Flight (20 page)

Phoebe whimpered in his arms, bringing him back to the present. He knew it was a childish notion and one he would never voice; there was Doug, of course, it was his baby too – and soon, Rob feared, Laura would be swept along with her own concerns, bogged down in the mire of new parenthood, something he knew about only too well. Broken nights and nappies and fear and exhilaration and washing and shopping and anxiety and love, love so huge it could break you in two… There was so much to think about now that Laura
was to be a parent, now that they were all to be parents. So much to live for.

Three weeks later, shortly before her twelve-week
appointment
with the midwife, Laura miscarried. After the medics had performed a D&C and put her in a taxi home with painkillers and leaflets, Doug embarked on a forty-
eight-hour
binge of self-medication, leaving Laura at home alone with her grief. She phoned Rob to break the news, telling him that she hoped he understood, but she wouldn’t be round this weekend, or the next, as she had to rest. And it was just too painful for her at the moment – to see Phoebe – to see Rob and Wren and Phoebe. She didn’t want any visitors, any fuss. Would he tell Wren, would he explain to her?

For the next few days, Wren was inconsolable. It was as if it were she who had lost a baby. She couldn’t speak to him, couldn’t handle Phoebe, couldn’t go to the phone. And then, just as quickly, she was out from the hole again, back to her regular subdued state, back to the way things were before Laura had announced she was pregnant. They didn’t discuss it, didn’t mention Laura at all, but as far as Rob was concerned things were functioning again: they rose in the mornings, he went to work, and when he returned each evening Wren was there on the sofa with Phoebe and everything was just fine.

A fortnight later, she was gone.

Laura leads Rob up through the rocks until they reach a large pool at the top of the formation. It’s huge, draped in seaweed and mussels and thick plates of barnacles that
spread up over the edges and out across the stone bank. They stand at the pool’s edge, looking out over the beach and ocean. Laura takes his hand.

‘Are you sure she’ll be alright?’ Rob asks again, feeling the power slip from him.

‘Of course. I wouldn’t take any risks with Phoebe, would I? I’ve been with Wren for the past few days, and yes, she’s changed a lot – but it’s nothing to be concerned about. She’s not a danger, Rob, if that’s what’s worrying you.’

He squeezes her fingers, looks up into the blue sky above, his eyes following the movements of a large bird heading out to sea. ‘God, Laura, I don’t know what I’d do without you right now. This whole thing, it’s just a bloody great mess.’

‘What do you mean?’ Her red curls lift and hover in the bright breeze. ‘How’s it a mess? Finally Phoebe’s getting to meet her mother. Surely that’s got to be a good thing?’

‘Wren’s not her mother, Laur, not really. Not like you. You’re the one who was there for her first day of school, her first words, her first exam. Not Wren.’

Laura reaches behind her head to gather up the tangle of hair that whips about her face.

‘It’s not the same, Rob. I love her like my own, you know that. But Phoebe needed to find Wren eventually – she needed to know where she came from. Wouldn’t you, if your mother had given you up?’

Rob narrows his eyes, tries to make sense of her words, her actions. She stands before him, her hands thrust in deep pockets, her sturdy little boots planted firmly against the rock. He wishes he could burrow down inside her thoughts, to seek out her truth, uncover her secrets.

‘What?’ she asks. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

Inside his jacket pocket, Rob’s phone vibrates, and he reaches for it with fumbling fingertips. He opens his inbox as a backup of delayed messages floods in. Most are junk, but finally, here is the one he is expecting from Ava. Rob turns away from Laura, walks slowly around the edge of the rock pool so that he can stand facing out to sea, his back to her. He opens the message:

Rob can barely hear the crash of the waves over the roaring in his own head. With fear and anticipation rushing through his veins, he clicks to open the attachment, and waits, waits, waits as the little green arrow on the screen rotates and the image loads.

Wren didn’t acknowledge the first shifts in her perspective until several months into her pregnancy with Phoebe. The early weeks were a rush of exhilaration, mostly Rob’s, as they kept a lid on the news, waiting as advised until they crossed the line into the twelve-week safety zone. Never before had Wren seen such excitement coursing from him, and he talked at length about all the things they would all do together, the places they would see.

