Chapter 8
Seven years ago
‘Kitty? You’re home!’ Those were Jacob’s first words when I saw him for a surprise visit in the autumn. The first thing I did when our car pulled into the driveway was climb up the branch to the treehouse.
The leaves of the willow formed a carpet around the roots and a few strays were strewn across the floor of the treehouse.
They were yellowed and dry and they crunched with each of my steps towards Jacob.
There was an October chill in the air, but he was the only thing that stayed the same no matter the season.
He hadn’t even dug out his long trousers yet – his knees were still braving the elements, and he didn’t look the slightest bit cold in his t-shirt.
The sun hung low on the horizon this time of year, casting the trees and livestock in shadow as they grazed on the last of the harvest, fattening up for winter.
‘Mum and Dad thought we needed to get away from London for a bit, Dad finally got some time off work, so we’ve come back for half-term,’ I said, settling in beside him as he slid away his favourite atlas.
‘You’re here all week?’ he asked with wide eyes. I nodded, grinning. ‘I have so much to show you!’
Without wasting another minute, he leaped down from the treehouse, not bothering to climb down carefully like everyone else. No matter how much of a rush he was in, however, he always made sure to stop to give me a hand down the steepest part of the branch.
‘How’s Hope?’ I asked. We’d been raising that barn cat for a couple of years and watched her grow from tiny kitten to a fully-fledged adult that could catch birds bigger than her. I knew Jacob took good care of her when I was back in London.
‘Proper chubby now. She eats more of my dinner than I do.’ He shook his head, taking a slight detour to the Hope Farm kitchen for him to scoop up the camera that he’d got for his eleventh birthday, ‘We can go and see her after I’ve shown you this.’
I followed him blindly into the small grove just to the east of Hope Farm.
Hopping over streams and fallen branches, it almost felt like night with the trees so dense.
Even without their leaves, the sun couldn’t quite reach us, though the cloudy day might have helped with that too.
Jacob pressed a finger to his lips to shush me, but I was too excited.
I couldn’t stop myself from breathing heavily, and the crisp leaves under our feet didn’t help our sneaking either.
‘Just through there,’ he mouthed, pointing to the base of an old oak that was all gnarled and twisted with age.
I mean, it was a lovely tree, but unless it could speak or grant wishes, I couldn’t see why he would have brought me here.
I looked to him with furrowed brows, but he just pointed to the tree again without a word.
After a few more moments of silence, some of the fallen leaves began to twitch, and from a hole in the ground, a little black and white nose emerged. I gasped, but before I could scare it away, Jacob pressed a hand to my mouth, silencing me with an amused glint in his eyes.
We watched on as the badger sniffed through the blanket of leaves that had fallen around its set, nudging them around with its nose as though sweeping the porch.
Jacob finally drew his hand away from my face as we both settled onto the ground.
We laid on our bellies as we observed the creature from a distance.
Minutes passed as we watched it go about its business, before the leaves twitched again.
This time, three more badgers emerged from the set.
‘Oh my gosh.’ I couldn’t help but breathe, and thankfully the family didn’t seem to notice. Jacob did, however, and he smiled to himself.
‘I’ve been watching them for a couple of weeks,’ he whispered so quietly that I had to shuffle even closer to him to hear. One side of my body was pressed against his, and the autumn breeze didn’t feel so icy after that.
‘Did you know?’ he asked. ‘Badgers can eat up to two hundred worms every night.’
‘Gross,’ I said, shivering at the thought of anything eating those faceless things.
‘Are you cold? Come here.’ He threw an arm over my back and dragged me even further into him.
‘Thanks.’ I couldn’t look at him to thank him, nor could I tell him that I was only shivering from disgust. But I was too comfortable and the idea of him moving away would be tragic.
Looking back now, I know that was my crush beginning to bloom, but eleven-year-old Ava didn’t have a clue.
I’d always felt warm and at home next to Jacob; I had just assumed that everyone felt the same way in his presence.
But it was coming to a point that even my toes began to tingle at the slightest contact with him.
I remember the way it felt for him to call me Kitty, to single me out from the rest. That’s the memory that would keep me going right through until the next summer, fizzling with anticipation, and longing to be back with him again.
‘The two smaller ones are their babies,’ he continued and I had to try my hardest to concentrate on his words.
‘They would have been born at the start of the year, but they’re blind when they’re born so they don’t come out of the set for a few months.
They’re almost mature now, so sometimes they’ll leave and start their own families, but often they stay together. They like the company.’
I could listen to him talk for hours. Sometimes, I did just sit and let him talk, especially when he had so much to say about whatever obscure new animal he’d learned about.
It was funny – when we were around the others, he barely had one word to say.
Sian told Granny that he’s shy, and Will said he’s mardy.
But I’d realised that Jacob only spoke to people that actually wanted to hear him.
Will, Lizzie, Alfie and Callum didn’t really care to listen.
They just wanted to be running around, or fighting.
‘I bet you’re top of your class at school, aren’t you?
’ I asked. ‘You’re the cleverest boy I know.
’ I hadn’t been watching the badgers for a while.
I liked to see how his face changed as he talked about the animals.
It’s like he was reading straight out of an encyclopaedia in his head.
I noticed he had a new scar above his eyebrow.
At the mention of school, however, his expression shifted and he sat up, holding his knees to his chest. He looked down to the forest floor. ‘My teacher doesn’t like me much.’
