Chapter Five
‘So, are we off then?’ Mae asked from her bed.
She was playing snake on their dad’s phone while Luna set up her sketchbooks in the small circle of space at the end of their beds.
Luna and Mae shared a room at home, where they didn’t need to, and in the cottage where they did, since there were only two bedrooms.
The cottage, decorated by their mum, was cream.
And white. Everything was cream and white.
Some of the things had little pink flowers on them, like Luna’s bedding for instance.
Or else little blue flowers, like the curtains.
There was one wall of bare stone behind their beds (this was Luna’s favourite thing in the cottage) and an antique chest of drawers by the door (her second favourite).
Luna felt like it was the bedroom of a dainty person. The sort who brushed their hair until it was shiny every night before bed and knelt down to say their prayers. No matter how hard she tried, Luna didn’t feel like that person. And Mae… well, Mae didn’t even try.
‘What about Mum?’ she asked.
Mae rolled her eyes where she was laid on her bed, a leg draped over her bent knee.
‘She’s not going to ground us for the summer – we only make the place look a mess, same as Dad. Plus, Eyebrow Clive is here. I saw her heading out into the garden with a cocktail twenty minutes ago. Let’s just go ask Dad if we can go out.’
Eyebrow Clive was their neighbour; their cottages shared a hedge.
Luna’s mum was a Clive fan, a Clive superfan if you like.
In Luna’s mind, Clive was ancient already, with this sweep of grey hair but the biggest, darkest eyebrows she’d ever seen.
They were like slugs. That’s how he got his nickname, which wasn’t very original, but it was what they’d come up with four years ago when Clive bought the place next door.
Eyebrow Clive was rich. He talked about his favourite wine a lot and did this chortly-posh laugh while saying things like, ‘Very good, Jennie, very good,’ when he and Luna’s mum had deep and meaningful conversations over the hedge.
Luna could never remember a time when her parents had seemed as if they liked each other, so she had no real basis for comparison, but it seemed like her mum laughed an awful lot more with Eyebrow Clive than she did with any of them.
‘Poor Dad,’ she said.
‘Yep, totally tragic. Maybe he can get a serum to grow his eyebrow hair, and then Mum will fancy him again.’ Mae launched herself out of bed. ‘But you know what’s even more tragic?’ she asked.
Luna noticed that Mae still hadn’t changed her T-shirt.
‘No, what?’
‘The fact that you’re thirteen and you’ve never been kissed. That’s way worse than your own wife being repulsed by you. They’re going to write articles about you in Seventeen magazine.’
‘They are not.’ Luna stood up too, a little bit worried that that might actually be a thing. She didn’t want to be weird, or tragic. She just wanted to be normal, to fit right in. ‘There’s just no one that I want to kiss. I’m not kissing just anyone.’
There was a chortly laugh from the garden. ‘Very good, Jennie, very good.’
‘Come on, before her drink runs out and she has to come back in the house.’ Mae grabbed her sunglasses from the top drawer. Luna was pretty sure that they were joke ones; they were so thick, but Mae thought that they made her look cool, and who was Luna to argue?
Luna fluffed her already wild hair in the little mirror they had hanging on the wall next to the door.
‘You look amazeballs,’ Mae said, already out of the room. ‘Someone better snog your face off this summer. Now let’s go.’
The girls found their dad at the small dining table, glueing together a model of some old aeroplane.
Neither of her parents had ever demonstrated to Luna what a happy relationship might look like, but her dad had instilled in her an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of old planes, which hopefully counted for something.
‘Look at this, girls.’ He ushered them closer in hushed tones, as if talking loudly might cause the model to fall to pieces somehow. ‘It’s a Supermarine Walrus mark one.’ He held it up so that Luna and Mae could inspect it.
Luna and Mae made a sound to show that they were impressed. Luna mostly felt sorry for her dad, which made her kind of sad.
‘Where do the bombs come out?’ Mae asked, talking in a normal voice. This wasn’t their first rodeo when it came to their dad and his models.
Luna might feel sorry for her dad, but there was no denying that he was the reason she was so big and hairy since he was a big bear of a man.
This was what Luna thought when her dad took his T-shirt off at the beach.
He even had hair on his back. He was tall and wide and probably quite strong.
It was just that his personality didn’t match his stature.
He was softly spoken and gentle. Most of the time he just seemed confused by his wife.
He was an aeroplane engineer. Her mum once asked why he spent so much time making aeroplane models, since he spent his working life around the real thing, and he’d answered that he admired the fragility of models.
