by Polly Crosby
‘No.’ I had forgotten how all-encompassing her attention could be, how it lasered into you, engulfing you until you felt submerged in it, unable to breathe.
She placed her hand on mine. The movement was so quick that I hardly saw her do it.
‘Don’t visit him yet,’ she said, ‘let him settle in first. You don’t want to make him feel guilty for abandoning you.’
‘He didn’t abandon me,’ I said, pulling my hand away.
She looked round the kitchen theatrically. ‘Where is he then?’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ I said. ‘I can look after myself.’ The unfairness of what she was saying billowed around me, and yet I knew she was right. Stacey had an uncanny way of pointing out the truth, the things shrouded in shadows in my head.
The beginnings of an ache threatened at my temple, and I reached up and touched my sutures again, running my finger over the rigid threads. ‘Why do you always pick arguments with me?’ I said.
‘I don’t pick arguments. We just don’t see things the same way. You said yourself that he’s ill,’ she said, ‘he’s not going to get better. He’s never coming home, so it’s time to move on. It’s simple, when you look at it like that.’
I picked angrily at the scab, edging my nail under the tight stitches. How was any of this simple?
‘I’ve had a really hard time over the last couple of years,’ I said quietly.
‘Is this going to turn into a woe-is-me story about how we stopped being friends, just when you needed me most?’
Her words landed in my chest, igniting the fire that had been smouldering there quietly for months.
‘Real friends don’t just drop each other like that,’ I said. ‘It was two years ago, Stacey. I was pissed off, and I’m really sorry if I upset you, really I am, but it was just a comment. Why did you leave? Why didn’t you argue back?’ Anger like white hot sparks was shooting through me now. ‘You have no idea what I’ve had to deal with.’
‘I’ve had to deal with stuff too,’ she said. She was looking down at the picture of Mary in her hands, stroking the golden halo around her head, ‘And I didn’t go far. I was always nearby if you needed me.’
‘Like the time I went to the lake, you mean? That’s what friendship’s about, is it? Stalking someone?’
‘Yeah, well you weren’t a great friend either!’ she said, her face full of the stubborn anger I remembered from when we were young.
She had bunched her fists up, her cheeks bright red, and I realised that deep inside she was still that child, with the same hopes and fears that an eight-year-old has, and all of a sudden I was jealous of her. Jealous of her lack of responsibility, of her lack of complexity. I stifled a sob.
At the sound, her anger abated as quickly as it had come. She sank back against the chair, drooping like a wilted flower. Her hair had changed in the two years she had been away. It was streaked with highlights from the sunshine, and it hung over her face as she looked down at the picture in her lap. She curled a lock of it round a finger, twisting it tightly.
‘Do you remember when we thought her name was Mrs Mother-of-God?’ I said, touching the picture.
A smile spread slowly across Stacey’s face.
‘Maybe… we could start again?’ I said. I pulled my chair closer and touched the hand that was frantically braiding her hair. ‘I missed you.’
‘I missed you too,’ she said, an uncertain smile still flickering over her lips. She pulled out a worn packet of Parma Violets and offered me one.
‘You don’t still like those, do you? They taste like rotten flowers.’
‘At least my breath doesn’t stink like yours.’
‘It doesn’t smell!’ I licked my teeth, conscious of the fact that we’d run out of toothpaste weeks ago.
‘I can smell it from here,’ she said, putting a handful of Parma Violets in her mouth and crunching gleefully.
I took a sweet and put it in my mouth, bracing myself for the feelings the taste of it would spark. But the flavour wasn’t as strong as I remembered. We sat, grinning at each other, rolling the sweets around our mouths.
‘Did you go to the circus in the end?’ she asked.
‘You heard me asking you to come, then, that day at the lake?’
‘Course I did. Did you go?’
‘I did.’
Stacey’s eyebrows lifted imperceptibly. ‘Wow. I didn’t think you had it in you.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I found out something: a clue to the treasure hunt.’
Stacey’s eyes widened. ‘No!’
