Charlcombe, Somerset
July 1985
The girl reminded him of a little witch. With her long dark curls, high cheekbones, and eyes of an indefinite greyish-blue colour, she didn't resemble any of his classmates.
After checking her bike, he tugged at the chain to show her how it had slipped off. "Needs to be changed," he decreed in a confident voice.
"Oh," she said. A deep crease had appeared between her eyebrows.
He had noticed the small figure pushing a bike up the slope outside their cottage during his afternoon break. The sun was scorching, and Alec had debated whether the girl was worth leaving the Raymond Chandler book he was reading, but in the end curiosity had won the upper hand. He had seen her around several times, riding that red bike, sitting in the grass scribbling on a notepad, climbing trees. Always on her own. His mother had told him that she was the daughter of the family that had rented the Hawksdale Cottage up the hill.
He had overcome his shyness and diffidence toward girls and had approached her and asked if she needed any help. She had stared at him with a frown for a while. Then, she had shrugged and pointed at the pedals. "They suddenly got loose."
She must have fallen, because her left knee was dirty and scratched. Alec was about to suggest to have it cleaned as soon as possible, but gave up after he met her stern eyes.
Alec led her over to the shade of an oak and crouched over the dusty bike. "That's not hard to repair," he said. "Probably your father..."
The girl shook her head. "He's busy," she murmured, as if talking to herself. She suddenly stood up and brushed off her hands on her shorts. "But thank you; at least now I know what the matter with this rattletrap is." She smiled, but her smile had something sad. It made Alec wonder if she wasn't older than she looked.
He watched her walk away and thought that maybe he should have offered to repair it for her.
That night a soft rain wrapped the countryside in a grey, hazy shawl. Alec finished reading his book, started another one and ate some apple pie just to have a reason to take a break from reading for half an hour. On the morning of the third day, he was so bored he decided to go downtown to buy groceries for his mother.
The shops on Main Street were almost deserted, so he spotted the strange girl at once. She was sitting inside The Green Rocket - Charlcombe's one and only cafe - scribbling on a notepad. Her chin rested on the palm of her hand and she seemed completely unaware of her surroundings. As if to contradict him, she glanced up a few seconds later and looked at him through the glass window. His ears turned red when she caught him staring and he felt the urge to leave, but she had clearly recognized him and he didn't want to appear even more uncool. Besides, she was just a little girl.
He stepped into the cafe, and the girl closed her notepad and smiled at him while she took her backpack from the chair next to her so he could sit down. He ordered a macchiato, but if his adult beverage impressed her, she didn't show it.
"Hello, how's your bike?" He inquired, only half interested.
She shrugged. "In the barn, still broken."
"I'm sorry."
"Awww, thank you. I'll tell her you asked after her."
Was she teasing him? God, he couldn't stand girls. He frowned and tasted his coffee. It burned his tongue, but he pretended to savour it. "Were you writing something?" he asked, crossing his arms and lounging on the chair.
She shook her head. "Drawing."
"Can I see?"
"No way. I'm Tess, by the way." She extended her hand.
He shook it. "Alec."
"Weird name."
"It's Scottish."
"Yes, you sound quite Scottish."
"Do I?"
"Aye." She smiled again.
"You are staying at the Hawksdale Cottage, right?"
"Yes, with Mum and Phil. Do you live here?"
"Oh no, I'm from Glasgow. My mother got the cottage down the hill from her family and we're spending a few weeks there."
He hadn't asked about Phil and she didn't ask about his father. He was glad she wasn't a chatterbox as many of the girls in his class were, but she wasn't like his mate Brian either: she kept staring at him in a way that made the skin on the back of his neck prickle. His younger self would have wondered whether that girl wasn't really a witch. Also, her accent was quite posh, and the cottage up the hill was one of the fanciest in Charlcombe, but with her shorts and battered Converse, she didn't look like a rich girl.
When he spoke again, it was mainly to escape her piercing blue-grey eyes. "I can have a look at that chain, if you want."
