by Faye Bird
* * *
“Hey,” Jamie said as the bell rang and everyone started to move toward the door.
“Hey,” I said back.
“Where shall we go?”
I shrugged. I actually hadn’t thought about it.
“I was thinking the park. We can pick up something to eat or drink on the way,” he said. “If you want to?”
I nodded and smiled, and Jamie took my hand and we started to walk.
We found a bench by the ponds. We’d bought coffees at the kiosk but I still felt so sick I wasn’t sure I could drink mine. And it was hot. Too hot. I set the cup down next to me at my feet and I felt Jamie move in closer as I bent down. I tucked my legs beneath me and sat back up.
There was no conversation we could have right now. The air we were breathing, the thoughts we were thinking were permeated only with the possibility of our kiss, and I could feel only the anticipation of it between us.
“Listen, Ana—I…”
I turned to face him on the bench.
“Can I—?”
And I didn’t wait for him to say it. I didn’t wait for him to ask whether he could kiss me. I just let my eyes search his beautiful face, and I looked at his lips and I lifted my hands up to hold him, to touch his cheeks, and as he came closer toward me I pulled him in and our lips met, and our mouths gently opened to each other—and we kissed—we were kissing …
… and it was blissful.
It was the most blissful thing that had ever happened to me in my whole entire life.
And I held on to the moment
—and I held on to him
—and it was perfect.
thursday
25
I DIDN’T SLEEP. SLEEPLESSNESS was a permanent part of my life now. This morning my head ached with it. But at least when I told Rachel that I had a headache, and that I needed to stay home from school to sleep, it wasn’t that much of a lie. I said I’d go in later, and she was okay with that.
I waited for her to leave the house, then pulled on my jeans and a sweatshirt, grabbed my bag and coat and headed straight to the station. I didn’t want to risk being late.
When I got to the station I could see that the next train to Hampton Wick was at 8:52 a.m. I was going to be massively early. I sat on the platform and texted Jamie while I waited.
Not in this morning but will be later. Headache. Need to sleep. Thinking of you. x
I felt sick again when I sent it. It was true, I was thinking of him, but as I hit SEND I felt like somehow I’d said too much.
I bought a hot chocolate. It tasted nothing like hot chocolate. I opened up the lid and looked inside. It looked like it was just brown sugary water. I didn’t mind. I needed the sweetness, to keep me going. The granules crunched in my teeth, and I liked it. I put on my headphones and listened to my music and the train pulled in on time.
I stepped on and sat, gazing out the window. I thought again about what Frances had said to Mum. She’d said that I was someone who claimed to be Emma. It didn’t sound very convincing. More like total madness. And yet Mum was coming to meet me, now. Frances must have said something more. She must have. Why else would Mum be coming? To Mum, I was a stranger. A fifteen-year-old stranger. To me, she was Mum, and I had to find a way to persuade her to accept me and to love me, like she had loved me before, like I had loved her, like I still loved her now. Because I was so sure that if I could see her again, if we were together again, I’d feel better. I’d feel like me. All of me.
I got off at Hampton Wick and walked from the station toward the shops. I searched the faces of everyone I walked past, urgently seeking Mum out. Her face was there, in my mind, all the time. Her soft blond hair resting against her pale cheek. And yet the more I looked for her in the street, the less I felt I could see. As I turned the corner I saw the café where we were supposed to meet. There was an old man sitting outside with a newspaper and a coffee, and a woman smoking in an apron, leaning against the door frame. There was no one else around.
I looked back up the street and started scanning my view for dogs. There was a small yappy thing tied up outside a newsagent’s. I wished it would be quiet. It wouldn’t stop barking for its owner to come out of the shop.
I was getting closer to the café now, and still I couldn’t see her. For a split second I doubted myself—what if I didn’t recognize her? What if I’d walked past her already? What if I had to go home without seeing her because I never found her? Because this woman I think I know isn’t here? What then?
As I walked I felt hopeless, like someone had turned my heart inside out and emptied its contents onto the side of the road.
I stopped walking and stood utterly still.
I felt in that moment as if I had nothing, and no one.
And then I saw her.
Mum.
There she was. Walking along the street, toward the café, like today was the most ordinary day, like she was the most ordinary woman alive. Except to me—she was everything, and today was no ordinary day. It was just she didn’t know it yet.
I ran across the road. I didn’t even look as I stepped out. I just wanted to get to her. She must have left the dog at home, because there was no dog, no black Lab, no red collar. She looked old. She was old. Of course she was. Her hair was gray now, not blond, her walk slower, her back a little more curved than I remembered it. I hesitated for a moment as I neared her. I slowed myself down. It was her. I knew it was her. I knew her. I stepped up onto the pavement. She stood outside the café, her back to me now. I walked up to her and I touched her on the arm. She turned around to face me.
“Hi,” I said, and when she saw me she smiled, and I thought I might scream out with the joy of it.
I loved her.
And she was here.
“You must be Ana!” she said. “Well, it’s very nice to meet you.”
