Page 14 of A Sky Painted Gold

Alice rolls her eyes. “Yes. Just don’t dance too wildly,” she adds over her shoulder, already halfway out of the door. “You don’t want your dress unravelling!”

“Thanks for that,” I mutter under my breath, but Alice is gone. I begin shoving clothes into an old carpetbag – after all, I remind myself, I am invited to stay over. I’ll need something to wear in the morning. And something to sleep in, of course, another nightdress. The thought makes me giggle, and the sound has more than a hint of hysteria in it.

Midge sticks her head around the door. “Everything all right?” she asks, taking in my appearance. “You look very nice. Where did that frock come from?”

“Alice made it,” I reply, biting my lip.

Midge, unflappable as ever, doesn’t bat an eyelid at the thought of Alice (who can barely sew on a button) whipping up a whole dress, and I don’t really want to go into too many details. Midge is a very relaxed kind of parent, but I realize that even she may have something to say about my going to dinner in a nightdress.

“Well, she did a lovely job,” Midge says, and I am so relieved that she seems to think I’m wearing a normal party dress that I want to sit down on the floor and weep. “Do you have everything you need?” she asks.

“I think so,” I say uncertainly. “I don’t really know what you take to a fancy house party.”

“Oh, I’m sure it will be fine. People are just people, Lou. Wherever you go.” Midge smiles serenely. She and Pa have treated the invitation with the same casual pleasure that they would an invitation from any of our friends. Sometimes I find their failure to be moved by any of our more outrageous behaviour fairly astonishing, but apparently my producing an invitation to dinner from the local landed gentry is nothing to bat an eyelid over.

Just then, Pa appears around the door with a triplet under each arm.

“I found two of ’em, Midge, but I can’t uncover the third.” He looks me over and gives an appreciative whistle. “Very nice, Lou.” Again, I feel buoyed by the fact that he hasn’t forbidden me from leaving the house in what is obviously nightwear.

“Davy’s probably in the pantry again, trying to get into the jam,” Midge says, ambling from the room, with the rest of us traipsing behind her.

When Midge opens the pantry door, Davy is indeed sitting on the floor with one small hand plunged into a jar of strawberry jam. From the look of his face and clothing, he has been indulging for some time. He looks up at us, smiling sunnily and waving his jam-covered hands around. “Yum!” he exclaims. “Yum, yum, yum!” He pulls himself unsteadily to his feet, intent on sharing his precious bounty with me.

“Stay back!” I shriek, clutching the carpetbag in front of me like a shield, very aware of the pristine whiteness of my outfit. Pa, ever the hero, darts in front of me despite the fact that he is still holding Joe and Max, who are squawking loudly at their own lack of jam. Davy is now very upset by my rejection of his kind offer and adds his own cries to their chorus.

“You’d better go, Lou,” Midge says, scooping Davy up and unceremoniously plonking him in the kitchen sink. “Have a wonderful time.”

Pa smiles at me over the heads of the other toddlers, who are both wailing loudly.

I smile back tremulously. Time to go. It’s funny that I feel a lot more nervous about going to the Cardew House as a guest than I did about sneaking in uninvited. Still, never let it be said that I shrink from an adventure. Taking a deep, steadying breath, I set out, ready for a closer glimpse of a world I’ve dreamed about – one that is full of all sorts of possibility.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

The early evening is warm enough that I don’t need anything over my dress; in fact, the light, soft cotton feels quite nice on my skin as I wind my way down the path to the beach, my fingers skimming the tall grass on either side. All is calm and quiet, but when I finally arrive at the beach it is to find that the tide is in. My heart sinks. I hadn’t even thought about it, and I stand dithering on the sand for a moment. What an idiot I am! I can hardly swim over there in my white dress. That would be quite the entrance to make, rising from the water with bits of curtain hanging from my wet hair. I will have to drag out the rowboat, and that means that I am going to be horribly late.

Suddenly, breaking the stillness, I hear a distant rumbling sound. It doesn’t take me long to realize that it is coming from the small, sleek motorboat that is bouncing across the water towards the shore. It is a journey of only a few minutes from the island to the mainland where I stand, shielding my eyes from the early evening sunshine and trying to make out who is in the boat.

I feel my heart stutter when I recognize the figure looking out from behind the wheel. It is Robert Cardew. That tingling angry feeling skitters across my skin and I draw my shoulders back. This time, at least, I have the advantage of being where I’m supposed to be, but still something about his presence leaves me feeling off balance.

“Hello,” I call from the beach as he comes to a stop in the shallow water, turning the engine off with a sharp click.

“Hello,” he calls in response. “Caitlin sent me over for you.”

“Good job she thought of it.” I am frustrated to find I am babbling. “I certainly didn’t and I’ve lived here for ever, well, for my whole life anyway, and you’d think that I would remember to think about the tides but I didn’t, so…” I trail off hopelessly. He is watching me, and his face registers nothing but cool disinterest. “Anyway,” I say, trying to recover some sense of dignity, “thank you very much for coming to get me.”

“Not at all,” he answers. There is a long pause as I reach for something else to say. “Do you think you might like to get in the boat now that it’s here?” he asks.

I glare at him, trying to think of a witty comeback.

“I suppose you could swim?” he muses, turning to look over his shoulder at the house. “It doesn’t look too far.”

“It’s not,” I snap, nettled. “I’ve done it many times.”

He raises an eyebrow at this. “Many times, you say. Interesting.”

“Well, not many times,” I correct myself, hastily.