Harry and Hope. Sarah Lean

breeze making pink snow of the blossom.

      “It’s too hot in my bedroom,” I said, rummaging under the blankets drooping over the hammock and on to the floor. “I can’t find my shoes.”

      “Where are the new ones I bought you?”

      I shrugged.

      “In your other bedroom, probably still in the box,” said Marianne.

      I took my clothes downstairs and got changed. I grabbed my new shoes from the box in my room and a croissant from the kitchen and went outside with the croissant in my mouth to wait for Harry and Frank.

      When they got back, Harry trotted out of the trailer, looked around, and Frank frowned and said to him, “You never give up, do you, Harry?”

      “He’s a creature of habit,” I said. The croissant muffled the words in my mouth and flakes dropped all over me so I jumped up and down to shake them off. “That’s what you always say. Like all of us.”

      “Seen Marianne this morning?” Frank asked.

      I nodded. “I expect she’s in her studio now.”

      I shoved my feet in my shoes without pushing my heels in and scuffed after Frank and Harry. Slowly Harry headed to the meadow, as always, in that kind of, oh yeah, I nearly forgot, there’s a lovely meadow for me here kind of way. I hoped Frank still thought that too. That this was the place where they both fitted perfectly.

      Frank pointed towards something lying in the grass. I’d left my other shoes in the meadow yesterday. Harry had chewed on them. Frank had made me lots of rules since he lived here. Marianne said artists don’t like rules. But I’d got used to Frank’s because he was never mean and bossy, and that helped me remember them, almost all the time.

      “Oh,” I said, picking the shoes up, disappointed I’d done something stupid. The canvas was shredded, the laces unravelled. “I know, I know, I’m not supposed to leave anything in the meadow. Sorry, it was just this one time I forgot because Peter and I were hiding things in the grass and trying to find them with bare feet and our eyes closed. I won’t do it again.”

      “Hope—”

      “I don’t mind, honest. I’ve got these,” I lifted my foot up to show Frank the new ones and hooked the back with a finger to get my heel in. “The others were too small anyway.”

      “What might happen to Harry if he ate something he shouldn’t?”

      “Oh.” But Frank didn’t make me feel stupid, just kind of like I’d try harder next time. “Sorry. Sorry, Harry.”

      Frank shoved his hands in his pockets and I followed his eyes to the snow on Canigou. I hadn’t finished what I was saying earlier.

      “Do you think it works the other way around?” I said. “I mean, because of the environment, because Canigou is different today, can it change us?”

      Frank had stayed put for three years now. Had he changed enough to stay for good?

      I looked across and Frank didn’t say anything because we had this other kind of quiet world where we totally got each other. He taught me you didn’t always have to have an answer straight away.

      “Where you off to today?” he said instead.

      “I was going to the waterfall,” I said, cramming the last of the croissant into my mouth. “Peter and I were going to check on the swing to see if it needs fixing, ready for summer holidays. But actually I think I’ll stay here today. With you and Harry.”

      “Peter’s last day, isn’t it?” Peter went to boarding school in England and was only home for the break.

      “Yes, but—”

      “Go on,” Frank said. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

      I still didn’t go.

      “I’ll find some wood.” He smiled.

      I knew that meant we’d sit outside by the fire-pit this evening, talking in the honey-coloured light with the mountain looking over us. About all the things I couldn’t say to Marianne.

      All I had to do was find a way to remind Frank of all the good things about being here, all the good things that made pairs of us, and then he wouldn’t even think about going anywhere else.

      I nodded.

      “See you by the fire later,” he said.

      

      Before I met Peter, I’d only ever heard that he was the rich kid from the vineyards and didn’t play with anyone else in the village, which was enough information for me to think we’d never be friends. The day that Frank and Harry arrived three years ago, Peter turned up too. He sat on the meadow fence and watched Frank introducing me to Harry, and then all Peter did was come over and ask Frank if he could stroke Harry too.

      Frank said what he’d already just said to me when I’d asked the exact same question. “You need to give Harry a bit of time to get used to you first.” I looked at Peter’s big brown eyes, and when Frank said, “He doesn’t know yet if you’re going to be kind to him,” I murmured along with Frank what I knew he was going to say next: “even though I do.”

      I had one more day with Peter before I lost him to boarding school and would have to wait ages for him to be on holiday again. I ran across the meadow and Harry trotted alongside me until I climbed through the hole in the fence, into the vineyard, and raced on to Peter’s grandparents’ house, turning back to see Harry with his chin up on the top rung, his ears pointing high, watching me go.

      “See you later, Harry!”

      That donkey would always think he was coming with you.

      Peter was dressed smart, as always. Even if we were going crawling through vineyards or driving Monsieur Vilaro’s rusty old tractor he looked kind of pressed and tidy and new. I liked my clothes, they made me feel comfortably like me, but I always got the feeling when I was next to Peter that actually my clothes were scruffy, not casual.

      Peter was packing a towel into a bag.

      “Are you going swimming? We never swim until July. The water’s too cold,” I said. “And anyway I haven’t brought a towel.”

      “I’m going to swim; you can watch. If you change your mind then you can share my towel.”

      “I thought we were going to make the swing ready for when you come back?”

      “We are,” he said, winking. “Ciao, Nanu,” (which means Bye, Nanny) he called back as I followed him outside. Peter’s grandparents were Italian and although they’d lived here in France for over fifty years, they still didn’t speak much French or English, unlike Peter.

      Outside, Peter said, all kind of secretive, “Today’s the day.”

      “The day for what?”

      “Jumping off the waterfall.”

      “You say that every year.”

      “I mean it this time.”

      “What, from the top? You’ve always said it’s too high.”

      “But I’m taller than I was before.”

      I looked at the top of his head. With my hand, I measured his height against me, pressing his thick wavy hair down in case that was what was making him look taller, but he’d had his hair cut short ready for school, so it wasn’t that.

      “For the first time ever, you are actually just a teeny, weeny bit taller than me,” I said, which made him grin. “But I’m not doing it.”