She gaped at him. "Would you?"
For a terrible moment Alec feared that she would reach across the table to hug him, but she regained her composure almost at once and said, "I mean, if it's not too much of a hassle."
Alec sneered. "That's ok. Just tell me when I can drop in at your place."
Tess bit her upper lip. "What if I bring you the bike instead?"
He though it was a bit strange for a girl her age to be so willing to go to a stranger's house, but didn't say anything. They agreed she would bring the bike to his garage that same afternoon.
"Bloody pin..." Alec kept hitting it with the handle of the screwdriver, hoping behind hope to manage to loose the damaged chain-pin. His hands were dirty with black grease and his forehead sweaty. He casted an anxious sideways glance at Tess.
The girl was sitting on her haunches in front of him, absorbed in contemplation of an old wrench.
"I'd need a chain tool," he blurted out, knowing that his cheeks were getting red and that there wasn't anything he could do to prevent it. Why the hell had he told her he was able to fix her stupid bike?
"I'll buy it for you," Tess said and jumped up.
"Now?"
"Yes? There is a hardware store near the church, isn't there? They should have it."
She really wanted that bike fixed. Alec wondered why her stepfather, or whoever that Phil was, had done nothing to help her. "Tess, it's raining pretty hard."
She raised her eyes to the garage roof as if to gauge the noise of the rain, then - defeated - dropped her shoulders. "Yeah. Sorry, I'm kind of pestering you. May... may I just wait for the rain to lessen a bit before I leave?"
Alec knew he had tried his best, but felt as he had let her down and the idea made him sad. Which was weird since he barely knew her. "Sure. There, sit wherever you want. I'll fetch us a coke."
He ran a hand through his hair and disappeared through the adjoining door.
When he came back with two tall glasses of coke, Tess seemed to be in a better mood. She was looking at the stack of books Alec had brought from home with her hands clasped behind her back.
"You like detective novels," she said, taking her drink from him.
"Sort of."
"You want to become a detective?" There wasn't trace of mocking in her voice; she sounded genuinely curious.
Alec shrugged. "I don't know. Sometimes I think I should just get a job and help my mother. It's not like I have any special talent, anyway." He tried to keep his cool, but thoughts like this kept on gnawing at him since his father had left. His mother hadn't obtained a divorce from his father yet, so he wasn't bound to give them a penny. She had never told him, but Alec knew that she was picking up extra shifts at the convenience store where she worked. He was about to turn fourteen, and - running after his books and dreams - felt like a parasite.
"I don't know you enough to tell whether you're a genius, but you sure are a kind guy. A lousy but kind mechanic." Under the harsh neon light, her eyes had hazel sparks.
"Oi!"
She grinned and stuck her tongue out at him.
"You are really fond of that bike, aren't you?" It felt strange to feel so relaxed talking to a girl he had just met, but he felt compelled to find out more about her.
"Not really." Tess' smile faded, and she started to play with the pages of a book. "It was just... useful for a little project I had."
"What kind of project?"
She shook her head and scowled. "It was stupid. Maybe it's a good thing that the old piece of junk broke."
Alec finished his drink in silence, giving her time in case she felt like saying more.
"I need it to get to Swainswick and back without my family knowing."
"What's in Swainswick?"
Tess closed the book and looked straight at him. "An art competition."
Right, he had seen her sketching. He chose his next words carefully, sensing he was walking on eggshells. "And you needed your bike to submit your contribution."
"That's correct, Sherlock."
"But why don't you want your family to know?"
Tess cleared her throat and crossed her arms in front of her chest.
Alec raised his eyebrows.
"I'm never going to win anyway, so why bother them. Listen, you don't have to help me."
"Oh, shut up. I'll go get the chain tool first thing tomorrow and I'll try to get old rattletrap fixed before lunch. Either that or you could borrow my mother's bike. When's the deadline for submissions?"
"8 pm the day after tomorrow. But I got to be back home before 7 pm."
"We'll make it."
