Flight (22 page)

Wren sets to work in the kitchen, distractedly chopping vegetables and loading the bread machine, her one concession to modern living, for tomorrow’s loaf. It was Arthur who talked her into getting the machine a couple of years back, after waxing lyrical about the bread he produced from his own. She resisted, told him no, until some weeks later, when she arrived at his kiosk to get her morning coffee and there it was under his counter, a brand new machine, shiny and persuasive in its carrier bag. She was cross with him, told him so, and the stubborn old mule said, ‘It’s not a gift, so don’t go getting any ideas about not paying me. You take it home and give it a go – and if you still think you want to do it the hard way, you bring it back to me. But, if you like it, it’ll cost you sixty quid.’ A week later, Wren stopped by for her coffee. As he handed her her cup, she pressed three twenty-pound notes into his hand and strode on, and not another word was said on the matter.

While the soup cooks, Wren sets about tidying the house. She must look a fool, she knows, rushing around the place as if she’s expecting royalty, but Laura didn’t give her any warning last time and had to take it as she found it, shabby and neglected. Alone, Wren has no cause for pride when it comes to her home. It serves its purpose – keeps her warm in the winter, provides her with heat to cook, with water to drink, with a roof for shelter. The dogs and she have no need
for anything more, but here she is, running around, fluffing up dusty old cushions and straightening the ash-marked rag rug before the fireplace.

After half an hour, she’s had enough and is beginning to think that Laura’s not going to return at all. She lies on the sofa and closes her eyes, embracing the heat of Willow as she clambers up and curls her face into the crook of her neck, their breaths rising and falling as one. Her velvet head smells like freshly baked biscuits, smooth and unsullied as an infant’s. Wren slips into watery dreams of summer youth, of Cornish caves, of the slip and plop of starfish returning to their salty pond. She’s soothed by the warmth of toddler summers, the sun’s rays soaking into the soles of tiny upturned feet; yet all the while the anxiety of loss bubbles like an underground earthquake at the bottom of the ocean.

On their first night home from the maternity hospital, Robert set Wren up in the bedroom so that everything she and the baby needed was within easy reach. He’d bought a brand new portable TV, spending several harassed hours installing it before hospital visiting time started, the time when he would collect Wren and the baby, and bring them home at last. On the bed was a special V-shaped cushion – a ‘nursing pillow’, the woman in the baby shop had called it – and a freshly ironed pile of muslin cloths, although Rob wasn’t entirely sure what they were for. He had followed the list from the
Mother & Baby
magazine Wren’s colleagues had included in her leaving hamper. He spent a small fortune on every item the experts considered to be an essential, and another small fortune on most of those they thought were not.

As she sank back against the puffy pile of pillows, Wren instinctively cupped the loose husk of her abdomen, smiling wanly at Rob through her fatigue. He stood at the foot of the bed, gazing into the rustling Moses basket beside her, his eyes lit up with wonder as he offered Wren tea. She declined, but when she noticed his lost expression, his need to do
something
, she congratulated him on the freshly laundered sheets, and thanked him for the efforts he’d made to get the house looking so nice.

‘It was Laura mostly,’ he confessed. She’d only returned to her own home that morning, three days after Phoebe had arrived in the world, bruised and crying. While Wren had been sitting alone at the edge of her hospital bed, shedding tears at the needle-sharp bursts of first milk, Rob and Laura had toasted her, as they shared a good couple of nights wetting the baby’s head over takeaway curries, and exchanging emotional homilies regarding the majesty of Nature’s creations.

‘I’m so glad she saw Phoebe on her first day,’ Wren said, as she settled against her new pillow and breathed in the warm scent of her daughter’s softly domed head, marred as it was by the angry indentation of the ventouse cup. The horror of that moment jolted her thoughts, and she blinked it back, forcing it deep into the damp cellar of her troubled memories. ‘Though part of me feels sick with guilt that we did it first, that we did it without her. It should have been
her
first, not me.’

Rob’s expression fell, and he moved to sit at the edge of the bed, worry working through the lines of his forehead. ‘Laura’s happier for you – for us – than anyone. She couldn’t be more ecstatic if Phoebe were her own baby. She wasn’t ready for a baby before, when she – well, you know – lost it.
It wasn’t planned.’ He leant in and kissed Wren on the lips, pulling back and squinting at her as if she were the most beautiful woman in the world. Wren felt wretched, squeezed out, less than a woman. The gap where her baby had been left a crater of loneliness behind, and she closed her eyelids against Rob, desperately trying to recall how it felt just days ago, to feel the undulating tide of another life nestling beneath her skin.

