Flight (25 page)

She had had no plans to become entangled, and she’d thought she had it all under control. But by the time she fell pregnant, by the time she realised that she was smitten, that she had fallen for him completely and utterly, he was off. They stood together on Platform 7 at Clapham Junction, oblivious to the waves of rush-hour passengers coursing by, and kissed, a bottomless embrace of tongues and lips, and she wanted that kiss never to end. As the train to Gatwick was announced over the tannoy, Esteban tugged her to him by the small of her back and murmured, ‘I will never forget you, Phoebe Irving,’ and in that moment she understood. She loved him more than he loved her.

‘Laura said that?’ she eventually answers, retrieving her spoon and tackling her soup with exaggerated concentration.

‘She did.’

‘She had no right to say that to you. I haven’t even – she doesn’t – ’

Wren picks up her empty bowl and places it on her plate, sliding them both to one side. ‘Why haven’t you told them? It’s not the kind of thing you can keep concealed for very long. You’re starting to show.’

Phoebe’s jaw drops; for a woman of so few words, Wren is alarmingly direct. But, finally, she’s looking at Phoebe as if she’s there, as if she exists as another human being in the room.

‘I know that. I wanted to tell Laura straight away – but then, I just couldn’t find the right words for it, and weeks turned into months. I’m three months gone.’

‘What about your dad? Surely he’d want to know.’

Phoebe merely nods, her mind racing over the possible reactions she might face from Dad, from Laura. She thinks about the secrets Dad has been keeping, the questions he evaded as she prodded away at him in the car this morning, as he sat with his eyes resolutely on the road ahead, careful to deflect her truth-seeking glare.

‘Why are you so afraid of telling them? They’re good people. You’re lucky to have good people in your life.’

How do you respond to something like that?
Phoebe wonders. ‘She’s been like a mother to me,’ she says, expecting to wound Wren, to see her balk. But she doesn’t; instead her face relaxes, and she almost smiles.

‘If Laura’s been as big a part of your life as I suspect, it looks as if she’s done a very good job with you.’ Now she smiles, nervously, moisture rising to her eyes.

‘You call this a good job?’ Phoebe laughs, fighting the tears herself, smoothing her sweater tight across her abdomen. ‘Twenty, single, and knocked up!’

Wren clears the table, turning away to swipe at her eyes. Phoebe sees this, and is thankful that they’ve broken through the silence, the formality; that Wren appears to be human after all, not so much the strange, spooked creature who met them at the door. She runs hot water into the sink, noisily dropping their dishes into the suds, working the dishcloth over the worktops, over the table.

‘It was planned,’ Phoebe says as the dishcloth gathers up the crumbs from the space in front of her.

Wren stops, cloth held in one hand.

‘I wanted a baby. I know I’m only young – and I’m not in a stable relationship – but this was something I wanted more than anything. Everyone else – all my friends, my teachers,
Dad and Laura – they go on and on about university, about how bright I am, how I should use it – about how important a degree is in securing my future – but none of that is
my
dream. It’s all over the TV and internet, how much it costs to send your kids to uni, how so many finish their degrees and it’s all “sorry, no jobs” or “sorry, you’ll have to work for nothing for a year before we’ll even think about employing you” – and, even though I went along with the whole thing for a long while, it just wasn’t for me. You know, I sat in that miserable student room in Hull and I thought, what am I doing here? I’m lonely, I hate the course, I miss my family, my home – I cry myself to sleep every night, and for what? And then there was Laura, and everything she’s done for me, and everything she’s missed out on, just to be there for me and Dad – ’

Wren lowers herself to her seat, pushes the cloth to one side. ‘Is she not happy?’

‘She’s happy enough – she adores Dad, and she loves her work, and me – but she’s made so many sacrifices, and I just thought, this, this is the one thing I could do for her, for Dad, for all of us.’ Phoebe brings her elbows to the table, drops her face against her knuckles. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just rambling on. You must think I’m a bloody nightmare.’

She feels fingers at her wrist, the gentle tug of Wren’s hands, forcing her to look up.

‘Phoebe, why are you having this baby?’

Phoebe gazes into Wren’s eyes, and there, something like a long buried dream rises in her, recognition of a kind, and she knows she can trust her with this thing, with this secret that can’t be kept.

