Flight (17 page)

Laura opened the small parcel to reveal a silver frame, containing a black and white photograph of her holding Phoebe, taken in the afternoon light of the hospital window, the baby sleeping in her arms, a wide, delirious smile on Laura’s face. On the back of the frame, was a label:
To
Godmother Laura, with all our love, Rob and Wren x

‘I’ll be the best godmother,’ she cried out in a burst of good feeling, rushing to embrace Wren and Phoebe in one sweep, as the baby suckled at her mother’s breast.

Rob handed her a flute of champagne. ‘Wren?’ he asked, ‘Maybe just a small one?’

She shook her head, indicating towards Phoebe.

Laura grabbed the bottle from Rob and poured another half-glass. ‘Oh, go on, Wren! A little can’t hurt, can it? To toast the new godmother?’ She placed the glass in front of Wren and returned to her seat, where she raised her own to mirror Rob’s.

‘To Godmother Laura,’ Rob said, and she and Rob cheered as they clinked and took a drink.

Wren raised hers too, and she smiled and touched glasses, but she didn’t drink. Not even a sip. When Laura pulled a daft face at her, Wren’s face clouded over defensively. ‘I’m not going to risk it, Laura. Not after keeping her safe all this time. I’m not going to subject her to a flush of toxins just because
I
fancy a drink.’

Laura nodded, resisting the urge to make a joke of it, to make fun of Wren’s sensitivity.

‘OK, I get it – sorry. It’s all new to me, this baby stuff! Mind you, I’d better gen up on it all, now I’ve got an official role to fulfil. Because if you two fall off the edge of a cliff tomorrow it’s Auntie Laura here who’ll have to take over. Blimey. There’s a responsibility.’

Rob laughed, reaching over for Wren’s glass and pouring the contents into Laura’s. ‘Actually, that’s the other bit. We want to put you down as guardian – you know, officially – should we fall off that cliff tomorrow. Obviously we’ll be updating our wills now that Phoebe is here. We’d be honoured if you’d agree, Laur.’

Laura looked at Wren.

‘Really, we wouldn’t want the duty to go to anyone else,’ Wren said. ‘I couldn’t bear her to go anywhere else.’ Her eyes filled with tears.

‘What about your mothers?’ Laura asked.

‘No,’ Rob and Wren said at once, and they all laughed at the definitive tone of their answer.

‘No,’ Wren pressed. ‘It has to be you, Laura. Promise me, if anything ever happens to me, you’ll be there for her? You’ll look after Phoebe?’

Laura put down her drink. She looked at her two friends, her only true friends, framed in their own perfect portrait of family bliss – a mother, a father and their infant at a table of plenty – and her heart broke a little more. ‘You know I will. Not that you’re going anywhere, you ninny. But yes, I promise, I’ll be there for Phoebe.’ She swiped a finger beneath her lashes and laughed away her own sentimentality. ‘She’s my goddaughter.’

‘Laura?’ Phoebe sounds cross. ‘About bloody time! We’ve been calling and calling you.’

‘Where are
you
?’ she replies. ‘Are you with your dad, Phoebs?’ She can hear the low roar of motion in the background; they must be in the car.

‘He’s right here – he’s driving.
Laura!
We’ve been out of our minds with worry!’

Of course you have
, she thinks. How could she not have thought of that, of them?

‘Where is she?’ Laura can make out Rob’s muffled voice above the noise of the engine. ‘Is she still there?’

‘Well?’ Phoebe says. ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’

‘Can I speak to him?’ she asks, trying to maintain a light tone in her voice.

‘The trouble with you, Laura, is you just don’t think of the impact you have on other people. It’s plain
thoughtless
.’
In her pent-up nervousness, Laura almost laughs. When did Phoebe get to be so grown-up? ‘You sound like my mum,’ she says.

Silence.

‘Listen, Phoebe – I need to talk to your dad.’ She waits for her answer, strains to listen over the rustling of Phoebe’s hand covering the receiver as she consults her dad. ‘Phoebe? Tell him to pull over somewhere.’

‘We’re on the motorway, Laura,’ Rob yells loud enough for her to hear. ‘It’s not that easy right now – we’ll call you back when we’re near Padstow!’

‘Padstow?’ she says, switching her phone to the other ear, as she remembers driving past signs to the nearby town. ‘You’re coming here?’

But Phoebe has already hung up. They’re on their way.

