Fly Me Home

by Polly Ho-Yen

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Essays by Polly Ho-Yen

  A Walk in the Woods

  ‘I don’t feel I belong anywhere’

  About the Author

  Also by Polly Ho-Yen

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Feeling lost and alone in a strange new city, Leelu wishes she could fly away back home – her real home where her dad is, thousands of miles away.

  London is cold and grey and the neighbours are noisy and there’s concrete everywhere.

  But Leelu is not alone. Someone is leaving her gifts outside her house – wonders that give her curious magical powers.

  Powers that might help Leelu find her way home …

  This book is dedicated to the very dear Doyle-Finch family (both two-footed and four-footed members alike)

  Prologue

  ‘Can’t you come with us? Can’t we go together?’

  I grasped the smallest piece of Dad’s shirt tightly in my hand, but I felt him unpick my fingers one by one until he was holding my hand in his.

  ‘I can’t, my sweet pea,’ he said softly. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but he stayed quiet.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ I said. ‘Not without you.’

  There was a well opening up inside me. I could feel it lengthening, deepening, widening, with every breath I took.

  ‘You must go,’ Dad said. ‘You’ve got to stay safe … I mean … what I mean is, you’re going to have a great adventure. You and your mum and Tiber – you’re going to find us a new home. You can get everything ready for when I get there. Find the best places to go! The best things to eat!’

  He was smiling now, and he squeezed my sides in a way he knew would tickle, make me wriggle and jump.

  I darted away so that he couldn’t reach me, and as I moved I heard him laugh.

  It started small, in his belly, and then grew and grew until it seemed to fill the whole room. It made me imagine the dome of his tummy lighting up, all aglow. I wished I could capture that sound, bottle it, fold it into the clothes in our suitcase, bury it deep in my pocket.

  I couldn’t leave it behind.

  ‘Leelu!’ Mum was shouting for me to go through the barrier now. As I turned to look for her, Dad let go of my hand, and when I looked back, he was striding away. Out of reach.

  Mum swept me up in a chaos of bags and coats and tickets, and walked me through the barrier and away.

  And Dad … Well, Dad we left behind.

  We got on the plane, and when it took off I felt a vague sort of sickness rolling around inside me like a marble. I told myself it was from being in the cabin, but I knew it was really because we had left Dad behind. I wondered if he was still standing in the airport. Maybe he thought we might run back to him …

  Mum said I should try to sleep but I couldn’t. Then she said I should close my eyes anyway and keep them closed, and that was when I dreamed of him.

  I dreamed of Dad. Not standing in the airport, not clasping my hand or striding away, but flying. I dreamed of him flying.

  I could see him flying next to us – right by the plane, by the solid white angles of its wing. I could see him through the small rounded square of the window.

  He didn’t have wings or anything like that; he just had his arms down by his sides, but he was definitely flying. I slept on, content in the fiction that we hadn’t left him behind; he was coming with us after all.

  But it was just a dream, of course. When I woke up, Mum was asking me if I wanted some orange juice, and there was nothing to see outside apart from a heavy layer of grey cloud that became darker and darker as I looked at it.

  Because people can’t really fly.

  Dreams don’t come true.

  1

  The first thing I noticed was the cold.

  It crept around my bare legs.

  My shoulders started to shake, then shudder, as though I was unfurling a pair of wings that, until then, I hadn’t known I possessed.

  ‘This is it,’ Mum said. A tight smile. It did not quite stretch across her face.

  We took our first steps out of the aeroplane, Mum, Tiber and me, doddering, unsure of where to step, unsure of how our bodies moved, like we were babies taking our first few steps on brand-new, chubby legs.

  I looked back across the tarmac runway before I turned into the airport – a building that was full of fluorescent lights and noise and signs with arrows pointing this way and that.

  Lights were studded across the runway in pathways and lines. Little pinpricks in the darkness.

  It looked hard.

  Cold.

  Grey.

  Our new home.

  2

  I found the first surprise on our first day here.

  It was tucked into a little sliver of space outside our new house, between the bin and the metal lamppost beside it. There, crammed in at an angle so it wouldn’t fall: a walnut.

  It sounds strange, I suppose, to notice something so small, so insignificant. Perhaps it was because of the way it had been placed there. Wedged in securely, waiting for me.

  Mum always tuts when she sees the bin and the rubbish just outside our front door. That day, some old wooden drawers had been left next to the bin. Their sides were coming apart and the rain had swelled the wood so they were sodden, ruined. And a torn bag of rubbish had spilled its innards onto the street: dried-out grey chicken bones and the greasy red-and-yellow boxes that had once housed them.

  Every day, when we opened our thin blue front door, we found another lot of things left there. Old fridges, the plugs snipped off so that the wires stuck out wonkily. Broken toys missing wheels or eyes.

