wooden pier

Kit sat on the wooden pier.

Their boat was tied up beside her, but there was an iron-hard rule that no one took the boat out alone. Someone had been drowned in the lake because she went out alone. It was ages ago, but people still talked about it.

Her body wasn't found for a year, and during that year her soul used to haunt the lake calling out 'Look in the reeds, look in the reeds'. Everyone knew this. It was enough to frighten the most foolhardy, even the boys, from going out on their own.

Kit watched enviously as she saw some of the older boys from the Brothers' school untying a boat, but she would not go back up and pretend to Clio that everything was all right. Because it wasn't.

The day seemed very long. There was nobody to talk to. It had been the place that she and Clio always went to, and that one time she had gone to try to find out things, Sister Madeleine must have known what she was after.

Rita was always working, or else she had her head in a book. Emmet was too young for any conversation. Daddy was busy and Mother... Mother. Mother expected Kit to be less clingy less woried. It had been very easy when Clio was around. Perhaps Mrs Kelly was right and they did need each other.

But she was not going to go up to that house. She heard footsteps behind her and felt the spring of the wooden pier as someone walked along. It was Clio. She had two milk chocolate biscuits; their favourites.

"I wouldn't go to your house, and you wouldn't come to mine. This is neutral ground, all right?" she said.

Kit paused. "Sure" she shrugged.

"We can just go on as we were before the fight." Clio wanted it defined.

"There wasn't a fight." Kit reminded her.

"Yeah, I know. But I said something stupid about your mother."