Snow Foal. Susanna Bailey
Her stomach tightened every time she thought about what Penny might say when she got here. Might she take Addie home, after all?
Addie couldn’t swallow her toast at breakfast. She didn’t feel like talking, so she curled up on the window seat and pretended to read. Rain hit the window in fat circles, then ran to the sill in crazy rivers; stole the frost feathers from the glass. Addie kept an eye on the tall clock by the door. Its black hands never seemed to move.
Ruth brought Jude into the kitchen, fresh from the shower. His hair twisted in damp ringlets on his forehead. His wide blue eyes scanned the room and held Addie’s for a small moment.
‘Jude’s going to help make some scones, aren’t you?’ Ruth said. ‘Penny and Tim can have some with their coffee.’ She put an enormous mixing bowl on the table. ‘Want to help, Addie?’ She went to a cupboard, began piling ingredients on the bench and took milk from the fridge.
‘Dunno,’ Addie said. Social workers drank lots of coffee. She knew that. But she wasn’t sure they should get scones to go with it.
Jude sat down at the table, his face barely visible above the rim of the bowl. He stared at Addie, wooden spoon in hand.
‘OK then,’ Addie said. ‘I suppose.’
She and Jude stirred butter and sugar, piled glistening cherries into the bowl. It was hard work. Addie’s arms ached.
Jude held the sieve while she tipped in flour bit by bit. It lifted in a white cloud when he shook the sieve, dusted their wrists and hands. Addie faked a huge sneeze. Jude’s lips twitched, as if he might smile. He didn’t. Maybe he had forgotten how to do that too.
‘Goodness,’ Ruth said, laughing, ‘it’s snowing indoors now!’
She showed them how to push the sticky mixture from the spoon with one finger; how to make little piles on silver trays for the oven. Jude screamed at Ruth about a speck of mixture on his T-shirt. Ruth took him upstairs to change.
Addie thought they would be a while. That was the only T-shirt Jude had agreed to wear since Addie arrived. She went back to the window seat and peered through the blur of rain into the yard. She breathed in the warm smell of the scones as they baked. She tried to remember the last time she had baked with Mam – kneeling on a chair to reach the table, feeling the crack of eggshell under her thumb, the yellow stickiness of yolk between her fingers and running down her arm. She heard Mam’s voice. ‘Go on, never mind, Addie. Try another . . .’
She thought of the eggs in Ruth and Sam’s henhouse; of the mother hens, with their nodding heads and ugly claws, their wing feathers softly spread to protect their babies inside those fragile shells.
She tried to hear Mam’s voice again. It wouldn’t come.
Feet thundered down the stairs and the kitchen door swung wide. It banged against the wall. Sunni struggled in, laptop clutched to her chest, books and a bunch of papers tucked under her arm. She slid the laptop on to the table and thumped the books down. Pieces of paper slid to the floor.
‘Don’t help then,’ she said.
‘OK,’ Addie said. ‘I won’t.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, Ruth said you had to work in the bedroom. On your own.’ She hoped that Ruth wouldn’t be gone too long after all.
Ruth appeared a minute or two later, holding a red-faced Jude by the hand. He was still wearing his Batman T-shirt. It had a dark, wet patch right across Batman’s face. Jude was holding the damp material away from his body, his nose wrinkled in disgust.
‘Sit here, Jude,’ Ruth said, pointing to the rocking chair by the fire. ‘It’ll dry before Tim gets here, don’t worry.’
‘He won’t be here for ages,’ said Sunni. ‘The roads will be even worse now, all icy under the snow. His jeep will probably get stuck.’
Addie glared at her. Sunni flicked her hair over her shoulders and bent over her books. ‘Mira’s dad said,’ she added, as if that meant it must be true. ‘He does loads of driving.’
‘I think they’ll be fine, Sunni,’ Ruth said. She smiled at Addie and Jude. ‘Tim’s car has special tyres for the snow, hasn’t it, Jude? It’ll get icy overnight, for sure. But not yet.’ She handed Sunni a glass of milk. ‘You might be better off in your room, Sunni, love,’ she said, ‘or in the snug. You need to concentrate on that homework and get it finished.’
‘Don’t see why I have to do it anyway,’ Sunni said. ‘On a Saturday.’
‘Because you didn’t want to do it on a Friday!’ Ruth laughed, shook her head. ‘I don’t know! See how you get on at the table in here then. But no annoying the other two, or back you go.’
Sunni smirked at Addie, sat down and opened the laptop. Addie turned away; listened to the tap of Sunni’s fingers on the keys, the clatter of tins, the surge of the water, as Ruth washed the baking things in the sink. Ruth was always so busy. Addie should offer to help. She didn’t.
Jude curled up in the rocking chair, his knees under his chin. Widget jumped on his lap. He pushed him off, brushed at his trousers. Addie watched him rock back and forth; back and forth. The wooden rockers ticked off the seconds on the tiled floor.
Sunni looked up from the laptop and slammed it shut. ‘I’m too tired,’ she said. She pointed at Addie with her pen. ‘Why doesn’t she have to do school work?’ She pulled her mouth down at the edges. ‘Think you’re so lucky, Addie,’ she said. ‘But you’re going to get miles behind everyone else. Not so lucky then.’
Ruth shook her head. ‘What did I say, Sunni?’ She smiled an apology at Addie. Her eyes were kind; crinkled at the corners. ‘You’ll be fine, Addie,’ she said. ‘We’ll make sure you catch up before you go. You can join Gabe for his home-school sessions, if you like. It’ll be fun, I promise.’
‘Right,’ Sunni said. She snorted, looked away.
Ruth dried her hands on a red-spotted tea towel. ‘You’re really a kind girl, Sunni, I know. So let’s have no more of that. Come on, show me how far you’ve got.’ She sat down next to Sunni, opened the laptop and rested an arm across Sunni’s shoulders.
‘I like school work,’ Addie said. ‘I like school. If I wasn’t stuck out here, I’d be there.’ She stretched out on the window seat, folded her arms behind her head. ‘And I wouldn’t keep moaning about homework.’
She missed school. She did.
School the way it used to be.
She remembered her first classrooms: the rainbow colours, the clamour of voices, the books with their secrets and puzzles. The new words that stretched her tongue; the new ideas that made her brain fizz. She remembered the shiny corridors, the smell of polish and roast potatoes; the soft, sticky warmth of Hattie’s hand in hers as they skipped on summer grass.
Hattie. Her best friend. Forever.
She saw herself standing on the playground wall next to Hattie, arms outstretched: a small tightrope walker, balanced and sure, the sun warm on her bare arms. She tried to hold the memory, to be that Addie again, there in Ruth’s kitchen.
The memory blurred; trickled away like the rivers of rain on the window. The tightrope walker was gone.
She saw herself sitting on the playground wall, swinging her legs as if everything was fine. She saw Hattie, watched her run hand in hand with Lola Smythe.
She saw Daren Oates and his stupid mates, heard their jeering calls:
‘Hey, Adelaide Forgettable Jones!’
‘Where’s your mam this time, then?’
‘Oh, wait. Everyone knows where she’ll be . . .’
The front door clicked open, wrenched Addie from the memory. Boots stamped in the hallway.
Addie felt sick. Really sick.