"I don't want to go home," said Jessica, one day.
I misunderstood. "We don't have to be home for ages. We can stay out until supper, Angus said so."
"No, stupid. I mean I don't want to go home. Back home. Our real home."
That made me sit up and open my eyes. I was aware of a little finger of cold nudging me. "What do you mean?" I thought for a moment and then spoke again. "I mean, why don't you want to go home?"
Jessica was silent for a moment. She still had her eyes shut and her blonde hair was splayed out against the grey surface of the rock, drying slowly into stringy little rats’ tails.
"I just like it here," she said, eventually. "I like it here with the stones and it always being sunny and never having to go to school. Mummy isn’t so cross with Daddy here.”
I glanced across at her. “What do you–”
She didn’t let me finish. “I just wish it could be like this forever," she said.
I hugged my knees and stared out at the shifting blue sea. I was vaguely troubled by her words.
"We have to go back to school," I offered. "It's the law."
Jessica sat up abruptly. "Hey," she said. "I've got it."
"What?"
"It's easy. We have to harness the power of the stones. You know."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, come on. You know. We do a magic ceremony, just like we've been talking about."
I felt another little cold nudge. She sounded so serious. For a moment, I wavered; I wondered whether I could ask her what she meant. But we'd spent days discussing the magic rituals that the stones had been used for - I knew she wouldn't believe me if I pleaded ignorance.
"Yeah, we could," I said, trying for enthusiasm. I looked back at the stones on the hilltop. My eyes fell on the distant ellipse of the Men-an-Tol and I felt a little shudder pass through me.
Jessica stood up, stretching her arms above her head. She flung her head back and shut her eyes against the sun.
"We'll do it at midnight," she said. "That's the most powerful time of all. We'll sneak out just before midnight and go up there and do our ritual. And you know the Men-an-Tol will be open to the other side, then. Hey Maudie, perhaps we’ll even go back in time!”
I thought of being there at midnight. The enormous black sky stretching overhead. The stones looming up through the darkness, solid, somehow implacable. The cold wind, the blank white light of the moon. I looked down and saw my arms had humped up into gooseflesh, despite the warmth of the sun.
Jessica picked up her towel from the rock and wrapped it around her shoulders.
"I'm going up there," she said. "I want to see what kind of ceremony we can do. I know it won't be the same as it will be at midnight, but I still want to do it. Coming?"
I shook my head. "I'm going to go home. I'll see you later."
I gathered up my beach bag and towel and began the slow struggle up the hill. The grass was slippery beneath the soles of my sandals and once my foot jagged backwards and I banged my knee on a rock. Eventually I reached level ground and the path that led back to the village. When I looked back, I could see the little moving dot that was Jessica, making her way up the circle. She shimmered in my vision.
The stone track gradually led to the rutted, dried mud of the lane which ten yards further grew a skin of tarmac. Despite the heat, I began to run, the soles of my plimsolls slapping against the road. My ponytail bounced and grew looser as I ran faster, past the groups of pink-faced walkers, bent underneath their rucksacks. Soon I was puffing but somehow my legs carried me forward towards home, the home that that been known by that name for two short weeks. I stopped briefly outside the garden gate to tie my shoelace and get my breath back.
I don't know what made me stop and look up, before putting my hand to the gate. If I hadn't, the gate would have given its long, tortured squeak as I pushed it open and the sound would have alerted them to my presence. But I didn't push it, and so I looked up and saw them, Angus and Mrs. McGaskill, framed by the kitchen window, locked in an embrace. They were kissing in the way that people kissed on TV, or in the films that I'd seen; liplocked, pressed up against one another, his hand underneath her jaw.
For a moment, I was dumbstruck, transfixed. My feet felt welded to the hot tarmac beneath them. Then the shockwave hit me and I ducked down behind the hedge out of sight, my face hot and my heart thumping. For a moment, I dithered, wondering whether to walk back through the gate and pretend I'd seen nothing. I knew I couldn't. My knowledge was written in the blood running into my face. Instead I turned and ran back down the lane, back towards the beach. Again, my plimsolls slapped against the dusty surface of the road.
I had some thought of going to find Jessica, but instead I found my feet taking me off the track and into one of the nearby fields. I stumbled over the stile that led over the fence and walked along the hedgerow. I felt hot all over, prickly with prurient curiosity and embarrassment. For a while, I stood looking out over the field, hugging my elbows and seeing the kiss again and again. I tried to construct an innocent scenario. Perhaps I'd imagined it? No - I couldn't have, I was seeing it now, unfolding in front of my eyes. Perhaps Jessica’s mum had had a fit and needed the kiss of life... even at ten, I could see that that was ludicrous. Did Jessica know? I wondered suddenly. Did Mr. McGaskill know? I found I had my fingers in my mouth, nibbling at the nails. I could taste gritty sand in my mouth.
There was a pile of wood heaped at the edge of the field, bleaching under the hot sun. I sat down on a log, rubbing my dirty knees. Beyond the hedge, in the next field, I could see a tractor trundling slowly round and round.
For the very first time in my life, I realised that things would change. I realised that we would all get older. One day, Angus wouldn't be here anymore. One day, I wouldn't be here anymore. A kind of panic took hold of me and I leapt up and began to run. Only, this time, I couldn't run home. I stopped at the edge of the field, at the gate, holding onto its rough wooden spars with both hands, gasping for breath and shaking the gate until its hinges rattled, shaking it with the tears running down my face, and my teeth clenched in sudden fury.
Chapter Sixteen
I stayed in the field until it got dark, roaming the sun-baked edges of the crop, sitting myself down and jumping up again. As the sun sank slowly beyond the darkening horizon, I trailed back home down the lane. Again, I paused outside the gate to our cottage and looked up at the lighted kitchen window.
I could hear cooking sounds coming from within; the splash of water and the crash of a saucepan on the stove. There was the pop and glug of a wine bottle being opened. I rubbed my face; it felt tight and hot after being in the open air and sunshine all day and my eyes felt gritty from the tears that had dried along the lids. I could hear Mrs. McGaskill calling from the kitchen and froze. A second later, she came out into the corridor.
"Oh, Maudie," she said. "I'd wondered where you girls had got to. Can you go and root out Jessica for me, please? We'll be eating soon."
I didn't answer her straight away. I couldn't take my eyes off her.
"Maudie?"
"S-sorry," I said, stuttering. "I don't know where she is either."
"Well, go and find her for me then, there's a love." She turned back into the kitchen. "Dinner in five minutes."
I dithered for a moment and then walked up to my room. Why should I do anything for her? She wasn't my mother. I'd seen her kissing my father and that was wrong. I stomped about my room for a bit and then heard Jessica's voice outside my window. When I looked out she was leaning out from her window.