The Icarus Girl (19 page)

Jess closed her eyes and beamed with satisfaction. If TillyTilly said so, then it would be true. She would fly.

“Jessy,” she heard Tilly say. Jess opened her eyes again. TillyTilly was sitting up now, wriggling and restless. “What shall we do?”

Jess shrugged.

“We should write a poem,” said Tilly.

Jess sat up and stared.

“A
poem
? What about?”

“I dunno . . . I came up with the idea; now you do something!”

Jess scratched her knee. “We don’t even have a pen or paper.”

TillyTilly felt in one of the pockets of her school dress and came up with a blue biro. She smiled again. She had a much crumpled, but blank, sheet of paper, too.

Jess began to laugh.

“What else have you got in your pockets?” she enquired.

TillyTilly tapped the side of her nose.

It took much quiet thought with their heads bent together over the paper, whispering ideas. Jess was sure that writing the poem took a long time, although she wasn’t sure how long, because she didn’t have a watch and she didn’t quite know what it was about time and TillyTilly. Halfway through, something was wrong with the pen, and Jess got blue ink all over her hands, but managed to finish writing down the poem. It was disappointingly short for so much effort. TillyTilly took the paper and smoothed it out, then read it aloud, her finger running over the crossings-out and scribblings to get to the actual poem:

“All my thoughts have left, with her.
I thought I’d kept them in my head
But when I tried to find the thoughts
They all told me she was dead.
I asked if I could go to her
To find my thoughts, to think one day,
But they said ‘No,’ ’cause she’d prefer
To keep me, too, and make me stay.”

They sat quiet for a few minutes, arms flung loosely around each other, cheek pressed against cheek, then Jess sighed and shifted, breaking the loop of arms and legs.

“It’s a sad poem,” she said, “definitely really sad.” She felt as if she hadn’t written it, and neither had TillyTilly. But they must have, because they’d come up with the rhymes. “What rhymes with ‘head’?” she’d asked Tilly, and Tilly had squeezed her eyes shut while thinking, then whispered in her ear so that the word was all tickly, “Dead.”

Jess put the poem in her own pocket to copy it at home, but they had to throw the ruined biro away. Then, just as TillyTilly started to say something, Jess heard a clamour of voices.

Trish Anderson from Year Five came careering around the bushes.

“Hello, Jessamy!” she called out.

Jess shrank in her seat and looked at TillyTilly, then realised that she had vanished. The bit of grass that she had pulled up lay on top of the growing grass. Jess stared, frowned, then turned back to Trish, trying to think.

“Whatcha doing here by yourself?” Trish asked. She sat down on the bench next to Jess.

Go away
, thought Jess,
oh, just leave me alone
.

She had just realised with stunning clarity that she was the only person who saw TillyTilly. She put a hand to her mouth as she tried to sort this out in her mind. She didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to her before. TillyTilly had not met anyone in her family, no one had met her, and she refused to meet anyone. And even when Jess was with TillyTilly, never mind that people couldn’t see Jess; the most noticeable thing was that they couldn’t see TillyTilly. She suddenly felt very small and a little bit scared.

Is TillyTilly ... real?

All she knew, as Trish began talking and calling her other Year Five friends over, was that even if TillyTilly wasn’t real, if it was a choice between there being just her and Tilly or her and real people, she’d much, much rather have Tilly.

“I wasn’t by myself, I was with my friend,” she said suddenly, interrupting Trish’s flow of speech. Trish had been offering to push her on the swings. Even though she would’ve liked that, Jess turned her down. It would somehow be disloyal to TillyTilly to hang around with Trish and her friends. Also, she needed to go home and think about all this and, later, copy out the poem.

“I think I’d better go and find her,” she added.

Trish shrugged, laughing.

“All right, suit yourself.”

Jess didn’t remember to show her mum the poem until the next morning, just before school. The day started with a general feeling of discontent. Her mum read the poem at the kitchen table as she ate her bacon sandwich. When she got past the first line, she put down the sandwich. Her lips began moving without any sounds coming out as she read the poem to herself, then she read it again, her eyebrows raised. Jess had written
By Jessamy Harri
son and Titiola at the bottom. Even if TillyTilly wasn’t real, she had reminded herself, she still deserved credit for the poem. She would have to discuss the realness thing with TillyTilly today, if she saw her.

