‘I like house because here I make music. But I do not know about crumbs.’
‘I can’t believe you.’ He was grinning like one besotted.
‘Oh, but you must believe me, I really not know!’ she protested. ‘I never have real house, you see.’
‘So where did you live in Siberia?’
‘In forest…’
Odette, flushing, hated giving half-truths. She longed to let go and confess everything. If he loved her, he would understand, wouldn’t he? She took a deep breath and said his name. But before she could utter another word he had moved across the kitchen, tipped her face upwards and begun to kiss her.
Her knees buckled. She imagined her whole self might dissolve into him. Never had she felt so wholly, indubitably human.
‘Odette,’ he was mumbling between kisses, ‘let’s go upstairs.’
‘What is upstairs?’
‘More comfortable than the kitchen.’
Her hands were clasped behind his neck. He bent and in one smooth movement picked her up and started to carry her towards the stairs.
‘No!’ she laughed, ‘you drop me!’
‘’Course I won’t. You’re light as a bird…’
In his bedroom, surrounded by posters from his past plays, Odette feared he might find a telltale feather in her hair or her jeans, which he was unfastening. He had already tugged off his own shirt and she wanted nothing more than his skin against hers. She marvelled at the sensations cascading through her own body.
Outside, some way off, an owl hooted. Odette tensed.
‘What’s up?’ Harry protested.
‘Harry, you do love me? You said at the ball…’
‘You silly, daft bird! I’m crazy about you.’
‘Will you love me always? Forever?’
‘Forever and ever and ever,’ Harry declared, his fingers busy with buttons and zips.
And Odette smiled, not her usual lightning flash, but long and slow. ‘Kiss me again…’
Harry’s jeans landed on the floor.
Much later, they lay still, his head on her shoulder, recovering breath, thrilled, exhausted.
‘I thinking,’ Odette whispered to him, ‘now I am free.’
‘Free? You’re incredible.’
‘Now I maybe tell you.’
‘Tell me…’ Harry slid down beside her and cradled her against him. Odette closed her eyes and fell asleep in his arms, without telling him anything at all.
20
The telephone shocked Mitzi awake. Her brother’s voice was sharp and strained. ‘Mitzi, where’s Odette?’
‘What?’ Mitzi rubbed her eyes. It was 7.45am. She had been so tired that she hadn’t listened out for Odette returning.
‘Is she there?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Even if she were, she wouldn’t be able to speak.
‘So where is she?’
Mitzi dashed into the hall. She’d shown Odette how to make up the bed herself, but the study was as she’d left it, the mattress and frame folded away, the sheets safely hidden in a filing cabinet. No one had been there all night.
‘She’s done it again,’ said Harry. ‘She’s gone. She didn’t even say goodbye. But herclothesarestill here.’
‘She’s not been home,’ Mitzi said, trying to be diplomatic and read the situation.
‘So she walked out? Barefoot and coatless? Without so much as a thanks-for-the-pizza?’
‘I’m sure she hasn’t,’ Mitzi ventured. ‘Maybe she borrowed some jeans and a jumper when you were sleeping. I’ll phone you as soon as she turns up, OK?’
‘Shoes, Mitzi. Shoes…’
The line went dead.
Mitzi sat down on the floor beside Odette’s empty box, head on her knees. She guessed at once what Odette had tried to do. She could assume, too, given her brother’s track record with girlfriends, that it had failed.
What happens when a spell goes wrong? Mitzi picked herself up and went to search the book of fairy tales. Most of the love stories ended happily, with marriage, though if the narrative ran beyond that, sometimes things went terribly awry afterwards, especially between a mortal and a supernatural creature. But the boundaries were clear. There were no shortcuts to freedom.
She waited by the window for the familiar swish of wings and gentle honk of the arriving swan. Nothing. Chapel bells chimed the hour, then the quarter hour. If Odette had indeed fled Harry’s house in avian form – where was she?
In the cloister court of St Barnabas College, Stuart, Chris and Harry were plugging in heaters with lengthy extension leads, setting out sugar-dusted mince pies on foil-coated platters and filling jugs with mulled wine, ready for the Shakespeare Players’ Christmas meeting. This afternoon they were supposed to plan out Twelfth Night and the trip to Edinburgh. None of them had much to say about it yet, but it was a good excuse for a seasonal get-together.
