Remember Why You Fear Me (39 page)

But then Harry’s eyes, of course,
were
drawn to the wings. There was only so long he could deny they were there. Large and white and jutting out of the shoulder blades. They gave occasional little flaps, as the perfect child bobbed about idly outside the car window. Creamy pale skin, a shock of bright yellow hair, and a bright yellow halo hovering above it—there was nothing to keep it there, it tilted independently of the head, sometimes at a rather rakish angle—it looked like someone had hammered a dinner tray into the skull with invisible nails. Little toes. Little fingers. Babies’ fingers. And (because, yes, Harry did steal a look) there was nothing between the legs at all, the child’s genitals had been smoothed out like it was a naked Action Man toy.

The little child smiled amiably at him. Then raised a knuckle. And tapped three times against the glass.

“What are you?”—which Harry knew was a pointless question, it was pretty bloody obvious what it was—and even the cherub rolled his eyes at that, but then smiled back as if to say, just kidding, no offence, no hard feelings.

The child seemed to imitate Harry’s expressions, maybe he was sending him up a little—he’d put his head to one side like he did, he’d frown just the same, blink in astonishment, the whole parade. When Harry put his face close to the window it hurt, but he did it anyway—and the child put its head as close as it could too. There was just a sheet of glass between them. They could have puckered up, they could almost have kissed had they wanted! And at one point it seemed to Harry the child
did
pucker up those lips, but no, it was just taking in a breath, like a sigh, a hiss. “Can you understand me? Can you hear what I’m saying?” The child blinked in astonishment again, fluttered its wings a bit. “Can you get help?” And what did he expect, that it’d find a phone box and ring the emergency services, that it’d fly into the nearest police station? “Are you here to watch over us?”

And then the cherub opened its mouth. And it wasn’t a sigh, it
was
a hiss. Hot breath stained the glass; Harry recoiled from it. And the teeth were so sharp, and there were so many, how could so many teeth fit into such a small mouth? And hiding such a dainty tongue too, just a little tongue, a
baby’s
tongue. The child attacked the window, it gnawed on the glass with its fangs. Desperately, hungrily, the wings now flapping wild. It couldn’t break through. It glared, those bright eyes now blazing with fury, and the hissing became seething, and then it was gone—with a screech it had flown away.

There was a scratch left streaked across the pane.

Harry sat back, hard, his heart thumping. It didn’t hurt to do so. There was pain, but it was something distant now, his body had other things to worry about. And whilst it was still confused, before it could catch up—and before he could change his mind—he was lifting his arm, he was bending it, and
twisting it back on itself
(and it didn’t snap, not at all), he was going for his coat, pulling at the zip, pulling it down hard, he was reaching inside the coat, reaching inside the jacket inside the coat, reaching inside the pocket inside the jacket inside the—and he had it, his fingers were brushing it, his fingers were gripping it, the phone, the mobile phone.

By the time he pulled it out his body had woken up to what he was trying to do. Oh no, it said, not allowed, and told him off with a flush of hot agony—but he was having none of that, not now. The phone was turned off. Of course it was. He stabbed at the pin number, got it right second time. “Come on, come on,” he said. The phone gave a merry little tune as it lit up. He just hoped there was enough battery power.

There was enough battery power. What it didn’t have was any network coverage. Not this far out in the Highlands! Not in one of the many middles of nowhere that Scotland seemed to offer. The signal bar was down to zero.

“No,” he insisted, “no.” And the body really didn’t want him to do this, it was telling him it was a
very
bad idea, but Harry began to wave the phone about, trying to pick up any signal he could. By the time a bar showed, he was raising the phone above his head, and he was crying.

He stabbed at 999. The phone was too far away for him to hear whether there was any response. “Hello!” he shouted. “There’s been a car crash! We’ve crashed the car. Help us! We’re in . . . I don’t know where we are. We’re in Scotland. Scotland! Find us! Help!” And his arm was shaking with the pain, and he couldn’t hold on any longer, and he dropped it, it clattered behind his seat to the floor. And at last he allowed himself a scream as he lowered his arm, and that scream felt good.

The scream didn’t wake Esther. That was a good thing. At least she was sleeping soundly.

