There was the distant sound of voices, her grandmother’s shrill chirrup and, every now and again, the rolling bass of her grandfather. She should go check on Richard.
Freya stared at the wardrobe, doors hanging open. Distressed wood. Such an odd term, as if wood could feel pain. But then, maybe it could. She should close it. Walk away. Let her father’s secrets rest.
A shrill buzzing sparked from her pocket. Freya looked down, easing her mobile phone free. Luke. He had called her twice today already. Her finger hovered over the answer button, possible futures shuffling through her head. He was a good-looking guy, a nice guy, had a desk next to hers in the PhD office. A framed picture of his nieces tucked beside his computer. But it wouldn’t work. She couldn’t shake it, that whiff about him, in the way he carried himself, the way he laughed, just a little too carelessly, couldn’t look at him and not see her father. And if he was her father and she answered the phone, then, sooner or later, she would become her mother, pretending that the world is what she wants the world to be so that she can survive. Freya turned the ringer to silent. It was better this way, safer to guard yourself up front, rather than to throw yourself away, taking a chance on someone you didn’t really know. She sat for a moment, thinking about Luke, and then, with a sigh, folded the image up and tucked it away into the back part of her mind. She was okay on her own. After all, she always had been.
She turned the ringer to silent and went back to staring at the open wardrobe doors.
Then she heard the creak of floorboards on the landing, felt her heart thumping a little faster, the sudden flush of guilt that comes with being somewhere you really aren’t supposed to be.
“Frey?” Her mother seemed to have aged a hundred years in the space of a day. Her eyes were crimson from crying, her face slack. She was hunched over, the posture of an old woman suddenly appearing overnight. “What are you doing in here?”
She stood on the threshold, as if she was afraid to step inside her own bedroom. Looking from Freya to the wardrobe doors.
“I…I was just…”
Her mother wasn’t looking at her, was staring at the wardrobe. Took one step, two, into the room, and with arthritic slow movements, reached out with her long narrow fingers. Pianist fingers, her grandmother had always said. She breathed in, a deep shaking breath. Ran her fingers across the hangers, the fabrics, down the sleeve of a cashmere sweater. Navy blue.
Freya watched her, thinking of the last time she had seen her father in it. Standing in the snow.
“I bought this for your father. Last Christmas.”
“I know. I remember.”
“He likes navy.”
“Yes.”
Her mother lifted the sleeve, holding it to her cheek, soft, a newborn kitten, cashmere stroking her skin. Breathing it in, and Freya knew that she was trying to find her father in it. But instead she must have smelled something else, because her eyes open wider and she pulled the jumper from her face, staring at it.
Freya didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Waiting.
Then her mother shook her head, a small movement, one that she probably wasn’t even aware of making.
“You shouldn’t be in here, Frey.” Her mother’s voice came out cold, didn’t seem to belong to her at all. She reached up, pushing the jumper onto the top shelf, the one that ran above eye level. Shoving it so that it was hidden in the shadows and you couldn’t see it anymore.
“Mum…”
Her mother stood at the open wardrobe door, holding onto it like she would fall down without it. Staring at the remains of her father’s life. “He was such a good man.”
Freya looked down, fingers moving, picking at the thick piled carpet. A pulse of something flooded through her. It felt a little like anger. For the briefest of moments she wanted to scream. Why is that I’m the only one who can see this? But then she heard her mother, her breath juddering the way it does when you’ve been crying too long. And she pushed the feeling down.
Her mother pushed at the wardrobe doors, closing them hard on all of her father’s secrets. Stood there, for long moments, her palms pressed against it. “You shouldn’t be in here Freya.” Then a heavy, wintery sigh. “I…I’m going to go back to bed, I think. You shouldn’t be in here.”
“Okay, Mum. It’s okay. I’m going. You go to bed.” Freya’s gaze fought its way back to the shut up wardrobe doors.
“Okay. If you’re okay…”
Freya nodded, gave a smile for her mother’s benefit that struggled to stay. Watched as her mother shuffled towards the door. As she paused, looking back over her shoulder. Her gaze resting on her father’s bedside cabinet. Hanging there. Her lips tightening, the way they do when she’s angry. Then, a sigh and she turns.
Freya’s heart thrummed.
