The Astonishing Return of Norah Wells (30 page)

Sai strokes Ella's arm. ‘You've been tossing and turning all night.'

After seeing the van outside, Ella came back to bed. She doesn't remember when Sai moved from the sofa in the corner of his room to the bed she's sharing with him now, but she knows that he held her for most of the night. If only her father understood how good Sai was to her; that if someone was trouble, she was. Sai was the one who should be protected from her.

She kisses his shoulder, his skin a golden brown.

‘Just too many thoughts crashing round in my head.' She smiles. ‘You ready for our big race?' She feels a dull pain in her ankle but she doesn't care. Nothing's going to stop her from running.

‘You're sure you're up to it?' He passes his fingers over the raw skin on the palms of her hands.

‘I wouldn't miss it for the world. And we've raised all that money for the British Heart Foundation. I have to go ahead with it.'

He nods. ‘Stubborn as ever.'

She punches him on the arm.

There's a knock on the door.

Ella pushes him out of the bed. ‘Quick! Get back to the couch!'

Sai laughs and rolls onto the floor.

‘She likes you, you know.' He pulls on a T-shirt and tries the light switch, but the power's still out. Then he opens the door.

His mum stands with a tray and two steaming glass tumblers. A shaft of light falls through the window and bounces off the gold sequins on her sari. She's beautiful, thinks Ella. She glows, like Sai.

‘It's stopped raining at last.' She places the tray on the bedside table. ‘And the wind's died down. But there is a lot of damage out there.'

‘Will it be okay for the race?' asks Ella.

‘When I went out this morning, they were already clearing up the streets. I think it should be fine.' She hands Ella a tumbler.

‘Sweet Indian tea,' Sai says. ‘It cures everything.'

Ella blows into the tumbler and then takes a sip. It's bitter and rich and sweet. She takes another sip and looks up at Mrs Moore. ‘It's delicious, thank you.'

Her mobile phone buzzes from across the room. She left it in the pocket of her jeans. Sai brings it over and she looks down at the screen: five missed calls from Dad, but no voicemail.

Then the landline rings in the house and Sai's mum gives a small bow and disappears through the door and down the stairs.

‘Everything okay?' Sai asks, looking at the phone.

Ella nods. ‘Just Dad. He probably found out I was missing from upstairs and flipped out. I don't need him lecturing me right now.'

Ella swipes to her Twitter account. She knows she told her followers that she was going to shut down the account, that there was no point in keeping in touch now that the search for Mum was over, but tweeting, having this group of strangers rooting for her, has become such a part of her life that she can't let go, not yet.

There's a message from @onmymind sent late last night:
Run like a song
.

How does @onmymind know about Mum's special saying? Had Ella mentioned it in one of her tweets?

‘Don't you think you should call your dad back? He'll be worried,' says Sai. ‘Or I could walk your home, so you can talk to him. And your mum.'

But Ella doesn't want to go home. She wants to stay here with Sai and Mrs Moore and her sweet Indian tea. If Mum could just up and leave and find a new family, why couldn't Ella? Sai and his Mum, they can be Ella's family. This can be her home. She composes a tweet and presses send.

She hears Mrs Moore's slippered tread on the stairs.

‘Ella,' Mrs Moore calls in her gentle voice. ‘Ella.' She comes into the room. Her brown eyes have clouded over like the stormy sky the night before. ‘It was your father. He's been trying to call you —'

The light bulb overhead blinks back on.

Ella stares into the warm, amber liquid of her tumbler. ‘I don't want to speak to him.'

‘It's your sister. There's been an accident.'

In the street outside the tall red-brick house, the little boy stands on the pavement. He can't move. The fox… the van… the dog… and now the little girl lying there… It's all a muddle. And he doesn't understand what anyone's saying. All the grown-ups are standing in the middle of the road, looking at the little girl. No one seems to notice that he's here on his own. Even his mama has forgotten about him.

We didn't hear it coming,
he wants to tell them.
We were following the fox
.
I didn't mean for my sister to get hurt
…

A hand presses down on his shoulder. An old lady dressed in purple, and another one beside her.

It's going to be okay, my dear,
says the round one.

He doesn't understand their words but their warm faces and the light in their eyes still the thudding in his chest.

Across town, the teenage girl calls her father again and again, but he doesn't pick up.

