The Astonishing Return of Norah Wells (24 page)

When Norah gets to the pavement outside Number 77 Willoughby Street, she closes her eyes and takes a breath.

I'll get some food,
she'd insisted when Fay had a meltdown about not having anything for supper. Norah was glad of the excuse to get out of the house.

She hears the front door open behind her and turns to see Fay clipping on Louis's lead as he strains to get out.

‘He's been scratching at the door,' Fay says. ‘He wants to come with you. He's not good at staying off the road,' she adds. ‘You need to watch him.'

Louis escapes Fay's grasp, runs down the front steps and comes to sit at Norah's feet.

Ella pushes past Fay and Sai follows.

‘Ella!' Adam's standing on the doorstep now. ‘I need you to stay at home.'

‘I'm just walking Sai back,' Ella throws over her shoulder. ‘I need some space.'

Space
, thinks Norah.
We're more alike than you think.

As Ella and Sai disappear down the road, Norah watches Fay puts her hand on Adam's shoulder, all the while looking at Norah. And then she closes the front door.

Norah kneels down and puts her arms around Louis's neck. ‘You didn't ask for any of this, did you?' She closes her eyes, leans her head against his chest and listens to the hard, thud of his heartbeat.

As they walk past the bungalow belonging to the Miss Peggs, Louis stops for a moment and looks at the lounge window. Figures move behind the curtains like there's a party going on. The curtains twitch open and Rose looks out – and then they close again.

The Twitter followers are nowhere to be seen and the tent the man in the rainbow jumper put up flaps open and empty.

‘Come on, Louis.' She pulls on the lead.

As they walk down Willoughby Street the air cools, the wind picks up and clouds gather in the darkening sky. Once again, Norah's stepping away from the home she left six years ago.

She throws words at the pavement:

What the hell was Walter thinking? I told him I had to deal with this alone, that I needed some time to talk to Adam and the girls, that I wanted to keep things separate
– that I'd be home in a few days and then we'd decide what to do.
 

He missed you,
Walter
said.

And that, it would seem, was reason enough for them to travel hundreds of miles to come and find her.

Norah turns into the forecourt of the petrol station, the only place open this late on a Sunday.

The wind sweeps the petrol fumes off the tarmac. Her head spins and, for a second, she needs to stop to get her balance.

She's not ready for this. She had to get to know Adam and the girls – and Fay – again. To get their trust back and maybe, with time, for them to forgive her. Walter being here with Nat just confuses things.

She ties Louis up outside, goes into the shop and pulls some macaroni cheese and a pizza from the freezer section.

‘And some Marlboro Lights,' she says when she gets to the counter.

The handles of the plastic bags dig into her palm; the scar in the place of her left breast throbs. She didn't want reconstructive surgery, to paste over the reality of what the disease had done to her; she'd done enough pretending in her life. But she misses the easy balance of her old body. She wonders how long it will be before her body gives up on her altogether.

You need the people you love,
the consultant had said.
They'll give you something to fight for
. And she owed it to them, didn't she? If she doesn't make it, at least they'll have had a few months together. Long enough to say goodbye.

That's why she came home. But the consultant was wrong. Being around the people you love only made it worse. Being alone, that was what she needed. And as for Adam and the girls and Fay and Walter and Nat, they'd be better off without her.

On the way out of the shop, Norah stops at a display of leaflets arranged in a wooden rack by the door. She picks up a flyer for the Holdingwell 10k. She'd hoped to watch Ella run, that it would be part of them getting close again.

Norah puts back the flyer and picks up a bus timetable. She turns to the Sunday section and is relieved to see that they still leave on the hour. She looks at her watch: the next one goes in twenty-five minutes. And after that, fifteen minutes to the railway station. And then another wait, perhaps, for a slow weekend train to London. From there, she could go anywhere.

‘Norah?'

A hand on her arm. Dirty fingernails. Creased skin. Red knuckles. And rainbow sleeve.

She looks up at the busker.

‘Remember me?' He smiles.

She nods. He was there six years ago, on the morning she left.

Louis pulls on his lead and pads at the door. Norah goes out and unties him.