She should leave it. That was what her mother wanted. And what Freya wanted was to make her mother happy. But it now seemed that her entire life had been lived in the shadow of her father’s secrets and that she couldn’t breathe for them any more.
She should leave it.
She should leave it.
Freya pushed herself up, pulled open the wardrobe doors.
The shelf was high, almost higher than she could reach. But she stretched, fingers brushing the soft cashmere. She pulled it forward, holding it close, wondering what it was that her mother had found and she had missed. Then she smelled it, a waft of perfume. Vanilla.
Freya closed her eyes. Her mother’s. Must be her mother’s. But it wasn’t and she knew that it wasn’t. Her mother smelled of jasmine.
Her father, standing in the snow. Talking on the phone. Crying.
Freya turned, swift steps towards the bedside cabinet. Pulling at the drawer. There were papers, a dog-eared novel, a half-empty bottle of Nytol. And then, behind that, something cold, hard. Freya reached in, pulling the metal box towards her.
It was a lockbox. Small, about the size of an A4 pad, hardly big enough to contain any real secrets. Freya glanced over her shoulder, checking that the door was closed. Something bubbling up in her stomach like that time when she was seven and she stole two penny sweets from the shop on a horrible, hideous whim, and then came home and threw up. The padlock was small, thin, had begun to rust. A lifetime of secrets. Picking up a photo frame that sat on top of the cabinet, silver plated, heavy. Her father in his pilot’s uniform. Freya picked it up, hefting it, brought it down hard on the lock.
There was a crack, metal on metal.
There were papers inside. Stubs, tickets for concerts, receipts for hotels. And beneath, a picture. They stood before the Eiffel tower, a lit up Paris skyline. A woman, about Freya’s age, pretty and flushed, her head on Freya’s father’s shoulder, smile wide, chestnut hair caught in the wind.
Chapter 30
Cecilia – Tuesday, 20th March – 9.26am
“Good morning. This is the flight 2940 information line. Can I help you?”
“Hi. I need…um…I…”
“Are you looking for someone?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Do you have a name?”
“It’s Ernie. Collins.”
“All Right. Just a second.” There was a long pause. Cecilia closed her eyes, leaning her forehead against the cool of the refrigerator. “I’m sorry. I don’t have anything. But we have information coming in all the time. You should call back, maybe later today? Perhaps we’ll have something for you then.”
“Okay.” She could picture him, even though she hadn’t met him, or at least couldn’t remember meeting him, lying in the snow, body rigid with death. Or vanished, burned to nothing. She hung up without saying goodbye.
Don’t think about it.
She hadn’t seen Ben this morning. She hadn’t kissed him goodbye. She had woken in the early hours, a little after 5 and had lain awake, thoughts cascading. Had almost got out of bed, not sure where she would go, but not wanting to stay. A feeling all too familiar. Watched as the clock clicked past six, seven, listening because soon she knew she would hear it. Then later than she had expected, almost half past, had come the light footsteps, rain on a tin roof. Pattering towards the spare room door. Holding her breath for a moment. Then listening, stomach sinking, as they moved further and further away. The yawning of a door. A little boy “Daddy”. She had turned, burying her face into the pillow.
Cecilia leaned back from the refrigerator, balancing her weight on bare feet. Couldn’t seem to sit. It was as if she was waiting for something, hairs on the back of her neck on end. She hovered, halfway between the fridge and the kitchen counter. Trapped in no-man’s land. She was sweating, beads trickling between her breasts, along her brow line. The heating turned up too high to compensate for the snow. It seemed that she couldn’t breathe, the air thick, crawling over her. Cecilia pulled at her dressing gown, letting it slide to the floor in a puddle, now wearing nothing but a spaghetti strap vest, boxer short panties. Her bare toes curled against hard, cold tiles, sparking a chill through her, like they were buried in snow.
Don’t think about it.
It had been a little after 8am when she had woken again, light streaming through the thin curtains. There was movement, a rustling like pine trees. “Let’s be really quiet now.” Tom’s whisper exaggerated, carrying on the still air. “Mummy’s asleep.” Holding her breath again. Waiting. “Daddy?” Thinking that somehow it would be different, that somehow the crash would have scrubbed clean her past. “What is it, buddy?” Stuck between two worlds, and in one she wants to be left alone, an island in the middle of an ocean, where she is safe and where no-one can touch her. And in the other her fingers creep closer to the door, craving the feel of her son’s hand. “We build a snowman today?” Exhaling, drowning in disappointment, because nothing has changed. Had listened to the groan of the front door, the footsteps as they walked away from her, and wondering what kind of a mother fails twice.