She throws on her clothes and hobbles down the stairs.

Where are you going?
the boy calls after her.

Home. I'm going home.
 

They're at the hospital,
the boy's mother says.

The teenage girl clenches her fists.
This is my fault
, she thinks
. It was my job to look after Willa; I should never have left.

The boy runs after the teenage girl and catches her hand.
Let me come with you
, he says.

At the end of Willoughby Street, The Mother Who Stayed kneels next to the little girl. The grit of the tarmac presses into her knees.
Why didn't she lock the front door? Why didn't she let the little girl sleep with her last night?

As she strokes the little girl's head she whispers,
It's going to be okay, my darling.
And then she closes her eyes and, for the first time, she prays.

Beside her stands The Mother Who Left, a hand pressed to her throat.
I shouldn't have come back,
she thinks.
I shouldn't have come home.

And the father, his breathing unsteady, his legs weak, comes over and kneels next to The Mother Who Stayed.

He puts an arm around her.
I'm sorry,
he says.

He wants to tell her that he loves her. That at this moment, as they sit here, looking down on their little girl, he knows for sure. But it's too late, isn't it? He's found the words too late.

Above them, the big dog looks down on Willoughby Street. He's often wondered what it would be like to fly, to be a bird, to see the world from above. He likes it up here. How weightless his body feels. Likes how his senses are no longer overwhelmed by the smells and the sounds of the earth.

As he looks down past the tall red-brick house to the end of the street, he sees the little girl lying on the road. His heart jumps. And then he's falling.

He lands with a thump on the tarmac.

He hears the crunch of bone.

And a tear by his ear.

Warm blood seeps across his tongue and flows out of his mouth.

He wants to get up and walk over to the little girl to make sure she's okay, but his legs won't move.

He closes his eyes and sees the little girl's face; she's smiling at him.

It's okay, Louis, you don't need to look after me any more.
 

Under his body, the road tremors. The spin of tyres. Blue lights. Sirens.

At the end of Willoughby Street men in green uniforms lift the little girl off the ground and put her in the back of their van with flashing blue lights.

The Mother Who Stayed and The Mother Who Left climb into the back of the van with the father. The uncle says he'll join them later.
I'll take him to the vet,
he says as he lifts the big dog from the road.

Inside the ambulance the little girl's eyes flit open. She looks at her father. At her two mothers. How they're all here with her, and she feels a warmth rising in her chest. Then she blinks and looks past them.
Where's Louis? Where's Ella? And Mrs Fox?
She tries to talk but her lips won't move. Her head pounds. Her right arm feels heavy and numb. Her eyelids drop shut.

Outside the tall red-brick house the uncle carries the big dog to the family car; the father gave him the keys, said to take care of the big dog. He lays the injured animal on the front passenger seat. And then, as he starts the engine, he turns round, reaches out and strokes the big dog's head.

Lieber Hund
, he says.
Lieber Hund
.

The car bumps along the road.

The big dog wants to sink into sleep, to float away, like when he was floating above the road. But what about the little girl? He's meant to be looking after her.

Her face appears again, her big brown eyes.
It's okay, you can sleep.

His heart slows.

There's a bright light, like the headlights of the van coming towards him, but this time it's the sun.

He's standing outside a barn; the place feels familiar. The door to the barn opens. His nose twitches. His paws tingle. His mum comes out. She looks at him and wrinkles her brow.
You'd better stop running off
, she says.
Or one of these days you'll get lost and we won't find you.

He thought that she was the one who left.

She carries him into the barn and places him in the warm hay. His siblings are all there. He tumbles over them. When his mum lies down, he snuggles in close.

I'm home,
he thinks.

Willa's eyelids flicker. She hears voices but she doesn't want to wake up, not yet. She wants to stay here, in her dream.

Everyone's sitting on picnic blankets in the garden: Mummy and Mummy Norah and Daddy and Ella and Sai and Onkel Walter and Nat. They make room for Mrs Fox and her cubs. Mummy puts out bowls of milk for them.

The only one who's missing is Louis.

‘Louis!' calls Willa. ‘Come out and join us!' She picks up a piece of chicken breast. ‘I've got a treat for you!'

She runs into the house and searches all the rooms but she can't find him.

When she comes back out she asks everyone ‘Where's Louis?' But they don't answer, they just keep talking and eating.

