Fly Me Home

by Polly Ho-Yen

When Dad spoke like this, it made me feel like my chest was swelling, like there was something inside me that he was talking to.

  ‘You always tell us, Dad – we must help someone—’

  But Dad interrupted me. ‘No, Leelu, this is not one of the times when you must help if you can. You are only a child. It’s not up to you. Do you understand? You must not go round there again. You need to look after your brother and your mother. Concentrate on that. You need to keep each other strong.’

  ‘But when will we be together again?’ I asked. ‘When are you coming over? When are you going to start looking after us? Are you going to be here next week? Or the week after?’

  ‘Leelu, it’s not as simple as that,’ Dad said, his voice shifting uneasily. ‘You know I would be there if I could.’

  ‘No,’ I said back. ‘I think if you really wanted to be here, then you would.’

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ Dad said again. ‘You know that. With my work—’

  There was a crackle on the phone, and I could hear his voice begin to distort and then to fade.

  I didn’t wait for the connection to be lost.

  I hung up as I heard fragments of Dad’s voice trying to get through from wherever he was now, without us.

  36

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Bo waiting for us.

  He’d be wondering why we hadn’t come round, why I wasn’t helping with Dog like I’d promised. But there was never a chance to go and explain: Mum was always in the house now.

  I felt so angry with her for not listening to me, not hearing me, not understanding. I stayed up in the bedroom as much as I could, only coming down when I was called to come and eat. Over dinner I wouldn’t speak. I would chew on mouthful after mouthful until my plate was empty, and then go back to the bedroom.

  I could feel Mum’s eyes following me as I silently washed up my plate and glass and made my way up the stairs again. It seemed like she wanted to say something, like the words were there in her mouth, but she couldn’t let them go, couldn’t let them out. I turned away from her gaze, ignoring the feeling of sickness that came over me at these times, and thought of Bo, sitting alone on the other side of the wall. Wondering why it was that we hadn’t been round.

  I’d begged Mum not to speak to him. The moment we ran into her and Tiber, Betsy had slammed Bo’s front door closed behind us, and somehow we’d managed to shepherd Mum away from his house. She’d threatened to knock on his door the next morning, but I’d pleaded with her not to. I couldn’t stop crying and shaking at the thought of it; I knew it would upset him. I knew Mum would shout. In the end she agreed she wouldn’t, if only to stop my hysterical pleas and cries.

  ‘I’ll never go back,’ I promised. ‘I won’t see him again.’

  I felt myself go blank at the thought, but I kept my hands in my pockets. One wrapped around the old walnut, the other with crossed fingers, undoing the promise before I’d finished making it.

  Mum hadn’t found another job yet, but she said she wasn’t even going to look at anything that wasn’t during school hours. She and Tiber had made some kind of pact. Neither of them ever told me what had happened at the police station that night, but I could tell that they had forgiven each other in some way.

  It wasn’t quite like normal. They didn’t joke around as they had before. In fact sometimes, when I heard serious adult voices talking, I thought Dad was there, but when I went into the room, I just saw Mum and Tiber talking quietly together. Now that Tiber was the same height as Mum, they looked each other directly in the eye.

  They spoke more than Mum and I did now.

  I wondered if we would ever all speak to each other again. It seemed like a very long time since we’d shared anything, the three of us, without something stirring, unspoken, just under the surface.

  If I ever heard Betsy and her brothers playing outside, I’d always look out of the window, and Betsy would always be looking for me too. We’d wave and grin at each other, and she would mime something about football that I couldn’t quite understand. It wasn’t the same as seeing each other like we used to, but at least we were in contact.

  I didn’t see Bo at all.

  A few days after Mum left her job I was walking back from school in between Mum and Tiber; as I passed the bin and the lamppost, I had an idea. Suddenly I knew how I could tell Bo what was happening. I would leave him a message using our old hiding spot, the space between the bin and the lamppost.

  I wrote to him that night.

