Page 13 of Oleander

I laughed at that but it came out sounding all weird. “That we be friends? I doubt it; he bloody hates me.”

Luke glanced at me sideways. “Thought you hatedhim?”

“Well, it’s both. We hate each other. We’re not gonna be friends, Luke.”

“Hmmm. Well, let’s see,” said Luke diplomatically. “But no, I meant the cottage. I think he was the one who suggested it to Deveraux. It had to have been. How’d Gideon know we needed a new place to live for the baby?”

This made a strange crawling sensation move over my chest.

“Well, maybe he just mentioned to his uncle about the baby, and it was Deveraux’s idea.” I’m not sure why I hated the notion that Caspien had done something…thoughtful. Something that had helped us out. Something nice for someone. I thought about the way he’d spoken with Luke, all soft and sweet and polite, and I hated that too. He didn’t fool me. He was a nasty little shit, and if he had been the one to suggest it, then I was certain there was something underhand in it.

Except right now, I couldn’t figure out what that might be.

“He said we can drive up and see it tonight. Or tomorrow, whatever you want. But it’s perfect, Bethy. I think you’re gonna love it,” Luke told her. He was literally shining with joy. Beth was uncertain, like she wanted to let go of the edge and fall into full-blown joy but was scared to.

“What did you think of it?” she asked me.

I was so shocked that she cared what I thought at all that I just blinked at first, thoughts trying to scramble into something I could voice.Neighbourswith Caspien? Seeing him more than I already did? Even when school started again, and I didn’t have to work with Luke, there was gonna be the potential to see him every day. I hated the thought of it. It made my gut ache.

But if we moved there it would mean they didn’t need to use all their savings on a new place, and she’d maybe hate me less, and I probably wouldn’t have to change schools.

School.

Caspien went to school in Switzerland.

When school started, he’d leave. I wouldn’t have to see him for months, if at all.

He’d leave, I’d still get my new laptop, and things would go back to the way they were before. And itwasa nice cottage.

“It was nice,” I said finally. “I liked it.”

Beth smiled, biting her lips. Then she nodded. “Okay, let’s go see it tomorrow.”

I wonder now just how different things would have been had Beth hated the Groundsman cottage. I’d likely never have seen Caspien again after that summer. He’d have been a boy I’d had some weird feelings about when I was fifteen. That would have been it. But she hadn’t hated it.

She’d taken one look at its ivy-covered walls, white window trims, and stone path leading up to the front door, and almost squealed.

Gideon got contractors in that same week. Luke would do some work on it when he could this summer, and we’d move in when school stopped in October – that way it wouldn’t interfere too much with my schedule.

It did mean that there was a possibility Caspien would be there while we carried our stuff into the house. He’d probably sneer at our furniture from his horse. I could only hope fancy schools in Switzerland had different holidays from normal English ones.

Four

It was my last day working at the house before school started. A Friday.

It was a day as warm as all the others that had come before it. The next day, we were due to go to town to buy my new laptop and I was fantasising about it. About the stories I could write and the games I could download. It was for school, but the memory on it would mean I could use it for way more than the old model of Beth’s I’d been fighting with for the last two years.

I was still in the arboretum in the afternoon when the sun was highest. I had been five days in there while Luke, Harry, and Ged punched and rolled over soil. I’d worked hard though, and the place was almost clear; the dead stuff was gone; the old tools and pots had been thrown in the skip, and I was weeding carefully around a circular bed in the furthest corner.

Something was alive here, and I didn’t want to kill it. Luke always said that killing plants was like killing animals and you should avoid it unless you couldn’t. They had feelings, apparently. It had sounded like a stupid notion to me at first, but at some point, I’d taken it on as my own.

I was singing quietly to myself when I sensed a presence in the arboretum with me.

I turned to see Caspien standing at the opposite end of the large space, a few feet inside it. He’d voluntarily entered theroom I was in, and the notion made my hands tremble. He was staring at me hard – or so I thought. Actually, he was looking behind me, an odd, far-off look on his face. So far, none of our interactions had gone well, and so I expected no different from this one.

Just being in the same room as him made me feel tense, nervous, and faintly sick.

I decided that the best thing to do would be not to engage. So I turned back to the plant and scraped about at its base, trying to dig out the weeds surrounding the roots so I could lay some fresh soil on top.