She flashed him a smile, her eyes sparkling with mischievous excitement. They agreed to meet under the big oak the following afternoon.
Tess thanked him again, and before he could offer her an umbrella she was scrambling up the hill in the rain like a dark fairy.
At dinner, Alec tried to find out more.
Since he hadn't made any friends in the village, his mother was his only source of information about the family living at the Hawksdale. However, all he managed to gather from her was that there weren't any siblings, and that nobody seemed to have ever seen the mother. The dad, Phil Curtis, was thought to be a London broker, but Mrs Hardy had never talked to him and she wasn't sure about the source of the gossip.
"What does he look like?" Alec urged her on.
She stood up and started to clear the table. "I'm not sure, darling. Let's see... Mid forties, tall, blondish, wears neon polo shirts? But why bother with the father when it's the daughter you're interested in?" She added with a wink, passing him a pile of plates.
"I'm just helping her with a project. And I don't think Mr Curtis is her father."
But his mother didn't relent. "Whatever. She's cute as a button anyway, isn't she?"
Alec frowned, hoping to look more grown up than he felt. "She's just a kid, mum. And a weird one at that."
Mrs Hardy chuckled, and - as he went to his room - Alec felt he had lost a battle.
"That's brilliant!" Tess cried, riding her bike in circles around him, her arms dangling at her sides.
The rain of the previous days had cleaned the air, and that afternoon the sun blazed bright in a blue sky.
Alec had worked hard to get that chain fixed; even with the chain tool the task had turned out to be a pain in the arse, but he was proud of the outcome. He grinned, carried away by his friend's enthusiasm.
When she got off the bike and sat near him, her cheeks were flushed and strands of dark curls were sticking to her forehead. She smiled at him, and he had to divert his eyes to the grass blade he had just picked.
"Can I see your painting?"
"I'd prefer if you didn't. I'm really just a beginner."
Alec was crestfallen. After all he had done to help her, he thought he had at least won enough of her trust to see her work. "What kind of competition is that, anyway? One for kids?" He snapped.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her pucker her lips. "How old do you think I am?"
"Dunno. Ten?" That was mean, but he thought she deserved it.
She glared at him. "I'm twelve."
Alec whistled. He heard her rummaging in her backpack, and a moment later a cardboard folder landed on his lap. He opened it and there it was: a delicate watercolour of the tiny lake of Charlcombe. Alec wasn't an art expert, but to him it was beautiful. The turquoise water and the yellow dandelions she had painted on the bank seemed to blend in a sort of hazy halo, giving the well-known view a dreamlike atmosphere.
"Tess, this is amazing. You really did it yourself?"
Her lips were pressed into a stubborn line.
Alec tried a more cautious approach. "Why haven't you painted your cottage though? From what I remember, it's pretty... picturesque."
"Because I hate it."
"Is it because of your family? The reason why you didn't want me to come check your bike there?"
Tess' shoulders stiffened. "I don't want to talk about it."
Alec nodded, knowing how she felt. The memory of the never-ending sessions with Mrs Petrov after his dad's flight from home last winter still made him cringe. He knew the chubby school counsellor meant no harm, but the last thing Alec had needed during those weeks was to answer to her corny questions about love and abandonment.
Yet, there was one thing he had to know. Trying to ignore his sweaty palms, he spoke as casually as he could. "Phil... is your step-father, right?"
She turned to look at him, an eyebrow raised.
"Is he... rough with you?"
She chuckled, but it didn't sound like a laugh. "Oh Alec. Nope, Phil - my stepfather - never laid a hand on me." After a beat of silence, she hugged her knees and stared straight in front of her. "That would be too much of a bother for him. As long as I keep what in your books would be called a low profile and I'm on time for dinner, I guess Phil and I get along fine."
"He doesn't want you around?"
"He's ok, really. And loves my mother. Just what happened kind of..." She bit her lips. "Shattered them."
"What was that?"
"My little brother's death."
Alec wasn't aware he was holding his breath until he released it. "Holy shit."
