The Astonishing Return of Norah Wells (33 page)

Fay pulls Willa in to her arms and closes her eyes. The warmth of her, the soft smell of her skin, reminds Fay of the hours she spent holding Willa when she was a baby. She would lie beside her all night, listening to her breathing, scared then, too, that she might lose her.

I told Norah to leave,
Adam said to Fay.

Which meant Norah hadn't told him about the cancer.

So Fay had sent him back to the house. Norah couldn't leave like this, in the middle of a row. It would be like the first time, all of them left hanging, unable to get on with their lives. It would be worse: Norah was sick, she might not make it.

No, she can't let Norah leave. Fay knows that she's the one who has to go home.

She looks back at the screen.

Because of the traffic around Holdingwell, it takes a while for Adam to reach the halfway point of the race, but they get there just in time to see the first few runners go past.

Willa squirms under Fay's arm, grabs the iPad and looks closer. ‘It's only grown-ups going past, Mummy. That means Ella's still in with a chance of winning the junior category. Willa points at the screen. ‘Hold it up more, Daddy!'

The screen shifts.

‘By the Animal Ark – look!' Willa yells. ‘She's there!'

The screen stops. It's Norah. She's standing there, in the middle of all the other spectators.

So she listened to Fay: she came.

‘Back to the runners, Daddy!' says Willa. ‘We don't want to miss Ella!'

For a moment the screen doesn't move off Norah, but then it shifts again.

Ella pushes her way through the runners.

‘Look! It's Ella!'

‘Try to stay calm,' Fay says again. She can feel Willa's tiredness, how much she's straining to stay awake.

Ella's putting most of her weight on her good foot so her run is a bit lopsided, but she's still going fast.

‘Ella! Ella! Ella!' yells Willa

‘Go Ella! Show them what you're made of!' Adam's voice booms over the crowd.

Fay claps her hands – she can't help being excited. Over this weekend, Ella's come back to her – she's got that, at least.

Ella glances at the crowd and slows down. She must have spotted Norah because she frowns, then looks back round to the front and starts running even faster.

‘Mummy? What's happening?'

Willa scratches her scar. Fay pulls her hand away.

Willa looks up at her. ‘Ella must have known all along that Auntie Norah wasn't Auntie Norah but Mummy Norah. All those pictures in her room and the fact that she learned the trumpet and kept her trainers and wore them all the time – it means that she really missed Mummy Norah, that she loves her. Doesn't it?'

‘Yes, my darling, Ella loves Mummy Norah.'

‘But why's Ella so angry with her then – just like she used to be angry with you, Mummy?'

‘Ella hasn't seen Mummy Norah in a long time. She has to get used to her again.'

‘I think Mummy Norah's nice.'

Fay's chest tightens. ‘Yes, she's nice.'

‘Maybe Ella doesn't like mummies.'

‘Maybe.'

‘When the race is over and we're all living together back at the house – because Mummy Norah and Onkel Walter and Nat have to stay now, they're part of the family – once everything is back to normal and we're all used to each other, maybe Ella will see that Mummy Norah is okay – not as nice as you, Mummy' – Willa tucks her head into Fay's shoulder – ‘but nice enough for her to like her again, like she used to before she left.'

Fay gulps. What's she meant to say?
Your wish will never come true
– it can't
…
happy families, really happy families, only exist in stories
.

Children get used to anything, don't they? They love intensely, and then forget. In a few months, she'll wonder why she ever called Fay Mummy.

Willa looks back at the screen. ‘Why isn't Sai running with Ella?'

They look over the heads of the runners.

‘Maybe he ran past before Daddy got to the 5k mark.'

Willa shakes her head. ‘Ella wanted them to run together – and anyway, she's faster than him.' Willa takes a breath and yells at the iPad: ‘DADDY – WHERE'S SAI?'

Adam's face appears on the screen.

‘I'll walk back along the route to see if we can spot him,' says Adam. ‘Don't worry, Willa, I'll find him.'

For a while, the screen goes fuzzy.

‘Why's Daddy wearing his glasses?' Willa asks.

Adam hasn't worn his glasses in the day for a long time.

‘His eyes are tired, and when your eyes are tired they're too sore for contact lenses.'

‘I quite like Daddy with glasses.'

‘You do?'

Willa smiles. ‘They're like a disguise.'

‘What's he meant to be disguising?'

‘You know, like Superman. In real life he has glasses because they make him look kind of ordinary and geeky, so that no one knows who he really is —'

‘A superhero?'

Adam the superhero. She wishes he could hear Willa.

‘Exactly!' Willa tilts her head to one side. ‘I've always thought Foxy Fox should have glasses. It would make him look cleverer.'

‘Daddy used to wear glasses all the time,' Fay says.

‘When Mummy Norah was here?'

Fay nods.

Fay had persuaded him to wear contacts, had said that glasses masked his kind eyes. Bit by bit, she'd fixed him. But maybe Willa was right, maybe the glasses worked – maybe she'd gone too far.