  Dear Bo,

  It’s Leelu. I can’t come and see you any more. I can’t see Betsy either. My mum found out that we were coming to see you and now she won’t let me come any more. She’s very angry with me even though I told her that you were my friend.

  If I do get the chance, I WILL COME BACK. I haven’t forgotten you or our promise to help you fly home, back to the place. I hope Dog is all right. Tell him I’m sorry about the walks. I hope your aches are better and you can walk him now.

  Any luck with flying?

  Your friend,

  Leelu

  P.S. I found this stone I thought you’d like. It’s not a wonder but I think you will like the colour.

  It was the kind of letter that didn’t seem to say enough or say it in the right way, even though it was full of words – I had filled a whole page with writing.

  I had to fold the piece of paper about five times so that it would fit into the matchbox that had once held the moss. If I used that, Bo would recognize it straight away. I also tucked in a little stone I’d picked up on my way home from school. It was caramel coloured, like a piece of buttery fudge, and shaped a bit like a cube.

  The next morning, before Mum and Tiber had come out of the house I quickly wedged the matchbox between the bin and the lamppost. I brushed my fingers across it, testing that it was securely in place.

  ‘Leelu! Away from that rubbish bin!’ Mum’s voice pierced the still street.

  ‘Find this, Bo. Find this,’ I whispered, looking over at the jaded blue door. The numbers looked browner and rustier than ever.

  Later that day I ran ahead of Mum and Tiber, my eyes fixed on the hiding place.

  Only when I was a few steps away did I see what was there. The matchbox was gone and had been replaced by a small wooden box tied up with a shoelace that had been knotted several times.

  I had to tug hard to release it and, without looking at it, I buried it in my school bag among my reading books so Mum wouldn’t see it.

  ‘Leelu, why are you always hanging out by those smelly bins?’ Mum said. ‘Come on, get inside now.’

  Once we were in she pulled the door firmly shut behind us and then locked it with a key, which she dropped into her pocket.

  ‘Locked up for the night, are we, Mum?’ Tiber said.

  ‘Got to stop you two escaping,’ she said, smiling, although her face had fallen into what looked more like a grimace.

  ‘It’s like we’re in jail,’ Tiber said.

  ‘Rather this jail than another,’ Mum said, and after that Tiber fell silent. He loped upstairs, taking the steps three at a time.

  ‘I think I might have a shower, Leelu,’ Mum said. ‘Have you got homework to do?’

  I nodded and dumped my bag on our small sagging sofa. I took out one of the books and pretended to be studying it closely, but I wasn’t really reading it.

  As soon as Mum had gone upstairs I pulled the wooden box out of my bag and slipped off the shoelace. Inside was a folded square of paper, along with a single feather that was light brown in colour.

  I feverishly unfolded the piece of paper.

  That was all Bo had written.

  37

  We hadn’t been able to speak to Dad for a while.

  When we phoned his number, it didn’t even ring. We just got the same answerphone message. It was one of those messages with a cold-sounding woman’s voice, apart from the very first bit, which had Dad saying his name.

  ‘Adefemi Olawale …’ I heard, an
d then the woman would start up: ‘… can’t take your call.’

  Adefemi Olawale can’t take your call.

  I listened to it over and over.

  I rang his number whenever I could so as to hear the sound of his voice. Even hearing him say those two words made me feel better.

  ‘You’ve got to stop it,’ Tiber told me off. ‘You’re using up all my credit.’

  No one else seemed as worried as me that we hadn’t spoken to him for a while.

  One night when, once again, I hadn’t got through to him and had been unable to sleep and there happened to be a full moon, I was looking at the crater that Dad had pointed out to me all those months ago. I stared and stared at it. There was something beautiful about its shape. I kept seeing different things it could be: a leaf, the curve of a bird’s wing, a teardrop.

  At that time of night it was quiet, or as quiet as it could be in the city. I could still make out the soft hum of traffic, a far-off siren, but mostly it was peaceful. As though the trees, buildings and roads knew it was time to sleep.

  The sound of footsteps on the pavement outside broke the peace; someone sounded like they were in a hurry, their heavy steps growing louder as they came closer.

