Pineapple

By Jill Marshall

Based around the true stories of the Lost Gardeners of Heligan and the Muslim Tommies who fought in the trenches during WW1, best-selling author Jill Marshall tells a bitter-sweet tale of lost love and liberation from the past, as war, comradeship and personal hurts twist into one mystical 21st century summer.

When Poppy Moss is sent by her parents to an unconventional art school over the summer, she knows it is just a means to escape her past. But the past is all around in the exotic gardens of the country estate in which she's meant to just paint, breathe in beneficial fresh air, and share insights with the other teenagers ...

... like the mysterious Tariq, who really does seem to be there for the art, although he's spending an awful lot of time trying to uncover an old family mystery.

And Robbie, the gardener who cherishes his family, his workmates and his beloved pineapple so much that it steals her heart, even though he seems to think they are living a century apart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jill Marshall
• Release date: Feb 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370283873

Jill Marshall

Jill Marshall is the author of the best-selling Jane Blonde series and fiction for children, young adults and adults. Her middle-grade series about sensational girl spy, Jane Blonde,published by Macmillan Children's Books UK, has sold hundreds of thousands of copies around the world, featured as a World Book Day title and reached the UK Times Top 10 for all fiction. Jane Blonde has been optioned for film and TV and is currently undergoing some exciting Wower-ish transformations.Jill has now brought Jane together with her other series in this age group - Doghead, The Legend of Matilda Peppercorn, Stein & Frank - in a fantastic new ensemble series. Meet the SWAGG team, and their first book, SPOOK.As well as books for tweens and teens, Jill writes for young adults and adults, each with a collection of three stand-alone novels. She also writes for younger children, with a Hachette-published picture book for teenies, Kave-Tina Rox.When she's not writing books, Jill is a communications consultant and a proud mum and nana. She divides her time between the UK and New Zealand, and hopes one day to travel between the two by SatiSPI or ESPIdrilles.

Book preview

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jill Marshall does a lot of writing, for children, young adults and even old adults, although she’s best known for her series about girl spylet, Jane Blonde.

If she hadn’t been an author, she would have liked to have been an actress or a singer in a band or a brilliant musician. As she doesn’t actually have much talent in any of these areas, she just has to write about actresses and singers in bands and brilliant musicians. And put playlists on Youtube. She lives in leafy England and does some globe-trotting, when not writing, writing about writing and talking about writing.

PINEAPPLE is the second book in Jill’s YA collection. Look out for FANMAIL, and for more coming very soon.

Visit Jill at www.jillmarshallwriting.com

Jill Marshall’s YA collection:

FANMAIL

PINEAPPLE

BREATHE

Pineapple

By

Jill Marshall

Published 2015 by Jill Marshall

Copyright © Jill Marshall 2015

The right of Jill Marshall to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Ay person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This book is available wherever ebooks are sold, from Amazon in print, and as an audiobook on Audible, narrated by the brilliant Michelle Ford.

Go to www.jillmarshallwriting.co.uk for more.

For the brave

1914 – 2014

Chapter 1

The tree was unpaintable.

That was all there was to it. It was the unpaintable tree.

For a few moments, Poppy Moss considered telling the tutor this in plain and simple English, before packing up her easel and paints and heading back indoors. Then down the corridor to her room. To her wardrobe. Pack her case, call her parents – job done. Outta here.

She played it out in her mind’s eye. ‘S’cuse me, Sarah, but this tree is unpaintable.’

Sarah, concerned, dropping down onto her haunches so her kind, grey eyes would be on a level with Poppy’s wary blue ones. ‘Unpaintable? In what way?’

Poppy, shrugging. ‘In the way that it’s massive and I’ve got a tiny piece of paper, and in the way that it’s got a gazillion leaves that are all different shades of forest and golden-green, and I’ve only got six colours in my palette and just two of them are green and yellow, and in the very, very big way that it would take a year’s worth of work and I can manage maybe ten minutes’ worth of concentration.’

Sarah, with sympathetic nods. ‘It’s overwhelming?’

‘Yeah.’ Poppy, totally agreeing then remembering that she shouldn’t admit to weakness. Being weak caused problems. ‘No, not overwhelming. Just huge.’

‘And you know what we do when things are huge, don’t you, Poppy?’ Sarah, concerned, sympathetic, comprehending, downright annoying. ‘We take it a step at a time. One bite. Maybe just one leaf at a time.’

Poppy thought about it, out of her day-dream. Even going at it one leaf at a time would not in any way deal with the fact that doing a painting of a too-big tree was something else, too: it was boring. Excruciatingly dull. Mind-numbing.