‘Outside?’ came a familiar female voice behind them. Caroline had brought an extra armful of mugs borrowed from neighbours on her staircase.
‘Cheaper than a meeting room at Christmas,’ Stuart grunted. He was still in his gloves, which didn’t make the refreshments any easier to set up.
‘Let me give you a hand…’ Caroline, her red hair catching a beam of sunlight, began to lay out the mugs and fill them. ‘Hello, Hal – God, you look frightful.’
‘All kind compliments gratefully received,’ said Harry, under his cap.
‘Rela-a-a-x.’ Caroline rubbed his shoulders. ‘What’s eating you, anyway?’
‘A big, fierce lion that escaped from the zoo.’ Harry clawed the air.
The rest of the company, the designer and the stage crew were wandering through the college’s arched doorway into the colonnade; Stuart was looking up notes on his iPad and Chris was whistling one of his own tunes to a sceptical-looking clarinettist. The designer remarked to Harry and Caroline that her job was to rustle up as many suitable outfits as possible from the actors’ cupboards, conscript a few plants and, for anything else, become a smart bidder on eBay.
‘I’m sure I’ve got something suitable for Olivia to wear,’ Caroline remarked. ‘Hal, come up sometime and help me choose?’
‘Only Mum, Mitzi and Chris call me Hal.’ The fresh, cold air, the steaming mulled wine, the company of friends, Caroline’s green eyes sparkling at him – all this seemed delightfully normal, after such an intense night into which Odette seemed to have disappeared without so much as her socks. His obsession with her was easing at last; the full extent of her bizarre behaviour was beginning to strike home. Perhaps she’d come back to him, perhaps she wouldn’t. She’d more or less told him her family was filthy rich. Oligarchs? Dirty money? She’d be fine. She must have been spoiled rotten and was used to doing what she wanted, or what Daddy wanted her to do, rather than taking anyone else’s wishes into consideration. In which case, life would go on; there was acting to be done, friends to be made, and plenty of other girls.
‘The trouble is, Olivia’s got to be horribly pure,’ he said to Caroline. ‘You look good in those slinky little numbers and it’s sadly, y’know, not quite in character.’
‘Sadly?’ She nudged him. He nudged back, then slid an arm around her.
At college, Caroline, who was on the performing arts course, had mixed with the theatrical set from the start. Every time Harry made his way back to his old group for a meeting, audition or impromptu session over a late-night bottle of wine, there she’d be, talking non-stop or being difficult for the heck of it. Fresh from a posh boarding school, she looked up to him; he assumed a brotherly role, being several years older, a graduate supposedly trying to make his way in the world, and busy, at first, with another girlfriend or several. In her third year, though, she grew her hair, updated her style and started flirting. He was impressed by the change in her and in her acting: she’d just taken the lead in the Amateur Dramatic Club’s Hedda Gabler, for goodness’ sake, and brought the house down. Then Odette appeared. Yet given her predilection for disappear
ing again… maybe it would be best to keep his options open. And Caroline was quite an option.
‘Look, there’s a swan flying.’ She pointed. A huge white bird was winging over the college roof towards the river.
‘Funny there’s only one,’ Chris said. ‘My grandpa’s a great twitcher – he always says swans fly in pairs or flocks.’
‘So romantic… They mate for life, you know.’ Caroline shuffled closer to Harry. Stuart clapped for attention and began to outline the plans, such as they were, for Edinburgh.
A shadow was moving across the cloister. From under an arch, Harry saw the swan passing over them a second time, in the other direction, a little lower than before, but he was more interested in Caroline’s smooth, pale neck beside his arm. Although Odette could win any Oscar for fine necks, becoming obsessed with her was too much like falling in love. Scary. It was such a relief to be back in the real world: the sooner he escaped her, the better. He started to stroke, with one finger, an exposed area close to Caroline’s jugular vein.
‘What’s that swan doing?’ said Chris.