I nodded and I swept my hand across my face to wipe away the tears. I was crying with relief and happiness and with sadness—to see her—but to see her so old, like this. It wasn’t what I had imagined or expected.
“I left the dog at home in the end,” she said. “Let’s go inside.” And she opened the café door to let me go in first and as she did she looked at me, searching my face for something, for some recognition. I prayed that there would be something in my face that was Emma.
We sat at a corner table and ordered tea. I wondered whether the dog, or the lack of it, had been some kind of test.
She stirred her tea, and then she spoke. “Emma never used to drink tea,” she said. “She didn’t like the taste.”
“Oh … right. I do,” I said. “Well, I didn’t as a kid, but I do now…”
If the dog was a test, I’d passed. If the tea was a test, I’d fallen short at the start.
She sipped from her mug and her eyes darted about the room. I could tell the tea was too hot and that she’d stung her lip but was holding in the pain. She was more nervous than I was.
“I’m not really sure what we say,” she said. “In a situation like this.”
“I know,” I said, looking at her hands, at her rings. She wore the same rings she always wore, but her fingers were wider around the knuckles and her skin was lined and brown in places with age. These were the hands I remembered, and yet not the hands I’d held and stroked and pulled on as a child.
We were quiet again.
“I don’t know what Frances said to you,” I said. “About me.”
Mum frowned and I could see all the lines on her face—the lines marking the years I’d missed with her.
I saw myself in our kitchen. I was smaller. I could hear shouting above me, and I could see all the bread crumbs nestling under the toaster from where I stood. I tried to block the shouting out. I felt tiny, insignificant, like a mouse in a storm. Mum and Dad were shouting. Mum’s arms were waving about and the wide sleeves of her dressing gown were flapping like some kind of prehistoric bird’s wings. Dad was pacing, threatening at every step to just walk out of
the room, but Mum reeled him back in again with more words, angry ones. I’d only wanted cornflakes. I just wanted the cornflakes. Would someone not just get me the cornflakes? “Stop shouting!” I’d said, “Stop shouting!” And they did.
“Frances didn’t say very much,” Mum said. I nodded.
“And D—” I went to say “Dad” but I stopped myself. “Richard,” I said. “Is he…?”
“What?” she said.
“Does he know? I mean … that Frances called?”
I could feel myself getting tied up in knots. I didn’t know what Mum knew about Dad and Frances. I didn’t want to say anything, to give anything away, but I needed to know whether he knew about me, now.
“Yes,” she said. “He knows, but I’m afraid he’s not—well, he’s not convinced—if that’s the word. Or at least he doesn’t think he could ever be convinced. He’s not interested in meeting you. Not right now, anyway.”
I nodded.
He didn’t want to see me.
That felt like a blow. A blow that hit me deep in my belly.
I wanted my dad. It wasn’t the same feeling as wanting Mum, but it was there. I needed him. Like I needed him that night, with Catherine.
“So what do you know—about Emma?” Mum said. “I’d like to know.”
“I remember the curtains in my bedroom. They were white with green flowers. And the walls, they had matching wallpaper, the same pattern, but green on white. I remember tracing the gaps between the flowers with my fingers when I lay awake at night.”
“Go on,” she said.
“I remember that Dad let me collect up the grass into a bucket after he’d mowed the lawn. I remember you used to talk to the car. You used to ask it to start, when it was cold and it wouldn’t go. You’d say, ‘Please, please start. We love you, car,’ and when it didn’t start we’d sit for a minute or two before trying again. When it eventually started, we’d cheer! I remember a shop, full of clothes. I don’t know where that was. I remember a hall … I didn’t like it there. It had one yellow wall with framed pictures all over it, set really close together. Maybe someone’s house…?”
Mum nodded like she knew the place, but I could see she was holding so much emotion in her throat that she couldn’t speak.
“I remember loads more, but mostly, I remember you,” I said. “Just being with you.”
She blew her nose on a pale blue hanky with a pink rose embroidered in the corner of it. I thought about how I’d played with all her scarves and handkerchiefs—ones just like this—when I was little and I used to go through her drawers.
“Why do you think you remember these things?” she said. Her eyes were fixed on me now.
“I don’t know. Being Emma—it’s just always been there. It’s what I’ve always known. But recently, I’ve had new memories. It’s been more painful, more difficult.”
“Difficult?” she said.
“Catherine.”
“What about Catherine?” she said, lowering her eyes. She looked different, suddenly. Angry even, like someone who’d been provoked.
“Catherine’s death,” I said, “and what happened…”
“What happened that night, the consequences of that night, it was all…”
“What?”
“Heartbreaking,” she said.
“For Frances,” I said, nodding.
“Yes, of course. For Frances. For all of us.”
“I wish—”
“There’s no use in wishing now,” Mum said, her voice dry and taut, like it might crack and split with the pain. “I used to tell you that—then. All the time. Wishing will change nothing.” And although her face was full of blackness for a few seconds, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all, because I knew then, when she spoke to me, that she believed me. She was talking to me as Emma. She knew I was her Emma.
