Page 6 of Oleander

Part One:

Those fleeting, fiery summers

“You are in every line I have ever read.”

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

One

It was a bright, burning Tuesday in August when Caspien Deveraux broke my heart for the first time.

The news said it was the hottest day on record, though there have been hotter ones since. The weather map on TV showed red warnings, and there were reports of melting train tracks and things spontaneously combusting. My parents had been dead for seven years, and I could barely remember their faces.

It was hard to imagine there even was a time before. Before the Deveraux mansion and the two wraiths that haunted it. Before that summer, when everything was on fire, and I knew what it was to be consumed by flames.

But there was.

I hadexisted before.

I’d once dreamt dreams that were not about him – dreams that were not about his skin, his hands, or his lips which were always twisted with mockery and malice but which would, later, part with want and desire - though I could not now tell you what they were.

Dreams of my parents most likely. Of a life outside of the small island I’d called home since my parents’ deaths. Oxford, probably. Then London. On other, bolder days, Italy, New York.

The year I first met him, I was fifteen. School was done for the term, and the summer break stretched out before me like a cat in the sun.

It was a Tuesday. Life-changing things rarely happened on Tuesdays – or so I had thought. On weekdays, Beth left for work even before I got up; she had to drive to her sales job on the opposite side of the island, and since Luke made his own hours and I clearly couldn’t be allowed to stay home reading all day, I was told I was going to work with him.

He’d tried to make it sound like an adventure; uncaring that my adventures were inside the pages of the book I’d stayed up until 3 a.m. reading. They didn’t involve crumbling old houses and annual delphiniums.

Luke had been born with green fingers, he said. Once, when I was five, he’d said he’d been born with ‘green fingers,’ and I hadn’t known for a long time that he didn’t mean this literally. He knew more about plants and gardens than I knew about Terry Pratchett books. He knew more about plants than most of the garden experts on TV. He talked to plants. Covered them with blankets in the winter. Left the radio on in our greenhouse sometimes for the seedlings he was sprouting. Radio Four: because they liked voices more than music.

That morning, at the sound of him bellowing cheerily up the stairs (Luke never raised his voice in anger), I’d come downstairs, my eyes gritty and my bones still asleep. Yawning, I sat at the kitchen table while he set down a cup containing two boiled eggs, butter, salt and pepper. Buttery toast landed next to it a few moments later.

“Eat up; you’ll need your energy today,” he said around a mouthful of mushed-up egg.

I glared. “It’s child labour, you know.”

“Well, it’s not. Since I’m not paying you.” He thought this was funny and smiled wide. “Well, not in money anyway.”

They were buying me a new laptop the week before school if I stuck to this ‘arrangement’. My stomach flipped with excitement when I thought about it. I could write on it. I could write. Properly. The one I used now was about ten years old and struggled to load two web pages at the same time.

“Three days a week?” I checked.

He nodded. “Eight until three.”

“No Saturdays or Sundays?”

“Not a one. Not unless you want to. I’ll give you double for a Sunday, though.”

“Double of nothing is nothing.” I pointed out.

Luke’s eyebrows rose. “So you aren’t as bad at maths as Mrs Edmunds says, then? Interesting.”

I grumbled as I bit down on an edge of toast. It was still warm, and the butter dribbled over my lip, the scent of the peppery egg making my stomach growl. I’d been hungry before I’d fallen asleep last night.

“How late did you stay up?” His brown eyes softened.

I shrugged.