Rob’s voice startled her.

‘Who knows if it’ll even be with Doug, but until Laura does have kids she’s quite happy playing the role of Best Godmother in the World.’

‘Why isn’t she here?’ Wren asked, her voice betraying her sudden panic. She wanted Laura more than any other person, more than Rob or the baby or her mother. ‘I thought she’d be here when we came home.’

‘She had to get back, Wrenny. She couldn’t stay on any longer; she’d already taken a couple of days off work just to be here for the big day. You know she’s starting a new supply job on Monday, and to be honest she was a bit worried about getting in the way here, with the new baby. That reminds me – she wanted me to give you this.’ He opened the drawer of the bedside cabinet and took out a small
gift-wrapped
bundle. Inside was a painted Russian doll, not ten centimetres in height, beautiful and perfect, containing doll after doll, all the way down to the tiniest little seed doll at the heart of the woman.
Take care of your precious girl
, the gift card read.
With all my love, Laura x

Badger barks, scratching at the back door, waking Wren with a start. She wonders how long she has slept, and leaps up
to check that the pan hasn’t boiled dry. It’s fine: the soup is still bubbling and the sun hasn’t moved far in the sky; she can only have dozed off for a few minutes. She takes the saucepan off the hob and leaves it to cool, shooing Willow out into the garden to follow her brother. The little dogs sniff around in the overgrown grass, before starting on a game of hunt and roll, their excited yaps rising, muted through the salt-streaked windows of the cold kitchen.

Over at the bench, Laura’s coffee cup sits on the wooden arm, with Wren’s balanced on the opposite side, abandoned when they went their separate ways this morning. Was she coming back? Surely she wouldn’t go without saying goodbye, without saying
something
? They’ve never before had a disagreement, not a real one, and Wren couldn’t stand it if they left things on a bad note.

She balks at her own sentimentality, something which is so completely absent in this life that it troubles her with its unbidden appearance. She finds herself in a limbo of nervousness, uncertain what to do next, and again she trails from room to room, checking on the tidying she carried out before her unplanned nap. The only room she hasn’t looked in is the boot room at the back, and as she opens the door she is alarmed to see the contents of the trunk still spilled out across the floor and organised into piles for disposal – for the charity shop, for the bin, for burning. She kneels beside the trunk, and stays there a few minutes, her silent gaze moving over the strange antiquities of her past. The sleeve of the orange silk shirt hangs from the mouth of the bin liner and she brings the garment up her face, to feel the peach-soft slip of the fabric brush against her cheek. In a jolt of craving for material things, she strips off her upper clothes – the fisherman’s jumper, the mannish grey thermal
vest with its long sleeves and ribbed cuffs – and eases her arms into the blouse, taking her time to fasten the tiny shell buttons, a skill her rough fingers seem to have forgotten. She extends her arms to inspect the drape of the sleeves, the way in which they puff at the wrists before ending in delicate button-studded cuffs. Still inside the trunk is her old jewellery box; why she had thought to pack this when she left she has no idea, as she hasn’t worn a single item of jewellery since she arrived here. Within days of moving in, along with the clothes and bags, the shoes and fripperies, all these things had been consigned to the trunk, shoved beside the coat rack and concealed beneath a layer of practicality – of boots and tools and winter supplies.

Opening up the jewellery box, she sees that the ‘jewels’ are laughable now. A large collection of hangover trinkets from the 1980s, from her student days – plastic hoops in a variety of acid colours, a handful of cheap filigree danglers bought from Camden Market, and an arm’s length of bashed silver bangles, found in various hippy gift shops and festival bazaars. There’s a garnet ring in a tiny embossed jeweller’s box, gifted to her by her father, having belonged to his aunt, and a silver brooch her mother had given her on her sixteenth birthday, a wreath of daisies. At the time, Wren had been irritated that her mother knew her so little that she could even think she would want an old lady’s gift like this. Looking at it now, she sees it really is a small thing of beauty, with each tiny daisy head perfectly crafted to form a circle of flowers, rather like the daisy chains she used to make for her mother as a young child. Was that her mother’s intention? To reflect back to those summer picnics of childhood – to the fleeting beauty of daisy tiaras and necklaces and anklets; to Wren
adorning her reclining madonna with floral celebrations, as father poured elderflower fizz and handed out sandwiches, reciting half-remembered snippets of Wordsworth beside the stream. What a fool she was, not to have seen it. And how like her mother, to not point out the significance, even when faced with Wren’s sullen lack of appreciation. She unhinges the clasp and pins the brooch to the breast of her silk shirt.

