The Hideaway Deer Page 4

“Of course – if Paige’s mum doesn’t mind. I’ve got to be here about another half an hour, though. Paige, could your mum just pop in here to let me know it’s OK? I can drop you home later, tell her.”

  Lola and Paige sped off to find her mum, who was waiting in the playground with Immy. As soon as Paige’s little sister realized Paige was getting to go to someone’s house, she started begging to go too and then she went into a huge sulk when she was told she couldn’t. But Paige’s mum said yes, which was the important thing.

  Both the girls paced around the reception area outside the office, occasionally nipping in to look hopefully at Lola’s mum. Surely she didn’t need to stay much longer?

  “OK! I’ve finished, I’m coming now,” she said at last. “Stop prowling about like that, girls, please. Let’s go and get the car.”

  Lola clenched her fingernails into her palms all the way home. The deer had been killed late last night so if she did have a baby, it would have been abandoned for hours already. She kept remembering the fawn and the mother deer in the garden, sniffing and nuzzling at each other after she and Mum had rescued the baby deer from the football net. They had been so beautiful, and so loving. She couldn’t bear to think that the little fawn might have been left all alone. But if it was, then she and Paige had to find it. They just had to.

  The girls jumped out of the car and dashed round the corner of the house into the garden. Then Lola caught Paige’s arm. “We should slow down. We don’t want to scare the fawn if it’s there.”

  Paige nodded. “Sorry. I just hate the thought of it waiting…”

  “Me too.”

  They crept down the garden towards the longer grass at the end, just past the tree house and the goal.

  “Wow, you had to cut massive holes in it,” Paige whispered, looking at the net.

  “I didn’t mind,” Lola said. “Actually Mum said maybe we should cut away all of the net just in case it happens again.” She pointed at the swathes of long grass. “That’s where we found the fawn before, curled up in there.”

  “I can’t see anything now.” Paige crouched down to peer through the stems.

  “I nearly poked the fawn with a stick last time. I was right on top of it before I noticed it was there.” Lola swept her hand carefully through the grass. She was half hoping to see a dappled-brown back and half dreading it. But there was nothing. No fawn curled up in the grass, even though they searched for ages.

  “I don’t think it’s here,” Lola said at last, standing up with a sigh. Her back was aching from stooping over. “Do you think we should look in the graveyard?”

  “Are you allowed?” Paige asked. “Have you been in there before?”

  “I went through the fence to look around once,” Lola admitted. “Mum didn’t say I couldn’t.”

  “OK.” Paige nodded. “There must be loads of places a fawn could hide in there. It’s huge.”

  Lola led the way along the tiny deer-trodden path to the hole in the fence. “Watch the brambles! The graveyard is huge, but the grass is short. There’s no overgrown bits like there are in our garden, I reckon that’s why the deer like coming through the fence.” She crouched down and pushed her way through the broken fence panel. Then she watched Paige scramble through after her.

  “It’s not as spooky as I thought it would be.” Paige glanced around curiously.

  “I know.” Lola looked out at the long stretch of graves, gleaming palely in the spotted sunlight through the trees. “I think it would be really scary in the dark, though.”

  Paige sucked her teeth. “There could be a fawn hiding anywhere, Lola. This place is massive. All those tall statue things – there’s loads of hiding places.”

  Lola sighed. “Mmm. Maybe. We should still look.”

  They started down the nearest pathway, darting here and there to peer behind the gravestones, but the only animals they saw were squirrels, bouncing from tree to tree above them. Then a faint rustle behind them made Lola whirl round and clutch at Paige. “Look!” she breathed.

  Stepping slowly past them came a group of deer, their ears flickering as they watched the two girls inquisitively. They were all does, Lola thought, with no antlers. They didn’t seem very scared – perhaps they were used to people walking through the cemetery.

  “They’re beautiful!” Paige whispered.

  Suddenly the deer scattered, bouncing wildly across the path and disappearing between the gravestones.

  “What spooked them?” Paige asked, giggling in surprise. “Oh – is that your mum calling?”