She supposed that was the point, really.

So instead of getting into it with Sarah, Poppy dunked her brush in the jam jar of water, feeling about five years old, and dragged it through the watercolour tablet of indeterminate khaki. Then she attacked the paper. One leaf. There. Splodge. That was easy. Two, three, four. Very easy. Just blobs, really. Leaves. More leaves. Leaf. Leave. Five, six, seven, eight, nine leaves, leave leave, when can I leave, when can I leave, when can I leave …

The blobbing became more frantic and soon the paper was glistening with wet, green paint as Poppy carried out a frenzied assault on her paper. The result was amazing – an incomprehensible swirl of dingy, muddy sage, which bore no resemblance to the tree at all but probably looked a lot like the inside of Poppy’s head.

Which, again, was probably the point.

‘Interesting,’ said Sarah, suddenly leaning in over her shoulder.

Together they leaned their heads to one side and studied it. Interesting was not a word Poppy would have used for it. Disgusting, maybe. Disturbing, for sure. If she painted hair, ears and a face on the merged blobs, it would look like the Hulk. Don’t make me angry, Sarah, it would say. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

‘Have you finished?’ said Sarah, being very careful to stare straight at the blotchy page instead of at Poppy’s blotchy face.

‘I don’t know,’ said Poppy truthfully. ‘Have I?’

Sarah smiled, her uneven teeth contrasting starkly with her poised, trendy appearance. Must have been born before the age of multi-coloured and invisible braces, or those other things – veneers, thought Poppy, running a tongue across the clear wires that traversed her own teeth. Funny; Sarah didn’t seem that much older than Poppy, but she was probably mid-thirties. Maybe twenty years older than Poppy. Old enough to be her mum, even.

Sarah snapped her lips together abruptly and Poppy realised she must have been staring. She wanted to apologise – to explain that it was just something she did, and she never meant to be rude. It was just that sometimes her eyes got stuck on whatever they were looking at while her brain went off for a little ramble around the world. Some world. Any world.

But then Sarah would know that.

‘That’s cheating, Poppy Moss,’ said Sarah with a tight, toothless smile. ‘I can’t tell you if it’s done. Only you can decide when you’ve finished.’

‘If I’ve finished, can I go?’

Sarah tried and failed to hide her disappointment. ‘Yes, but—’

‘Then I’ve finished,’ said Poppy.

She smiled nicely at Sarah to show her it wasn’t meant personally. She just wanted to get back to the house. Outdoors made her uncomfortable. There was just too much of the damn thing.

‘Okay,’ said Sarah, a little reluctantly, then she helped Poppy take her tree painting off the easel so she could take it to her room and let it dry. ‘We’ll see you at five for dinner and chats,’ she called cheerfully, with just a hint of hopefulness.

‘I’ll be there,’ said Poppy.

She would, too. Dinner and chats followed by a movie and more chats (about movies) was about the only thing in this whole set-up that made it bearable. Three weeks of intensive art instruction over the summer holidays, in beautiful surroundings, combined with learning about community and citizenship - that’s what her parents (and the brochure they’d shown her) had called it.

Poppy would have called it something different: nearly a month’s enforced therapy, bunking down with a bunch of other miserable kids and being dragged outside on a daily basis for masses of Beneficial Fresh Air. It was like Fat Camp on TV, only here they each had their own room, and none of the kids were fat. Quite the opposite in some cases, though not Poppy who was decidedly average.

The Misery Meeting. That was what it should be called, she decided, although she doubted it would ever make it to a reality TV show status with a name like that. Who would watch? Only people who’d never been miserable, she guessed, and then they wouldn’t get it at all. They’d shout ridiculous things at the TV: pull yourself together; toughen up; just decide to be happy, and all that other garbage.

Anyway, she was pretty sure there were no cameras here taking hidden footage. It was insanely private, actually. Three miles from the nearest shop. Seven miles from a train station. Thirty two miles to the closest New Look. Mostly, that was a good thing.

Gathering her paints and jam jar along with her soggy painting, which she planned to ditch at the earliest opportunity (or possibly send to her parents as a joke – see how well I’m doing! x ), Poppy nodded goodbye to Sarah and steadily avoided everyone else’s eyes. Only Tariq, the intense Indian guy who actually seemed to be there for the art, bothered to look up. He had genuine talent. His tree looked like – well, a tree. THE tree, in fact, only in miniature. He smiled briefly at Poppy and she quickly rolled away to the left before she’d be forced to smile back, hurrying across the paving stones towards the pond. Pond, turn right, house, corridor, room. Yay.