"He got sick last year just after I started school and died three months ago. Leukaemia. Everybody loved Cullen so much; he was just a happy bouncing thing who never would have hurt anyone."
"How old was he?"
"He would have turned four three weeks ago."
"Tess I'm so..."
"I'm still so angry and sad that he had to die so young, but..." Her voice caught and she rested her forehead on her knees. "But sometimes I just want to be happy and laugh and ride my bike fast. And I think this is wrong, I think I should hurt more and spend my days in bed like mum does. I think I'm a bad person and maybe it was me who should have died in his place."
Alec did a thing he had never done before: he put an arm around another person's shoulders. He felt her stiffen at first, then relax a bit and sniff. He rubbed Tess' slender arm awkwardly, surprised to find himself fighting a giant knot at the back of his throat. Now everything made sense: her spending so much time out and about, her reticence about bringing people home.
An absurd thought formed in his mind: 'I want to keep being there for you'.
"Is that why you started to draw? 'Cause it was something you could do away from home?"
She shook her head. "My mother is... she was an art teacher, and we used to sketch together when I was little. I was never any good, but I thought that if I won that stupid contest maybe she would be happy. And you know, proud of me."
Alec winced. He had felt the same way towards his father countless times. Striving to make him proud, to be good enough for him, and always failing. He sensed those kind of goals were unattainable, yet he wanted to help Tess.
"I think you are talented. You could make it."
She lifted her red puffy face. "Yeah?"
"Aye."
She elbowed him. "Sop."
"Oi!"
She stood, drying her eyes with the back of her hand and smiling down at him. "Then I'll submit my masterpiece tomorrow."
"What time are you leaving?"
"I don't know. Have to have lunch at home, so I guess early afternoon. Fancy a trip to Swainswick?"
Alec shrugged. He did, but he really wished she'd stop smiling at him like that. It made him feel sort of uncomfortable. "2pm?"
"Deal. And thank you for listening, Alec." Without giving him time to reply, she got on her bike and left.
Alec felt quite clumsy riding his mother's lilac bike. He had grown about four inches over the last six months, and now he felt he had too much leg and arm and most of the time wasn't sure what to do with them. He circled their cottage a couple of times, and when he felt marginally more confident about his biking skills headed off to meet Tess.
Despite this, she chuckled when she saw him. He rolled his eyes and led the way out of town. They rode on dirt roads in comfortable silence through green fields and small clusters of houses, enjoying the fresh air and the high, endless sky. She had brought a pack of cookies and two bottles of soda, so about midway they sat on a stone wall to rest and have a snack.
"Hey Sherlock?"
"Stop calling me that, please."
"Do you think that I will make a fool of myself with my little painting?"
"No."
"Do you reckon I could win?"
"I have no idea, Tess. I like your painting very much, but I don't know how good the other participants are going to be."
She nodded and threw cookie crumbs to a grey duck that had come to observe them from a nearby pond.
"But the point is another. I don't think you should try to earn your mother's love by winning a competition." It was tough talking about these things, but for once the need to say something was stronger than the difficulty to voice it. "I think she should, and I would, be proud of you for trying and doing your best."
"Phil rented the cottage to speed up her recovery; clean air, nature, and stuff like that. But she still spends almost all her days in bed, sleeping or watching the telly. Sometimes he shuts himself in the bedroom with her, and I can hear them arguing. I wasn't supposed to come with them you know, I was supposed to stay with my father in London, but he got an important project at work at the very last minute. Phil got spectacularly mad at him."
"What a prick."
Tess sneered, creasing her brow. "Who?"
"Both. Listen, I'm sure your mother loves you very much. What happened to her was terrible, she just needs some time." Fearing that he had said too much, Alec jumped off the fence and ran away with his bike, leaving a disgruntled Tess behind.
He slowed down almost at once, waiting for her to catch up on him, but she didn't. Muttering under his breath, he stopped. "Tess? We're already late."
He could see her pushing her bike, walking so slowly she almost stood still. Her head was craned back, and if she heard him she didn't acknowledge it.