‘Want to share a cigarette?' she asks the busker.

He nods.

They sit in the dark, smoking, Louis beside them, the bag of frozen food thawing at Norah's feet.

After a while he unzips his backpack and pulls out a CD. ‘Here, thought you might like it.'

Norah holds it up to the light.
Home Again
,
and a picture of a sky with clouds.

‘I believe we're both fans…'

‘Louis Armstrong?'

Louis looks up when he hears his name.

‘Sort of. They're my covers.'

Norah traces the words on the CD case. ‘Ironic title,' she says, before drawing on her cigarette. ‘For a homeless guy.'

He shrugs. ‘I'm not homeless.'

‘What are you then?'

‘Free.' He smiles. ‘A little cold sometimes. But mostly free.'

Norah had often thought of how she'd like to move around the world with nothing but a rucksack, a tent, a temporary home that she could put up and take down anywhere she pleased. Maybe he was right – no matter how hard his life was, it was worth it to be free. And yet he'd stayed in Holdingwell, hadn't he? He'd been here the whole time while she was away. And years before that too. Perhaps there was a freedom in staying, too.

‘They're waiting for you at home.' He rubs Louis behind the ear.

She exhales a stream of smoke into the night air.

‘I don't think so.'

‘I do.'

‘How did you know I was here?'

He laughs. ‘The twins – they saw you trying to make a run for it.'

Norah remembers Rose Pegg's face at the window, the empty tent in their front garden.

‘I wasn't making a run for it.'

‘I can take that from you, then.' He looks at the bus timetable in her hand.

‘This wasn't… I wasn't…'

‘It's okay. It's human – the desire to run.'

What did that even mean:
it's human
? Fay was human, and she'd never run away from the people she loved.

She hands him the timetable.

As if he knows that a decision's been made, Louis gets up. And he's right, isn't he? Him and the busker. Norah should go home. Home, despite it all. Home for good.

‘Thanks for the music,' she says, holding up the CD.

He smiles. ‘Any time.'

 

When she reaches the house, Norah sees Ella standing on the doorstep looking up through the scaffolding to the light in Willa's room.

As Norah looks up, she notices the outline of Nat's face at the window, his nose pressed against the glass: he's looking at Ella. Norah had told him stories about his two sisters who lived in England, but he hadn't understood.

Ella turns round, locks her eyes on Norah and then disappears through the front door.

Norah puts the shopping down in the hallway and goes up to Willa's room. The door is open just wide enough for Norah to look in. Louis walks past her and climbs onto the bed. Willa throws her arms around him.

‘Louis,' she whispers as she strokes him behind his ear.

He licks the side of her face.

Nat comes and joins Willa and pats Louis's side.

Willa stares into the dog's eyes and then leans forward and kisses the top of his head. ‘We were wondering where'd you'd got to, Louis.' She picks up a piece of paper off the floor. ‘Look, Louis, Nat drew a picture.' She turns to Nat. ‘Here, why don't you take it and show it to your mummy – it's really good.'

Nat shakes his head and pushes it back to her.

‘Geschenk,
' he says. A present. ‘
Für deinem Geburtstag.
'

She gives him a kiss on the cheek and then folds up the picture and puts it in her pocket.

‘I'll show Auntie Norah myself then,' she says. ‘She'll like it.'

Norah turns away from the door and heads downstairs.
Auntie Norah,
she whispers to herself… It's time to tell Willa the truth.

They stand outside the front door of the post office and Sai takes her hands.

‘I'm glad you came over for Willa's birthday. That you weren't scared away.'

‘Wait until my mum tells you her stories about my aunts and uncles back in India.' He smiles. ‘Now they're really scary.'

Ella reaches up and kisses him.

‘Can I stay tonight?' she asks.

He touches her cheek. ‘You need to go back and sort things out. I'll come and get you tomorrow for the race.'

She looks down at the trainers they are both wearing; the ones she helped him choose in TK Maxx when they started training, and her own, inherited from Mum.

‘The race? We're still doing that?'