Her room was her sanctuary for these few weeks, and Poppy made the most of all opportunities to hunker down there with her iPod. That was allowed. It wasn’t like Hadleigh Hall was a mental institution or anything. It might be therapeutic to do art, but it wasn’t actually treatment. To all intents and purposes, each of the dozen teenagers here was actually on a holiday of sorts. They didn’t all have to go back home to two weeks of helping out in the community like she was supposed to. Poppy had heard the twins talking about it: their parents gave them the choice of this or sailing, and they’d plumped for painting as neither of them liked being cold or wet (they were from Dubai or somewhere, although they sounded just like her – the girl twin especially). The only difference in their treatment at Hadleigh was that some of the guests got more personal attention than the others. Poppy was one of these. Even then, it wasn’t too intrusive. Just annoying.

She was considering this, and the general annoyingness of annoying people constantly asking her how she was feeling, as her feet traced the stepping stones towards the pond. So many different ways to ask the same question. How ya doing? All okay? How’s Poppy today? Sometimes just plain All right? Or even ‘Heyyyyyyyyyyy’ in a seemingly endless way that made Poppy think they’d forgotten her name so she was tempted to fill in the gap for them, or greet them back quickly and chirpily so they wouldn’t have time to get embarrassed at losing their memory like an old person. Like grandparents who trailed off while singing ‘Happy Birthday’ because they couldn’t remember the name of the particular grandkid blowing out the candles.

Lenny was good at that one. It was his favourite form of salutation, going ‘Heyyyyyyyyyyy’ over the fried eggs in the morning or while he was handing out the bread rolls with the soup at lunchtime. He might look like a waiter, but Poppy was pretty sure he was actually an undercover therapist. Was that even a job? Undercover therapist? Made it sound quite cool …

At that moment, just as her foot was reaching out for the next paving stone, the cobbles ran out. Poppy’s right heel landed heavily and her flip-flop sank without trace into deep mud, with her foot still inside it. She tutted loudly, yanking her foot from the mire with a rather obscene squelching noise and then dropping to her knees to locate her shoe.

‘Where are you, Flip-Flop? Come to think of it …’ Poppy paused after she’d grabbed it and sank back on her haunches, looking around her. ‘Where are you, Pond?’

She’d come the wrong way. Swerving away from Tariq’s friendly grin had sent her off track, and now that she looked properly, Poppy could tell that she was completely off beam. The pond was nowhere to be seen. Instead, she was standing in a mulchy flower bed. Served her right for being named after a plant, she supposed.

Standing still, she took stock of where she was, trying to work out if she was just a little off the road, or completely and worryingly lost. If it was the latter, it wasn’t even that worrying; she just needed to turn around 180 degrees and follow the path back to the tree and the assembled artists. No need to panic.

Ahead of her was another flowerbed, and then another and another – wave upon wave of concentric circles, each filled with a different variety of flower in increasingly subtle shades of purple, from deep amethyst in the centre to the faintest lilac at the edges. The effect was rather dizzying, and for a moment Poppy felt as though she was standing on the edge of a whirlpool. If she leaned over, she might fall and be sucked in. She could drown in purple. Maybe painting wasn’t the safe choice, after all. She thought of the twins, Tori and Charles, not wanting to go sailing and get wet, and laughed aloud.

Much further ahead, beyond the maze of circular flowerbeds, something suddenly moved through the tall bushes. Rhododendrons, she identified. There weren’t many plants she knew, but her grandmother had loved her rhododendron hedge with its blousy pink blooms, so Poppy had been told about that one from a young age. She’d even worn the blossoms in her hair, when she was so small they almost swamped the neat black bob she’d had then. It was still a bob, of sorts, and still black. Not so neat, though.

Poppy looked again through the waxy green leaves, only to discover that it wasn’t a something, but a someone. A broad-shouldered back in a white cotton shirt was pushing away from her through the thicket.

‘Hello?’ she shouted.

For a moment, the figure paused and turned around. He was a bit older than Poppy – seventeen, maybe? – with a tanned, open face and cropped fair hair brushed neatly to one side. The rest of him was buried deep in the rhododendrons, so she couldn’t work out if it was one of the tutors or someone from the house. Maybe he was a gardener. This was a garden, after all (and actually, that was the understatement of the year. This was a garden the size of a safari park, with so many different sections and landscapes, paths and pockets of flora and fauna that they’d been warned not to go out alone. It was easy to get lost. As Poppy was discovering).

‘Am I near the pond?’ she yelled hopefully, waggling her flip-flop at him in case he couldn’t quite see her through the wildlife.