  “Lola! Paige! Where are you?”

  Lola nodded and they raced back to the broken fence, quickly squeezing through and weaving between the bramble bushes. Lola’s mum was standing just outside the kitchen door, holding a plate of sandwiches.

  “Did you go through the fence?” she asked, frowning a little.

  Lola looked at her apologetically. “We looked all through the grass in our garden and we couldn’t see the fawn, and then we thought maybe in the cemetery…” She shifted uncomfortably. “We should have asked.”

  “Sorry,” Paige murmured.

  “You shouldn’t go in there on your own,” Mum said. “I didn’t know where you were! Anyway, I was coming to help you look. But have some of these first.”

  “Thanks.” Lola picked up a sandwich. She was actually quite hungry, as she hadn’t eaten very much of her lunch. Paige took one as well and they ate silently, looking around the garden.

  “If the deer left her baby somewhere in the cemetery, I don’t think we’ll ever find it,” Lola said at last. “We saw some deer, Mum, and they just disappeared into all those bushes and trees. There could be lots and lots of fawns hidden in there. It’s hopeless.”

  Mum put the rest of the sandwiches down on the grass and hugged her. “We can go back and keep looking,” she said gently. “Perhaps if the baby really has been left alone for a while, it’ll be calling for its mum. We might hear it.”

  Lola swallowed hard. She knew Mum was trying to help, but the idea of the fawn crying for its mother was so sad. She sniffed and then glanced at Paige. “We have to try?” she said hesitantly. Perhaps Paige was sick of looking. But Paige nodded firmly.

  “We can’t give up.”

  They searched for another hour but by then the sun was going down and the shadows were starting to grow thicker around the old cemetery. The fading light made the trees seem taller and there were strange, eerie patches of darkness around the graves. Paige and Lola found themselves walking closer together, and even Lola’s mum was looking nervous.

  “Paige, I promised your mum I’d have you home soon,” she said at last. “We’ve just got time for some more sandwiches. I’m sorry I haven’t cooked you a proper tea.”

  “It doesn’t matter – it was more important to keep looking.” Paige sighed sadly. “The fawn could still be here and we’d never know.”

  “Don’t say that.” Lola shook her head miserably. “Maybe the deer your mum saw didn’t have a baby.”

  “Maybe.”

  They walked back through the graveyard, hurrying a little past the deeper patches of shadow. Somehow, Lola thought as they stepped through the fence, her garden seemed brighter and sunnier than before. But perhaps the fawn was still out there in the deepening darkness, wondering why its mother hadn’t come back.

  The next morning, Lola woke early with a start. She hadn’t slept that well. She’d kept having strange dreams where she was chasing something and couldn’t catch it, and it was so terribly important but she didn’t know why.

  They must all have been about the fawn, she realized as Alfie yawned and stretched and padded his paws up and down on her feet. He obviously hadn’t had any bad dreams. Lola wriggled her feet out from under him and got up to look through her bedroom window at the garden.

  There were woodpigeons in the trees, making a low roo-roo sound, but nothing else was moving. There wasn’t even a breeze and she couldn’t hear a single car. It was the sort o
f morning for something magical to happen, Lola thought. All gold and green.

  So why not look for the fawn again?

  Her heart started to beat a little faster and she grabbed a sweater to throw on over her pyjamas. Mum was still asleep, she guessed, so she crept down the stairs with Alfie weaving excitedly around her, wanting his breakfast. She stopped in the kitchen just long enough to fill his bowl with cat biscuits and pull on her wellies. Then she opened the side door and slipped out into the morning.

  It was cold that early and the grass was so wet that Lola left footprints. She slowed down as she reached the big horse chestnut tree but there were no deer staring back at her. Lola eyed the patch of long grass. Could they have missed a fawn hidden in there last night? She and Paige had looked so carefully.

  She sighed, and a surprised squirrel dashed across the grass in front of her and scuttled up the tree. Lola watched it disappear among the leaves. Perhaps she should just go back in.