 

The screen goes blank for a good five minutes. Then it blinks back to life. A paramedic bends over a guy in a red T-shirt. It's Sai and he's sitting on the pavement, his head between his knees, his inhaler in his hand. An Indian woman sits next to him; the hem of her sari sweeps the road. She rubs his back and whispers in his ear.

‘SAI, ARE YOU OKAY?' Willa yells at the screen.

‘Quietly,' Fay says.

‘I want him to hear me.'

‘Look, Louis is there, sitting at Sai's feet.'

‘Oh darling.' Fay strokes Willa's hair.

Adam holds his phone to Sai's mouth. All they can hear is his wheezy breath, but he's smiling. He coughs. ‘I'm fine, Willa. Just fine.'

‘No you're not!' says Willa. ‘You've been training with Ella and Louis all winter and you've raised all that money for the heart charity —' Willa turns round to Fay. ‘Mummy, all those people won't pay their money if Sai doesn't finish his race.'

‘I'm sure they'll understand,' says Fay. ‘And if they don't, Daddy and I will give him the money. Sai's part of our family now.' And then she feels a jolt. It's no longer
her
family, is it? Why can't she get used to that?

Sai's voice comes back through the screen. ‘Don't…' He takes a breath. ‘Don't tell Ella.'

But Fay knows that the minute Ella realises Sai isn't following her, she'll turn back.

‘She'll work it out, Sai.' Norah's voice.

Sai takes a puff of his inhaler. Then he starts coughing again.

The woman puts her arm around his shoulders and whispers ‘Shush… shush now…' She has the same almond-shaped eyes as Sai, brown and filled with light. Fay looks at Willa and wishes that she had something of her, some small mark to account for six years of being her mother.

Sai's voice again. ‘Then tell her I want her to keep running – for both of us.'

How were they meant to do that? It would take ages to get back to the car, especially with so many people in the way, and even if one of them started running now there's no way they'd catch up with her.

Willa tugs at Fay's sleeve. ‘Can I speak to Mummy Norah?'

‘Mummy Norah?'

Willa nods. ‘I've got an idea. And she's the only one who can help.'

 

‘MUMMY NORAH?' Willa shouts at the iPad. ‘DADDY – GIVE MUMMY NORAH THE PHONE!'

‘You don't need to shout,' says Fay.

‘Sorry.
Mummy Norah
,' she whispers.

Adam hands Norah the phone. Her face appears on the screen, lines fanning out from the sides of her eyes. Fay never thought her best friend would grow old. Peter Pan, that's who she was meant to be.

‘Can you still run?' Willa asks Norah.

‘Sorry?'

‘Can you still run, like you used to?'

Norah shrugs. ‘Not quite as fast, but yes, I can run.'

‘You need to catch up with Ella and tell her that Sai is okay and that she has to keep going – that he doesn't want her to turn back. Ella's got a bad ankle, so she's not as fast as usual. You'll be able to catch her up —'

Maybe this is what Willa's inherited from me, thinks Fay. She smiles to herself:
caught
from me. The need to fix everything.

‘She won't listen to me, Willa,' says Norah.

‘She will. I promise. And then she'll finish the race.'

Willa's refusal to believe in anything but the best outcome – Fay will miss that.

‘I'm not sure…' Norah looks at Adam.

‘Go, Norah,' he says. ‘Go.'

‘But you said —'

‘Go.'

Adam holds up the phone so that they can watch Norah climbing over the barrier onto the course, to join the runners. In a few seconds, she's gone.

Willa grabs Fay's hand. ‘Louis will make sure that Ella listens to Mummy Norah,' Willa says. ‘I've asked him.'

Fay kisses Willa's small, pudgy hand. She loves that dog so much she's wished him back to life.

Ella needs you,
that's what Fay had said on the phone.

So she left Walter and Nat at the house. She'll do this one last thing and then they'll go.

As Norah runs along the route she's taken so many times, she feels like a stranger. The sun pierces through the clouds, sharp and bright after the rain; it lights up the Great Escape, the Holdingwell Café, the post office, the Three Feathers, the bus stop, the park, Holdingwell Primary, the Animal Ark. They're just as she remembered.

She'd thought that when you chose to leave a place, a door slammed shut and life went on without you. But perhaps Holdingwell had never let her go.

Norah splashes through the puddles from last night's rain and kicks away twigs and branches from the storm.

She's glad she didn't tell Adam the truth. It wouldn't have been fair; he'd have felt obligated, and that wasn't love.

As she runs past the park she thinks about how she lay spinning in the dark on the night Fay and Adam found her. A thought hits her: was she the one who brought Adam and Fay together, her sleeping body the prop that drew them to each other?

Yells and whistles and claps fill Norah's ears. She keeps running, her eyes set ahead of her, lost in the slap, slap, slap of her pumps against the tarmac. She knows that she's the last person Ella will want to see, but she couldn't say no to Willa. There's too much to make up for already.

The taste of blood fills her mouth. She hasn't eaten anything today, and she can't remember the last time she's run this fast. But she keeps going.

