One Lucky Summer by Jenny Oliver

Author:Jenny Oliver [Oliver, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

The morning sky was white like a fluffy roll of cotton wool. Seagulls snoozed on the ice-flat sea in the distance. The park was still. A kite hung limp in the branches of a horse chestnut.

‘You seem tense, Dolly,’ said Fox as he strode alongside her.

‘She’s so righteous!’ Dolly stomped through the lush grass, past grazing deer and sprawling ferns. ‘Always acting like some pseudo-parent, going on about how I’ve never grown up. I’m a grown-up, look at me, grown up!’ Dolly turned to Fox outraged as she gestured to her adult self.

‘Did you ever feel like a parent?’ asked Fox, walking next to her, feet sinking into the thick grass, a trail of deep dewy footprints behind them.

‘Don’t start all that on me. It’s not going to work. “Do you feel this, you seem that.” I’m on to you, Mason. None of your hostage negotiator stuff on me, got it?’

Fox smiled under his breath. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Dolly mimicked. ‘Don’t act the innocent with me.’

Fox didn’t reply, just kept his annoying half-smile on his face. Dolly looked ahead at the landscape and tried not to think about anything to do with her mum and dad. Many years ago, she had perfected the ability to shut her thoughts down completely. Through a dogged determination to conquer meditation, she could now turn her mind into a simple canvas of blue. Nothing else but blue. Like the sea. But it wasn’t working right now. ‘And no,’ she huffed, ‘I never felt like a parent. I felt like a child.’

Fox didn’t say anything.

Above them, the sun was working hard to peek through the shredded clouds.

‘Olive had everything she wanted,’ said Dolly, still on the warpath.

Tiny birds darted in and out of the bushes.

‘Did she?’ questioned Fox.

‘Yeah.’ Dolly tied her hair up with her good hand, twisting it angrily into some semblance of a ponytail. ‘She had everything!’

They walked a little further. Hands behind his back, Fox mused, ‘Do you think maybe she had everything you wanted?’

Dolly glared at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Out on the horizon, fishing boats were coming in after a night at sea. The sunlight catching on the rigging and the tinfoil sea.

Fox turned away so his gaze was fixed on the boats. ‘Well, she had the guy – Ruben. She had the upper hand in terms of your relationship purely from her age.’ Fox shielded his eyes from the growing glare of the sun to get a better view of the fishermen. ‘And I’m assuming – based on the school of thought that she was the parent figure – clearly everyone in the family listened to her. So she had authority, which is always enviable.’

Fox looked back in Dolly’s direction.

It was her turn not to say anything. To consider instead what had been said.

Fox took a chance and said into the silence, ‘You can be jealous of someone, Dolly, and still empathise with them.’

‘Shut up, I’m not jealous!’

‘Right you are,’ said Fox.

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