Even now, it did look kind of funny, his big hands delicately touching a small, fragile aeroplane.
‘This plane was purely for reconnaissance, Mae. No bombers on this one.’ He held up his model carefully.
Their dad only stayed with them for two weeks of summer, then he went home to work before driving back to get them four weeks later. It meant that Luna, Mae and their mum were here for six weeks. Six weeks. It felt like a whole lifetime.
‘It’s a great model, Dad,’ Luna said. ‘Maybe we could go to the puffins while you’re here.’
Mae was making eyes at her since she wasn’t the biggest fan of the puffins or their dad’s bird talk. But Luna wanted their dad to have a nice time.
‘What a fantastic idea, Luna. We might even see a puffling while we’re there.’ Her dad nudged her with his elbow and winked. ‘You always liked them.’
‘Hopefully,’ she played along. ‘Hey, would it be okay if me and Mae went and played outside for a bit? We’ve been inside all day and in the car. I think some fresh air would do us good.’
He waved them away. ‘Of course, go, go, you girls have fun.’
They made a dash for it, only stopping when their dad called, ‘What time did your mum say that you needed to be back?’
‘Nine!’ Mae answered, not missing a beat, even though it was definitely eight.
‘See you at nine then. Have fun!’
They quite literally ran out of the door, down the path in front of the cottage and along the pavement that took them to the centre of Bamburgh.
Luna’s jaw hurt from smiling. She held out her arms as she ran.
Here, she felt taller, unburdened. And in this instance, her extra height felt like a gift rather than something to be ashamed about.
They ran faster still, breathing in the salty sea air and laughing.
Bamburgh was tiny, so it took no time at all to reach the red telephone box. That’s where they always met, and there was Emmett.
Luna might come and go from Northumberland, but he was always here.
So much so that Luna wasn’t entirely sure where Northumberland ended and Emmett began.
They slowed to a walk, her smile so big that her face was at risk of splitting in two.
Emmett was wearing a faded T-shirt with a small rip by the hem, and his trousers were slightly short, but he was smiling too.
Luna was relieved. All she ever wanted was for Emmett to be happy. It was her deepest desire. She found it almost painful when he’d sometimes have his darker moods. The ones he described as like looking at the world from behind sunglasses, just a little bit dim.
‘Hi,’ she said, coming to a stop in front of him.
‘Hi.’ He smiled back.
‘And hi to me too.’ Mae stood next to them both, almost forming a circle.
‘Nice glasses, weirdo.’
‘Nice T-shirt, freak.’
And then they were laughing, and Luna felt so light that she could float off into the sky, like a feather caught by the wind. She’d feel this way for the whole summer if she was lucky. She’d try and bottle it and take it home with her.
‘Come on, Earl’s desperate to see you, and the others,’ Emmett said, taking off towards The Edge. Since Emmett lived here all the time, some of his school friends had become Luna and Mae’s friends too.
‘How’s his work?’ Luna asked as they walked to the caravan park where he and Earl lived.
Her mum had once said that living in a caravan park all year round was against the law, so Luna didn’t know how Emmett and his mum and Earl managed it.
Or any of the people who lived on The Edge all year.
But they did. It was Luna’s favourite place in the world.
‘He sold a piece in February, to that London buyer. But nothing since then. Gregor says it’ll pick up.’
‘It always does,’ Mae and Luna said together. Mae called ‘Jinx!’ and punched Luna in the arm.
Bamburgh had a massive castle on the cliff by the beach, but mostly it was just cafés in the centre.
A couple of people, putting tables and chairs away at the end of the day, called to say hello.
Even though Luna and Mae were only here for six weeks of every year, they knew everyone.
Louisa, who ran a bakery, gave them a paper bag of scones with fat, juicy currants.
‘They’re going off – try and get your mum to have one, eh? ’ she told Emmett.
‘I will, thanks Louisa.’ Emmett held the bag close to his chest and then, as they walked away, started eating one straight away. Luna and Mae pretended not to notice the fact that he barely seemed to breathe between bites.
‘So, tell me everything about what’s been going on,’ he asked around a mouthful of food.
‘Well, I had my first kiss.’ Mae started talking really fast. ‘And my second, and third. I think I’m getting way better at it.’
Emmett stopped walking. ‘No way, Mae – you’re too young to be kissing anyone.’
She pushed on the back of her sunglasses so that they lifted up to look at him directly.