I could see where Nina got her rapid changes of subject from.
After dinner, I played my violin for them, and then we all carried our drinks out to the terrace—white wine for Leonora and Markus, lemonade for Nina and me. Nina and I played cards and chatted lazily as the sun went down, and I felt more tired than I had in a long time. When Markus picked up his guitar, Nina and I settled back in our chairs, and we gave him our full attention as the sky grew darker and the stars came out over Raven Hall. Markus’s songs were like stories, and I closed my eyes, picturing Rocky Raccoon falling back in his room, and strawberry fields stretching on and on forever . . .
Nina shook me gently awake. “Come on, Beth, it’s time for bed. Busy day tomorrow.”
* * *
* * *
After breakfast the following morning, Nina led me back up to my bedroom and cast her eyes over my still-unpacked bags.
“Have you got a swimsuit?”
“Yeah, somewhere.” I tugged clothes from the bags until I found it: my old black suit from school. “Will this do?”
Nina smiled. “It’s perfect. Put it on. I’ll meet you downstairs in two minutes.”
When she was gone, I surveyed the tangle of clothes on the floor and turned to the chest of drawers next to my bed. The entire contents of both my bags would fit into just one of those deep drawers. There was a huge dark wood wardrobe in the corner too, and I swung open its doors and peered into the faintly lemon-smelling interior. Just one dress hung there, and strangely it looked to be about my size. I lifted it down on its hanger cautiously. An old-fashioned design, high-necked and long, in blue gingham checks with white embroidery on the front. I replaced it on the rail and closed the doors on it.
“Beth!” Nina was back. “Aren’t you ready yet?”
I began to scoop my clothes into the bottom drawer. “Give me a chance. Why are you in such a hurry?”
“Jonas is coming.” She wrapped her arms around herself, as if her impatience with me were threatening to burst out of her. “We’re gonna swim in the drain on the other side of the lake. It’s a good spot.”
“In a drain?” I pushed the drawer shut and stared at her. “No thanks.”
But she merely grinned. “Wait and see. Just—hurry up, will you?”
As soon as I stepped outside the front door, I could tell the temperature was shaping up to being even hotter than the day before. The sky was a vibrant blue, and the sun turned the gray-white gravel into a dazzling sea of light. Nina and I shielded our eyes with our hands as we wandered over to the stable block that sat at right angles to the house. It was made of the same gray stone, and it had a low wall in front of it, which we perched on to wait for Jonas. I was mildly disappointed to see no evidence of real live horses; the family seemed to use the building for nothing more than storage. Two bikes were propped against one of the stable doors, and I felt a pang of gratitude to Markus for keeping his promise and readying them for us.
“So, why aren’t you allowed into the village?” I asked Nina.
She squinted down the driveway and sighed.
“Trust me, I’ve tried arguing about it hundreds of times. But Mum just hates me going there. She drives me mad, sometimes. Bloody mothers . . .” She shot me a horrified look. “Oh, Beth, I’m so sorry . . .”
I shook my head. “It’s okay.” I’d learned how easy it was to complain about the people you loved when you still had the luxury of seeing them every day. I scratched my nails up and down against the wall we were sitting on. “So Jonas has to come out here to see you?”
“Oh, him.” Nina grinned. “He comes for the swimming, really. And skating in the winter, if it’s cold enough. That’s why he came here the first time—his mum told him Avermere was the best place to skate, so even though all his mates were going down to the other end of the village, he trekked up here by himself—he was only eight, then.”
“And your mum didn’t mind?”
“Oh, well.” Nina wrinkled her nose. “She wasn’t massively keen, but he kept coming back, and—well, Mum knows his mum from when they were young, and says she can be trusted, so . . . Yeah. Jonas kept on coming back.”
I straightened, peering toward the road. “Is that him now?”
A figure on a bike turned into the drive and drew nearer, and Nina and I got to our feet. I’d been picturing Jonas as around Nina’s height and younger than me, but as he came closer, I saw he was taller and older—maybe even sixteen, I thought. He sprang down and dropped his bike on the grass by the stable block and squinted at us.
“Hi,” he said. He looked from me to Nina and back. “Are you Beth, then?”
I nodded. “Hi.” I was struggling not to stare. Soft reddish brown hair, light hazel eyes, the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen . . .
He took a step backward. “So . . . are we going swimming, then?”
“ ’Course we are.” Nina moved forward, and the two of them fell into step as they made their way down the grass and joined a track that curved around the lakeshore. I hurried along behind them. From this angle, I could see the straps of Nina’s swimsuit emerging from the neckline of her T-shirt: pale gold fabric that looked delicate and sophisticated against her brown skin. I adjusted my no-nonsense school-regulation straps with a twinge of embarrassment.
The path grew fainter as it ran along the side of the lake, and within minutes we had to hold our arms in front of our faces as we barged our way through a patch of cow parsley higher than our heads. The bitter green smell of sap clung to my hair even once we’d emerged on the other side, and I swatted at clouds of tiny flies around my face, while my legs prickled from the brush of nettles. Nina pointed out a broad tree stump between us and the lake, barely visible under a coating of pale brown fungi.
“No one can see you from the house, after you’re past the stump,” she said. “Just an interesting fact that Jonas and I once calculated.”
Jonas laughed. “We were pretty bored that summer, weren’t we? It took us ages to check from every window.”
“Hey!” She punched his arm. “It was fun. Anyway, it would have been quicker if you hadn’t fallen off your bike on the second day.”
Jonas dropped back slightly, and it took me a moment to realize he was pointing out a scar to me, on the back of his arm.
“Twelve stitches,” he said rather proudly. “The doctor gave me the gravel he picked out of it, in a little pot.”
I nodded, fascinated, but Nina rolled her eyes.
“Urgh, can we not talk about such disgusting things? So, what are we gonna do this summer? We need a new project . . .”