‘I know we’re going to be the best parents ever,’ he told her, his gentle palm circling her still flat stomach. ‘And I know we’re going to make the most beautiful baby the world has ever seen.’

What he didn’t know, and what would have hurt him deeply him if he had, was that he wasn’t the first to find out.

On a late summer morning in September, just before the schools returned for the new term, Wren had met Laura at the station where they caught the train to Camden, for a day trip to mark their last days of freedom from the classroom. Rob stayed at home, preparing for the new term, having ‘a mountain’ of forms and assessments to complete as part of his fast-track programme. Since they’d moved into their new family home in Peynton Gardens a year earlier, he had been working harder than ever, to secure their future with his plans to scale the career ladder.

‘
Yawn
,’ Laura laughed as Wren told her about Rob’s progress so far. They were sitting at table seats, their bags
and coats spread out beside them to put other passengers off joining them. ‘I know I should be more ambitious, but really, I think I’d die of boredom doing all that paperwork, jumping through all those hoops. Now I’ve got used to it, I’m quite enjoying the freedom of supply teaching.’

‘Rob would hate that – you know what he’s like about having things “settled”. He’s obsessed with security. You know: pensions, savings plans, mortgage rises and falls. I wish he’d lighten up a bit. He’s turning into an old man before he’s even thirty.’ Wren sifted through her bag, searching for the cereal bar she had packed for the journey. She tore open the packet and held it up, poised to break it in half. ‘Want some?’

Laura wrinkled her nose – ‘Rabbit food!’ – and waited for the tea trolley to come by with its biscuits and crisps.

At Camden Lock, Laura left Wren at the canalside while she went in search of a cashpoint before they decided on somewhere for lunch. The sun was high and bright over the water, and Wren wandered alongside the railings to look out across the water, where sparkling white shards dipped and rolled with the movement of the canal boats that daytripped along the waterway. There was still heat in the air, and across the lock families and couples reclined on the benches and low walls, turning their faces to the sun, feeling its rays warm their skin. Wren was struck by the serenity of the vista, and how, all at once, every one of them – the mothers, children, lovers, friends – every last one of them was here in this moment with her, feeling this sunshine, not thinking of the future, nor the past. Like Wren, they were simply
here
.

‘Woohoo!’

Wren was plucked from her warm trance by Laura’s cry, and she spun around to see her friend jogging across the stone path, a silk Paisley scarf flowing from her fingers.
Laura gently wound it around Wren’s neck and gave her a peck on the cheek.

‘What’s this for?’ Wren asked.

‘I must have lost at least three of your scarves when we were living together at Victoria Terrace. I’m making amends.’

Wren laughed, smoothing the silk through her palm. ‘You didn’t lose them,’ she said, giving Laura a little shove as she leant over the railings to peer into the water below. ‘You kept giving them to your delinquent boyfriends. I remember Jack coming on stage one night with my favourite houndstooth print wrapped round his head like a school tie. That was the last I saw of that!’

‘I was always stupid around boys. In my defence, I was usually so drunk when I gave your stuff away that I really believed it was mine to give. Bloody hell – Jack! I haven’t thought of him in years. I wonder what he’s doing these days. Probably a bald banker by now.’

‘And fat. In my mind’s eye, all my exes are fat and bald and miserably married with kids.’

‘While, of course, we both just get better and better with age.’ Laura flicked her hair self-indulgently and hooked her arm through Wren’s.

They chatted and walked alongside the water, enjoying the bustle and flow that spilled out from the shops and bars that edged the busy pathway, eventually deciding on a café for lunch, where Laura set off to find a table in the sun while Wren visited the Ladies’. Once inside the cubicle, she leant against the back of the door and opened her bag, drawing out a pharmacy pack containing the pregnancy test she had bought in the high street on the way down. She hadn’t wanted Laura to see, so she’d purposely lost her at the perfume counter of Boots, sprinting off to make her purchase
and exclaiming her relief at having found her again minutes later. Now, she unwrapped the testing stick and shoved the wrappers in the bin, rapidly double-reading the instructions to make sure she did the test properly. She was only a couple of days late, but so certain she’d felt a little different when she woke this morning – somehow
outside
of herself – that she’d known she couldn’t wait a moment longer to take the test. With care, she held the tip of the tester in her urine stream and sat watching as the liquid blotted through the stick. Checking her watch, she waited and counted and then turned her eyes back to the stick, and there it was, quick and clear and without delay or doubt – a double bar. Her stomach flipped over – a rush of adrenaline, and what? Happiness? Fear? All those things and more.