He stared back at her, his face framed by the deep, lustrous green of the bush’s leaves. She caught the glint of the waning sun reflected in a pair of light green eyes, a dusting of freckles on a wide, slightly lumpy nose. He looked like Peter Pan, grown up as Peter never would be. Or … no, more like a Lost Boy.

Now that, thought Poppy, I could paint.

Far from giving her time to whip out her watercolours, however, he gave her one last, long look with a slight frown pinching his brow together, and then turned away, pressing on through the bushes.

‘Hey, I’m lost here!’ shouted Poppy.

It made no difference. He was gone.

Pretty rude, thought Poppy. She could probably get him into trouble for that. All the staff were meant to ensure that the guests’ needs were met at all times. They’d been told this over and over again, from their first induction lunch to evening chats before movies or table tennis.

But then, she wasn’t actually lost. She already knew how to get out of her predicament. And anyway, Poppy Moss wasn’t much given to getting other people into trouble. A secret, once told to Poppy, went to the grave.

Which was what had landed her at Hadleigh in the first place.

Suddenly aware that the summer sun was starting to drop and her mud-caked feet were pretty chilly, Poppy stopped staring at the spot where the guy had long since disappeared. The leaves weren’t even rustling any more. Carefully, deliberately, using her arm as a rudder so that there was no way she could veer off track, Poppy turned herself around.

The paving stone path unfolded ahead of her.

‘Okay. That way,’ she said, more confidently than she felt, and then she marched lop-sidedly back to the tree, not even bothering to put the right member of her beloved pair of silver Havaianas back on.

Tariq and Charles were loading the easels into a metal shed at the edge of the glade in which The Tree was king. ‘It’s nearly five,’ said Charles when he saw her. ‘You’d have been in trouble.’

I nearly drowned in purple, thought Poppy. How’s that for trouble? She just smiled enigmatically at him and didn’t bother trying to explain.

Tariq fell in step beside her as she ploughed on up the path towards the pond. Definitely towards the pond this time. Then round said pond and off to the right and up the stone steps to the entrance hall, and if she didn’t bother to get changed she’d be at pre-dinner chats and nibbles shortly after five anyway. Tariq and Charles would arrive at the same moment, so nobody would even need to know she’d got lost.

Tariq stood back to let her squeeze through the gap by the pond ahead of him. ‘You chose the wrong path, didn’t you?’ he said quietly.

He spotted a lot with those big brown eyes, she could tell.

Poppy grinned. ‘Yes. Yet again,’ she said.

He didn’t bother asking her what she meant, she was glad to discover. He probably knew. Some of the other inmates – Oops, guests – were better at all this than the staff.

Instead of asking her to explain, Tariq simply pointed to a hose pipe that lay coiled under a window at the side of the kitchens. ‘Wash your feet down, and then you won’t need to get changed before dinner.’

‘What?’

For a second, she didn’t know what he meant. Then her eyes followed his big browns down her legs to her revolting feet. One was completely encased in a mud boot all of her own creation. The other wasn’t much better – it just had a flip-flop embedded into the mud crust that used to be the sole of her foot. ‘Ew. Good call, Tariq. Thanks.’

‘Not a problem,’ he said.

She watched him leave before turning on the water jet. He might be nice, but there were some things nobody needed to see at close quarters, ever – and her feet were two of them. Satisfied that they were no longer too disgusting, Poppy shoved her toes back into her flip-flops, and ran inside.

Chapter 2

They ate, as always, in the Refectory. It was called this because the original Hall had been built on the grounds of an old abbey, and this was where the monks were supposed to have eaten. Nowadays it was pretty difficult to envisage some lowly humble brothers eating their gruel there, what with the floor-to-ceiling windows allowing photo-enhancing light to flood in, and the small stage and microphone where brides and grooms could cut cakes and make speeches. Poppy liked to imagine the chief monk leaning on the mike stand before they ate. ‘Good evening, Brothers. Good to be back at the Refectory. I’ve got God on the line and he says the beetroot soup is to die for …’ Apparently the old bell that tolled to call the monks to their repast still existed somewhere in the grounds, attached to one of the outbuildings. Like most of the fascinating things they’d all been told about the Hall and the gardens in the first of the evening chats, Poppy hadn’t bothered investigating.

She decided on the vegetarian option of spinach lasagne, not because she was a vegetarian but because it sounded more filling than the chicken curry (which always seemed to leave her wanting more) and because she’d had sort of a green day – trees and leaves and Peter Pan. It went with the theme. Lenny nodded approvingly as he wrote down her order (though why he’d have to approve or not, Poppy wasn’t quite sure) and she