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Swimming in the Nuddy
James and Laurie said their goodbyes and left. Harry, leaning on the stone wall of the campsite, watched their car all the way down the lane until it disappeared around the corner.
‘Do you like Laurie?’ Amy asked.
‘S’pose. She’s okay. She’s a bit … well, she’s weird sometimes. She thinks I’m a baby, and she did try to make me read that bollicks Peter Rabbit. But she gives me extra chocolate when Dad’s not looking, and she tells him to be quiet when he shouts too much. Yeah. I guess I like Laurie. But …’ He tailed off into silence, poking his finger into a crack in the stone wall, and Amy couldn’t help thinking he was holding back something important.
‘What is it, Harry?’
‘Nothing.’ He shook his head vigorously. ‘Nothing.’
‘Please, Harry, will you tell me what’s bothering you? Sometimes it helps to talk, you know. A trouble shared is a trouble halved, that’s what Granny Jen always said.’
He took his hand away from the wall, standing in silence for a minute.
‘Sometimes,’ he said, after a long pause, ‘I wish it was just you and me and Dad again. In the old house with the old garden. I liked my bedroom there, and I liked having the rabbits in the garden. I miss my bunnies.’
‘Do you miss living with Dad?’
‘Sort of … sometimes …’ he said quietly, almost as if he was ashamed of it.
‘And that’s okay, Harry. It’s normal to miss your dad. Everything’s changed so much this year, and it’s okay to be sad about it. I promise you I’ll never be upset with you because you miss your dad, and I know he misses being with you too.’ Tears stung the corners of her eyes, but they weren’t unhappy tears. It felt like she’d made a breakthrough at last. By the time she’d blinked them away, looking up to the hills, Harry was speaking again, and she turned back to him.
‘But I guess … well, Olly hasn’t got his mummy any more, has he? I’ve still got a dad and a mam. And now I’ve got Laurie too, and she says she’s going to ask if I can have a rabbit in Dad’s garden and she’ll look after it when I’m not there, so that’s all good. Even though she wants to call it Peter,’ he said rolling his eyes.
‘That is good, isn’t it?’ she said with a grin. ‘Now, do you think we should take Jen back home?’
Amy and Harry headed up the field to the old farmhouse with Jen. They knocked, and Peter answered the door.
‘Wondered if you’d decided to keep her, like.’ He leaned in the doorway as Amy handed over the lead.
‘The other little boy got scared of the ghosts in the tarn. He wouldn’t move, so Harry and Jen helped to stay with him and keep him calm. They were very sensible, both of them,’ Amy said, as much for Harry’s benefit as for Peter’s.
‘I held her lead all the time, like you said,’ Harry added.
‘Well, there’s a good lad. He gets upset quite a lot, doesn’t he, that other young’un. Heard him the other night sobbing away like a girl.’
‘You can’t say that. It’s sexy!’ Harry bristled.
‘I think you mean sexist, Harry, not sexy. That means something different.’
‘Ay. Well, maybe,’ said Peter with the twist of a smile. ‘No harm meant, like.’
‘Poor Oliver lost his mother last year. I think it’s his first holiday without her. He misses her very much, like we miss Granny Jen, don’t we?’ She looked to Harry, but he was kicking an old bootscraper beside the door and didn’t reply.
Peter looked at him too, the evening light catching his face, highlighting every line and wrinkle.
‘You remind me of her, you know, lad. You’ve got a bit of her spirit, haven’t you? Always up to mischief, I’ll bet.’
‘I’m not!’ Harry protested.
‘He is!’ Amy mouthed above his head. ‘But Mam wasn’t like that.’
‘Oh, wasn’t she?’ he said with a chuckle. ‘I remember her when she was a young woman. Swimming in that tarn by moonlight. Skinny dipping, no less.’
‘I think you’re remembering the wrong person. Mam would never have done that!’
‘Oh ay? She did. More than once as I remember it.’ Peter squinted into the sunlight.