She couldn’t even begin to think what she meant by “not real.”

Jess was tempted to spatter her porridge, but knew it drove her mum mad, and so refrained, hoping to be rewarded with some positive comments about the poem.

“Jess,” her mum said, finally, putting the sheet of paper down, “are you sure that you wrote this?”

Jess drank some orange juice before answering, drinking slowly to show how offended she was.

“Yes, me and Tilly did. What’s wrong with it?”

Her mum looked at the poem again, shook her head.

“How old is Tilly again?” she asked, suddenly, looking at Jess.

Jess shrugged uncomfortably.

She felt as if she was keeping a terrible secret for her friend:
The thing is, she’s not real, but it’s a secret.

Her mum picked her sandwich up again and took a bite, looking reflective. She kept glancing down at the poem.

“Muuuuum,” Jess said impatiently.

“Mmmm?”

“What d’you think of it? D’you like it?”

“Jess, if you were unhappy, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you, darling?”

Jess was confused. This had nothing to do with anything. She was now being forced to consider her answers so as not to make her mum cross with her, when all she wanted was for her mum to like the poem. Her mum waited without appearing to be waiting, eating her sandwich, checking her watch. They were going to be a little late, as usual.

“Yes,” Jess said finally in a very small voice. “Do you like the poem, though, Mummy?”

Her mum stood up and got Jessamy’s coat, began helping her into it.

“It’s . . . quite mature, Jess. It’s a bit of a sad poem, isn’t it?”

Don’t ask me about it, I’m asking you.

“What were you and Titiola thinking about when you were writing it?” her mother asked when they headed through the park to school. Jess moped. There was something too cheerful about her mother today, something too jaunty in her walk and the questions she asked. Jess could sense it, it was almost tangible; her mother didn’t think that TillyTilly was real either. That must be it.

“We were just finding rhymes.”

Her mum nodded. “Right. Well, I
do
like it, Jess, it’s just . . . well, I think it’s . . . I like it, but if you want the truth, it . . . well, sort of confuses me that it was written by you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“You think it’s too mature.”

“Yes.”

“But you’re the one who reads me Shakespeare and stuff! How do you
want
me to write?”

Her mum ruffled her hair.

“Jesus on toast, Jess, I dunno.”

TEN

In the sitting room, Jess sat watching her mother dial, calling Nigeria. Her mum looked up and flashed her a smile in between punching in the last two numbers, and Jess smiled back, preparing herself for the odd feeling of hearing Bodija over the phone again. They both waited.

“Hello?
Iya
Jessamy calling from London!” her mum said.

There was a static pause, then Jess could hear a faint, crackling shriek of delight sounding from the other end, then a string of questions in piercing, fast Yoruba. It sounded like Aunty Funke, but it could well have been Aunty Biola. Jess watched her mum throw back her head and laugh, before responding in equally fast Yoruba. She turned, treading a small half circle on the carpet, then suddenly looked at Jess. She seemed to catch herself and winked at Jessamy before questioningly indicating the phone. Jess nodded.

“Funke, here is your girl, o,” she said in English, laughing. She handed the receiver to Jess and dropped into one of the sitting-room chairs.

Jess gripped the receiver, pulling the mouthpiece closer to her face. Her hands were slightly sweaty and the phone felt slippery. She licked her lips.

“Hello, Aunty,” she said, listening for the audible echo of her voice bouncing down the phone line in a way that it did not when she was speaking to somebody in England.

There was that unnerving split-second delay before Aunty Funke crackled so that it was sharp and shrieking, “Jess! How is everything, eh?”

The question was imbued with unmistakable menace and malice.

Jess was instantaneously miserable and frightened; the way that she always was at first. This fear lasted a few seconds, then, before it was allayed and she could speak to her aunt comfortably, the phone would be taken from her by her mum.