He kisses her and whispers through his lips, ‘Of course we are. You're the champion, remember?'

And then he stands there, watching her, waving, until she disappears around the corner.

How long will he love me, she wonders. Will his love run out one day, like Mum's did for us?

 

They're all squeezed in around the kitchen table, like for Willa's birthday party. Fay leans against the counter. Pale. Not eating.

The wind rattles the windows. The sky's heavy with clouds.

Ella sends the tweet and slips her phone into her pocket. She wishes Sai were here, or at least that he'd let her stay with him at the post office.

Dad keeps stealing glances at Walter, as though he's checking out his competition. Walter's chewing a slice of pizza; he doesn't seem to mind that he's sitting at the same table as his girlfriend's husband and children. Mum's clamped to Nat's side. She keeps reaching up and stroking his hair and taking his fork and pushing bits of gloopy macaroni into his mouth. A brother – something else for Ella to get her head around. Nat closes his eyes and his head drops forward. Louis sits next to Willa; his head rests on her feet like he's worried that she's going to be swept away. He thumps his tail against the tiles; something's rattling him too. Only Willa seems normal, wittering away to Nat about how tomorrow they're going to look for Mrs Fox and her cubs.

Mum clears her throat. ‘You ready for the race tomorrow, Ella?'

Everyone looks up at her.

‘I'd like to sponsor you,' she says.

And that will make up for you having disappeared for six years, will it?

‘I'm not running.'

Willa's head snaps up. ‘You're not running? But you have to run. You've been training for ages and ages – and what about Sai and the charity that will help people with poorly hearts, like Sai's dad?

Ella shrugs. ‘I don't feel like it.'

She's lying. Of course she's going to go through with it. She wouldn't let Sai down. But she wants it to be just the two of them. She doesn't want them all standing there with banners, Dad taking photos, Mum pretending to be a mum – she's had enough of playing happy families.

‘My pizza's still frozen.' Ella throws the slice down on her plate. ‘Why are we eating this crap?'

‘Ella!' Dad glares at her.

‘Well Fay wouldn't serve us this stuff.'

Ella remembers those first years after Mum left, when she refused to eat anything that Fay had made because it wasn't the kind of food Mum used to cook: processed, packaged food, fish fingers, frozen peas, oven chips. Fay's food looked so good that, sometimes, she'd came back down in the middle of the night to open the fridge and sneak it back to her room.

‘Walter's got the same job as Mummy, except he looks after animals instead of people,' pipes up Willa. ‘I think he should come and live here and work at the Animal Ark.'

Everyone turns to face Willa.

‘What are you going on about?' asks Ella.

Willa digs out a piece of paper from her pocket, unfolds it and holds it up for everyone to see: ‘Onkel Walter's wearing a white coat – look.' She points at the crayon drawing of Walter. ‘He's Auntie Norah's brother.'

The table falls silent. A gust of wind. The branches of the cherry tree tap the window. A tearing sound at the top of the house. The crash of a roof tile on the pavement.

‘Mum's
brother
?' asks Ella.

Nat claps his pudgy hands together: ‘Onkel Walter! Onkel Walter!'

God, if Nat isn't Walter's kid, then he must be Dad's. Wow, nice one, Mum. First you abandon Dad with two small kids, and then you keep another kid from knowing he exists. Great parenting.

Ella imagines her Twitter followers perking up and looking across the road, the kitchen window a portal to the soap opera of their lives.

Fay stares at Walter, shell-shocked.

Dad looks at Nat. You can see it sinking in, the realisation that he's had a kid all this time, a son who Mum didn't even bother to tell him about.

‘You don't have a brother,' Dad says to Mum.

‘We found each other – a few years ago,' Mum says, as if going out and finding a brother is the most normal thing in the world.

Maybe Mum enjoys dropping bombs on their family, thinks Ella. Maybe it gives her some kind of sadistic kick to upset everyone like this. Ella looks at Walter and at the freckles across his cheeks and at his brown eyes. Of course he's not Mum's boyfriend.

Dad keeps staring at Nat; the blood's drained from his face.

Fay walks to the kitchen door. Everyone turns to look at her.