  She was still trying to see where the squirrel had gone when she caught the tiniest movement out of the corner of her eye. Just a twitch, at the very edge of the long grass. In amongst the bramble bushes.

  They hadn’t looked there. The brambles were lethal, armed with long curved thorns. Lola had scratched her legs badly the first time she’d tried to follow the deer path through them to the fence. Surely they were too prickly and uncomfortable for the fawn to be hidden in there?

  But as she watched, the purple-green bramble leaves at the very bottom of the bush fluttered again and a shining eye blinked at her between the thorny stems. In the shadows under the bush, the fawn was almost invisible.

  “We walked right past you,” Lola whispered, crouching down to look. “You were there all that time?”

  The fawn gazed back at her, and then it wriggled clumsily out from under the brambles and stepped towards her on wobbly legs. Lola stared – she had expected the fawn to stay curled up and hidden, the way it had before, or perhaps even to run away. She’d never thought that it would come closer. It staggered forward and opened its mouth in a tiny cry.

  “Oh…” Lola whispered as the fawn butted its head gently against her knees. “Oh, baby…”

  The fawn looked up at her and cried again – a funny little squeaky noise. It wasn’t nearly as loud as the barking wails that the fawn caught in the football net had made. This fawn – Lola still wasn’t quite sure if it was the same one or not – sounded feeble and it definitely wasn’t walking very well. Lola didn’t know whether to be glad that she’d found it, or not…

  “Have you been there since Thursday night?” Lola muttered. “You must be starving.”

  There was a faint sound behind her and the fawn skittered away a few shaky steps. Lola looked round to see her mum standing there, gazing at them wide-eyed.

  “Is that…? You found…”

  “I think so. But how can we know for certain? What if its mum just left it here this morning while she went to graze? I mean, its mum might be the deer who was run over but how can we know for sure? What if we try to help and we’re not helping at all, like Uncle Chris said…” Lola looked anxiously at her mum. “I was talking to him about the deer when he came over the other day. He said if people pick a fawn up and handle it then the fawn starts to smell like humans and its mother won’t want it any more when she comes back.”

  “If this fawn does belong to the deer that Paige’s mum went out to rescue,” Mum said slowly, “then I suppose it must have been here all the time. It wouldn’t move, would it? Not if this was where its mother left it?”

  “I don’t think so,” Lola said. “Uncle Chris said they’re really good at staying put. I didn’t disturb it, Mum. It just got up and came over.”

  “I know, Lola, don’t worry. This isn’t your fault.” Mum frowned. “You and Paige looked really carefully yesterday. Wouldn’t you have seen the fawn if it was there?”

  Lola tried to think back. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “We did search for ages, but we were looking in the grass because that’s where I saw the fawn before. We didn’t look through the brambles. If the fawn hadn’t moved just now, I don’t think I’d have noticed it this morning either. It was tucked right under the bush.”

  “So it could have been there yesterday. Oh, the poor thing…”

  The fawn had staggered closer, and it was nudging at Lola’s pyjamas and making those faint squeaky cries again.

  “I think it’s hungry,” Lola said worriedly. “It’s really wobbly, Mum. It didn’t stagger as much as that when we got it out of the net, did it?”

  Her mum looked at her in surprise. “How do you know it’s the same one?”

  Lola shrugged. “I’m not certain. But that fawn had really dark stripes on its back between the white spots, just like this one does. I’m almost sure it’s the same. Mum, what should we do? If it hasn’t had any food since Thursday night it must be so weak…”

  “Let’s wait a bit longer,” Mum suggested. “Till lunchtime, say, just in case it does still have a mum looking after it. And I’ll call Uncle Chris and see what he thinks.”

  “OK.” Lola nodded. “So we leave the fawn then?”

  “Just for a bit longer.”

  Lola swallowed and started to edge backwards towards the house. The fawn watched her and Mum for a moment, then it squeaked again and staggered through the grass after them.

  “It’s following us!” Lola whispered. “Mum, I think we need to call Uncle Chris now.”