‘I have so much to tell you. I nearly didn’t come back.’
‘What? You mean you nearly joined the circus?’ She looked at me, unsure whether or not I was joking.
I nodded.
‘As a clown, or a bearded woman?’ she said, shaking with silent laughter, and then we were both giggling, enjoying the familiar ring of our voices together, inhaling the smell of Parma Violets that surrounded us, thankful that we had finally found each other again.
Thirty-Three
Stacey supported me that evening as I climbed the stairs on wobbly legs, despite my protestations that I could do it on my own.
‘Whoa,’ she said as we came to my bedroom.
It was the first time she had seen all the paintings. I tried to see it for the first time: my face staring out at us from every corner of the room, the eyes, painted in oil and watercolour or sketched in charcoal and pencil, following us as we walked across the room.
‘This would give me nightmares,’ she said, avoiding looking at them as she ushered me back into bed, ‘how do you get any sleep?’
‘I like it,’ I said. I could feel Feena’s benevolent gaze beaming into me from all corners of the room.
Stacey turned her back on the pictures and began tucking me in.
‘Stacey,’ I whispered when she had finished, ‘I’m scared.’
‘About what?’
‘About Dad. About living here without him.’
‘But you’ve practically run the house singlehanded for years. What’s the difference? And at least now you’re not having to deal with your dad’s piss-soaked knickers.’ A sardonic smile lifted the corner of her mouth, and she began patting the covers around me.
I tried to smile too, knowing she was only trying to cheer me up. I didn’t want to be reminded of my dad now. I looked over at the telephone on the window sill.
‘I should call my mum,’ I said. I could suffer her anger and sadness now, if it meant seeing her again. If it meant I could hear stories about my sister that my dad’s brain could no longer hold onto. I thought of Mum’s red nails, her sad eyes creasing into a smile as she stroked my face until I slept.
Stacey stopped fussing round me. ‘What do you need her for?’
‘I don’t think I can do this on my own. I need her help.’
‘But I’m here,’ she said. ‘I’m helping. That’s enough, isn’t it?’ She sounded hurt.
I reached up to pick at the scab on my head. The stitches were the kind that melted away, but they were still there, clawing into my scalp. My brain was whirring over everything that had happened since Stacey went away. ‘I have so much to tell you,’ I repeated.
‘Shh, it can wait one more day. You look exhausted. Here, take this.’ She shook a small white pill onto her palm. ‘It’ll help you sleep.’
I took it, and she lifted a glass of water to my lips. As the bitter pill slid down my throat, I thought again of my mum. I could always call her tomorrow. Perhaps.
‘You’re right: you do need looking after,’ Stacey said. ‘You never were very good at taking care of yourself, were you?’
There were those words again. Truthful, but barbed. She sat on the bed and took my hand in hers. Her fingernails were short and chewed, just like I remembered them.
‘Why does everybody leave me?’ I said.
‘I didn’t leave you.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘Well, I came back.�
�
‘Eventually.’
Stacey sighed. ‘Don’t start again, Rom. I’m here now.’
‘What’s wrong with me?’ I asked quietly. ‘Why can’t I cope?’ I could hear the whine in my voice, magnified tenfold by tiredness and the pill she had given me. My hand was back at my head, scratching, picking. The scab felt huge now, taking over my whole scalp, a bumpy landscape for my fingers to explore.
Stacey sighed again, gazing out of the window. ‘I don’t know, Romilly, what is wrong with you?’
My breath caught at the cruel words, and I edged my nail deep beneath the stitches, prising the scab away. Warm blood rolled suddenly over my fingers.
‘Shit,’ Stacey said, jumping up from the bed. Finding a towel, she pressed it tightly over the cut.
I leant into her touch in spite of myself. ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ I said, laying my fingers lightly on her wrist, smearing blood across her skin.
She flinched.
‘I’m sorry, I—’ Tiredness was beginning to overwhelm me now, I couldn’t form the words I wanted to.