‘Please excuse me,' she says and walks out.

Ella gets up too.

‘Ella, sit down,' says Dad.

But Ella ignores him.

As she follows Fay, Ella remembers how many times Fay's run after her and tried to talk to her and how many times she's slammed the door in her face.
You're not my mum!
she'd yell at her, over and over, hoping that, like a spell, it would make Fay disappear and Mum come back.

Outside the loo door, Ella hears that raw heaving sound when someone's stomach is being yanked up into their throat. It makes Ella feel sick too. Sick that she hasn't realised until now how badly she's treated Fay. Sick at how she never understood how much Fay meant to Dad and to Willa – and to her. And sick at the gross food Mum brought back from the petrol station.

‘Fay?' Ella knocks on the door. ‘Can I come in?'

Fay unlocks the door and Ella comes in and kneels beside her.

A sour smell rises up from the toilet bowl. Fay sits on the tiles, leaning against the wall and staring up at the ceiling.

They sit in silence for a bit, listening to the wind tearing at the tarpaulin on the roof.

Ella rips off a bit of loo paper, dampens it with warm water, takes Fay's hands and cleans her palms, then the tops of her hands, then her fingers. After that, she dampens the hand towel and holds it to Fay's forehead.

‘I'm sorry,' Ella says.

Fay looks at her and smiles weakly. ‘You don't have anything to be sorry about.'

‘I'm sorry that I was so mean to you. That I kept wanting Mum to come home.'

‘It was normal, Ella —'

Ella shakes her head. ‘It was stupid. I get it now: you're the one who belongs here – you're the one who Willa needs. Who we all need.'

Fay closes her eyes. ‘Things have changed. Your mum's come back. She's going to look after you now.'

‘No, she's not. Not properly. And Dad doesn't love her, he loves you. And you're pregnant, and Willa loves you and I – I —' Ella gulps. ‘I need you.'

For a moment, Fay looks at Ella and her face softens and Ella feels like maybe things could turn out okay. Maybe Fay can get them out of this mess again. But then Fay gets up off the tiles.

Fay strokes her stomach. ‘So you know.' She looks up at Ella. ‘And you don't mind?'

Ella smiles. ‘I think it's cool. You've spent so long looking after us, you deserve to have your own baby with Dad. And I know you're scared, with Mum having come home and everything, but it's going to be okay. You just have to fight to stay. And I'll help you. We'll make Mum leave —'

‘I have to go home, Ella. I need some space – and so do you, all of you.'

‘But I don't want you to go.' Ella stands up, throws her arms around Fay and for the first time since Fay moved in, they hug.

Fay's always looked so solid. She's the strong one. The surgeon. The perfect mum and wife, the one who stuck it out with them. But right now, Ella feels like she's hugging a little girl.

‘When were you going to tell us,' Ella asks. ‘About the baby.'

‘On Friday night.'

‘Why —?' Oh God. Fay probably had it all planned. Their pizza supper. A family meeting. An announcement that Willa's dream was going to come true, something even better than having fox cubs to look after: a baby brother or sister, someone she could pour all her love and care and imagination into. ‘Mum's timing has always been crap,' Ella says.

Somewhere upstairs, a door slams. A gust of wind howls through the bathroom fan. Overhead, the light bulb flickers.

Fay pulls away. ‘I've got to go.' She lets herself out of the loo.

Ella follows her and watches her walk to the stairs.

She hears the clink of knives and forks coming from the kitchen. If Fay isn't going to stay and do something about Mum, then Ella will have to take it in hand.

 

When Ella comes back into the kitchen Willa's sitting up, her brown eyes wide as she stares from Nat to Dad to Mum.

‘I don't understand,' she says, all the excitement drained from her voice. ‘Why would Daddy be Nat's daddy too?'

Dad's eyes fixed on his plate, the vein on his forehead pushed out. There should be a law against keeping a kid from his dad. Mum should get locked up for this.

Ella walks round the table, kneels beside Willa and takes her hand.

‘Because Norah's our mum, Willa. The mum who walked out on us when you were a baby.'