when she secretly hates whoever it is she’s talking to (which is surprisingly often).

  When Mum finally plucked up the courage to phone Granny and acted disappointed when Granny didn’t pick up, I knew that she was actually relieved. I had to prompt her to leave a message asking Granny to phone back.

  We live in the same town where Mum grew up, but Granny sold that house after she retired and moved away to live in a bungalow by the sea. It’s just as well really, since Mum and Granny get on best when they see each other in small doses.

  ‘I’m going out now,’ Sean announced as Mum put down the phone.

  ‘Where?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Blossom House,’ said Sean.

  Mum works as an estate agent, and Blossom House is one of the houses on her list. ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘I want to take some new photos.’ Sean was looking a bit shifty and I was pretty sure there was more to it than that.

  ‘Do we need new photos?’ Mum sounded surprised.

  ‘Well, the last ones were taken before the blossom came out, and the light at the back of the house should be perfect right now.’

  ‘That’s true, I suppose,’ Mum agreed, looking out of the window. One thing about Mum is that she’s really good at her job. She always likes to wait until the weather is just right before going to take photos of the houses she’s trying to sell, and she always makes sure the pictures are up to date. She says it was our dad who got her doing that because he was massively into photography. Our house is full of photos of us as babies, of Mum looking beautiful, of moody and dramatic shots of the sea and trees and landscapes from all around the world. There are some older family photos too: one of Mum’s fath
er in his magician’s costume, another one of him and Mum together, a couple of my mum and dad at university and one of Granny as a teenager, wearing a massive feathery hat.

  Anyway, whenever a new house gets taken on Mum’s books, she’ll dash out to take pictures of it just after breakfast if that’s when the sun is going to be on the front, and return in the evening if that’s when the light will look best at the back. When we were younger, Mum often had to take Sean and me with her and she started to let us take some photos too. Sean is really good at it now and Mum sometimes ends up using his shots instead of hers. Mum’s boss doesn’t mind. In fact she was the first to tell Sean he must have inherited his talent from our dad.

  Sean went to fetch his camera – an expensive one that had belonged to our dad, which Mum had let him keep.

  I watched him closely as he returned with it and opened the drawer where Mum keeps all the keys for her houses. I still had the feeling he was up to something. But what?

  ‘Don’t take the whole bunch, Sean,’ Mum instructed him. ‘Take off the key to the side gate – that’s all you need. And make sure you lock it again when you leave.’

  ‘I have done this before, Mum,’ Sean said impatiently, just as the phone started ringing.

  ‘Granny!’ we all announced at once.

  But one look at the caller display told us it was Leo.

  ‘I think I’ll go with Sean,’ I whispered as Mum picked up the phone, and Mum nodded as I slipped out through the front door behind my brother.

  Just so you know, Mum would never normally let us take photographs of any of the houses on her list without her being present. But Blossom House has been empty for well over two years, ever since its elderly owner died, and it’s only a five-minute walk from where we live. And of course Mum has no idea that we’ve ever let ourselves inside the house itself …

  ‘Haven’t you got anything better to do?’ Sean asked me as I did my best to keep up with him in my flip-flops.

  ‘Hey, it’s my house too,’ I told him indignantly.

  I expect that sounds weird, but at some point in the past two years we had definitely started feeling as if Blossom House belonged to us. Sean had even had an extra set of keys cut, without telling Mum of course.

  Mum says that she’s always loved houses and that’s why she became an estate agent. I’m beginning to think that might run in our family because I’d definitely fallen head-over-heels in love with Blossom House. It sounds crazy, right? Most girls my age are either madly in love with some guy, or with their pony or with the lead singer in their favourite boy band. But stupid or not, it just happened. There was something about Blossom House that drew me in – right from the very first moment I clapped eyes on it.

  I’ll never forget the first time Mum took us inside.

  It was during the Easter holidays two years ago. Miranda, Mum’s boss, had asked her to check up on a window that she thought might have been left open. It was a couple of weeks after Mum had found out the truth about Married Michael and she wasn’t in a very good state. Mum had already talked to me a lot about how awful she felt, and part of me was glad because it made me feel closer to her. But the other part wished she wouldn’t tell me quite so much, because sometimes the things she said scared me.

  Blossom House was a big detached three-storey Victorian building that had been allowed to fall into a pretty bad state. But on the day we first saw it the magnolia tree in the front garden was in full bloom and all I noticed as we walked down the drive was the gorgeous pinky-white blossom.

  ‘That tree needs cutting down,’ Mum grunted. ‘It blocks out all the light.’

  I gaped at her. I didn’t contradict her though, because when she wasn’t confiding in me she’d been snapping my head off at the slightest provocation ever since she and Michael had split.

  ‘Oh, wow!’ Sean exclaimed after Mum had taken us in through the front door and he had gone to have a look in one of the reception rooms.

  Mum and I went to see what he was wowing about. We found him gazing out of the window at the massive back garden, which was full of cherry blossom trees.