The remaining snaggle of old jewellery is poured on to the charity shop pile. Maybe some of these things will be in fashion again; maybe someone will enjoy them. Mother used to say that bad fashion always came back round again, like a bad penny. Wren lifts the top layer from the jewellery box and fishes out the contents below: a collection of obsolete coins – some ha’pennies and old shillings her father had given her to play shop with; a purple hair bobble fashioned into a ring; and a small hoard of cracker toys, tiny plastic horses and dogs in an array of colours, each with a hoop in its back for dangling, perhaps from keyrings or neck chains. She can’t bring herself to part with these little animals, amassed as they were over several happy Christmases, when all the cracker tokens would be gathered up and added to Wren’s collection at the end of the festive lunch. Her favourite was a tiny black dog – a wiry terrier with the kindest expression cast in its face. It was the type of dog she’d always thought she might have one day, when she grew up, a scruffy little terrier with keen black eyes.

She really has no use for a jewellery box, she thinks, and she returns the top layer and snaps the lock shut, putting the empty case on the ‘donation’ pile. Inside the trunk, only one item remains, and Laura reaches in and retrieves that last thing, tucked into the far corner, small and bright
and perfectly formed: Laura’s Russian doll. She’ll show it to Laura, she decides. If she ever comes back, she’ll show it to Laura.

Outside, the dogs are barking wildly. She’d forgotten about them in the garden, and she pushes herself to her feet, heading for the kitchen, where she sets the doll down on the side and opens the back door to let them in. In a rush of exuberance they bound across her sandy boots and race through the house to scratch at the front door of the cottage.

‘Slow down,’ she murmurs, perplexed by their frenzy, following them and scooping Willow under one arm. As she turns back towards the kitchen, the front door knocker raps against the old wooden exterior, startling her to her very core.

Shifting Willow to her shoulder, she feels rooted to the spot, and as she slowly turns her eyes towards the small front window she catches a glimpse of Laura’s red hair, blowing about in the breeze as she stands on the doorstep. ‘She’s come back,’ Wren whispers into Willow’s neck.

She’s come back to say goodbye.

When Phoebe was two or three months old, Laura made her a velour comforter fringed with garment labels she had carefully snipped from her clothes, hand-sewing each to the blanket’s edge with tiny, precise stitches. Phoebe loved it, instantly bringing her thumb to her mouth and turning her face into the soft, silky bundle in a rapture of delight. It was an inspired gift, conceived one hot afternoon in July while Laura sat on a picnic blanket in Wren’s back garden, watching Phoebe in the shade of a parasol as Wren took down laundry from the washing line. Phoebe had almost
mastered rolling over, and she lay on her back tugging at her own toes, restlessly flip-flopping from side to side in the fitful way babies did before an overdue nap. Her chest rose and fell, and she rubbed her head from side to side, her fists working away at her face, her mouth turning downwards. ‘
Argh-argh-argh-argh
,’ she began, her chest revving up as she built momentum. Her legs stiffened, rising up, thumping down against the blanket in frustration. Wren continued to fetch washing from the line. It was such a beautiful,
clear-sky
day; she had hoped they could stay outside for a picnic lunch, for egg sandwiches and strawberries and Pimms in the sunshine. She had hoped that Phoebe would sleep.

Laura shifted position, coming up on to her knees to make soothing noises and perform
peep-bo
behind her hands in an attempt at distraction. ‘She’s getting a bit grizzly,’ she called over, laying a hand gently on the rising dome of the baby’s bright white vest. Phoebe kicked out and her whining intensified, shattering the peace of the sheltered garden, the serenity of the imagined picnic. ‘Shall I put her in her pram? I can rock her off to sleep if you like.’