"Bloody girls. Oi?"
"Houston, we have a problem." She sounded tense and still wasn't looking at him.
Torn between annoyance and worry, Alec rode back to her. The source of the problem seemed to be the young duck she had just fed, which had no intention to stop following her.
Tess was hissing at it to go away, but the little thing kept trudging after her bike.
Alec chuckled. "It thinks you're its mum."
"Will you shut up?"
"Oooh, someone is being prickly!"
"You're not helping much."
"Just ignore it."
"But it will follow me, get lost, and die of starvation alone and far from its family."
"Geez, Tess."
Alec tried to shoo it away himself, but the duck relented only a few inches.
"See?"
"I think we'll have to run. Its legs are shorter than yours, I doubt it is a good sprinter."
Tess glared at him and got on her bike. However, her voice was low and sweet when she spoke to her new feathery friend. "So I guess that's a farewell, little duck. Take care of yourself and think of me sometimes, will you?"
Her wistful voice brought him a sudden pang of sadness. But there wasn't the time to dwell on it, since a moment later she was sprinting down the dirt road.
They sped on their bikes, raising clouds of dust, until they were forced to a screeching halt in front of a bale of hay in the middle of the road. They leaned against it; laughing so hard they had troubles catching their breath.
The rest of the trip was quieter. Alec waited outside Swainswick City Hall as Tess submitted her work and, as they started their journey back, he asked when and where they were going to announce the winners.
"Couple of weeks, in the local newspaper."
"Oh. Hope I'll still be here, then."
"What do you mean?"
"Mum has to go back to work by the beginning of August."
Tess scrunched up her face and nodded.
He opened his mouth to say something but couldn't find the words. The deafening silence marked the whole journey back. When they finally arrived at the bottom of their hill, the shadows had turned long and sharp, and the lights inside Alec's cottage were on.
"Are you going to be on time for dinner?" He asked.
"Aye," she smiled. "Thank you for the company. It has been an interesting ride."
"Same here. See you around?"
"Yeah. And Alec?"
"Uh?" He was already fumbling with the gate to the garden.
"I may look like a duck, but you look like a stick insect."
Alec smiled and shook his head, amazed. She had a point.
They spent the following days together. Tess borrowed a couple of his books and managed to guess who the murder was both times, and they just hung out with each other: they read, chatted, hiked, and bickered.
They were resting under the old oak after they had helped his mother hang up the laundry when Tess handed him a newspaper cutting with the results of the competition.
She wasn't among the three winners.
"Fuckwits," he said and crumpled the piece of paper in his hand.
To his surprise, Tess was smiling. "Wankers!"
"Lavy heid."
She gaped at him.
"It means toilet head."
They both snorted. Alec looked at the branches swaying in the breeze and wished time could stop. The light, which had been blinding a few minutes earlier, was getting soft and painted the clouds orange, pink and gold. The days were getting shorter, gnawed on by dark humid nights. In forty-eight hours he would be back in his old room in the outskirts of Glasgow, those sounds and smells - crickets chirping, footfalls on wet grass, a dog barking in the distance - just a memory. But most of all, he didn't like to imagine her on her own in that cottage up the hill.
Again, that absurd thought. 'I want to keep being there for you'.
He had seen his father yelling at his mother and had felt powerless and angry. He had been happy to see him leave their home, no matter how tight the money was, but the burning shame of having done nothing to protect his mother hadn't gone away. He was glad he got the chance to help Tess, to do something for her. He hoped he had been able to make her feel safe, protected and a little less lonely.
He closed his eyes. Maybe that was what he wanted to do: to help those who were struggling, weak or forgotten. All his books, all the time spent worrying whether he was as smart as his fictional heroes, suddenly felt like a childish game. The warmth and the excitement he'd felt when he had been able to fix Tess' bike had been a thousand times better than any Sherlock Holmes denouement. That had been real, and his awkward self had been able to make a difference.