Then she hears a screech of brakes from the street. And a whine.

She runs round to the front of the house, and in the distance she sees a thick pelt, the colour of caramel, lying in the middle of the road.

A white van roars past her. Behind the steering wheel sits a man with a red face and a bottle in his hand.

‘Louis!' She runs up to him and presses her ear to his chest.

His heart is beating, but it's very faint. Clasping her hands together, she massages his chest like she's seen people do on TV. He whines again. His eyelids open and he stares at her with his big brown eyes; he seems to smile at her too, and then he lets out a breath and slumps further into himself and closes his eyes.

‘Someone help!' she calls out. ‘Someone come and help!'

She presses her ear back to his chest and listens, but this time there's no heartbeat, just a long, empty silence.

Willa looks around for Mummy or Daddy and Ella. But the street is empty. And then she notices a little girl lying in the road, her body curled up like she's asleep.

White walls and sterile instruments and screens and drips. A room disinfected of the colour and chaos of living. She's given too much of her life to places like this.

Willa's hair glows red against the white pillow, her face pale. Her arm's in a plaster cast. They're waiting for her to wake up.

Nat sits on her hip, his arms tight around her neck. He hasn't let go of her since the accident.

‘There are anomalies on the ECG.' The doctor's voice threads between them. ‘We're still trying to work out what's going on.'

‘But it's a coma, right?' Norah asks.

He shakes his head.

‘She's showing more responses than we'd expect from someone in a coma. We believe she's in a minimally conscious state.'

Like sleepwalking, thinks Norah, that semi-conscious state that no one really understands. A living dream.

Walter's gone to the vet with Louis. Louis won't wake up either. Maybe he's taken Willa with him, thinks Norah. Willa would like that.

Ella sits on Willa's bed, clutching Willa's good hand.

Sai stands next to Ella, his fingers laced in hers.

Fay's in a chair next to Willa's bed, her eyes fixed on the heart monitor. Adam stands beside her, his hand on her shoulder. The vein in his forehead pushes up against his skin as he looks down at Willa. He hasn't said a word to Norah since they got into the ambulance.

‘
Wir liefen nach Frau Fox.
'
We were running after Mrs Fox, Nat whispers into Norah's ear.

‘
Ich weiss.
' Norah kisses Nat's brow, hitches him up higher on her hip and walks to the door. She needs to get some air. She feels there's no room for her here. That Willa has everyone she needs around her, as does Ella, and Adam.

Ella lifts her head. ‘Where are you going?'

Nat's body tenses up.

‘Running away again?' Ella asks.

‘Ella —' Fay starts.

Ella ignores her. ‘If you're going to up and leave the moment things get tough, why did you bother to come back at all?'

Nat leans his head against Norah's chest and holds her tighter. She should have protected him from all this.

Ella stands up. ‘Even when you're here, you can't take care of us. Look at what happened to Willa – and Nat: he could have got hurt too.' She gulps her words. ‘You're not fit to be a mother.'

Everyone in the room seems to stop breathing for a second. The only sound comes from the steady beat of the heart monitor.

‘Ella, not now.' Sai whispers. He rubs her back. ‘You're upset. We're all upset —'

She shrugs him off. ‘I'm not upset. I just want her to see how pathetic she is – walking out, coming back, leaving again… I want her out of our life. For good.'

Norah puts Nat down. ‘
Geh zu Vater,
' she says, and nudges him towards Adam. Then she turns to Ella. ‘Will you come with me for a moment, Ella? So we can talk?'

‘You're joking, right?'

Norah goes over to the door and waits. If there's someone who deserves an explanation, it's Ella, the one who never gave up hope that she'd come home.

Sai whispers into her hair: ‘Go, Ella. Give her a chance.'

 

‘You'd better make this quick. I need to be with Willa.'

A nurse walks past, pushing a little girl in a wheelchair. She's bald, her skin grey, and there's a drip attached to her arm.

Norah notices a sign above the door that says
The Sanctuary.
‘Let's go in here.' She doesn't want to have this conversation in a corridor.

The little girl and the nurse disappear into a lift.

Norah holds open the door and lets Ella walk in ahead of her. Dim lights, a thick green carpet, the ceiling sky blue with clouds and birds painted on the plaster. The walls have been painted too, with trees and flowers and animals. Willa would love it in here. Dear, dear Willa. Ella's right: none of this would have happened if Norah hadn't come home.