  Mum nodded and they hurried back to the house, leaving the fawn watching them, bleating anxiously. Lola kept looking round at it. She felt awful, seeing the poor baby deer so miserable and probably hungry. But if the fawn’s mum had just left it under the brambles that morning and she and Mum made a big fuss over it, it might end up being abandoned for no reason at all.

  “Sorry,” she murmured as she pulled the kitchen door to. Then she peered out of the window over the sink, watching as the fawn stood in the middle of the grass, looking around uncertainly.

  “Uncle Chris isn’t answering,” Mum said. “I suppose he could be driving. I’ll leave a message.”

  Mum tried to persuade Lola to eat some breakfast but she kept popping up to check out of the window again. The fawn stayed standing on the grass calling miserably and then at last it curled up again, tucked into a tiny ball. Lola ached to go out to it but she knew she mustn’t.

  “How long are we going to leave it there?” she asked, giving up and pushing away the bowl of cereal. It didn’t feel fair, eating cereal when the fawn might be starving – and it had gone all soggy while she messed with it.

  Mum went over to the window. “We said till lunchtime… I know it’s horrible, Lola. I want to help too, but what if we do the wrong thing? I looked up abandoned fawns on my phone and all the wildlife websites say to leave them alone.”

  “It looks so weak,” Lola muttered, coming to stand beside her. “I hate this, Mum.”

  “I’ll try Uncle Chris again,” Mum said. But there was still no answer. She put on the radio, but it didn’t help. Lola went upstairs to get dressed and when she looked out of her bedroom window the fawn was still there. It had its head resting on its hooves and its eyes closed. It looked so small and helpless.

  Lola didn’t even try to do her homework. She knew there wasn’t any point – she’d end up writing nonsense. She borrowed Mum’s laptop and looked up deer and how to look after orphaned fawns instead. Mum was right. All the websites warned that most “abandoned” fawns weren’t abandoned at all – they were just waiting for their mums to come back from grazing and feed them.

  At last, after what seemed like days to Lola but was really only a few hours, Mum’s phone rang.

  “Is it Uncle Chris?” Lola yelped and Mum nodded as she answered.

  “Hello – no, don’t worry, we guessed you were driving, or in the middle of an operation or something. Yes, it’s still there, Chris. Curled up in the middle of the lawn.” Mum paused to listen and Lola guessed her
uncle was probably pointing out that the deer might not be abandoned at all. “Yes, but we know there was a deer hit by a car close to here on Thursday night and we can’t help wondering if this is her fawn. It’s looking so weak. OK… OK… See you then.”

  “He’s coming?” Lola asked hopefully.

  Mum nodded. “He says he’ll be here in ten minutes.”

  Uncle Chris was carrying a big cardboard box and Lola peered at it curiously as she opened the front door for him.

  “What’s that?”

  “Wait and see,” her uncle told her, dumping it in the hallway. “Show me your fawn, Lola. Did you touch it?”

  “No! I didn’t want the fawn’s mum to smell me on it and abandon it. You said that might happen. But I did get close, Uncle Chris, I couldn’t help it. It came out from under the blackberry bushes and it followed me.” She led him into the kitchen. “Look, you can see it out of the window. I’m really worried – I don’t think it looks very well.”

  “Mmm.” Uncle Chris leaned on the sink and gazed out of the window at the fawn. “So you reckon this fawn’s mum was the one that was run over on the other side of the cemetery,” he murmured. “It would make sense.”

  “Is there a way we can make sure?” Lola’s mum asked. “We don’t want to end up stealing a perfectly healthy fawn whose mum just happens to be off grazing.”

  “Not exactly.” Uncle Chris sighed. “Look, you’ve done the right thing leaving the fawn alone. You’re not going to like this but we may have to wait a while longer. Often the deer won’t come back to their fawns until after dark.”

  “You mean tonight?” Lola squeaked. “But Uncle Chris, if the fawn does belong to the deer who was run over, it’s already been alone since Thursday night – maybe even Thursday morning if that’s when its mum left it. That’s two days already!”