‘I just wanted something for myself. Something to care for, to love and hold – and to be loved, unconditionally.’ She
hesitates, holds Wren’s gaze, and for a split second – more than anything – she wants to hurt her for leaving her behind. ‘I want to know how it feels to be a mother.’

On that November morning after Wren had vanished, Rob came round from a deathlike sleep, his body sluggish with hangover, and he started in horror at the sight of Laura’s face on the pillow beside him.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked, her face betraying hurt at the shock so visible on his.

He stared at her for a moment, the connections in his brain firing off as he put it all together.

‘What – ?’ He tried to speak, pushing himself up to a slumped sitting position, cradling his banging temples between the knuckles of his fists as the memory of Wren’s absence rushed in.

‘We didn’t
do
anything, you idiot,’ Laura said, and as she swung her legs off the bed he felt foolish at the sight of her fully clothed body. She scowled back at him and bent down to retrieve her balled-up socks. ‘
As if
.’

Phoebe’s bubbling chatter drifted in from the room next door, and Laura disappeared into the hall, leaving Rob to welter in his throbbing misery, rising only to follow the aroma of bacon and coffee and the promise of paracetamol. In the kitchen, Phoebe was already installed in her high chair. At the sight of Daddy in the doorway her chubby heels battered out an animated beat against the padded vinyl as her arms pumped the air in a halting wave. He gaped at his delighted daughter, the implications of Wren’s actions gaining clarity and speed in his waking mind.

‘What if she doesn’t come home?’ Rob said, his voice hushed as if Phoebe might understand. His eyes shifted to meet Laura’s, as she pointed to a chair and, with a single motion of her extended finger, ordered him to eat.

‘She
will
come home, Rob.’ She poured herself another coffee.

Rob picked up his cutlery, studying his autumn-dappled reflection in the knife’s silver. The distorted image seemed a perfect reflection of the surreal sense he felt now, the way in which his life had become blurred and strained at the edges. ‘But, if she doesn’t? Then what?’

‘Then you’ll get through it.
We’ll
get through it. You’re not on your own here. I’m here – and I’m not going anywhere until we get you all through this. You
and
Wren. You, and Wren, and Phoebe.’ She snatched the knife and fork from his hovering hands and cut a slice of bacon, holding it up to his mouth with a fierce frown. ‘Eat, you fool! You’re hungover, and you’ve got responsibilities. Now,
get on with it
, Rob.’

Running a damp cloth over Phoebe’s eggy face, she cast Rob a businesslike nod, and left the room to phone her agency, to tell them she wouldn’t be able to fill in at Leverside Comprehensive after all. ‘It’s a family emergency,’ Rob heard her say. Shakily, he stood and crossed the room, standing just within the doorframe to listen in on her conversation, unearthing the buried shame of childhood eavesdropping but lingering all the same.

‘Yes, I realise it’s late notice,’ Laura said, ‘that’s why I’m phoning you so early. So you can make alternative
arrangements
.’ There was a pause, while the speaker on the other end of the line responded. Rob could hear the irritation in Laura’s silence, the impatience she felt at having to explain further. Finally, she spoke again. ‘It’s a death, if you must
know. Close family. I’m sorry, Monica – I really don’t want to go into any more detail right now, but I’ll be in touch.’

In that moment, inexplicably, Rob knew for certain that Wren would never be coming home.

Ava’s message and the photograph within still haven’t loaded when Laura reaches out and takes the phone from Rob’s hand. She flips it shut and hands it back to him. ‘Rob? Are you alright?’

Panic surges through him. The picture timed out before he could see it – Phoebe’s up in that little stone cottage with Wren – and he hasn’t even started to work out how to broach this with Laura –

‘Rob? You look terrible; you’re as white as a sheet. Come on, let’s take a walk along the beach? You’ve got to stop worrying. You’ll hear the phone if she calls.’

‘Who?’ he stammers, feeling the heat rise into his face. Despite the cool breeze in the air, he’s sweating.

‘Phoebe, of course! You need to calm down a bit – you’ll give yourself a heart attack at this rate.’