Ahead of her, the wall of runners fractures. Someone knocks into her from behind and kicks her heels.

‘Why are you slowing down?' he snaps.

‘Sorry… I don't know – something's happening ahead.'

A few yards in front of them a man's voice rises above the runners, hoarse and loud: ‘What do you think you're doing?'

‘Get out of my way!' A voice Norah would recognise anywhere.

A moment later she sees Ella's short dark hair, her head bobbing up down as she runs towards her. Ella elbows people out of the way as she tears back through the runners.

An official steps forward, reaching for Ella's arm, but she ducks away from him.

‘Hey!' The official lurches after Ella but he's not built to run. He shakes his head and steps back to the side.

‘Ella!' Norah calls. ‘Ella!'

Ella looks Norah up and down and then pushes past her.

Norah runs after her. ‘Stop!' she calls.

Ella turns back slowly. Her brown eyes cloud over. She registers that it's Norah and then she says, ‘
Stop
what
, Mum? Stop running?' She laughs. ‘That's rich —'

Norah catches Ella up. ‘I have something to tell you – from Willa. From Sai.'

Ella's face falls. ‘Sai – what's wrong with Sai?'

‘He wants you to finish the race. He wants you to keep going.'

‘What's happened to him?'

‘I think it's his asthma – but it's okay, his mum's there.' She gasps for breath. ‘He's going to be fine.'

‘We were meant to do this together. That was the deal.'

Ella starts running again. Norah lurches after her and catches the hem of her T-shirt. There's a rip as Ella pulls away.

‘What the hell?' Ella says.

A picture flashes across Norah's eyes: Ella, five years old, running beside her at the mothers and daughters' race, her skinny legs, her knees hitched up as she tries to keep up. Ella always wanted to come with Norah. Even then, Ella hated being left behind.

Norah pauses and looks Ella in the eye. ‘If you turn round and keep going to the finish line, I'll run with you.'

That's the tweet Ella would have sent if she hadn't been running.

Mum's arm brushes Ella's. Ella feels a jolt of electricity.

‘Go away!' she says. ‘I can do this on my own.' She hates the mean things coming out of her mouth, but she can't help it. A raw anger burns in her stomach, pushing up all those horrible words. Mum thinks she can make up for walking out on them by running for a few stupid miles?

‘Pretend I'm not here,' says Mum.

Sai wants her to finish the race; that's the only reason she's not going back for him. She wants to make him happy. And to raise the money for the British Heart Foundation. Ella used to think she and Sai had something in common: Mum disappearing, his dad dying. They'd both lost the people they loved most in the world. But now she realises that their situations aren't a bit the same. Sai's dad was a good person – he didn't want to leave Sai. He loved him.

Ella runs faster, hoping she'll lose Mum.

Except Mum doesn't go away. She keeps up with Ella, breathing hard, her face red and sweaty. Someone who's got cancer probably shouldn't be running this hard, but Ella doesn't want to feel sorry for Mum. This isn't about her.

Ella focuses on her breath, the smell of the wet tarmac, the sun breaking through the clouds. And on Sai's face: his dark hair and dark eyebrows and dark skin. So permanent. So unlike Mum, who looked as though she might dissolve into the air at any moment. Maybe that's why Ella loved Sai so much: because she knew he'd never disappear.

‘You really care for him, don't you?' Mum says, gasping for breaths between her words.

Ella ignores her and pushes herself to run faster.

She scans the spectators lining the streets. The Miss Peggs have moved from the start and a found a new place to wave their purple
Go Ella!
banner. They gave Ella more sponsorship money than anyone else. Rose holds up one of the Chihuahuas and makes him wave at Ella as she goes past.

They knew about Mum all along, didn't they? God, they'd probably watched her walk out.

Ella thinks that Mum will start lagging soon, but it's like some force is propelling her forward.

She listens to the beat of their feet on the road and the sound of their breathing and notices that they're in sync. For a second she forgets that she's angry. This is what she always wanted, wasn't it? To run with Mum? To be together again?

And then a teenage guy in headphones bashes into the back of Mum. His music's on so loud she can hear it ring out around him.

Mum stumbles.

Before she can stop the words coming out, Ella yells: ‘Hey! Watch where you're going! Idiot!' Ella grabs Mum's elbow. ‘You okay?'

Mum nods but she's gone pale, and Ella can tell that she's tired and struggling. The force that drove her on came not from her legs or her breath but from the fact that she wanted to be with Ella. She was running to show her that she was sorry. And at that moment, Ella wants to hug her really tight, to tell her how much she's missed her and that she's glad she's home and persuade her to stay, tell her that Dad will come round, that Fay must have some contacts at the hospital, that she'll find a really good doctor for her and that they'll all look after her and make her better.

But then she gets scared. What if Mum gets bored with them? What if she realises that she doesn't love them after all? That she doesn't like who Ella's become? What if, just when they've got used to her, she dies?

Ella moves away from Mum and starts jogging again, though when Mum joins her she doesn't say anything mean and she doesn't speed up.