Outside, Laura had found them a table beneath a bright Orangina umbrella, and she waved Wren over just as the barman turned up with two large cocktails.

‘Margaritas!’ Laura announced, lifting her glass and holding it up to the light. ‘Remember? For old times’ sake.’

Wren sat down, stared at the frosted lime drinks and frowned. ‘I’m not sure – ’ she said, grasping for words. ‘I – ’

At first Laura looked perplexed, but quickly her expression changed to one of shocked comprehension. ‘Oh. My. God.’ Her eyes sparkled, blinking hard at Wren as she lowered her glass, her mouth opening like an ‘O’. She leant in close to the table, her hand sliding across to grip Wren’s. ‘You are, aren’t you?’

Wren’s gaze fell on their entwined hands, their fingers tangled together like a stack of slipper limpets and her face shifted into a slow, shy smile as her eyes met Laura’s. She nodded, hushing her voice, feeling almost fraudulent as she spoke the words. ‘I just did a test, Laur. It’s
positive
.’

Laura clapped a hand to her mouth, rushing around the table to crush Wren in her embrace. Waving excitedly, she called over a new waiter and returned the margaritas, claiming they’d been sent the wrong drinks. ‘We’ll have a large freshly squeezed orange juice, please. And a huge glass of champagne. We’re celebrating.’ She smiled proudly. ‘We’re having a baby.’

Willow and Badger sense the alteration in Wren as they scurry ahead of her through the meadow, halting to check back every once in a while for reassurance that she’s following. When Willow turns, the soft dome of her head wrinkles, causing her dappled brow markings to incline in an exaggeration of concern.

‘On,’ Wren says, with a sweep of her hand.

The dogs wriggle beneath the low bar of the stile, stopping to sniff at the salt-split fence post on the other side. As Wren climbs over, she glances back towards the house, at the upper gables just visible beyond the wall of hedge, and wonders if Laura is still standing in the garden, waiting for her to change her mind and return.

Her own anger has taken her by surprise. The rational part of her recognises the guilt and dread she’s pushing down inside herself, and she’d known it was only a matter of time before Laura demanded some answers, but anger isn’t her usual response. In the absence of other human contact, Wren has, until now, found it entirely possible to blank out unwanted emotion, to stuff it down and muffle its voice. To function and to exist, neither happy nor sad, but at some level of peace. But now Laura – she’s forced her way in, and she’s given this blank space a voice, and a face, and Wren hates her
for it, hates her for trespassing on her life, for peeling back the corners of her past and forcing her to look in. The things she said last night in the cave – about Phoebe and the baby, about Rob – they seem unreal now, like one of her dreams.
But she’s only a baby herself
, Wren had replied, unable to process the news, unable to shift her thoughts forward, to think of her infant as now grown. And what about the rest of the story? Surely Laura’s not telling her the whole story. There has to be more to tell. There
must
to be more to tell, or else Wren doesn’t know how she can go forward from here, how she can bear to keep going with all that Laura has told her, and all that she has not. What else? she wanted to scream at her in the darkness, but she dared not for fear of the reply. When Laura had told her that she hadn’t seen Rob for a full year after Wren had gone, that he had spent all that time alone with Phoebe, her heart had shrunk, injured.
You should have been there, Laura
, she thinks now.
You were meant to be there
. Perhaps then it would have all come together in the way she had dreamed for them, Rob and Laura and Phoebe, and, soon afterwards, a child of their own.