Cecilia stared out of the kitchen window at the falling snow. She could eat something. There were eggs in the china basket. Bread in the bread bin. She should eat something. But her stomach was full of lead anyway; far too full for food. She could take a shower. But her arm throbbed, and the bathroom was so far away.
She wondered if there was anything left, out of the wreckage of the plane. After they had found the bodies and the fingers and the toes, what then? Would there be suitcases and tray tables and a flimsy picture, dark and unformed? Was it there, lying in the snow, just waiting for someone to find it, bring it home to its mummy?
In that first pregnancy she had gone to the appointment alone. After all, who would she take with her? The father? Had sat in a greasy plastic chair, leafed through a magazine, eyes flickering over the story of a woman who had slept with her step father, trying to ignore the couples, leaning in towards each other, books on a bookshelf that have overbalanced, toppling towards one another, the women cradling their bellies. Almost walked out, once, twice, ten thousand times. No idea why she was there. I mean, what was the point? But couldn’t seem to move, welded to the seat, watching them, waddling their way past her like overweight ducks, eyes bright with anticipation. Had splayed her hand across her own belly, an experiment. Still perfectly flat. You would never know it was there. Growing. Mutating. Woman after woman, coming out smiling, clutching dark photographs of an alien lifeform.
Had moved, about to leave. Pointless.
“Cecilia Williams?”
Hadn’t looked up for a moment, apparently engrossed in the woman who gave birth to her own grandson.
“Cecilia Williams?”
If she didn’t look up then it would all be a mistake, and none of this would be happening to her, and she would be back where she belonged in her apartment in Bethnal Green. Smelling of sandalwood and musk and home.
“Cecilia?”
But she had to look up, because the woman with the stocky build and the lesbian haircut was hovering over her, leaning too close, and suddenly she was back in the greasy waiting room.
She shivered, suddenly cold standing in the kitchen in just her underwear, but the dressing gown seemed so far away now and her arm pulsed with pain. There were tablets, there on the kitchen counter. They’d given them to her at the hospital, said not to be afraid to take them. That they would make her drowsy, take away the pain.
But she couldn’t seem to move, couldn’t seem to make her body do anything but stare at the small white packet.
“You’re Cecilia?” The ultrasound technician’s voice had been too little for that big body, reedy and high.
Cecilia had nodded because she couldn’t speak.
“Come on then, love. I’ve been calling you.”
Sticky fingers letting the magazine drop onto the table beside her, knees shaking as she stood, following unwillingly, a dinghy pulled behind a barge. And before she knew it she was flat on her back, oversized sweater tucked up beneath her bra, jeans shuffled down to her knickerline, stinging cold gel squirted onto her belly. The overwhelming sensation of panic, that she had to leave, didn’t want to see it. But the woman was leaning over her, pressing so hard into her abdomen that she had wondered if she was going to kill the tiny life, and thinking in the deep dark hell of her thoughts that at least that would be easier. At least she wouldn’t have to do it then.
She was still clutching the phone. Looked down at the dark plastic. Maybe she should call someone. Maybe she should talk. But it was all pointless, she knew that. There was no-one to call.
“Do you have a partner with you today then, love?”
A moment as Cecilia’s mouth bobbed open like a fish. Not knowing how to answer, just a quick shake of her head, because she just couldn’t find the wordsr.
“All Right. Here we are.”
The silver clouds on the screen coalescing as she presses into Cecilia’s stomach and suddenly there is a light, pulsing.
“There’s the heart.”
Wondering if she’s going to black out or be sick, but instead she’s staring as the image pulses and moves.
“My, this one’s a little wriggler. There’s the spine. That’s the head.”
The ultrasound technician had offered her a photo. We got a nice profile shot, she had said. Think it’s going to have your nose. Cecilia hadn’t answered, silence taken for agreement, and the woman had bustled, feeding paper into the printer, muttering about her busy day.