  But mostly it was food.

  It rotted and stank, filling the air with a putrid, sour smell that coated your skin, lingered in your hair.

  Mum always shut the door securely each time we got back to the house, pressing her weight against it to close the latch properly, as though she could stop the smell from coming in. When that didn’t work, she slammed the door hard; the force made the walls shudder.

  Of course, smells won’t let a door stand in their way. They creep through cracks, whisper through gaps, find their way through the smallest of spaces. Our house always smelled of old rubbish, no matter how much we cleaned it o
r how many cans of air freshener Mum emptied into the stale rooms.

  After a while I got used to it, although I’m not sure that Mum ever did.

  I got used to her tutting whenever she saw the rubbish too. It was as sure as the bleep that Tiber’s watch made on every hour.

  Mum taught herself to swing her gaze away from the bin and whatever had been dumped there that day, but I always found myself drawn to it.

  It was because of the old walnut I found there on our first day here.

  It had a hard shell that was smooth and mottled at the same time. The nut rattled when I shook it.

  Sometimes I imagined that if I broke it open, I wouldn’t find a nut at all but some kind of magical jewel. A ruby like a luminous berry; a diamond that looked like ice.

  But I never cracked it open.

  I’d pulled it from its place suspended between the ground, the bin and the lamppost and held it tightly in my hand so Mum wouldn’t see it and tell me to drop it.

  It became warm there, clasped in my palm, and when I examined it later, it seemed to give off its own heat. As though it was alive.

  I held it carefully, as I would something treasured or delicate: the photograph of Mum, Dad, Tiber and me set in heavy glass and edged in silver; my grandmother’s tiny jug, the porcelain worn thin by use.

  But I didn’t know, couldn’t have dreamed how precious that old walnut truly was.

  3

  I hid the walnut under a loose floorboard I’d found by my bed.

  It had only become my bed after Tiber and I fought over it.

  Tiber and I fought over lots of things. Small, petty things mostly. Things that neither of us cared about really. It came to us as naturally as breathing. We’d tussle back and forth, pushing and pulling, and then, somewhere along the line, we’d drop it. Because, as I said, our fights didn’t usually matter that much to us. The point was more about disagreeing with each other.

  Sometimes, though, they did. And on those occasions Tiber would know. He’d sniff it out without me having said a word. He wouldn’t let it drop. Tiber was five years older than me. Sometimes he seemed much older, but there were other times, especially when we fought, when there seemed to be no age difference at all. As if any wisdom he had gained in those years when I was not yet in the world vanished with the opportunity to rile, provoke and tease.

  ‘He only wants it because I do,’ I cried out. ‘It’s bad enough that we have to share a room here …’

  Tiber made a whining copy of my voice.

  ‘Shut up, Tiber!’

  ‘Hey!’ Mum said to me sharply. A warning.

  I tried to ignore my grinning brother making faces at me when Mum’s back was turned. He pulled his mouth wide with two fingers so it looked rectangular, like a letter box.

  ‘Please, Mum,’ I said.

  She sighed and then reached into her purse for a penny. ‘Heads or tails?’

  I sighed too. This was something Dad did whenever we got into an argument over something and couldn’t agree. I’d learned not to question it, however annoying I thought Tiber was being. Dad said it was the only fair way of deciding sometimes.

  ‘Tails,’ I said quietly.

  ‘All right then. Tails, Leelu gets the bed by the window. Heads, Tiber does.’

  Mum looked round at Tiber, who had managed to stop pulling faces just in time. He nodded his head demurely in agreement.

  She threw the coin high into the air; it sailed upwards, almost to the ceiling, somersaulting as it did so.

  Tails, tails, tails, I thought. With every bit of me.

  Sometimes I wondered whether, if you wanted something badly enough, you could make it happen. Just by the power of thought.

  Of course, it didn’t always work. Before leaving our home I’d thought hard about Dad coming with us. It was something to do with his work: it meant that he couldn’t come at the same time but would follow us later.

  I’d concentrated with every bit of me on the thought that he would come too, but it didn’t matter how much I imagined us all staying together, we had still left without him.

  One of the reasons I wanted the bed by the window was to do with Dad.

  It had been hard to leave him. There had been what felt like hours and hours of waiting at the airport. Tiber and I had gone off for little walks because we’d got bored of sitting in one place. Later, I wished I had never left Dad’s side. When the time came to say goodbye, there suddenly weren’t enough seconds left.

  I felt his arms release me before I did him, and I only let go when he said, ‘We’ll always have the moon, Leelu. We’ll have the moon.’

  ‘What you mean?’ I said, sniffing through the words.

