Taking Flight

by Sheena Wilkinson

  Still not thinking, I put the kettle on and find the teapot. Milk. Mugs. I bring the tea in and she smiles.

  ‘Thanks, son. We’ve had a lovely Christmas, haven’t we?’

  ‘Um. Yeah.’ How can I say anything? She hasn’t been drunk. I always know. And it’s Christmas. I sit on the arm of the sofa and look at EastEnders. ‘You’re bang out of order!’ yells Phil Mitchell. I hate Phil Mitchell. He looks like Barry.

  Then I hear my own voice, louder than Phil’s. ‘Mum? Why’s there a bottle of vodka in the cupboard?’

  She takes a sip of tea but under the silver angel a red stain creeps up her neck. ‘A bottle of vodka?’

  ‘Don’t tell me it was from before. I know it wasn’t. And don’t say you haven’t been drinking it. I’m not stupid, Mum.’

  ‘Declan, have you seen me drunk since I got home?’

  I shake my head. Try to drink my tea but it’s too hot.

  ‘Look, I have a wee glass now and again. That’s all. It’s just a wee treat. It’s no big deal.’ She tries to reach her hand out to me, but I move away, spilling the tea on the sofa arm. ‘Watch what you’re doing!’

  ‘Thought you were off it?’ My voice sounds sulky. Childish.

  ‘I am. For God’s sake, Declan. Look, I know I was overdoing things a bit before. But it’s all sorted now. I can take it or leave it.’

  ‘But you were meant to have stopped.’

  ‘Does Colette never take a wee drink?’

  ‘Mum, that’s different!’

  ‘Why?’

  Because Colette’s not an alcoholic. But I don’t say it.

  ‘Am I the one who came in legless last week?’

  ‘That’s not fair!’

  ‘Oh, but it’s fair for you to lecture me?’

  I sigh. I’m not going to win. She twists everything. But maybe she’s right. If she’s only having a glass every now and then. That’s just – what do you call it? – moderate drinking.

  But my mum’s not a moderate drinker.

  * * *

  Mum sets the phone back in its holder. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘she’s happy, all right. Spending New Year’s Eve with this Brian. Must be serious.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  Mum sighs. ‘OK for her, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well,’ I shrug, ‘she’s been on her own for ages.’ I still can’t think about Colette without my face smarting at the memory of that day before Christmas. ‘It’s not me you need to apologise to.’ I’ve even thought about it. But I can’t imagine phoning Vicky. Well, I can imagine it. It always ends with her slamming the phone down. I’ve even thought about writing it. But she’d think – and Colette’d think – that I was chickening out of a proper apology. And they’d be right.

  And Cam. I wish I could apologise to Cam.

  ‘Maybe it’s time I went out and met someone nice,’ says Mum. ‘What d’you think?’ She smiles at herself in the hall mirror and rubs her tongue over her teeth. Then she frowns at me. ‘Any word of you getting off your arse and getting yourself a life?’

  ‘Mum!’ I’ve stayed in every day since I found the bottle. Stayed in until my head throbbed with being indoors. Stayed in to make sure she was OK. It’s been so boring I even started doing a bit of revision for my mocks. Not that there’s any point now. ‘You used to nag me to stay in and stop running the streets.’

  ‘Well, there’s a happy medium, son. You’re sixteen. You shouldn’t be sitting in with your mother.’

  God, she makes me sound like a sad bastard.

  ‘And, you know,’ she goes on, sort of proudly, ‘it’s not like you need to keep an eye on me. I haven’t been near that bottle since Christmas.’

  That’s true. I keep trying not to go and look in the cupboard but I can’t stop myself. And the level hasn’t changed. I thought she might have filled it up with water but I tried it – well, I got as far as sniffing it but the smell brought back my birthday and made me gag so I reckon it was vodka, all right. So maybe she’s right – she can take it or leave it now. Sometimes I think I’ve caught the brightness in her eyes, the slight redness of her cheeks that means she’s been at it – but I could be wrong.

  ‘Ah, go on son. Away out and see your friends.’

  ‘I’m not leaving you on your own on New Year’s Eve.’ No need to tell her I don’t seem to have any friends.

