Taking Flight Read online

  But I can’t go back in there.

  I make it as far as the landing. Stand outside the door. Why didn’t I go in last night? I just closed the door to shut her up. I squeeze my eyes shut but the image of that room the way I just saw it is scratched onto my eyelids. The rumpled bed. Mum’s face hanging, collapsed. And something else, something weird – what was it? The bottle of tablets on the bedside cabinet. Jesus!

  Sickness floods me. Bathroom. White tiles. Hands grip something cold and hard. I’m still spitting up bits of sausage when I hear the loud rap at the door.

  Chapter 2

  VICKY

  ‘D’you miss me at weekends?’ I asked while Mum was cutting my sandwiches.

  She paused, mid-chop. ‘Sort of. Well, yes. But I know you’re happy with Dad and Fiona.’

  ‘And Flight.’ I didn’t mention Molly. ‘Can I take some of those apples for him, Mum?’

  ‘They’re Pink Ladies – far too good for a horse! There’s a bag of carrots in the fridge.’

  ‘Nothing’s too good for Flight!’ But I rooted in the fridge. It was a huge bag. Mum was pretty nervous around Flight but she didn’t mind buying him stuff. ‘Oh Mum, I can’t believe I got asked to be on the senior team!’

  ‘And you’re sure you’re ready for it?’ She looked anxious – horses had that effect on her.

  A little worm wriggled in my stomach while I shoved the bag into the rucksack I always took to Dad’s. ‘Well, he’s a showjumper. He’s bound to be a bit more – well, complicated, than a pony. But Cam thinks I can do it.’ And that feeling of not bonding with Flight – maybe I was imagining it.

  ‘Well, she should know, darling. And Flight’s a very good horse. He’d need –’

  ‘I know, he’d need to be, the amount Dad paid for him! So you’ve said about a million times.’

  She laughed and set my lunchbox on the table. ‘Hurry up, love. It’s past eight and you haven’t dried your hair yet.’ She ran her fingers through her own short, dark hair.

  ‘Can I use your straighteners? We’re going to the Rowan Tree for Fiona’s birthday tonight, and it is so posh.’ I didn’t tell her my main reason for wanting to look my best – that Rory from three doors down had a part-time job there.

  ‘Go on then.’ Her voice was a tiny bit tight. Maybe she minded me talking about Fiona’s birthday. Fiona was thirty, a barrister, though she was on maternity leave now.

  I squeezed Mum’s waist on the way past. I’d been taller than her for ages.

  ‘Hurry up if you want a lift!’ she called after me.

  Swinging out of the driveway we saw Rory out for his run. He stepped back onto the pavement to let us pass and waved.

  ‘He likes you,’ Mum said.

  ‘Mu-um! He’ll hear.’ I felt my cheeks catch fire and hoped Rory hadn’t noticed.

  As I waved goodbye to Mum outside school I thought she looked sort of small in her blue Golf. I wondered if she really didn’t mind me being away all weekend. Fliss kept saying she couldn’t understand why Mum didn’t have a boyfriend yet – after all, she and Dad split up five years ago – but she only thought that because her mum had a new guy, on average, every six months. My mum wasn’t like that. Thankfully. Because that was about the worst thing I could think of. I swung my rucksack and pushed my cuddly Tigger down out of sight. With luck Fliss and Becca would be at the lockers already and we could get a good gossip before tutor group.

  They were both there, leaning against our special bit of wall, talking about going into town the next day. Becca looked tired; she’d probably stayed up to revise for our French test. Her mum gave her a hard time if she didn’t get straight As.

  ‘You up for it, Vic?’ asked Fliss, blotting her lip-gloss with a tissue to get it to just the right level of naturalness to keep Mad Max off her back.

  ‘Sorry. Got to practise jumping.’

  ‘You’re always doing that!’ Becca complained. ‘You’re never around.’

  ‘I am!’ I protested. ‘But you know I’m on the senior school team – the first show’s next week!’

  ‘What’ve horses got to offer that your best friends don’t?’ Fliss started on her eyeliner. It was green, the same as her eyes.

  ‘Oh, try fun, excitement, glamour, the odd gorgeous boy rider in skin-tight jodhpurs. Not much, really.’