Stuart stopped speaking, annoyed by the interruption. The bird was circling above them, barely clearing the roof with its wingtips. ‘I’ve heard of pigeons and starlings and even seagulls coming down and eating the sandwiches at garden parties, but not swans,’ he said. ‘Now, as I was saying, if we book train tickets three months ahead it’ll cost—’
‘This is like something out of Hitchcock,’ Chris mumbled.
‘Prince Hal will protect us,’ Caroline laughed, while Harry, gazing up at the circling bird, twizzled with his left hand a long strand of her hair.
‘Shit, this really is like Hitchcock!’ Stuart broke off. The swan seemed to be trying to hover above the courtyard. Harry found himself wonderstruck: the great wings swishing back and forth, the pure whiteness of its feathers, and the extraordinary grace of its movements were uncanny, disturbing – nature meeting supernature…
‘Come on, guys, have a refill,’ Stuart offered, ‘and let’s get back to business.’ But cast and staff ignored him, transfixed by the swan. It completed another circuit of the building, then manoeuvred itself into an angle facing the group.
‘What’s it doing?’ Caroline clutched Harry’s arm. The swan was pointing its head down and forward, straight at her. The massive wings beat once, twice, three times and then bent back, set behind the bird’s body with the air-searing streamline of an Olympic diver.
There was a fierce gust of air under the arches, the hissing of wind in feathers and the crash of breaking china as the swan’s headlong descent swept the mulled wine from the table. The actors, frantic, scrambled for the protective doorways, but Caroline, caught in the swan’s path, appeared frozen with terror. A long, high scream flew from her throat. Harry flailed at the bird as it reared above her. Its wings lifted in a blazing arc over his head, its eyes fierce, the coldest gaze he had ever seen. It was overwhelming him like a tongue of flame that could swallow his vision and his mind.
‘Help me, somebody!’ Some of Caroline’s red hairs were drooping from the swan’s black and yellow beak. It reeled, gathering its energy, then redoubled the onslaught. Caroline, trying to strike at the creature with what remained of her mug, missed her footing and fell to the flagstones, beside the stone step to the dining room door. Feathers scattered, clinging to her black jersey. Harry felt a wing thud against his abdomen and found himself on his knees, winded. Caroline was rolling over, shielding her eyes with her arm. On the side of her head, where it had struck the step, was a large and bloody gash.
‘Morons!’ Harry yelled at his friends, who were cowering inside the nearest door. ‘Call a fucking ambulance!’ He glimpsed Chris pulling out his phone, before the swan turned on Harry, striking his shoulder with such force that he fell prostrate.
‘It’s going to kill me!’ Caroline shrieked.
‘It can’t.’ He was fighting for breath. ‘It’s not possible.’
He tried to clamber upright, but the colonnade looped vertiginously around him while the swan beat Caroline over the head with its wings until her screams stopped and she lay silent amid spilled purple wine that was streaked scarlet with her blood. The bird flapped out over the courtyard grass, as if surveying its handiwork; then it turned away and rose towards the gathering clouds.
Slowly the actors ventured out to gather around the unconscious girl. Harry, crouching beside her, tried to pick up her hand, but couldn’t. His own was shaking too much.
21
‘Is that Mitzi Fairweather?’ The voice was unfamiliar, female, friendly. ‘It’s Joanna Hill here. I’m one of the home editors on the National News. I got your number from Nature Now and I wondered if you could help us out with a story in Cygnford.’
The National News? Mitzi’s mind reeled. Half a million readers, maybe more? She held her breath.
‘We had a call from a student at St Barnabas College who said a swan attacked a girl called Caroline Simpson at an actors’ group meeting in the cloister and now she’s in hospital, unconscious. And we heard there was an incident recently when a swan stole a dress from the market and then fell off the roof of Duke’s College Chapel. We couldn’t help wondering if there’s a connection. Some sort of rogue waterbird… Have you heard anything? Could you find out what happened and write us the story?’
‘A swan?’ Mitzi turned numb. ‘Someone’s in hospital?’
‘That’s right. We’d need about three hundred words, depending on how much info you get, by tomorrow morning. It’d be great if you could do it, because I saw your piece in Nature Now and I really enjoyed it. Could you call the hospital, then speak to the girl’s friends, and maybe the woman who kept the market stall…?’