I searched her face for what to say next. I was desperate to say so much but I didn’t know where to start. I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could say anything she had stood up and walked out of the café.
I followed her out.
She was waiting for me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I needed some air.”
I put my arms around her. It was all I could think to do. I pressed myself against her chest and held on to her like I would never let her go, and I smelled her smell and the warmth of her, and I found our imprint—the one that had always been there, since I was born and bundled—the one that made us fit.
After a moment or two I could feel her body start to shake. She was weak, weaker than she was before. Her chest rose and fell as she took a breath, and then she closed herself back into me, her arms wrapped around my shoulders and we stood, enveloped in each other—strangers—family—apart—yet connected.
“There’s so much to say, but I’m not sure I can say it,” she said, pulling back from me, holding on to both my hands with hers.
“I need to know how she died,” I said. “Catherine. I just need to know.”
Mum dropped my hands. “I don’t want to talk about that. That was the worst night of all our lives. It was the beginning of the end of everything good. Surely you must know that? If you are Emma you would know that better than anyone.”
She took a step back from me. “Tell me,” I whispered. “Please.”
“This is too much,” she said, “for one day.” And she motioned with her hands that she was going to leave, to say goodbye, and I could see she was about to break down.
“Please—don’t go,” I said. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No!” she said. “I can’t do this. I’ve only just met you. I don’t know anything about you.”
“Yes, you do! Don’t you see?”
“See what?”
“That I’m here, that I’m Emma, that I’m feeling the things that Emma felt, that I have these memories—her memories—that I need to know about that night, about Catherine.”
“What I see,” she said, “is a young, vibrant girl, Ana. In the here and now. Yes, I hear you speak of things only Emma can know, and I’ll admit that’s strange—extraordinary—almost wonderful. But … Catherine. I just can’t … I’m sorry.”
“But if I hadn’t seen Frances—”
“Ah, Frances!” she said. “Frances put you up to this. I should have known … As if we all haven’t suffered enough.”
“No! No one put me up to this. I saw Frances. In the hospital. By chance. It was by chance—and I asked her—for your address—I wanted to see you!”
“I have known Frances for a very long time,” Mum said. “And if there is one thing I am certain of, it is that she will never let what happened that night be laid to rest. Never.”
“And what about Dad?” I said. “Has he laid it to rest?”
I hadn’t meant to say it—Dad.
It just came out.
Mum flinched when I said it.
“We have too many unanswered questions of our own,” she said. “Can’t you see that?”
“I thought you’d understand,” I said, so softly now.
She took a step toward me. “I can see something of Emma in you,” she said. “I can.” And she reached out and stroked some hair across my forehead where it had fallen in front of my eyes. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s there.”
“I love you…,” I said.
“I loved you,” she said back. “So much, my Emma.”
A car beeped its horn, and she looked over her shoulder. “I’ve got to go,” she said, and she walked toward a large silver car that was pulling up alongside us. As she opened the door, she spoke. “I’ll be in touch. I’ll definitely be in touch. Goodbye, Ana,” she said.
I watched her get into the car, and I didn’t take my eyes off her for a second. I saw her turn and say something to the driver as she put on her seat belt. I crouched down lower. The driver was wearing a pale brown coat. I could see his hands on the steering wheel, set in place, sturdy, strong, ready to go. And then he glanced over at Mum, a
nd so, too, at me.
It was my dad.
And he didn’t even want to say hello.
friday
26
I HAD A NIGHTMARE.
About me—facing a polar bear. It’s white in the dream. Everywhere is white. The bear is white and I’m in a white world. It’s hard to see. It’s bright and the light burns my eyes. But I can see the bear. Wherever I am, I can see it. And it terrifies me that I can see it. It terrifies me that I know it will attack. It terrifies me that there is only white space all around me, and nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, no one to help me in this white wilderness.
I think to myself, in the dream, This is my worst nightmare—to be here—with a bear. And in the dream I’m saying out loud to myself, “This is my worst nightmare—to be here—with a bear!”
And the polar bear is padding his way toward me, low and heavy. His swagger is strong. And even in the brightness I can see he is coming for me, and then—just as if someone has flicked a switch in my head—I decide not to be afraid. I decide to face it; to face the bear. I think to myself, I’ll face it and see what happens. The worst that can happen is that I’ll wake up.
And so I go toward the bear and the bear comes toward me and he stands on his two back legs and opens his wide mouth. I can see deep inside his red throat, and I can see all of his brown teeth.
He is preparing to kill me.
He is going to savage me.
I know this.
And I go up close to him, really close, and I lift my arm to his face, and I place my hand in his open mouth, and I turn my head away and I wait for the pain.
And I feel nothing.
No pain. No fear. Nothing.
And I look at the bear, and the bear looks at me, and I bring my arm back to my side, and the bear lowers himself down onto all fours and then he sits.
I sit down too. I mirror him.
And we sit like this for I don’t know how long. And we look at each other. And now me and the bear are friends. True friends. I know this as much as I know everything else that I know.