The Astonishing Return of Norah Wells (4 page)

Ella's been training so hard for the 10k that the short distance between school and home shouldn't leave her out of breath, but her heart pounds against her ribcage and sweat runs down the back of her school shirt. Waiting for the bus would have taken too long, and it would have been far too slow anyway.

As she runs past Holdingwell Primary she remembers the day she stood at the gates waiting for Mum to come and collect her. How cold it was. How the minutes seemed like hours. And then the days and weeks and months and years that followed. How she kept having nightmares. How she couldn't watch films about people who'd been kidnapped, about psychos who locked women in their basements for twenty years, because they'd flood her head with bad pictures of what might have happened to Mum.

Ella blinks. None of that matters, not now that Mum's home.

She sees Willa walking across the playground to the girls' loos, her head bowed, her jagged red fringe falling into her eyes. How are they going to tell her?

Mum will find a way to explain, she'll have a plan.

When Ella gets to the post office she stops to catch her breath and sends another tweet. There's a stream of messages waiting for her. She scans for her favourite follower: @onmymind showed up on her Twitter account a year ago. She always posts replies.

There's another one too, from @sunnysideofthestreet. Ella thinks he started following her because she tweets about jazz and he likes Louis Armstrong, like Mum. He replies in weird phrases: some are song lyrics and others just seem random.
We have all the time in the world
,
he wrote this time. Which irritates Ella. Who's to say Mum will still be at the house? After six years of waiting Ella's going to get back to Mum as fast as her legs will carry her.

And then @liliesandroses, the Pegg sisters from across the road:
#theastonishingreturn
, they'd written. So they'd seen Mum too.

She looks into the post office window and spots Sai standing behind the counter with his mum. The post office is where Ella and Sai met. She had come in one day, to post some letters to missing persons associations around the world, thinking that maybe whoever had taken Mum had left the country and taken her to one of those foreign places where it's really hard to trace people. Ella wishes she could tell Sai what happened this morning. He's the only one who never stopped believing her about Mum coming back. He knows what it's like to lose someone you love. But Dad's made Ella promise not to see him, not until she improves her marks. And anyway, Ella has to keep going – she has to get home.

She runs down the high street, where they're putting up banners for the Holdingwell 10k. Past Pound Stretcher and the kebab van and the Lotus Flower Indian restaurant and the Three Feathers pub on the corner, where Dad used to hang out. And she keeps running until she turns into Willoughby Street.

The roofers have arrived with their dirty white van and their big ladders and their hard hats. Even though lunchtime's hours away, they're sitting on the scaffolding eating sandwiches and sipping cans of Red Bull. They promised Dad that the roof would be fixed for the bank holiday, but the new tiles are still heaped up in the front garden.

Ella stands on the top step. Even though she's stopped running, her heart's thudding so hard she can hear the rush of blood in her ears.

It's going to be fine
, she breathes out.

All the crap of the last few years – having to repeat Year 9, Dad turning into a control freak about Sai, Fay taking over, acting like Mum's never going to come home – none of it matters. Mum's home now. Everything is going to be okay again.

She straightens her uniform, threads her fingers through her hair and wipes her brow. Then she puts her key in the lock and pushes open the front door.

Norah looks down at her body under the water: the folds in her skin, the softening around the middle, the sinking inwards and downwards. She brushes her fingers over the scar where her left breast used to be. She's able to see the humour in her body now;
like Cyclops
, she whispers to herself as she glances at her lone breast swinging off to the side.

She thought the operation would be the end of it: a clean cut. But it's never that simple, is it?

Spotlights bounce off the white tiles. No cracks. The grout bright as bleached teeth. On a shelf, four plastic baskets packed neatly with creams and shower gels. The girls' baskets named:
WILLA
.
ELLA
. Neat black capitals.

Norah slides under the water.

When she took Ella to the pool they'd go under the water and speak to each other, bubbles floating from their mouths and noses, lips opening and closing like fish around their words. They'd stay down there, just the two of them, floating in their secret watery world for as long as their lungs could bear it.

Tell me what I said,
Ella would splutter as she came up for air.

And, most of the time, Norah got it right. It was one of the things about motherhood that had blown her away, how you can know another human better than yourself.