  I expected them to go on past, dissolving into the night, but then came the sound of banging.

  Banging on our front door.

  Banging so loud that it seemed to shake the walls of our bedroom.

  ‘Tiber?’

  ‘Shush, Leelu.’ Tiber was out of bed, standing in the shadows in the middle of the room. ‘Someone’s at the front door. Mum’s just got up. Stay where you are.’

  The banging came again. It was powerful, insistent and loud.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I heard Mum call out.

  ‘You know who it is,’ the voice shouted. It sounded familiar somehow, but I couldn’t place it. ‘I warned you. Open this door.’

  I heard the clicks as Mum unlocked it.

  ‘Why is she letting him in?’ I got out of bed and stood next to Tiber; I felt safer near him.

  ‘It’s our landlord,’ Tiber said.

  I recognized the voice now, though it sounded thicker than it had the day he’d shown us around the house. Much more like a snarl.

  ‘I told you I would come round if you didn’t pay up,’ I heard him shout. ‘Give me everything you can now. Or you are out on the streets tonight.’

  ‘Please, please,’ I heard Mum say. ‘I’m getting a new job, the money is coming. It won’t be long now.’

  ‘Now. I don’t care about your excuses. It needs to be now. Do I look like I am a stupid man? Do I? Do I look stupid to you?’

  ‘This is all I have – this is everything we’ve got. Take it, take it,’ I heard Mum say. Her voice was shaking; it was small and fearful.

  ‘This is everything? You’re in trouble if this is it. It’s nowhere near enough.’

  ‘Just a few more days – just a few more days. I’ll have it, I promise.’

  ‘End of the week. The full amount. Got it? No more excuses.’

  There was the desperate sound of Mum slamming the door shut and the scrape of keys as she tried to get the right one into the lock.

  And after that we heard Mum running back up the stairs. Tiber and I both flew back to our beds and I threw the duvet over my head just as Mum opened our bedroom door.

  I could hear her breathing. In, out, in, out. It went like that. It sounded like she was panting, like she does after she’s had to run to catch the bus.

  She stayed in our bedroom, just standing there, for ages. I couldn’t see her because I kept my eyes tightly closed, but I could tell that she was still there. I concentrated on keeping still. I tried to make my breaths heavy and regular like I was sleeping. I imagined Tiber doing the same, but he was always a better actor than me.

  Then I heard Mum walk towards me; I could feel her pressing the duvet around me like she used to so that I was nice and cosy and all tucked in.

  I should have felt warm and safe, there in my little bed by the window, with the duvet wrapped around me. But I didn’t.

  After that Mum left the room. I heard Tiber turn over onto his back. I waited for him to speak but he kept quiet.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ I whispered.

  ‘We have to find some way of getting that money,’ he muttered back, under his breath.

  ‘Mum might find a job. She could do it.’

  ‘It’s not as easy as that, Leelu.’

  ‘Or Dad could send us some money.’

  ‘He would have done that by now if he could,’ Tiber snapped.

  ‘We should call him. He’ll help, I know he will,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Tiber said, his voice as hard as stone.

  I ignored him, imagining Dad coming to our rescue. ‘He might come over if he knows we need his help.’

  ‘Leelu!’ Tiber hissed. I could tell that he would have shouted if he wasn’t trying to keep quiet. ‘You’ve got to give this up! Dad’s not going to save us. We’re going to have to do it ourselves. We have to make it happen.’

  ‘But what is going to happen, Tiber?’

  My voice had begun to tremble, just as Mum’s had. I imagined the three of us standing by the bin that Mum hated so much, all our belongings around us, getting mixed up with the things that had been dumped there. Where would we go? Where would we sleep?

  ‘I think I know a way of getting the money,’ Tiber said quietly.

  ‘How? What are you going to do?’

  ‘Don’t ask too many questions,’ he told me. ‘You don’t want to know the answers.’

  There was a bad feeling rising up inside me like a sickness. ‘Talk to Mum first, please. Or Dad. They might have some money coming. We don’t know.’