  ‘Oh!’ I gasped as I took in the mass of colour – pinks and pale purples and creams. It made me smile just looking at it, and I glanced at Mum, hoping it might cheer her up a little too.

  Mum didn’t even seem to see the blossom. Her face still wore the same frozen-over expression as she said, ‘Well, it’s not this window that’s open. Come on. Let’s check the others. God, it’s depressing in here.’

  I looked at Sean, not bothering to hide my astonishment.

  ‘Depressing?’ I murmured, because to me it felt like a house from a story, somewhere something magical could happen. The fireplace had a beautiful carved wood surround and gorgeous ceramic tiles depicting pink birds on a green and gold leafy background. Normally Mum would have been in raptures over that – and over the original wooden floor.

  As far back as I can remember, Mum has always talked about her dream house. Now it’s like this game we all play. Mum wants big windows and high ceilings, open fires, at least two proper bathrooms and a lovely big garden. And she thinks the Victorian and Edwardian houses have the most character. She thinks our house is poky and box-like with no character whatsoever, and it’s true, I suppose. Our house is certainly much smaller than Lily’s and we don’t even have a proper garden, just a small rectangle of lawn and a little patio. Sean and I used to share a bedroom until a couple of years ago, when Mum decided we were too old. We had to draw straws to see who’d keep the room we were in and I lost. I had to move into what had until then been the box room, where Mum kept her work stuff and lots of Dad’s old things. Sean kept our big bedroom all to himself, with a desk and bookshelves where my bed used to be. Mum tried to make my new bedroom look nice – I’ve got a platform bed with a desk underneath, and we painted the walls pale blue and stuck a big mirror on one wall to make it feel bigger. But you can’t really fit two people in there, which is why I always end up going round to Lily’s place now that we’re older. Perhaps that’s why Blossom House means so much to me. It totally makes up for my lack of space at home.

  ‘That floor could be so beautiful if it was polished up a bit, couldn’t it, Mum?’ I said, running after her. ‘Maybe we could polish it up. We could polish up all the floors if you like. It might help you sell the house.’

  ‘It’s not our job to polish the floors,’ Mum snapped as she went around checking the other downstairs windows. ‘Anyway, that sort of thing doesn’t make any difference when a house is this overpriced. Frankly, I don’t think the old lady’s son is ready to sell his childhood home at all. If he wasn’t a friend of Miranda’s, I doubt we’d be wasting our time having it on the market at this price, but Miranda thinks we might get him to see sense in the end and she doesn’t want to miss out.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he come back and live here himself if he loves it that much?’ I asked. ‘He could totally do it up and make it really beautiful again!’ (Mum and I are both big fans of all those home improvement programmes on TV, where you see them doing up all sorts of neglected houses.)

  ‘He’s been living in Canada for a good ten years now, according to Miranda. Came back for his mother’s funeral and to sort out the house and put it on the market. Miranda says he needs to sell it but he’s just not quite ready to let it go.’

  I followed Mum up the wide Victorian staircase with its beautiful carved wooden banister rail, and we found the open window on the landing. There was a lovely oak window seat and I thought how, if I lived here, I’d have scatter cushions on the seat and sit there whenever I wanted to have some quiet time all on my own. I imagined myself as a Victorian girl in a beautiful long dress sitting in the window seat, doing embroidery, or wearing an even grander gown of the finest silk and lace, sweeping down the staircase towards the ballroom where all my guests awaited me.

  Normally Mum lets me look around with her if a house is empty and we don’t have anywhere else we have to be, but that day
when I asked her she said that she just wanted to go straight home.

  And when we got home she went upstairs to her bedroom, where she closed the curtains and lay on the bed with the radio turned up loud so we wouldn’t hear her crying about Married Michael.

  Mum had elected not to get up at all the following morning and I was really taken aback when Sean announced that he had a surprise for me. It turned out he had ‘borrowed’ Mum’s set of keys to Blossom House. ‘Let’s go back and take a proper look inside without Mum,’ he suggested.

  ‘Oh, Sean, I don’t think –’

  ‘It’ll be fun and we’re not doing any harm. Come on. It’s better than having to stay in the same house with Mum at the moment. Every time I come home I feel like somebody just died.’

  Sean was right – being at home with Mum was pretty depressing.

  ‘What if someone finds out?’

  ‘Even if they do, I don’t reckon anyone will care. The guy who owns it is in another country, Miranda never goes there and Mum doesn’t care about anything right now except Michael.’ He grinned as he added, ‘Come on, Sasha. Blossom House is lonely and unwanted. Who better than you and me to give it some love?’

  I know that we were only ten then, and you wouldn’t normally expect two ten-year-olds to go and explore an empty house all by themselves, but back then Sean and I did a lot of stuff without Mum and had already learned to be quite independent. Sometimes Mum was so tired she forgot about dinner, so Sean and I got quite good at making beans on toast or scrambled eggs, or else we’d take Mum’s purse and go round the corner to pick up chips for all of us. Our primary school was really close, which meant we could get there and back by ourselves quite easily. So going to Blossom House without Mum didn’t feel that weird.