I sat up so quickly, the rustling sent the family racing back into their set. I grimaced at the thought of disturbing them, but turned back to what had concerned me first. ‘What do you mean? How can anyone not like you, Wolfie?’
‘I get in trouble a lot,’ he muttered, picking up a fallen leaf and tearing it into tiny pieces.
‘What kind of trouble?’ The Jacob I knew was never told off, apart from when he walked through the house with his muddy wellies on.
He shrugged. ‘I have to stay behind most lunchtimes to finish my work, and then I just get in more trouble in the afternoon.’ A little anger flashed across his face.
‘I don’t get it. I hate it. I just sit in the same chair all day and I feel like my head is going to explode.
I just can’t pay attention. I want to be outside; I want to run around.
The classroom is so stuffy! It feels like the room gets smaller and smaller every time I go back. It’s like I’m trapped in there.’
Picking up a stray conker, he threw it back at the horse chestnut tree it came from. It bounced off the trunk with such force we had to dodge it on its way back towards us. I didn’t know what to say, but my silence didn’t deter him, so he continued.
‘I don’t get why I have to do all of that stuff.
Those badgers don’t go to school. They roam this bit of woodland for as long as they like.
Just like the foxes, or the muntjacs, or the mice.
And they’re happy, aren’t they? I wish I actually was a wolf, Kitty.
They can go wherever they like and they don’t get told off for tapping their pencil on the desk. ’
‘Maybe one day we can run away and live in the woods too,’ I said, thrusting my hand into the pile of leaves.
‘You’d come with me?’ He looked at me, the pleading look of a dog in his eyes.
‘Of course I would, Wolfie. I’d follow you into sets, dens, hives, anywhere you took me. I’d be happy as long as it was you and me.’
He smiled without looking at me, then spun around to lie back on his belly and we waited side by side for the badgers once more.
When the autumn breeze began to make the fallen leaves tremble around us, I tried my best to mask my shivers, but nothing could ever get past Jacob. Getting to his feet, he dusted off his shorts and offered me a hand up before I could protest.
We walked together in silence back through the woods. I wasn’t sure whether Jacob was deep in thought like I was, or whether he just didn’t want to disturb the other creatures as they began to stir in the evening air, but it was comfortable.
‘Do you want to come with me to do my jobs?’ Jacob turned to me once we had cleared the treeline.
‘Your jobs?’ I replied, and he nodded, with a little excitement.
‘Mum and Dad think that now I’ve started secondary, that I should have some responsibilities on the farm.
They put me in charge of sweeping the barn, checking on the chickens, feeding the pony, things like that.
They’re not big jobs, but it makes me feel like I’m actually useful somewhere.
’ He shrugged. ‘Plus, Hope will probably be in the barn this time of night too …’ he added, as though I needed tempting.
‘Yeah, sure, I’ll come with you.’ He clenched his fists in excitement, then tried to pass it off as a stretch, but the gesture was already enough to make me a little giddy.
We reached the barn in no time. Jacob could hardly keep up as I moved even faster at the promise of seeing Hope again.
And there she was, pacing the concrete as if she had been waiting for us to arrive, like my mother paced the kitchen if I was late home for dinner.
As soon as we stepped past her threshold, she weaved in an out of my legs, pressing her face against my trousers with a loud rumbling purr.
‘Will tried to pick her up the other day and she took a swipe at him,’ Jacob said as she hopped happily into my arms to continue her fussing. This time, she pressed herself against my cheek. ‘He was so mad; pretty sure she drew blood.’
‘You’d never do such a thing would you.’ I pressed myself into her fur, knowing full well she could take down a full-grown man if she so desired.
Whilst I busied myself catching up with my furry friend, Jacob got to work sweeping the barn until he broke out into a sweat. Setting Hope back down on her bed, I found another brush and set to work beside him.
‘You don’t have to do that, Kitty.’ He shook his head, a smile playing on his lips.
‘Of course, I do. We’re a team.’ And with two of us on the task, it was soon spotless and we fell against a bale of hay, both out of breath and panting.
‘You’re coming to the Halloween party, right? Since you’re here.’ Jacob always had a funny way of asking – as if he was trying to be casual, slipping it in to conversation, as though he wasn’t too bothered about the answer. But I always knew he was.
‘Halloween party?’ I asked, genuinely unaware of any such event.
‘Has no one told you?’ His eyes lit up. ‘Halloween at Hope Farm is the best thing in the world. It’s mum’s favourite holiday and she goes all out. Costumes, buffet, party games, everything. Well, Will thinks he’s too cool for a costume, but we all wear one, even Dad.’
‘What costume are you wearing?’
He shrugs, ‘I have a couple to choose from but they’re mostly all of Will’s old superhero costumes. I wanted to be a wolf, but we don’t have any like that.’
‘Well, if Mum does let me come, I don’t have a costume either,’ I said with a sad hum, and a small silence settled between us before the idea hit me, ‘Why don’t we make our own?’
‘We could do that?’ his face lit up once more.
‘Yes! My granny has a sewing machine. I’m sure if I asked her, she’d show me how to use it.
She taught me to sew by hand a few summers ago, but that takes me ages.
It’s really fun though, making your own clothes.
Granny makes most of mine.’ I had been trying my hand at sewing back in London, mostly just patching the holes in my trousers that I’d made in the summer.
Holes in your trousers may be a common occurrence on a farm, but you do get a few funny looks on the London Underground.
‘I can’t wait.’ Jacob grinned.
‘Me too.’