Waves of meditation music come from a set of speakers in the corner.

Ella looks around, her hands on her hips. ‘And this crap's meant to make us feel better?'

Norah breathes in, feels the rise and fall of her chest, and then says, ‘Do you know why I left, Ella?'

Ella shrugs and then she tilts her head up and stares at one of the birds on the ceiling.

Norah's legs feel weak. She sits down on one of the beanbags and stretches out her hand to encourage Ella to sit beside her. Ella doesn't move.

‘You know how it feels when you run?' Norah says. ‘I mean
really
run? When you forget you're in your body, when your mind switches off, when all you can feel is the breath going in and out of your lungs – when you feel like you could keep going for ever?'

Ella nods slowly.

‘It feels like you're flying, right? Like you could do anything?'

Ella grabs a beanbag and slumps down.

‘I guess so.'

‘I needed to get that feeling back. And not just for one run – I needed to feel it in my life. I needed to find the room to grow again.'

Ella picks at a loose thread on the beanbag.

‘So you felt trapped? Big deal. We all feel trapped. It doesn't mean we take off whenever we feel like it – it doesn't mean we leave behind the people we love.'

‘You left last night.'

Ella's eyes shine. ‘I went to Sai's. For
one
night.'

‘We didn't know that.'

‘It's different.'

‘But you felt you had to get away.'

‘You're serious? You're actually comparing us? I'm a teenager – I'm meant to run off to see my boyfriend. I don't have a husband. I'm not a mum.'

Even in this dim light, Norah can see the flush in Ella's cheeks.

‘I knew Dad would look after you,' says Norah.

‘Dad was crap. You knew he was crap. That's why you left.'

‘No, that's not why I left. And your father wasn't crap. He just wasn't ready; he needed some time.'

Ella waits for Norah to continue.

‘Your dad loved me —'

‘Of course he loved you. We all loved you —'

‘He loved me too much.'

Ella widens her eyes. ‘Oh, he loved you
too
much? So that's the reason you left?' She shakes her head.

‘It wasn't healthy. I needed room to breathe. And I needed him to realise he was a dad, to love —' She stops herself.

‘You wanted him to love
who
?'

‘All of us,' says Norah. ‘That when you have a family, you have to love them all, together.'

They look at each other for a moment, and Norah sees that although Ella won't acknowledge it for a while, that maybe she won't ever say it out loud, she understands.

‘I knew that, once he understood, he'd be an amazing dad.'

‘A bit of a gamble, wouldn't you say?'

‘And I knew that you'd look after Willa too.'

‘I was a kid, Mum. I couldn't even look after myself. If it hadn't been for Fay we'd have fallen apart.' Ella stares at her. ‘I bet you didn't bank on that, did you? That your best friend would move in with your husband and adopt your kids.'

Norah holds Ella's gaze. No, she hadn't banked on that.

‘Do you remember Willa's crying?' Norah asks.

Ella nods.

‘How, when she'd start, it felt like she'd never stop?' She'd wail for hours, wail until her throat was raw, until she'd held her fists for so long and so tight that there were nail marks in her palms, until her skin was damp and red. ‘Your dad couldn't take it. He'd walk out, go to the pub, and he'd only come home when she was asleep. I couldn't take it any more either.'

Ella yanks the thread out of the beanbag and then looks up at Norah, her eyes hard now. ‘You left because you got sick of your baby's crying? Crying's what babies do, Mum. Putting up with that stuff is part of the deal when you have a kid.'

‘It was more complicated than that.'

‘You think that makes it okay? Because it was
complicated
? Welcome to the world, Mum: everything's fucking complicated.'

Norah takes a breath. ‘It was what the crying represented: the noise, the dependency. I wasn't a proper mum – or wife. I wasn't a whole person yet, not whole enough for those responsibilities. I was too young and I needed more help, from your dad —'

‘Too young? You weren't exactly a sixteen-year-old pushing a buggy around a council estate, were you?'

‘No. But I felt too young. Too young to cope with it all. I felt that my life was being drained of anything I loved or enjoyed. I was scared, Ella. It was all slipping away. And I felt stifled. And alone.'