Laura leads the way back through the rocks as Rob follows, gingerly clambering down to the sandy shore, accepting her hand as she steers him towards the water’s edge where a group of sanderlings runs in and out of the shallows, taking to wing as they draw near. He follows their progress as their shadows flutter like static across the sand, and is seized by the same helplessness as that he experienced when Wren left, feeling as powerless as a small boy. He must find a way to talk to Laura about Ava. But how? How did you ask someone,
Did you have my baby? Did you abandon her at birth? Did you conceal it from me for all these years?
He studies her
face, the curve of her cheekbones, the arch of her brow, the wild beauty of her hair, still her crowning glory. Is he insane? How could he begin to imagine that Laura was capable of such cruel deceit, that she could keep this one huge thing from him, when they’ve already spent a lifetime together, sharing everything? He has to be wrong; perhaps the whole thing is wrong, and it’s simply some big, terrifying mistake.

‘You’re looking at me in that strange way again,’ she says, giving his arm a little shake. ‘What’s on your mind?’

They reach the sandy stretch leading up to Arthur’s kiosk and the car park, passing it by as they follow the rippling line of the water’s edge. Rob looks towards Wren’s cottage and breathes deeply, trying to stay located in the present. He turns back to Laura, thinking of all those lost babies, and wondering, would that grief have made it more difficult or easier to give another away?

‘Do you regret never having a baby of your own, Laur?’

‘You know I do.’ She fixes on the landscape ahead. ‘But I had Phoebe. She was like my own.’

‘I wonder why we never – I mean, you never wanted to discuss it as an option. We were young enough, when we got together. When Wren left, you were, what twenty-nine, thirty? We could have had a child together, if we’d wanted.’

A knot of tension ripples along Laura’s jawline, the set of her mouth clenching hard. She turns her eyes on him, and there’s sadness in them. ‘Can you imagine – if Wren came back after a year, two years, and found you, me and Phoebe, and another child.
Our
child – can you imagine what that would have done to her, Rob? To us?’

Rob stops, pulls her into his arms, smoothes his hand across the warm nest of her hair.

‘You always thought she’d come back, didn’t you?’

She shakes her head against his chest. ‘No. But I always
hoped
she’d come back – that she’d want to come back – and I needed to be ready for everything to return to normal if she ever did.’

‘To normal?’ Rob holds her at arm’s length, so she’s forced to look at him. ‘How could we ever have returned to normal? After she’d left me, and Phoebe – after she’d left you? What – you would have moved out, content for me and Wren to try happy families again, with you visiting at weekends and holidays as if nothing had changed?’

Laura shakes free and continues along the beach, her stride gathering force. ‘Obviously not. But I could never really think of you as mine, could I? Even in our happiest times, Rob, the ghost of Wren was there. The unfinished business. You know, in all these years, not once have I heard a knock at our door without jumping, without wondering, however briefly, if it might be Wren come home. Not once.’

Rob slides his hand inside her coat pocket, wrestling her resisting fingers back into his. ‘But we
could
have had a child together – you and me – if we’d wanted.’ He’s testing her, watching for her reaction.

‘It would never have worked,’ she replies, and it’s like a door closing. She drops his hand and gestures towards the terrace of rocky caves ahead of them, breaking into a loose jog as she heads in the direction of the largest.

‘You should see this,’ she calls back to him, the ease returning to her voice. ‘It’s Wren’s cave. We came here last night – I think she’d want you to see it.’

During that first fortnight, Laura moved herself into the spare room, and she and Rob gradually worked out a
rhythm to help him through the fog of everyday life. After a week, she managed to persuade him to return to work while she stayed at home with Phoebe and took care of the house, and the mood of the home shifted as his confidence gradually rose and his attention was diverted from the horror of his abandonment. At the end of his first week back at school, Laura prepared a celebratory curry, and sent him upstairs to shower and change while she set out the table and got Phoebe off to sleep.

‘Tell me about your week,’ she asked when he returned to join her at the table, smelling of alpine shower gel and fresh skin. ‘
Darling
,’ she added, passing down the mango chutney and pouring him a glass of wine. They laughed properly for the first time since she’d arrived.

Rob snapped a poppadom in two, spooning chutney on to the edge in a small, neat heap. ‘You know what? It was OK. No, better than that – it was good. It was really good to get out of the house.’ Still holding on to his poppadom, he rubbed his nose with the knuckle of his right hand, at once self-conscious. ‘Not away from you and Phoebe, you know – ’ ‘Of course I know, Rob. Away from the thing we can’t seem to talk about.
Away from Wren
is what you mean – or at least the bloody great hole she’s left.’ He watched as she pushed her chair out from the table and went to the sink to run herself a glass of water, tensely flexing her shoulders before turning to rejoin him at the table. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I miss her. I don’t know what else to say. I love her. I miss her. I’m terrified that she’s gone for good. What else is there to say? What use is there in saying it over and over?’