On the telephone to Nigeria, Jess was seized by the fear that it wasn’t Aunty Funke she was talking to, but some thin, winding spirit that had intercepted the call, taking on her aunty’s accent and tone of voice, turning every sentence into a shrill cleaving of the nerves.

“I’m fine,” she whispered, letting the sound be stolen from her as the echo mocked. Now she had said she was fine twice. She almost added “Aunty,” but caught herself. This wasn’t her aunty Funke who made puff-puff in her lucky pan and sang while washing up at the sink and complained loudly—in English, for Jess’s benefit—whenever she was annoyed. The response was again delayed.

“Say what? Ah-ah, you this girl, won’t you speak up?” The wicked spirit thief sounded darkly amused, spitting out the question although they both knew that Jess’s throat was too dry from this ordeal for her to talk properly.

Every single time, she thought it might be different, but it never was; she never got to speak to her aunty Funke.

“I said . . . I’m fine,” she bellowed into the phone. She was suddenly enraged beyond belief, unaware of the fact that she was almost snarling. “How are
you
?” she added, belligerently.

The echoes were louder this time. Her mum took the phone from her, arching her eyebrows in bemusement before speaking to her sister in Yoruba. Jess couldn’t understand exactly what her mum was saying, but it sounded apologetic. She wiped her hands on the skirt of her school dress, and the green-and-white check reminded her of Tilly. Without another word, she left the room and went through the kitchen and out of the back door.

But Jess couldn’t find TillyTilly. She was lost to her, shrunken from her sight.

Jess understood implicitly that this had something to do with her realising that Tilly wasn’t real. She wished she hadn’t thought it, that her happiness hadn’t been stretched and pulled out of shape by that idea. How could she have . . . ?

As she ran through the park, a flurry of arms and legs and dress, searching frantically for her friend, the dread and panic thickened and bloomed in her lungs. She forced herself to stand still on the pavement, made herself draw in deep, deep breaths until she thought that she might suck herself inside out with the force of her breathing. A group of older children chasing each other down the other side of the pavement all stopped to look at her. One of them was a boyish-looking brown-haired girl wearing a baggy off-white T-shirt with
Heartbreak High
written on it in yellow letters. The girl yelled out, “Oi, wassamatter with you, man?”

Jess dropped to her knees and bowed her head, ignoring them. She didn’t mind them staring, she was used to it. When she had sufficiently quieted, she lifted her head.

“TillyTilly,” she called softly, then waited, listening, looking for TillyTilly to come skipping down the road, or running, maybe, or even to appear silently beside her.

Can’t you see I’m sorry—

No Tilly. Jess felt weak and dizzy, but she got home, and went into the kitchen and leaned against the table. She didn’t realise how odd she looked until her mother came to find her and gave a little shriek of surprised dismay. Jess heard it only dimly, as if the sound was being filtered through small holes in her hearing, the rest of which was filled with a low, resonant humming.

“Heh! You this girl! You were fine just thirty minutes ago!”

Jess turned her head and gazed at her mum, tottering a little with the effort to keep her neck straight.
How could she have
started feeling this ill so fast?

“It’s Tilly,” Jess tried to explain. “She’s gone away.” But it didn’t come out properly, because something was the matter with her tongue; it felt far too big for her mouth, and made flaccid, flapping movements against her bottom row of teeth and her lips. She realised that she was making her illness-singing sounds again.

“Jessy,” TillyTilly said quietly, insistently, from somewhere in the room. “Jessy, Jessy, Jessy.”

Jess, sprawled on the bed with the covers half falling off her achingly hot shoulders, came down from where she was floating in the darkness with the long-armed woman, and rolled over from her stomach onto her back.

“JESSY,” Tilly said again, her voice full of impatience.

Jess hesitated; the voice sounded different with her eyes closed; it sounded . . . older, somehow.

“Did you think I would leave you? We’re twins!”

Jess heard Tilly’s words, but didn’t respond. She didn’t want to. She was glad that Tilly had come back, but . . . the woman with the long arms was smiling and telling her a story about a boy and a magic bird that spread its wings over the land and made everything green and good . . . The words were making her feel fresher, coating her in dew. TillyTilly was speaking insistently, and her words were layering over and under the storyteller’s.