How do you always know what I'm thinking?
Ella had once asked her as they stood under the changing room showers.

I'm your mum,
Norah had answered. Simple as that.

 

A strange muffled sound reaches Norah under the water. Norah smiles. She pushes herself up, sloshing water over the edge of the bath. Louis stands in the swirling steam, watching her. He barks again, pads closer to the bathtub, hangs his head over the rim and thumps his tail hard against the tiles.

‘Lovely Louis,' she says, reaching out a wet hand, stroking the top of his head and then scratching under his chin.

He steps back and continues to thump his tail.

‘What is it, buddy?'

He walks to the door.

Norah climbs out of the bath and looks at the wet tiles; whoever's moved in with Adam won't like the mess she's made. Louis looks worried too.

Norah reaches for the white dressing gown on the back of the door and the white slippers under the sink; both a size too big.

Louis paces between Norah and the door and then he barks again and goes out onto the landing.

‘Louis – what is it?' Norah calls after him. And then she hears the front door bang and footsteps across the hall.

‘Mum?' A voice echoes up through the house.

In the hallway, Ella shoves her phone into her school bag. She got another tweet, this time from @hisloveishome, the religious nut who's been following her:
forgiveness is love
. What does forgiveness have to do with anything? He tells her he's been praying for her and for Mum to come home, which is nice of him, but as far as Ella's concerned, if there was a God, and if he cared, Mum wouldn't have been taken away in the first place.

Ella runs up the stairs.

When she reaches the landing she stops outside the bathroom door and takes a breath.

The door opens.

Mum's wearing Fay's dressing gown and slippers.

Ella blinks. Can it really be Mum, standing there all wet and dripping from the bath?

‘Ella – I thought you were at school —'

‘I had to come home.' Ella throws her arms around Mum. She shuts her eyes and holds on. Mum squeezes her back, and although Mum's arms feel skinnier than she remembers, it's the best hug in the world. Ella had promised herself that she wouldn't cry: today's a happy day, the happiest day of her life. But her eyes are stinging and she can feel a wet bit on her neck where Mum's face is tucked in.

‘I couldn't let on that I knew who you were, not with Willa,' Ella whispers into Mum's hair. ‘Willa doesn't know about you. But she will, we'll tell her. And then we'll throw you a party. It's Willa's birthday on Sunday so we can have a big joint party to welcome you home too. And everything will be back to how it's meant to be.'

Ella can't get the words out fast enough. There's so much to catch up on. She squeezes Mum tighter.
I'm never going to let you go
, she thinks.
Now that you've come home, I'm going to keep you safe.

Mum sits down at the top of the stairs and pats the space beside her. Ella joins her and Louis comes and puts his head on her lap. When Ella was little, the three of them used to sit on the stairs all the time. Mum said that stairs were a good place to talk, much better than chairs or sofas.

She reaches up and touches Ella's hair. ‘It's got really long.'

‘I wanted it to look like yours.' Ella knows how dorky that sounds, but sometimes dorky is okay, especially when your Mum's just come home.

‘Dad tells me that you're learning to play the trumpet.'

‘I'm not very good.' Ella looks up Mum. ‘Maybe, now that you're back, you can give me some lessons?' That's what she'd dreamt of, that Mum would come back and that they'd play together.

Mum smiles. ‘Of course.'

Ella notices how thin Mum's wrists are and how she's got shadows under her eyes and how she's really pale, even paler than you'd expect from someone with red hair. And her hair's thinner than she remembers. There are bits where you can see through to her scalp. God knows what she's been through. Ella doesn't want to ask, in case it brings back bad memories.

‘I'm glad you're home,' Ella says.

‘I'm so sorry —' Mum's voice chokes up.

‘It's not your fault, Mum.' Ella wishes she could have found Mum herself. Maybe if she'd insisted that Dad and Fay help her look. Maybe if she'd pushed harder with her Twitter campaign. Maybe if she'd camped outside the police station and
made
them listen to her. She'd let Mum down.

‘I'm sorry – about everything. That I left, that I haven't been in touch —'

Ella grabs Mum's hand and holds it to her cheek. She feels Mum's fingers shaking. ‘You didn't
leave
, Mum. You were taken away from us. They wouldn't let you make contact. You would have done anything to come home – just like I did everything I could to find you. It's okay, Mum, I understand —'

It's what they do, isn't it? Kidnappers. Abductors. Murderers. Whatever you want to call them. They brainwash people, make them think it's their fault.
It's normal that Mum blames herself,
thinks Ella.
She loves us. She couldn't bear to be away from us.