The day Wren vanished, Laura was back in Surrey visiting her parents, for an excruciating weekend of half-truths and restraint. After seven years together, she and Doug were staggering towards the end of their relationship, and Laura had wanted to get out of the flat after he had returned from a three-day bender with one of his old bandmates who had turned up midweek. There was no argument between them; she simply left him to it, delaying the decision she knew she would have to make on her return. Their time together, which on some level Laura had always suspected was transitory, after nine holidays, seven Christmases, two changes of job and four heartbreaking miscarriages had simply run its course. The version she gave her parents was quite different, filtered to avoid their questions and disapproval. Doug was redecorating the flat, she said, and
she couldn’t stand the fumes – it was the perfect excuse to come home for the weekend.

‘So he’s not put a ring on your finger yet,’ was her dad’s observation.

Laura had long ago learnt that she’d never change her father, so deep-rooted was his dour chauvinism. Even so, she couldn’t help but rise to his bait every time, picking her words carefully to stab at the angry man in the threadbare armchair.

‘I think it’s because I’m a terrible homemaker, Dad. I know, I know – you warned me. Honestly, I haven’t ironed a single shirt of his throughout our whole relationship. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to marry me.’

‘So who does his shirts?’ her father replied, genuinely bemused.

Laura laughed aloud. ‘He does! Here, you don’t think he’s one of those nancy-boys you’re always going on about, do you? I mean, sometimes he
even
washes the dishes. Hell, Dad, I’d better rethink this relationship.’

Mum laid a hand of caution on Laura’s forearm, silently urging her to stop, making Laura feel bad. She always felt sorry after one of their barbed exchanges, not for him, but for her mother. It was Mum who would have to soak up his suppressed fury and dissatisfaction when she’d gone home, Mum who would bear the brunt of his miserable moods.

‘Sorry, Dad,’ she said. ‘I’m only joking. You know what I’m like.’

He picked up the remote control and switched channels. ‘A dozy mare, that’s what you’re like,’ he said, and he allowed the glimmer of a smile to touch the crease of his eyes.

In the kitchen, Laura picked up a tea towel and helped her mum to clear the lunch dishes.

‘How’s your friend Wren getting on with her baby?’ her mum asked.

‘Good, I think. I haven’t seen them for a month or so. I’ve been busy with this new job.’

The pause told Laura where the conversation was going, and she felt tiny knots clench along her jawline.

‘It’s lovely, isn’t it, that they’ve started a family? She must be very happy.’

‘Worn out, more like. She looked as if she’d aged ten years last time I visited.’

Her mother smiled affectionately. ‘Well, it is exhausting, at the start. But that’s not to say it’s not the most joyful thing in the world too!’

Laura pulled out the under-cooker drawer with a clatter, and dropped in a handful of serving spoons.

‘Oh, not those ones – ’ her mum said, retrieving them carefully, her little fingers cocked as if trying to avoid making the spoons more dirty. She handed them back to Laura. ‘They hang on the hooks under the cupboards over there. Wouldn’t you like a family of your own soon, love? You’re thirty, after all. In my day, you’d have been thought past it by now. I remember the woman down the road from us – Mrs Beatty – she was thirty-five when she had her boy, and everyone thought it was scandalous! Mind, things are different now, aren’t they.’

Laura felt the swelling memory of own lost babies: so many lost, a hundred dreamed of. If she tried to explain this to her mother she’d never understand, would never comprehend why a young woman would choose to terminate her own infant, to wish it away, or how the implications of those thoughts and actions could haunt a person forever after.

In the living room, the phone rang. Her dad answered, and after a few words with the caller he yelled, ‘It’s that nancy from up the road! Robert!’

Laura dropped the towel on the side, rushing to the living room to snatch the receiver from her father before he could cause any more offence.

‘Don’t worry.’ He smirked. ‘I covered the mouthpiece.’

Laura turned her back to block him out. ‘Rob? Sorry about that, he’s still as obnoxious as ever. How’d you know I was here?’ There was an empty silence at the other end. ‘Rob?’

‘Sorry to call you at your folks, Laur,’ Rob eventually replied, his voice thick and slow. ‘I just – I didn’t know who else to call. It’s Wren – she’s not with you, is she?’

Behind her, her dad huffed and picked up his cigarettes, shuffling irritably from the room as if he’d been kicked out.

‘Of course she’s not here – what do you mean, Rob? Have you had a falling-out or something?’

‘No, that’s the thing – everything’s been just fine. You saw her last time. She was looking great, wasn’t she? She’s been fine, especially since Phoebe started to sleep through the night.’