  ‘Wherever I am, I’ll look for it. At night-time, when the day is done. I’ll sit on our old, rickety chair in the porch. I’ll be listening to the grasshoppers. I’ll look up at that moon and know that you are there, looking too. All the way off in London, I’ll know that you are looking at it. Look at it now – it’s a full moon tonight. Can you see it?’

  I’d let go of Dad to turn towards the sky. The moon sat round and white, solemn-looking, in the black sky.

  ‘Can you see that crater right at the top? That’s where I’ll look for you. Can you do that for me? Look for our crater in the moon?’

  I blinked the tears from my eyes so that I could look at it properly. ‘Which crater?’

  ‘That one, at the top on the right. The one that sits by itself. Can you see it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, staring at the crater; it was so far away it looked like only a circle.

  ‘That crater will be our place,’ Dad said. ‘Just you and me. No one else will know.’ He kissed the top of my head. It made a light, plucking sound. Then he placed his palms firmly on my shoulders and squeezed. It was meant to be comforting but it made me feel trapped. As though the pressure of his hands would quieten me, stop me from rising up, reacting.

  ‘But how will I know when to look at it?’ I blurted out. Prickles rose up my back. I felt as though I was growing spikes, spiny and sharp to the touch. ‘How will I know when you’ll be looking at it?’

  ‘OK,’ Dad said. ‘Let’s think. You’ll be one hour behind in the UK, so what if I look out at ten o’clock my time? That’ll be your bedtime – nine o’clock. Look out then, at nine. At bedtime. OK?’

  I didn’t have time to answer him. There was some sort of muffled announcement about our flight, and Mum said, ‘We have to go,’ in a dead, flat voice that made me look away. Suddenly, after all the waiting, it was a rush. We grabbed our bags and scrambled towards the part of the airport where Dad could no longer follow.

  ‘Goodbye! Goodbye, my sweet peas,’ I heard him shout. ‘I’ll see you soon. I love you.’ He said ‘you’ in a way that lasted, like he was singing the last note of a song. I remember thinking, How could he possibly sound so happy, so full of joy, at the sight of us leaving?

  I looked at him over my shoulder. The white of his teeth was framed by a grin. One of his hands rested on the slight dome of his belly and the other was outstretched, fingers splayed in a jubilant wave.

  It was only his eyes that gave him away. They were wide with worry, strained with sadness, desperate to reach us.

  ‘Dad!’ I called out, but I was being carried away by the tide of people. I fought against them, even though Tiber said, ‘Don’t look back.’ At first I thought he was being mean, but then he added in a low voice, ‘It’s easier if you don’t look back.’

  But I didn’t want it easy. I struggled to get back to Dad, and when I reached him, breathless and desperate, my hand grabbed the first bit of him that I touched. The corner of his old shirt. I remember thinking that I would never let it go. I would just never loosen my grip.

  Can’t you come with us? Can’t we go together?

  I’d asked those questions countless times, but no matter how many times I asked them or Mum and Dad answered them, I never felt that I fully understood why we were leaving. Or why it was that Dad wasn
’t coming with us.

  What with the flight and finding somewhere to live, I hadn’t managed to look out at the moon at the right time since we’d arrived.

  Part of me thought it was a silly thing to do. I didn’t think it would make me feel closer to Dad. Not really. But despite these thoughts, I still wanted that bed next to the window. I had to try and look for Dad’s crater.

  I had to see if it would work. Whether just looking at that grey patch on the moon might make the pain I felt at having to leave him just a little more bearable.

  4

  There was another reason why I wanted the bed by the window.

  It was to do with the loose floorboard I had found.

  I discovered it when our greasy-looking landlord, Mr Abenezzi, was showing us around the house. It had been night-time already. We’d all felt exhausted in that way that makes everything around you feel disconnected, unreal, just out of reach. In the harsh light of the bare bulbs that hung from each off-white ceiling, each room looked as unwelcoming as the next. But there was no question that we were not going to move in that night, whatever the house was like. We had all our bags with us, piled up in the hallway.

  I missed our old house, which was so familiar to me that I could walk around it with my eyes closed. If all the lights went out, which sometimes happened when we had a power cut, I could navigate my way through the rooms easily, without a stumble; I knew them so well. But here, even in the glare of the bare bulbs, I tripped on sharp edges of furniture, I knocked my knees on the narrow doorways and bruised my elbow on the banister, which stuck out awkwardly.

  Our old kitchen was big enough for a table in the middle, where we always sat for our meals. ‘No excuses!’ Dad would say if Tiber tried to sneak his plate away to eat in another room. ‘This table is where we talk and eat and share!’ When he said this, he would throw his hands up in the air expansively and the table would rock. One of the legs would bang against the floor, as though it was joining in with the conversation.

  Dad wouldn’t like this new place, where the kitchen and the living room were all in one room. Everything was squashed together, so the only place you could sit was on the long sofa that sagged in the middle.