Mitzi mobilised every shred of courage. ‘Leave it with me and I’ll get it to you first thing in the morning. What’s your email?’
At least now she knew where Odette was. She remembered Caroline Simpson: the red-haired young actress, rather talented, whom Harry liked. She’d seen Hedda Gabler, and spotted them getting along quite well at the party on the last night. And Odette had so much to lose… Where was she, anyway? What had happened to her?
She opened the window wide, urging herself not to panic, but she needed to think fast and she couldn’t. How to get her byline in a national paper while allowing the story to blow over and be soon forgotten? This was a national broadsheet; the all-important foot in the door. She knew full well, heart sinking, that any other journalist would have been capitalising, contacting the BBC and Channel Four and every radio station on the digital listings to offer to comment. John would jump on the story too, even though he normally took no interest in matters concerning students that didn’t involve drugs or suicide. Cygnford wasn’t accustomed to irrational, violent behaviour in its waterbirds.
A familiar shape blotted out the window and a second later Odette had come to rest on the living room floor. On the pure white feathers of her neck and wings lay russet streaks of drying blood. Mitzi slammed the window shut, in time to glimpse on the path below the gangly figure of Professor Maggie, returning with her shopping, gazing upwards in alarm.
‘What have you done?’ Mitzi demanded.
The swan stared at her, its eyes cold and angry. Mitzi shuddered. Imagine being attacked by a creature like this one, incandescent with rage and power.
‘Now listen,’ she said. ‘Stay where you can’t be seen from the street. You’re in trouble.’
Odette had begun to preen her feathers, working at the traces of blood with her beak.
‘Taking it out on her isn’t going to help,’ Mitzi said. ‘Oh yes, I know all about it. A national newspaper has just called and asked me to write about an attack by a swan on a student actress during a meeting in a college cloister. You spent the night with my brother, he must have been at the do as well, no doubt turning on his legendary charm with Caroline, and I imagine you weren’t too pleased. And here you are with blood on you that isn’t yours. This isn’t rocket science, so p
lease go and hide.’
The hospital press office agreed to give her a statement. ‘It’s extraordinary,’ the spokeswoman told Mitzi, sounding dazed. ‘She was admitted with wounds to the head and arm, bruising and concussion. We can hardly believe it was really a swan.’
‘Will she be all right?’
‘Her condition is stable, but we’re keeping her in overnight.’
‘Thanks for your help,’ said Mitzi.
Who had witnessed the incident? Harry, of course, her own brother. His mobile was off. Mitzi, who had never believed in any form of God, began to pray for guidance to whichever supreme power happened to be listening.
‘Chris Lovell speaking,’ came the polite voice of Harry’s housemate.
‘Chris, it’s Mitzi. Look, I’m writing about the swan attack for the National News. Were you there? Can you talk?’ She scribbled notes sideways against the lines of her notebook as Chris began to recount the day’s events.
‘You say it picked on Caroline. What about the others?’
‘Well, Harry was trying to help and the rest of us took cover.’ Chris sounded embarrassed. ‘I called the ambulance,’ he added. ‘The thing is – I know it sounds crazy, but it made a beeline for her.’
‘Where was Harry beforehand?’
‘He was with her… He’d been kind of flirting with her.’
‘Mm-hm,’ said Mitzi. Just as she’d thought. ‘Flirting how much?’
‘Well, er…’ Chris apparently couldn’t get the words out. ‘He had his arm round her. Does it matter?’
‘Is he there? Can I talk to him? He’s not answering his mobile.’
‘He’s at the hospital. I’ll get him to ring you.’
‘Thanks, Chris.’ Mitzi put down the telephone and began to type.
‘A 21-year-old student from St Barnabas College, Cygnford, was in hospital on Tuesday after being attacked by a swan,’ she wrote. ‘Caroline Simpson, who starred earlier this year in the Cygnford Amateur Dramatic Club’s production of Hedda Gabler, was attending a courtyard meeting of the Shakespeare Players, a nationally celebrated, university-based theatrical group that makes regular appearances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The swan, which seemed to have lost its companions, made a rapid descent and appears to have beaten the young woman unconscious before flying away. The hospital has described Simpson’s condition as stable.’
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