  ‘Well, I might head over to Mairéad’s for an hour. Sure, she doesn’t get out much with those wee twins.’

  ‘Oh. OK then.’ For the first time I notice she’s wearing her good leather trousers and she’s got make-up on.

  I’ve hardly been out the door for ages and the raw air catches at my throat. It’s like breathing for the first time in days. The footpaths are starting to freeze and they’re flashing light/dark in all the flickering lights. Tirconnell Parade is still lit up like Las Vegas. I stuff my hands deeper in my pockets and trudge on. There’s nowhere I want to go. I nod alright to Chris Reilly, Kevin Walsh and a couple of girls from the year below. The girls are sliding on the icy footpaths, half-falling and grabbing at the boys and laughing. I wonder where Seaneen is.

  I head on past the chippie, the offie, the sweet shop, and cut down through the waste ground beside them to the main road. There’s a row of cars outside the chapel even though it’s not Sunday. Gran used to drag me to Mass all the time. Haven’t been in the chapel since her funeral. Gran was a great one for Confession. Every Saturday when I was wee I had to wait for her in the pew and not move or fidget. If I was good she took me to the Cosy Café on the way home for jam doughnuts. One time she wouldn’t take me because I got my toy car out and ran it down the aisle. The Cosy Café’s boarded up now.

  I wonder what it’d be like to go to some priest and say you’d nearly killed a horse. I wonder what he’d give you – a few Hail Marys, maybe. How could that make you feel any different? Gran always used to say she felt great after Confession. She used to stay in the wee box thing for ages, but she can’t have had many sins.

  Past the chapel there’s the new flats. Well, people call them new but they’ve been there a few years now. I can’t help glancing up at Barry the Bastard’s window and my stomach clenches when I see the light.

  I think about going to the park, but I had enough of the park on my birthday.

  My new phone tells me it’s only ten o’clock. Sod the bloody New Year. It’ll be the same as every other year. I get to Fat Frankie’s just before he shuts and get a chip. Haven’t had proper chips for ages – not since that time with Rory after the show. Rory telling me I should work with horses. I bet he and Vicky aren’t walking through some shithole estate eating chips on New Year’s Eve.

  Walking past Seaneen’s house I have to step on to the road because of the big silver Jeep mounting the footpath in front of me. A drug dealer’s car. Then the registration jumps out at me – BAZ 67. Quick glimpse of fat bristly neck. I bend over my chips so he can’t see me, and the sharp vinegary smell nearly knocks me out. A blast of music and laughing comes through the open door of the house. If I hadn’t told Seaneen to piss off, would I have been invited? Then I catch on. Seaneen’s house is Mairéad’s house. That’s where Mum’s seeing in the New Year. Not sitting with a cup of tea and Jools Holland on the TV. At a party. A party with drink. A party with Barry McCann.

  I wrap the chips into a parcel and go straight through our house to the back yard to put them in the wheelie bin.

  It’s not even a surprise to see the three vodka bottles wedged down between plastic bags and the chicken car-cass from Christmas day. They’re not even wrapped up. It’s the cheap import stuff. The stuff she gets off Barry.

  And when a Flight-haunted sleep finally takes me, it’s no surprise to be dragged up out of it by the giggling and shouting and key-scraping of Mum getting in. This time, she is legless.

  And she’s not alone.

  Chapter 32

  VICKY

  I scuffled along Sandringham Park in the cold drizzle. Even though it was the first of Jan
uary there were still soggy clumps of leaves in sad heaps. Mum was still in bed. Dad and Fiona and Molly had gone to Fiona’s parents’ holiday cottage on the north coast. They’d invited me but I didn’t want to leave Flight. Mum had gone out with Brian the night before so I’d ended up sitting home on my own. Becca had invited me round to hers and I’d got ready and everything but in the end I hadn’t felt like going. I just stayed in and went to bed early. Which is why I was wide awake and restless while the rest of Belfast slept off its hangover.

  I was so intent on looking down that I didn’t see Rory until I nearly crashed into him.

  ‘Oh my God! Sorry!’ I said and my heart stopped. This was the first time I’d seen him since he dumped me. But it was bound to happen some time.

  Rory blushed. ‘Oh, hi, Vicky. Um – happy New Year.’