‘Shh, I’ll take care of you now.’ Her words were long and drawn-out like a record on slow play, hardly recognisable as words at all. ‘It’s not your fault you’re so pathetic, it’s how you were brought up. People who do as they please their whole lives tend to be selfish and thoughtless.’
Each word was like a little pin in my skin, as if I was a voodoo doll she was stabbing with relish.
‘But I…’ Sleep was folding me into its barbed arms now. I curled up in the bed, pulling my knees to my chest, my eyes heavy. ‘I didn’t…’ I murmured, but she patted the duvet, pulling it close around me.
‘It’s OK, you don’t need anyone else anymore. I’m here now. I’m enough.’
‘I…’
‘Shh, sleep now, we’ll talk more in the morning.’
My eyelids closed, and the room melted into nothingness around me.
A white feather was dancing in the corner of my bedroom window, caught in a cobweb. I lay in bed, watching it.
It had been a week since Dad went, a week since Stacey came back. A week of bedrest and sleep, punctuated by dreams deadened by the little white pills that Stacey had found. The bottle was on my bedside cabinet now. It had my father’s name on it.
The police had just called, the telephone’s ring so loud it had made me jump, pulling me from my drugged sleep. The man Dad attacked was out of hospital. He was not pressing charges. He probably didn’t want the world to know he was a sick pervert, I thought angrily.
I rolled over and my eyes rested on the red bauble that Dad’s box had delivered on the day of the attack. I leant over and picked it up. It fitted perfectly in my palm, and I remembered the night Dad told me about his dementia, when I had run to the meadow with it, and he had found me in his mobiles, and led me back to Braër to tell me the truth about his illness.
This bauble formed a part of Feena’s name in Dad’s clues. I thought of the complex web that Dad had created to lead me to the truth about my sister, how his brain must have worked so hard, knowing that at any moment he might start to forget.
‘Feathers appear when angels are near,’ Stacey said, climbing through the door with a cup of tea and making me jump. She put the tea on the bedside table. I looked over at the window. The feather was still there.
She had ordered me to stay in bed for the past week, bringing me food and drink, and frowning if I tried to get up. My legs felt weak whenever I padded to the toilet, my skin hot and feverish. Stacey had listened, entranced, as I recounted the last two years: Dad’s slow decline, the hunt for the clues, the raiding of his shed. When I got to the part about Feena, she had looked over at the paintings, frowning. ‘But they all look just like you,’ she said.
Now, whenever she came upstairs, she sat in front of them, gazing at the girls within.
‘This is definitely you,’ she said now, sitting cross-legged in front of a small watercolour of a girl making a daisy chain.
‘How do you know?’ I said, distracted by the movement of the feather in the window.
‘It just feels like you, she’s got a cheeky face. And she’s a bit fat.’
‘I’m not fat!’
‘No, but next to the pictures of Feena you have a certain chubbiness.’
‘Don’t you need to go back to your mum’s for a bit?’ I said. ‘Or your gran’s? I’m well enough to cope on my own now.’
‘Oh no,’ she said, turning and fixing me with a sweet smile, ‘I live here now, with you.’
The feather was swaying hypnotically in the window, like a pendulum. Nausea swelled up into my throat, and I swallowed it back. I got up, ignoring Stacey’s protestations, and pulled down the sash, but the feather took off out of reach into the air, high up above the house and over towards the road at the front.
I made my way shakily towards the stairs, climbing precariously downstairs after it, Stacey’s calls ringing in my ears.
What kind of angels could possibly be near me? A white feather was supposed to tell you that loved ones in heaven were thinking of you. But the only person in heaven was my sister, and why would she start thinking of me now after all these years?
I crossed the bridge and climbed awkwardly over the gate, craning my neck back to look for the feather. A dot of white appeared, swirling down towards me and I reached out my hand. It helixed down, straight into my palm as if, after all, it was meant for me. Tiny and perfect, it pulsed gently in the wind, and a rush of exultation went through me. I examined the soft downy hairs, wondering who was looking out for me; who cared enough to send me a sign.