Poor Laura, poor wonderful, beautiful Laura. How Wren has missed her, deep in that locker of buried feeling. What must she make of all this? What does she see when she looks at Wren, at the plainness of the small stone cottage, at the bonfire debris of the garden and the dogs who sleep on the bed. What must she make of the transformation in Wren? She doesn’t even own a mirror, save the small broken compact mirror she digs out when she cuts her own hair. These days she only knows herself from the most practical of distances, observing the turn of her skin as spring gives way to summer, or the hardening of her thumb pads as the digging of the autumn soil gets under way. The absence of
clutter is soothing to her; gone are the beauty-seeking lotions and potions of her youth, the constrictions of fashion, the exhaustion of vanity. But now, something about opening the door to Laura – to the past – uncovers that long forgotten self-consciousness in her, and she wonders how her looks are holding up in this, the year she turned fifty.
Fifty
. Her father didn’t even make it that far, she realises, and it saddens her all the more as she looks out across the bay and sees a young family stooped at the water’s edge, filling a bucket, a parent on either side of a yellow-anoraked toddler. He would have made a good grandfather, given the chance.

The grip of Wren’s pregnancy was a stealthy thing, like a slowly tightening fist, whose pressure increased so gradually that no real pain was felt, yet the restriction grew steadily, intensifying, smothering, until one day she woke up hardly able to breathe.

At twelve weeks, Rob was ready to announce their joy from the rooftops.

‘I’d take out an advert on the side of a bus if I could,’ he declared over breakfast, patting down his muesli and smiling to himself in anticipation of telling his colleagues. ‘So, are you going to phone your mother tonight?’

Wren unwrapped a new packet of Weetabix and put two biscuits in her bowl, feeling troubled that they didn’t fit
perfectly
, wouldn’t quite lie flat. ‘One thing at a time,’ she replied, gesturing for the milk. ‘I’ll get work out of the way first.’

Rob passed the carton down the table, and fetched the sugar bowl for her. ‘You make it sound like an arduous task. Aren’t you excited about telling everyone?’

She shrugged. ‘I feel a bit embarrassed, if I’m honest.’

‘Embarrassed?’ Rob sat down again, raised his spoon. ‘Why on earth would you feel embarrassed?’

‘I don’t know. They’ll make a fuss – stop talking to me and start talking to my stomach. I saw it with Tracey Bell and Shelley Cowley when they were expecting. Everyone starts speaking all sing-song, like you’ve had a bash on the head.
So, how’s the new mum, then? Ooh, aren’t you getting big? Look at you – blooming!
I even did it myself. I don’t want all that.’

Rob shook his head, spooning muesli into his mouth and checking his watch. ‘You old grouch. They’ll be delighted for you, and there’s nothing wrong with that. As will your mother, if you’ll ever get around to letting her know. Shall we ring her tonight?’

Wren forced a tight smile and took her bowl to the sink, abandoning the second Weetabix, mushy now at the bottom. ‘OK,’ she said with her back to him, ‘we’ll phone her tonight,’ and she left him at the table while she headed up to the bedroom to get ready for work.

At her dressing table she reached for her hairbrush then stopped, alarmed by her reflection. Since discovering she was pregnant she had been almost constantly queasy with morning sickness, and only in the past week had she started to feel better, physically. But now that the nausea was gone she was left with something else, something below the surface that she couldn’t quite articulate. The circles below her eyes were dark, haunted-looking, the corners of her mouth downturned. Far from ‘blooming’, she looked terrible.

It’s the baby
. At once she understood:
there must be something wrong with the baby
. Standing, she allowed her dressing gown to drop to the floor, and stood before the mirror in her underwear, slowly moving her fingers across the gentle new shape of her waist and stomach, concentrating,
squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to communicate with the foetus growing inside – tried to glean some greater perception of the crisis that raged within.

‘Wren?’ Her eyes snapped open and there in the doorway, reflected in her mirror, was Robert, concern visible on his face. His fingers held on to the doorframe. ‘What’s wrong?’

She stared at him, momentarily unable to respond, before breaking away from the mirror to retrieve her dressing gown, to cover her changing form. ‘Nothing,’ she said, her eyes darting to his. ‘I’m fine.’