  ‘Yeah. Happy New Year.’

  I thought he would just walk on but he hovered. He was all hopped up in a big overcoat with a wee woolly hat and he looked gorgeous. I had greasy hair which I’d pulled back into a plait and was wearing the quilted jacket I usually only wore to the yard.

  ‘So – how have you been? How’s Flight?’ He sounded nervous, like he wasn’t sure if it was OK to ask this or not.

  ‘Cam thinks he’s putting more weight on his leg. But he gets bored being in the stable all the time.’ I bit my lip. ‘Did you have a nice New Year?’ I was coming out with total crap but I didn’t want him to just say goodbye and head up the street away from me.

  He smiled. ‘The usual. We always do this big family thing. Loads of cousins and grannies and stuff. It’s a bit corny, to be honest, but my mum would be so upset if I said I didn’t want to be there. Even though I grew out of it when I was about twelve. You know what family parties are like.’

  ‘I don’t, really. My family’s kind of small and kind of … well, split.’ I didn’t just mean Mum and Dad. I was thinking about Declan and his mum. I didn’t want to think about him; I just couldn’t seem to help it. I bet he hadn’t been sitting in on his own on New Year’s Eve, either. I bet he’d been out partying with his horrible joyriding friends.

  I scuffled at some leaves. We seemed to have reached the point where there wasn’t anything left to say. Then at same moment we both said, ‘I’m sor –’ and gave short, embarrassed laughs.

  ‘You first,’ he offered.

  My stomach shivered but I had to say it. ‘It’s just I’m sorry about … well, you were right about me being nasty to Declan. I did say … something … to him and I suppose it made him so angry he just took Flight without thinking. I kind of know it wasn’t on purpose. What you said –’

  ‘Look, I feel bad about that,’ he interrupted. ‘I was way too harsh.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘You did make me sort of wise up to myself. Other people – my friends – had told me the same thing but I wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘Still, my timing could have been more sensitive.’

  ‘Your timing was crap,’ I said and suddenly we were both laughing, a proper laugh this time.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘are you busy? I mean, were you going anywhere special?’

  I shrugged and tried to sound casual. ‘Just waiting for Mum to surface so she can take me up to see Flight.’ I hoped my voice didn’t sound as full of anticipation as I felt.

  ‘I could take you up. If you wanted to, I mean.’

  ‘OK. If you’re sure.’

  And that’s how, half an hour later, I was looking over Flight’s half-door with Rory standing beside me, so close that I could feel the rough wool of his coat. The yard was deserted. All the other horses were in the field and poor Flight looked so lonely stuck in his stable. He nickered and limped over when he saw us at the door.

  ‘He’s happy to see you anyway,’ said Rory.

  I couldn’t help feeling pleased. ‘He never used to do that. But then … well, to be honest I suppose I just used to come up and ride him and go away again. I never spent much time just being with him. When – well, if I’m ever able to ride him again I think I’ll kind of know him better.’

  ‘Well, that’d be good, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t start telling me this was a blessing in disguise,’ I warned him.

  ‘Course not. Can you show me his leg?’

  ‘OK, Doctor Marshall.’

  He got all interested in the wound, especially when I showed him the drain that was still in it, though it was coming out later in the week. I could look at it now without flinching but I couldn’t answer all Rory’s questions about it.

  ‘Look, any time you want a lift up here to hold his paw or whatever,’ he said when we were walking back to the car, ‘just give me a shout. I mean, I have to revise but it’s nice to get a break.’ He half-looked away and started rummaging in his coat pocket for the car keys.

  ‘Hoof, not paw!’ I said.

  ‘I know. I’m not that stupid. It made you laugh, though, didn’t it?’

  * * *

  ‘So, are you guys, like, back together?’ Becca’s voice on the line was high-pitched with excitement.

  ‘No. Ssshh,’ I warned her, as if Rory could hear from three houses away. ‘Just friends.’

  ‘Yeah, right. He totally still likes you.’

  I sighed. ‘Oh, Becs, I totally still like him! Meeting him today was the only nice thing that’s happened since – well, since the accident.’

  ‘It’s certainly cheered you up, babes.’