Laura could almost hear his mind ticking over. The last time she had seen Wren, she hadn’t thought she looked either great or fine – but she’d been too wrapped up in her own problems to say anything to Rob, to do anything. And wasn’t it better that way all round: to keep the tone as upbeat as possible, act as if everything was alright until eventually it really was? Wren would agree, Laura was sure. With a shudder, Laura realised it was her mother she was thinking of, not Wren. Her mother, drifting through life like a woman with a brain injury; smiling benignly to block out the monotony.

‘There’s no note, Laur – she never goes out without leaving a note – and when I got back from playing squash Fiona from next door came round with Phoebe, saying Wren had asked her to babysit for an hour.’

‘Perhaps she just needed a bit of space. Maybe she’s gone shopping?’

She heard the whistle of Robert blowing air through his pursed lips. ‘She’s taken stuff with her. Her coat, welly boots of all things. A bunch of clothes, I think.’

‘Have you checked the bathroom for her toothbrush? She won’t have left that behind if she’s gone for a while.’ Laura listened to the crash of the phone receiver at Robert’s end, the sound of his shoes treading through the hallway before returning to the phone.

She waited for his words, but could hear only the slightest movement of his presence at the end of the line and the sound of tearing paper. ‘Rob? What it is?’

‘Hang on, Laur – let me just get this envelope open – ’

‘From Wren? What does it say?’

Rob sighs, long and low, his breath stuttering as he forms the words.
‘“Dear Rob, I’m sorry but I have to go. Please don’t worry and don’t try to find me – I promise I will be in touch. Look after Phoebe and tell her I love her. Wren x.”’

‘She put a kiss at the end, Rob?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s got to be a positive sign, surely?’

After a pause, he speaks again. ‘Will you come over, Laur? I don’t think I can be on my own tonight.’

Laura stands high up on the coastal path and scans the beachscape, searching for Wren and the dogs. Memories
and emotions overlap as she thinks back to that day at her parents’ house twenty years ago, when Rob tracked her down in his search for Wren. He’d had no way of knowing she’d be there, no way of knowing that she had that very weekend been considering her plans to leave Doug, just as Wren had walked out on him. Was it meant to be? Were she and Rob always meant to be together? She wonders if the love one person felt for another could ever be entirely matched – if the depth of it, the height and the width of it could ever be equal. Surely one would inevitably love the other more infinitely, whether by a small or large margin? It was always clear to Laura, now as then, that Rob’s love for Wren was the greater – and that Wren could never match his devotion as deeply, as endlessly. And, as much as Laura loved them, as individuals and as a pair, it broke her heart a little more every time she noticed the imbalance.

Her head throbs as she tries to work out what to do next. Rob and Phoebe must be nearly here by now – it’s gone one-thirty, and still Wren hasn’t returned to the cottage. That Rob and Phoebe will want to see Wren is not in doubt; it’s why they’re here. But Wren? Will she want to see them? Will she want to open herself up to them after all these years of seclusion – to their questions, to their demands?

A small figure comes into view at the furthest reach of rocks and caves. It would be impossible to tell if it was Wren but for the two specks of dog that trickle along the sand beside her, casting tiny black shadows in their wake. But she’s heading away from home, not towards it, and Laura has no way of knowing how much longer she’ll be gone for. What to do?

Laura’s phone buzzes in her coat pocket: a message from Rob.

Looking back out at the retreating figure of Wren, Laura makes a decision. She’ll go to Rob. She’ll go to Rob and together they will bring Phoebe to her mother.

When she thinks of all those years she wasted on Doug, Laura could weep. The memory of it turns in her stomach like a forgotten anxiety, like waking each morning after a bereavement, only to experience the grief all over again. Seven years of her life given to the wrong man – seven years when she might have been growing a little family of her own, instead of watching it pass by as Doug allowed their future, their security, to disappear in a toxic cloud of the white stuff. He was a good enough man, kind, funny, talented. But he was self-obsessed too, driven only by his desire to ‘make it’, to practise his art, his music – and for the first couple of years Laura effectively funded his lifestyle. While he’d go through long phases off the drugs, it would only take some small disappointment – a rejection from a record producer, a poorly attended gig,
another
miscarriage – to send him reeling, trigger him to seek out his old familiars, and the cycle would begin again. As if what he was doing to himself wasn’t bad enough, there was her career to think of; if her colleagues had ever had their suspicions about Doug’s extracurricular habits, had ever called at their flat and seen the undesirables knocking at their door at all hours, her teaching life would have been over in a minute. After three years, quite out of the blue, they had moved from his horrible squat into a stylish apartment, and seemingly overnight an endless supply of
cash appeared from nowhere. Yet, officially, they were still just living off Laura’s own modest salary. It didn’t add up. She never asked him outright if he was dealing, but in the stark light of hindsight how could he not have been?