Ill Conceived Plans

The Kiss of Death

OVER the next year or so Sarah Huntington became a regular fixture at the Hilditch house. Margaret's motherly instinct took over and her oldest daughter wasn't much better. Jane, in her final two years at school, became the young girl's "big sister" watching over her.

As confident and forthright as she was in her own world, at school she was awkward and emotionally stunted. The other girls were discovering boys and growing up, experimenting with make-up and sex. Sarah Huntington was in the library reading books. She was quick to cry or lose her temper although she'd usually disappear before anyone could see either thing happen.

In her own world Sarah could scale a tree and run as fast as the boys but she was clumsy when she walked, tripping over her own shoes, her own feet, attempts at wearing heels driven by her Aunty Charlotte who was desperate to have a daughter to mother, proved a fiasco, clumping in hand-made heels and twisting ankles.

She was reluctant to make eye contact if she wasn't in her comfort zones which was at home with her dad or her aunt and uncle or in her favourite subjects at school with her favourite teachers or the Hilditchs. That's where she was most comfortable – with her friend and his family. Dane was shy (until he stepped on a stage). Quiet, until he got to know you, and the pair complemented each other, giving each other confidence in public. They had their circle of friends who closed around them when they were out or around Dane when he was at school and that was all that mattered.

At school, Sarah had Jane now and she'd always had Petra. Tall for her age too, Petra, like Sarah, spoke several languages, and lived in the library. Another fish out of water, English wasn't her first language and the two took pleasure in chatting for hours in Greek, ancient and modern. Like Sarah, she had one English parent, one Greek but unlike Sarah, she still had both and they lived in the country. She had two brothers, one a year older and another Jane's age and both at Dane's school. If Sarah had time for boys she may have noticed Dmitri Taylor, tall and dark with smoky brown eyes, Jane more than noticed his older brother Nicholas, she was dating him. But not Sarah, the only boys she liked were her boys, Dane, Neville, George, and Boyd. They were her brother's now, well Neville certainly was. He'd become more protective of her over the years, no longer seeing her as an imposition on his life but his ally when his parents got difficult, his means of escape when they fought.

She and Neville were a team; they'd go to the Hilditch's together sometimes and to her father on some term breaks. Edward Huntington liked Sarah's friends and he was a sounding board for his nephew. But he was inept with his daughter, who was now moving headlong towards womanhood and struggling at school despite being bright, more than bright. There was something, not wrong, but different about her. The school had flagged it with him but in his grief and need to hide away from life he'd not really thought about it. She was too close to him, to the way he was and acted for him to see her as different from the rest of the world.

So it was Margaret Hilditch, practical, forthright Margaret, that brought it up, Sarah had hoped that the long discussions her father and her adoptive mother had when he dropped them off or picked them up were of a romantic nature. If her father had to marry again if she had to have a stepmother, then why not Margaret? Jane would really be her sister and Lydia and Lizzie and Dane......... her best friend, would be her brother. That would be good right? She felt the same way about Dane as she did Neville right?

Her feelings for Dane confused her. She didn't like him like the other girls liked their "boyfriends" but she'd support him and do anything for him, protect him, talk for him and him for her. They were brothers? Best friends? Cousins? Their relationship didn't fit any paradigm that Sarah knew, it just was.