  Mum said exactly the same thing when I ate all my dinner for the first time in ages. The problem was, I thought, stacking the dishwasher for her afterwards, I couldn’t really text him and ask him to take me to the yard; it would be too much like running after him.

  But before I went to bed my phone bleeped and it was a text from him! GOOD 2 C U. GLAD WE R FRIENDS AGAIN. I MEANT IT ABOUT TAKING U 2 C FLIGHT. 2MORO?

  And I replied: OK, WOT TIME?

  * * *

  ‘God, it’s freezing,’ Rory said, hugging himself and pulling his scarf tighter. I wished he would hug me. He opened the car door and jumped in.

  ‘Don’t suppose there’s anywhere round here to get a nice hot cup of coffee?’ he asked when he’d started the engine.

  I looked round the frozen fields. ‘Afraid not. Nowhere closer than my house. But I could make you a cup. I think we have some of Mum’s homemade mince pies left.’ I held my breath. We’d been going up to the yard together for the last three days but this was the first time either of us had suggested taking it any further. And Mum was back at work today – the house would be empty. I fiddled with my seat-belt, keeping my face hidden in case it gave away how much I wanted him to say yes.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘that sounds good.’

  Before Rory had dumped me I had made him quite a few cups of coffee, when he’d been helping me revise and stuff, but now it seemed much more of a big deal. It mattered that it was strong enough, that I gave him the cup he’d once said he liked, that there was the right amount of milk. And I knew I was being stupid – it was only a cup of coffee, for goodness’ sake, and he definitely didn’t fancy me any more – he never even looked at me that way – but for some reason I felt really nervous.

  The funny thing was, Rory did too. He kept putting his cup down and he took a second mince pie without seeming to notice that he’d only eaten half of the first one.

  And then he said it. ‘Vicky. I don’t know if you know but … next week … it’s our school formal.’

  ‘Is it?’ I managed to sound really casual.

  ‘And I know it’s really short notice but I wondered if … I mean I know we’re not … but I thought you might like to come with me.’

  ‘Oh!’ My mind raced. OK, he wasn’t asking me out again, but he was asking me to his formal! If ever there was a good omen this must be it!

  ‘So, will you come?’

  ‘Umm, what date?’

  ‘Friday the eleventh.’

  ‘Oh. That’s my mum’s birthday.’

  His face
fell.

  ‘Of course I can come!’ I put down my coffee cup and hugged him – just a hug. Friends could hug; I hugged Fliss and Becca all the time. But it felt lovely – he smelled just the same. And he didn’t pull away immediately.

  ‘And do you have enough time? To get a dress and all?’

  ‘Oh yes! My friends and I are going to hit the sales. Big time!’

  * * *

  Fliss was still in Donegal so Becca and I went into town. There were loads of formal dresses but most of them you wouldn’t be seen dead in – too tarty, too glittery, too frumpy, too clingy. But then in Karen Millen I found my dream dress. Turquoise with spaghetti straps that crossed over down the back and a skirt that was slinky but not tight.

  ‘Wow!’ said Becca. ‘There is no way he’ll be able to resist you in that!’

  I did a twirl and tried to see what my back looked like. ‘Are you sure it suits me?’

  In some ways Fliss would have been better to shop with. If something looked minging she’d just raise her eyebrows and say, ‘I think not, Miss Moore.’ Becca always wanted to please you. But I didn’t need Becca to tell me the dress was amazing.

  I held my hair away from my neck. ‘Up or down?’

  Becca squealed. ‘Let me come and do it for you! You know I’m ace at hair. We could have the back up, in a sort of twist, and maybe curls coming down at the front.’

  ‘Could you do that?’

  ‘Easy. And Fliss can do your make-up and nails. She’s got that lovely silver stuff. Look, we’ll come and be your personal beauticians! Straight after school.’

  ‘School!’ I remembered in horror. ‘I can’t be at school till four and then have time to get ready by seven. No way!’ I was taking the turquoise dress off very carefully – it was the only size twelve in the shop.

  ‘Course not,’ agreed Becca. ‘That’s why you’re getting out at lunchtime. Your mum’ll write you a note, won’t she?’

  ‘I think so.’

  Becca held the dress in front of her while I pulled my jeans back on. ‘So, have you met this Brian yet?’