For a few minutes he let himself believe his message had been heard. That he’d held on to a signal for long enough. That the police had taken notice if he had. That they’d be able to track his position from the few seconds he’d given them. And then he just cried again, because really, why the hell shouldn’t he?

He was interrupted by a voice. “Turn around when possible.” His heart thumped again, and then he realized it was the satnav. It was that nice man from the satnav, the one who spoke well enough for telly. The display had lit up, and there was some attempt at finding a road, but they weren’t on a road, were they? And Satnav was confused, poor thing, it couldn’t work out what on earth was going on. “Turn around when possible,” the satnav suggested again.

Harry had to laugh, really. He spoke to the satnav. It made him feel better to speak to someone. “I thought I’d heard the last of you!”

And then the satnav said, “Daddy.”

And nothing else. Not for a while.

For the rest of the day he didn’t see anything else of the child. He didn’t see much else of Esther either; once in a while she seemed to surface from a sleep, and he’d ask her if she were all right. And sometimes she’d glare at him, and sometimes she’d smile kindly, and most often she wouldn’t seem to know who he was at all. And he’d doze fitfully. At one point he jerked bolt upright in the night when he thought he heard tapping against the window—”No, go away!”—but he decided this time it really was the wind, because it soon stopped. Yes, the wind. Or the branches. Or a Scottish farmer this time, who can tell? Who can tell?

In the morning he woke to find, once again, Esther was looking straight at him. She was smiling. This was one of her smiling times.

“Good morning!” she said.

“Good morning,” he replied. “How are you feeling?”

“I feel hungry,” she said.

“I’m sure,” he said. “We haven’t eaten in ages.”

She nodded at that.

Harry said, “The last time would have been at that stately home. You know, we had the cream tea. You gave me one of your scones.”

She nodded at that.

Harry said, “I bet you regret that now. Eh? Giving me one of your scones!”

She nodded at that. Grinned.

“The itching’s stopped,” she declared. “Do you know, there was a time back there that I really thought it might drive me
mad
. Really, utterly loop the loop. But it’s stopped now. Everything’s okay.”

“That’s nice,” he said. “I’m going to get you out of here, I promise.”

“I don’t care about that anymore,” she said. “I’m very comfortable, thanks.” She grinned again. He saw how puffed her cheeks were. He supposed her face had been bruised; he supposed there was a lot of dried blood in the mouth, distorting her features like that. “In fact,” she said, “I feel as light as a feather.”

“You’re feeling all right?”

She nodded at that.

“Can you open the door?” he asked. She looked at him stupidly. “The door on your side. Can you open it? I can’t open mine.”

She shrugged, turned a little to the left, pulled at the handle. The door swung open. The air outside was cold and delicious.

“Can you go and get help?” he asked. She turned back to him, frowned. “I can’t move,” he said. “I can’t get out. Can you get out?”

“Why would I want to do that?” she asked.

He didn’t know what to say. She tilted her head to one side, waiting for an answer.

“Because you’re hungry,” he said.

She considered this. Then tutted. “I’m sure I’ll find something in here,” she said. “If I put my mind to it.” And she reached for the door, reached right outside for it, then slammed it shut. And as she did so, Harry saw how his wife’s back bulged. That there was a lump underneath her blouse, and it was moving, it
rippled
. And he saw where some of it had pushed a hole through the blouse, and he saw white, he saw feathers.

“Still a bit of growing to do, but the itching has stopped,” she said. “But don’t you worry about me,
I’ll
be fine.” She grinned again, and there were lots of teeth, there were too many teeth, weren’t there? And then she yawned, and then she went back to sleep.