‘No, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know I shouldn’t, but I feel so angry at her. And confused. What she’s done, Rob –
running
away – it’s not what Wren does. It’s not the Wren we know, is it? She’s just not that selfish.’

An image of Eliza Adler filled his mind. ‘A singular kind of gal’, Wren had called her, but Rob couldn’t agree, couldn’t concur that it was alright for a mother to dump her daughter in a boarding school just because she had better things to do. Surely Wren of all people would know that this was the wrong solution, no matter what was going on, no matter how unhappy she might have become? Hadn’t her own experience of abandonment been enough to show her how not to parent, how important a mother’s presence was in a child’s life?

For the first time since Wren had left, he started to allow his own feelings of anger to break through, and he stared at Laura across the table, watching as her eyes brimmed with tears and she reached again for the bottle. Rob drained his own wine glass and nodded for her to pass the bottle down. He couldn’t speak, fearful of betraying Wren with his words; if he started to express the rising heat of his feelings he would never be able to take it back – it would be out there in the world, as real as if he had said it to Wren herself. He must keep it down, he knew, lest speaking it gave it life. For some time, they continued to eat and drink in silence in this way, spooning up the tikka, polishing off the wine as they each dwelt on the situation in their own private space.

Eventually, Laura laid down her fork and pushed her empty glass away, just a fraction. ‘Rob,’ she said, ‘I would do anything to make things better for you. But she hasn’t only walked out on you, she’s walked out on Phoebe. She’s walked out on her mother. And she’s walked out on
me
.’

Her voice faltered at this last, and in reflex she covered her mouth with a hand as if to swallow the words back up, to wish them gone. From across the kitchen table Rob watched as her tears bounced like raindrops against the edge of her dinner plate. His eyes roamed over the half-empty dishes laid out across the table – dishes she’d spent all afternoon preparing for the end of his week back at work. It was, he was suddenly and acutely aware, an unintentional copy of the first meal they had all shared together, after that chance meeting with Wren in the college canteen queue of 1982.

‘The curry’s quite good,’ he said, faintly hoping to raise a glimmer of a smile as he quoted the very words Wren had spoken to Laura as she held up the line.

‘Is there anything we could have done?’ Laura asks, guilt in the wet of her eyes.

Rob’s gaze dropped from hers. ‘Like what?’

‘Do you think she was OK? I – I don’t think she was OK, Rob. I’m not sure that we did everything we should have done.’

Rob pushed back his chair, dropped his napkin to his unfinished plate. ‘She was fine, Laur – everyone gets a bit blue after a baby – it’s normal. Most of the time, she was just fine.’

‘What about the cleaning thing? You told me she’d be up at two in the morning some nights, bleaching the kitchen units – rewashing Phoebe’s clean clothes. You told me that.’

‘Yes, but that’s not – that’s not depression, is it? That’s not going to bed and not getting up, or suicidal thoughts or – I don’t know, but it’s not that!’ His voice had risen with the colour in his neck, and he stood anchored to the space opposite Laura and didn’t know which way to turn.

Laura left her seat and went to him. ‘I’m not blaming you, Rob. No one’s to blame for this. I’m just sounding off –
trying to blame myself if anything – I’m just trying to work it all out.’

His face crumpled, unable to hold it all in, and Laura pulled him close, where he clung to her fiercely, sobbing great racks of anguish against her neck, his tears spilling into the warm refuge of her fragrant curls. The smell of her skin and the pressure of her fingertips as she cradled his head in her hand, the welcome taste of his tears as they passed from his eyes to his lips… he was moved by these sensations, stirred by her affection. Their breathing fell into one rhythm, and he barely knew how to move away from her, to release her small, soft frame from the cage of his hands, hands that rested and clung to the curves of her waist. ‘Stay with me,’ he whispered, drawing her tighter, reading the subtle turn of her face, the brush of her chin below his. She couldn’t speak, was as powerless as he to let go. Without a word, they abandoned the kitchen and the debris of their meal for Laura’s single bed, where under the glare of the overhead light they made love in an urgent tangle of anguish, startling to them both in its brevity and force.