He felt Tess' piercing eyes on him, and turned.
"Where were you?" She asked with a half smile. "You looked like your thoughts were light years away."
"Just thinking."
"About Glasgow?"
"About the future. I hope to get to see you again, Tess."
She stared at him for a moment then looked away, still smiling. "Your ears are very red."
"You are annoying."
"I know. And yeah, seeing you again would be cool."
Tess was sure that her galloping heart was going to wake her mother and Phil. 'Don't creak', she mentally pleaded with the front door as she opened it. At first she thought she would never make it down the hill in that pitch-black darkness, but as her eyes adjusted to it, she was able to make out the familiar landscape.
She scampered down the slope, hugging the cardboard folder to her chest, humming a silly song to distract herself from the mysterious sounds filling the air.
More than a day later, she felt bad about her remark about Alec's ears. After their conversation under the oak she had run to her room and punched her pillow, angry with herself for being so mean. Of course she was hoping to see him again. Alec Hardy had been the first person to make her feel as if she weren't invisible in a long, long time. But he had done more: he had shown her that she could fail and yet the world wouldn't end. It was funny, because she hadn't felt as if she had let him down when she had shown him the clipping with the results of the competition.
"I would be proud of you for trying and doing your best," he had told her, and she was surprised to find out that she believed him.
Tess knew she had a bad temper, but she couldn't allow her farewell to him to be a stupid remark about his ears.
When she spotted Alec's white cottage through the black foliage, she felt a well-known prickling in her eyes. In a few hours it would be empty, his books and Mrs Hardy's bike gone forever. She let a few tears roll down her cheeks, knowing that nobody would see them.
Alec's room was on the ground floor. She tapped on the windowpane, waited, and tapped again.
He didn't take long until his huge eyes appeared behind the glass. "What the... What happened? Are you all right?"
Tess nodded. "Sorry to wake you. I didn't know what time you were going to leave tomorrow morning, and since I couldn't sleep... But I had to wait for Phil to go to bed." She knew she wasn't making much sense. "Can you sneak out a moment? I have something for you."
He climbed out of the window, and she smiled when she saw that he was wearing old-fashioned striped pyjamas. She leaned against the fence and gave him the folder with her watercolour of the lake.
Alec took it, but hesitated.
"Please, take it with you. The Fine Arts Committee was supposed to keep the entries once the bloody competition was over, but today I went back to Swainswick and asked if I could have my work back, and here it is. I know it's not good, and you don't need to frame it or anything. Just... keep it. See? I also wrote a stupid inscription on the back." Her voice broke and she covered her face in shame and frustration. Alec's silence was deafening, and she was making a fool of herself.
Gathering all the courage she had, Tess raised her eyes. His face was hard to read, but a moment later she found herself in a tight embrace. When was the last time she had been held? At Cullen's funeral, by her aunt Patricia. But even a kid like her knew that it wasn't the same; this hug was much warmer, more awkward and scary. She felt his fingers stroking her hair and she tried to relax. She knew that that hug was his parting gift for her, and Tess wondered whether there was a way to keep the memory of it with her forever.
Afterwards, they walked back to her house together, talking about mundane things and plans for the near future. They agreed to write to each other, and Alec promised he would visit her in London during the winter break. They also agreed she wouldn't come to see him leave the following morning, because that would be "too depressing and soppy."
At the door she turned, but he was already gone from view and, a few seconds later, the darkness swallowed the soft thudding of his feet on the grass.
She tried to call after him, but he didn't hear her. She couldn't raise her voice because her mother and Phil were sleeping in the room above the door, and even if she could - even if she called him back - what would she tell him?
She sat on the front steps and took in the smell of the wet grass. A small bug tried to climb over her sneaker but fell down, kicking its black legs in the air. Tess turned it with her finger and the bug scurried away. Life wasn't easy, but she hoped that Alec's road wouldn't be too bumpy and that he would hold tight to his dreams.
"Have a safe journey, Sherlock," She said in the still air. "And think about me sometimes."