She didn’t stir, not for hours. Not until the child came back. “Daddy,” said the satnav, and it wasn’t a child’s voice, it was still the cultured man, calm and collected, as if he were about to navigate Harry over a roundabout. And there was the cherub!—all smiles, all teeth, his temper tantrum forgotten, bobbing about the window, even waving at Harry as if greeting an old friend. And, indeed, he’d brought friends with him, a whole party of them! Lots of little cherubs, it was impossible to tell how many, they would keep on bobbing so!—a dozen, maybe two dozen, who knows? And each of them had the same perfect face, the same spherical head, the same halos listing off the same gleaming hair. Tapping at the window for play, beating on the roof, beating at the door—laughing,
mostly
laughing, they wanted to get in but this was a game, they liked a challenge! Mostly laughing, though there was the odd shriek of frustration, the odd hiss, lots more scratches on the glass. One little cherub did something very bad-tempered with the radio aerial. Another little cherub punched an identical brother in the face in a dispute over the rear view mirror. They scampered all over the car, but there was no way in. It all reminded Harry of monkeys at a safari park. He’d never taken Esther to a safari park. He never would now. “Daddy Daddy,” said the satnav. “Daddy Daddy,” it kept on saying, emotionless, even cold—and the little children danced merrily outside.

“Oh, aren’t they beautiful!” cooed Esther. She reached for the door. “Shall we let them in?”

“Please,” said Harry. “Please. Don’t.”

“No. All right.” And she closed her eyes again. “Just leaves more for me,” she said.

For the first few days he was very hungry. Then one day he found he wasn’t hungry at all. He doubted that was a good thing.

He understood that the cherubs were hungry too. Most of them had flown away, they’d decided that they weren’t going to get into this particular sardine tin—but there were always one or two about, tapping away, ever more forlorn. Once in a while a cherub would turn to Harry, and pull its most innocent face, eyes all wide and Disney-dewed, it’d look so
sad
. It’d beg, it’d rub its naked belly with its baby fingers, and it’d cry. “Daddy,” the satnav would say at such moments. But however winning their performance, the cherubs still looked fat and oily, and their puffy cheeks were glowing.

Harry supposed they probably were starving to death. But not before he would.

One day Harry woke up to find Esther was on top of him. “Good morning,” she said to him, brightly. It should have been agony she was there, but she was as light as air, as light as a feather.

Her face was so very close to his, it was her hot breath that had roused him. Now unfurled, the wings stretched the breadth of the entire car. Her halo was grazing the roof. The wings twitched a little as she smiled down at him and bared her teeth.

“I love you,” she said.

“I know you do.”

“I want you to know that.”

“I do know it.”

“Do you love me too?”

“Yes,” he said.

And she brought that head towards his—that now spherical head, he could still recognize Esther in the features, but this was probably Esther as a child, as a darling baby girl—she brought down that head, and he couldn’t move from it, she could do whatever she wanted. She opened her mouth. She kissed the tip of his nose.

She sighed. “I’m so sorry, darling,” she said.

“I’m sorry too.”

“All the things we could have done together,” she said. “All the places we could have been. Where would we have gone, darling?”

“I was thinking of Venice,” said Harry. “We’d probably have gone back there one day.”

“Yes,” said Esther doubtfully.

“And we never saw Paris. Paris is lovely. We could have gone up the Eiffel Tower. And that’s just Europe. We could have gone to America too.”

“I didn’t need to go anywhere,” Esther told him. “You know that, don’t you? I’d have been just as happy at home, so long as you were there with me.”

“I know,” he said.

“There’s so much I wanted to share with you,” she said. “My whole life. My whole life. When I was working at the shop, if anything funny happened during the day, I’d store it up to tell you. I’d just think, I can share that now. Share it with my
hubby
. And we’ve been robbed. We were given one year. Just one year. And I wanted
forever
.”

“Safari parks,” remembered Harry.

“What?”

“We never did a safari park either.

“I love you,” she said.

“I know,” he said.

Her eyes watered, they were all wide and Disney-dewed. “I want you to remember me the right way,” she said. “Not covered with blood. Not mangled in a car crash. Remember me the way I was. Funny, I hope. Full of life. I don’t want you to spoil the memory.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to move on. Live your life without me. Have the courage to do that.”

“Yes. You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”

She didn’t deny it. “All the things we could have done together. All the children we could have had.” And she gestured towards the single cherub now bobbing weakly against the window. “All the children.”

“Our children,” said Harry.

“Heaven is
filled
with our unborn children,” said Esther. “Yours and mine. Yours and mine. Darling. Didn’t you know that?” And her wings quivered at the thought.