Mum shakes her head. ‘I left, Ella.'

Ella lets go of Mum's hand.

‘What?' Ella's muscles seize up. Maybe she hadn't heard right.

‘It's not because I didn't love you.'

Of course Mum loves Ella. She's always loved Ella. Even when Willa was born and she came out looking like Mum, whereas Ella looked more like Dad, and even when Willa was a baby and needed lots of attention and people thought Ella would get jealous, Ella didn't mind. She knew that Mum loved her. That maybe she loved her best of all.

‘I had to go. I couldn't breathe —'

This wasn't how her reunion with Mum was meant to go. ‘What do you mean, you couldn't breathe?'

Louis lifts his head off Ella's lap.

Ella slowly stands up. Louis gets to his feet as well. She doesn't understand. The words that are coming out of Mum's mouth don't make sense.

‘You
left
?'

Mum stands up too. Ella notices that she's taller than Mum, that she needs to bow her head slightly to look her in the eye.

‘You mean, you weren't kidnapped or anything?'

‘No.'

Ella's cheeks burn. A mum wouldn't choose to leave her kids behind. Her eight-year-old daughter and her new baby and her husband. She wouldn't just up and leave.

Mum stares at her feet. ‘I chose to go, Ella.'

This time Mum says the words so slowly and deliberately that she must know what she's saying.

‘You
chose
to go?'

Mum nods and looks up, her eyes watery.

Ella feels like the ground is cracking under her feet, like in those films when there's an earthquake and everything you thought was solid and rooted – roads and houses and skyscrapers – starts shaking and splitting open.

There might be another explanation, dear,
Miss Rose Pegg had suggested once when Ella told her about her latest theory – that one of Mum's fans had got obsessed with her and abducted her.
It happens all the time,
Ella had said.
Celebrity stalkers.

The Miss Peggs had joined Ella's campaign. They'd said they'd help her find Mum. But every now and then they'd say something weird, like that maybe Ella shouldn't get her hopes up too much, that maybe it was for the best, that maybe Mum's disappearance was more complicated than any of them thought.

The Miss Peggs had tried to tell her. And so had Dad. And Fay. But she didn't believe them. She thought she knew Mum better than them. Mum wouldn't just take off. She wouldn't leave them. Dad worshipped her. So did Ella. And Willa – Willa was a baby. No one walks out on a baby.

God, Willa. What was she meant to tell her now? That Mum abandoned her when she was a few months old, just because she felt like it? And that she didn't love her enough to come home, to even check whether she was okay?

She looks at Mum for a moment and thinks of that poem they studied in English once, about a statue in the desert, the statue of a really important person like a god or a king or an emperor or something, a statue that people thought would be there for ever and ever, but over time it breaks and crumbles and turns to dust.

She turns and runs down the stairs. Louis thunders down beside her.

‘It's complicated, Ella. But I can explain,' Mum calls after her.

Ella stops and turns round. ‘It sounds pretty simple to me.'

‘Ella —'

‘I'm an idiot.'

‘What? No, of course you're not.'

Mum, kidnapped? She'd actually let herself believe that?

Ella stands in the middle of the hallway. Everything's spinning.

‘I'm a bloody idiot!' she yells over her shoulder.

She feels Mum coming down the stairs behind her. She puts her hand on Ella's shoulder. Ella doesn't move.

‘Please Ella – stay. Let me explain.'

Ella straightens her spine, lifts her head and turns round. ‘Don't bother. In fact, you shouldn't have bothered coming back at all. We were getting on fine without you.'

She pushes Louis out of the way, runs out of the house, slamming the front door behind her, and runs down the path – and then she stops and turns round and looks back.

Mum being home was meant to make everything better.

Today was meant to be the best day of Ella's life.

Ella kicks at the fence. A bloody white picket fence that Fay put in as part of her renovations. As part of her wipe-any-sign-of-Mum-off-the-face-of-the-planet mission. It turns out Fay had been right. Mum was never meant to come home.