‘You had me.' Ella says it so quietly that her words dissolve in the meditation music.

‘I know. I know, my darling —' Norah holds out her hand but Ella doesn't move.

‘Didn't you like the things we did together? Didn't you like being with me?'

Norah doesn't answer.

‘I guess not.' Ella gets up and walks to the door.

‘It's like you said, Ella, you don't need me. You have a family, you have Dad and Willa and Fay – Fay loves you all very much.'

Ella spins round. ‘Yeah, and she's more of a mum to us than you'll ever be.'

‘I never forgot you,' Norah says quietly.

‘No? Sure looks like you did.'

‘I followed you. I mean —'

‘You
followed
me?'

Norah hadn't meant to let this slip, not yet.

‘Your campaign, on Twitter.'

Ella blinks. ‘You were one of my followers?'

Norah nods.

‘God I'm stupid. @onmymind – of course.' Ella kicks the wall.

It was Lily Pegg who'd worked out who Norah was. Not so well disguised after all.
It's the name of one of your songs
– on your CD,
she'd written to her in a private message.
We found it on the internet.
They'd started a correspondence. It had made Norah feel closer to Adam and the girls. And when Norah told the Miss Peggs she was ill, they convinced her to come home.
They need to know, dear.

They hadn't told her about Fay, though: the New Mrs Wells. But then Norah hadn't told them about Nat and Walter either.

Ella tugs at a tuft of her short dark hair and turns away. Norah watches her press the pads of her thumbs to the corners of her eyes. ‘All this time…' she mumbles.

‘Yes.'

‘And even after that, after following me, after seeing how much I wanted you to come home, you still stayed away?'

Norah feels that stabbing pain again, by the scar where her left breast used to be. She knew this conversation wouldn't be easy, but all this suddenly feels too much. This room, Willa lying unconscious in a hospital bed down the corridor. Norah has to get this over and done with.

She gets up and takes Ella's hand in both of hers.

‘I'm sick, Ella.'

Ella yanks her hand away and opens the door. ‘You don't say.'

Norah takes a breath. ‘I've got cancer. I had cancer three years ago and I thought I'd dealt with it – I had an operation, I went through all the treatments —'

Ella freezes.

‘But it's come back. And it's going to get worse.'

Ella turns round and stares at Norah, her eyes as wide as Willa's. ‘I don't understand…'

‘I came back because I wanted to see you before – I wanted to spend time with you… with all of you…' her voice trails off.

‘You mean you came back because you're going to
die
?'

‘It's not like that.'

‘If you weren't sick, you would never have come back? Is that what you're saying? Wow, this just gets better and better.'

‘No, that's not what I'm saying.'

‘Well it sounds like it. It sounds like you would have been more than happy never to let us know where you were or what happened to you or whether you were even alive if you hadn't got ill and scared and decided to come creeping back to us, expecting us to forgive you, to welcome you home, to say that it's okay —'

‘Ella, let me explain.'

Ella shakes her head and pushes through the door. Norah follows and, for a moment they stand together under the bright hospital lights, blinking.

‘You can't do this,' says Ella. ‘You can't abandon us and then come back and upset everything and make Willa think you're her mum and then reveal that you're going to die. That you're going to leave us for good.' Ella's voice breaks. ‘You should have come back before.' She pauses and looks at Norah, her eyes swimming. ‘You should never have left, Mum.'

Ella's crying now, big fat drops roll down her cheeks, her skin pale against her dark hair.

Norah grabs Ella's hand and holds it against her chest. For a moment, they stand in silence in the corridor.

‘Ella?'

They both look up.

Adam stands at the end of the corridor, staring at them both.

He's holding Nat by the hand. How long has he been there? How much has he heard? And what about Nat? Nat doesn't understand much English, but he picks up on things, like Willa.

Nat runs to Norah and throws his arms around her legs.

‘Mama?' He looks up at her, his eyes heavy with tiredness. This has all been too much for him. She lifts him up and holds him against her chest. ‘
Es ist alles okay,
' she says, kissing him in the folds of his soft neck.

‘I think you should leave now, Norah,' Adam says.

‘Sorry?'

‘We need some time as a family.'

His voice is hard. Something's changed.

Ella stares at him.

He walks up to Ella and puts his arm around her.

‘And you're upsetting Ella. You're upsetting all of us by being here.'