‘They’re everywhere,’ Stacey said, following me from the house. I looked up, and with a sinking feeling I saw she was right. The whole road was covered in white feathers. Quite a few were swirling in the air, but most lay on the ground. I kicked at them, narrowly missing Stacey’s foot. Further away across the road, a whole heap of them lay together, lifting and dropping like seaweed in a tide.
We approached the pile of feathers cautiously. In its midst, a white dove lay, its beady black eye staring up at us. When it saw us coming it tried to scramble up, but only its head rocked back and forwards, its body staying still.
‘Its neck must be broken,’ Stacey said.
The bird continued to stare at us, its eye a swirl of smoke, as if it had already begun the slow descent into death.
‘We can’t leave it,’ she said.
‘What do you expect me to do?’ I asked, rubbing the feather anxiously between my fingers.
‘You’ve got to kill it.’
I looked up at her. ‘I can’t kill it! You kill it.’
But she just shook her head, staring at the bird.
I looked up at the sky. A sleet of feathers danced around us. One had landed in Stacey’s hair.
‘We’ll… we’ll just let it die.’ I turned my back on the dove, but the feathers were everywhere, a scurf of white falling in front of Braër’s windows like snow, as if the dove was shedding its life, layer by layer.
‘You’ve got to help it, Romilly.’ Stacey’s face was white. Her eyes resembled the dove’s, grey and marbled and swirling with something that might have been tears. I couldn’t remember ever having seen her cry before.
I looked down at the dove. Instinct made me want to crouch close to it, to stroke its warm breast, to calm it in any way I could. But I knew if I did I would see the terrible truths of the world brewing in its eye. I stayed standing.
‘How, how do I—?’ The dove was watching me still, its breast moving quickly in and out.
‘I don’t know. Quickly?’
‘With what, though?’
Stacey looked about. ‘Maybe… your foot?’ I looked down at my feet. I was wearing wellies. Ready-made, washable, bird-killing shoes. I shuddered.
I looked again at the dove. It wasn’t struggling to get away now. It was watching me with quiet acceptance. It blinked its eye slowly, the lids slipping over the glassy eyeball
, covering the world within.
‘On the count of three?’ I asked, and she joined in as I began.
‘One, two,’ I lifted my boot high into the air. ‘Three.’ I brought it down.
It became obvious that something had gone wrong the moment I slammed my foot down. I felt a silent pop as my heel hit the dove’s stomach. In the second that I lifted my foot back up I knew I hadn’t killed it, merely damaged it further. Skeins of intestine were attached to my boot, ribboning out of its burst stomach, and still it eyed me, its lungs fluttering delicately, inflating in a liquid chest that was half destroyed.
‘What did you do?’ Stacey said, stepping back, reeling away from the damaged bird.
Memories of broken snails twisting and turning in silent pain flooded my eyes as I stared at the poor mutilated animal.
‘You need to stamp on its head!’ Stacey said, miming her boot going down. ‘Its brain. You need to crush its brain! Quickly.’ She was staring in fascinated horror at the dove, its little head twitching now, its beak partly open.
With a huge effort I lifted my foot again and brought my heel down sharply on its head. With a crack, it stopped moving.
Feathers swirled about us as we stood by the side of the road. Stacey sat down on the verge and looked at the little bird on its bed of feathers. She reached a hand out to stroke its gleaming, twisted neck.
‘There are no angels,’ I said to her, wiping my foot on the grass and walking back to the house.
Thirty-Four
When I was well enough, I began planning my journey to visit Dad. It had only been a matter of weeks since he left, but as I began to gain the strength I had lost after so much bed rest, the need to see him intensified. I needed to hug him and smell his particular smell, to check he was all right, and see that he was being well looked after.
I dressed quietly and slipped out of the house when Stacey was on an errand, waiting nervously at the bus stop, hoping she wouldn’t come back early and find me there. I was reminded of when I took the bus to the circus, how I had wished Dad would see me and pull me back to the safety of Braër. I looked up at the house. It didn’t feel so safe now.