Lilac in Sunshine is coming on beautifully. It will be just about ready to go when summer is well and truly over - such timing! But nobody ever wants summer to end, especially not the summer before starting a new school, when you're not quite sure how it will feel to be the youngest in a new and unknown place instead of the important oldest in the school you know so well. Let's catch up with Lilac at the start of the book, and see how things are for her, and come back soon for the back-of-the-book blurb and a cover reveal...
Chapter 1
Early July, 1988, a town south of Dublin
‘Lilac, Agatha’s here!’ Nuala McCarthy’s voice drifted up the stairs towards her daughter’s closed bedroom door.
‘OK, I’m coming.’
Twelve-year-old Lilac paused, trying to decide between her yellow and her orange hairbands, finally crammed the safe blue one over her crinkly blondey-brown hair, and launched herself down the stairs three at a time.
‘We’ll miss it! They pick the winner at three!’ Her friend Agatha stood just outside the front door, eager to be off, reminding Lilac of a slightly concerned blackbird. Lilac fished for her sandals under the hall table with a big toe and pulled them on.
‘They’re always running late, don’t worry,’ Lilac told her. She was the voice of experience here because she’d been at this event in previous years, when Agatha was in Hungary visiting relatives. The town festival always happened in the second week in July, and there was great excitement among Lilac and her friends to see who would be crowned the queen this year. Festival queen was a purely honorary title usually given to some worthy elder citizen rather than any beauty-pageant winner, and even though the girls had no idea who it might be, they wanted to be there for the big announcement.
The two girls walked along Lilac’s road, turned on to the main street at the newsagents – and found themselves in uncharted territory. The traffic had been stopped at both ends of the long street and people were loitering, chatting, eating and even dancing in the middle of the road. A couple of restaurants and cafés had set tables out on the footpath and buskers were competing with the constant hum of background music emanating from speakers tied to the lamp posts. Bunting criss-crossed above their heads, there were colourful flower boxes in every window, planters and posters hung from poles, and the ground was strewn with litter of plastic cups and flyers advertising the events of the week.
‘What a mess,’ said Agatha, starting to pick up some of the rubbish but then abandoning the attempt as she saw more and more.
‘I think people think they’re allowed litter during the festival,’ Lilac said vaguely. ‘Like, there’s someone whose job it is just to pick it all up.’
‘Even if there is, they shouldn’t make more work for that person,’ Agatha said.
‘I know. Where are we meeting the others?’
‘Margery said she and Ev would be in the bookshop, because I didn’t know exactly when we’d get here. Unless they’ve already gone to watch the announcements.’
Since the announcement stage wasn’t far from the tiny bookshop where Lilac usually loaded up on second-hand reading material, it wasn’t hard to check both places. While Agatha scanned each passageway of the shop’s maze of bookshelves, Lilac shaded her eyes from the sun and looked up at the rows of stadium seating that had been set up in front of the makeshift stage outside the supermarket.
‘Stadium seating?’ Lilac’s dad Gerry had grumbled when he read the festival programme in the local paper. ‘Is it Croke Park they think we are? Are they planning to fit a whole football pitch on the main street now?’ But it was just a few rows of tiered metal seats brought up from the GAA club, to provide a better view. It had rained the night before, so very few people were using them, and Lilac had no trouble spotting Margery and Ev in prime position at the top. The girls waved a towel at her.
‘Come on up! We brought towels, you’ll be OK!’
‘Where’s Agatha?’
‘In the bookshop, she’ll be here in a second,’ Lilac replied.
‘She won’t, you know. You can’t drag her out of there,’ Margery contradicted, the curving ends of her blonde bob swinging around her cheeks as she looked down. Agatha had been known to while away entire afternoons comparing two battered editions of the same Enid Blyton to see which would be better value for her 20p, or reading a whole Judy Blume in fits and starts because she didn’t like Judy Blume enough to buy the book, but still wanted to know what happened.
‘Fine, I’ll go and get her. Save our spaces!’ Lilac turned around and ducked into the bookshop, its dusty, peaceful air unchanged in spite of all the commotion outside. She usually spent just as long in here as Agatha, in fact, though she made less of a to-do about it. It was busier than usual and she had to weave around a lot of browsers before locating Agatha in front of the 50p pile of paperbacks, methodically considering each title.
‘Come on, the others are outside.’
‘I knew they must be since they’re not in here. I was just checking in case they have the next Anne of Green Gables book second-hand,’ Agatha said, stepping back reluctantly.
‘I know, but now’s not the time. The girls have really good seats and anyone could sit in them if we’re not there.’
Lilac chivvied Agatha outside again, not without a brief longing glance at the pile herself, for her taste and Agatha’s didn’t always overlap and there might be something there she would like. She promised herself she’d go in later. They nodded and smiled thank-you to the tall, kindly owner behind the desk, who never minded how long people browsed, whether they bought something in the end or not.
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