  ‘It’s not coming, Leelu. Not from Mum; definitely not from Dad. We’d have the money to pay for this place if Mum hadn’t left her job,’ Tiber said.

  ‘She can find another one,’ I said, although I could hear the doubt creeping into my voice.

  ‘Not working only when we’re at school,’ Tiber said. ‘She’ll have to go back to working nights. She won’t do that. I think she’d rather we were kicked out than do that again.’ His voice sounded hard.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked again. ‘Tiber, you aren’t going back to those friends, are you? You said you couldn’t now.’

  Tiber didn’t answer, but I heard him turn and shift in his bed; it creaked beneath him.

  ‘Tiber?’

  But then I heard Mum’s footsteps approaching and our door opened. I fell silent and pretended to be asleep.

  Once she’d left I questioned Tiber again.

  But he didn’t want to answer me.

  38

  As I lay there in the darkness, sleep far from me now, I started thinking about everything that had happened since we arrived.

  I remembered saying goodbye to Dad at the airport. The last time I saw his face he was smiling, but his eyes were straining towards us as though he wanted to reach out and scoop us all up in his arms.

  I remembered how cold it had seemed when we stepped out of the aeroplane. At the time I didn’t know that it wasn’t actually that bad. It was nothing like the bone cold of winter that I was always wrapping myself up against now.

  I conjured up the night we had first come to this house. Walking from one blank room to another; the unremitting feeling of being cast adrift. By then I was so tired I didn’t think I’d ever know what it was like to feel rested again.

  Tiber and I had argued about the bed and Mum had done the coin toss. I’d clenched the walnut, the very first wonder Bo had given me, making sure that I won. It was so that I could look at the moon, I remembered; that was why I’d wanted that bed so badly. I looked through the curtains for it, but the sky was overcast; it looked heavy, leaden, as though it was bearing down on us.

  I shifted in my bed. The mattress had got lumpier over time; it was hard to get comfortable. The headboard creaked, banging against the wall as
it had the first time I sat down.

  Being awake when everyone else is asleep can be a lonely place.

  I was used to the feeling, but there were things that helped to distract me from it. I thought of Ms Doyle clapping her hands together, her moonstone rings knocking, when she saw me. Her little room, full of exciting things to look at and read, where time passed so much more quickly than anywhere else in the school.

  I thought of Betsy; how she’d play with her brothers, better at football than any of them. And Bo, of course. I thought of Bo delighting in his treasures, flying in the sitting room. These memories made me feel tremendously happy.

  Bo had once said that he was glad it was me who found the wonders. He made me feel special for noticing them and for using them in the way I had. I remembered the day Bo had made the feathers fly and I’d made the leaves twirl for Betsy.

  I reached into the pocket of my trousers. It was so cold when I got into bed that night that I’d put on my school trousers to warm myself up. I found the walnut, the first gift from Bo. I clasped it in my hand and pulled my duvet around me snugly. Finally a wave of sleepiness lapped over me. I yawned, feeling myself sink deeper into my lumpy old mattress. It almost felt comfortable.

  I could feel myself drifting off, my head and neck wonderfully heavy and cushioned on my pillow. I tried to forget our landlord’s snarling voice, the troubles that weighed us down like the thick overhanging clouds in the sky that night.

  And then, just like someone had thrown on a light switch, I knew what I needed to do to make everything right again. My eyes flickered open for a moment and then closed tightly, and I fell into a deep sleep.

  When the morning came, I woke with a start. The walnut was still in my hand, my fingers wrapped around it.

  I sat up quickly. I remembered what I’d thought of last night; what would fix everything.

  I needed to see Bo.

  It was time we went to the place together.

  39

  The school day passed slowly, as though it knew I was desperate for it to reach its end.

  I was planning on sneaking round to Bo’s as soon as Mum and Tiber went to bed. Tiber was usually asleep by eleven, and Mum not long after. I just had to make sure I got the key for the front door without Mum noticing.