  ‘Oh, when you put it like that!’

  ‘Seriously, though. You two should come and watch me next week.’ I tried to keep out of my voice just how much I would love them to. They looked at each other and then at me, with identical ‘no way’ expressions.

  The bell for tutor group made us all groan and shuffle our stuff together. I shoved my rucksack into my locker and had to slam the door to get it closed.

  Dad’s silver Merc was waiting at the gates at 3.30 p.m. I called goodbye to Fliss and Becca, swung my bags into the back seat and myself into the front.

  ‘Hi Dad!’ I hugged him as best I could in the car.

  ‘Hello, darling. Good week?’

  I’d talked to him most days on the phone but this was part of our Friday ritual, part of sliding back into being Dad’s daughter instead of Mum’s. Or as well as.

  ‘OK. Bashed my leg at hockey today. Otherwise, pretty good. I got 48 out of 50 for my English oral work – I had to do a speech. I did foxhunting. That’s an A star,’ I added, in case he didn’t realise how good it was.

  ‘Good girl! That’s the old legal brain. You must get that from me.’

  ‘Maybe.’ I could have said ‘Mum did law, too,’ but unlike Dad, she had only studied it for less than a year. Dropped out of university, pregnant with me, before her first year exams, after being the first person in her family to go to university – first in her whole street, probably, I thought, thinking about the horrible estate where Mum came from. I never used to think it was horrible but that was when Gran was there. And now Mum worked in a library.

  ‘I can’t wait to jump Flight tomorrow.’

  Dad’s eyebrows crinkled in puzzlement. ‘But darling, I thought you knew?’

  ‘What?’ My stomach turned to water. ‘Oh, my God, what’s happened?’

  ‘Calm down! He’s absolutely fine. But he and Joy got their flu jabs yesterday. And you know that means no riding for a few days. I thought Fi told you.’

  Tears of disappointment sprang to the backs of my eyes. ‘But they weren’t due for a couple of weeks!’

  The road crawled past and Dad beeped at a cyclist with a death wish. ‘I know, darling. But the vet was at the yard to see another horse and Fiona thought it was a good chance to save on the callout fee. You know he charges a fortune.’

  ‘But that’s not fair! It’s OK for Fiona; she never rides Joy these days, but what about me?’

  ‘Well, I suppose Fiona forgot about the show. There’s always next week.’

  Next week! Next week was the show! How was I ever going to be ready?

  * * *

  ‘Champagne?’

  I glanced up into Rory’s gorgeous blue eyes and smiled. ‘Lovely, thanks.’ To my amazement my voice came out sounding normal. When he bent over me I caught a wave of coconut shampoo. He turned to fill Dad’s glass and I saw his tight black waiters’ trousers and nearly fainted into my salmon. He played rugby for the boys’ grammar school and it showed.

  I touched the sleeve of my new white top. Fiona had bought me it for no reason, ‘because I thought you’d like it’. It was quite low-cut and I wished I’d more to fill it with.

  I was the only person at our table under thirty. Apart from Dad and Fiona there were Fiona’s parents – ‘call us Henry and Pamela’, they always said, as if making it clear that I wasn’t to be confused with their real grandchild, but somehow I never could. Mr and Mrs Ross wasn’t quite right either so I just never called them anything. Of course Molly, when she learned to speak, would be calling them Granny and Grandpa. Dad’s parents had moved to Spain when they retired and Gran – Mum’s mum – well, it was over a year since she’d died, even i
f it didn’t feel like it.

  ‘To Fiona!’ everyone chorused and I sipped my champagne. The fizz made it easier to drink than most alcohol and I decided I could develop a taste for it.

  Fiona laughed. She looked sparkly and happy. Usually she just slopped around in jeans but tonight she wore a blue dress. Only I knew that she’d had to lie on the bed to get it zipped up. I’d used Mum’s straighteners on her blonde bob and helped her with her make-up.

  Dad coughed when everyone had set their glasses down. ‘I have another little surprise, darling,’ he said.

  Fiona looked at the new sapphire eternity ring on her left hand. ‘Peter! You’ve given me enough.’

  ‘Just a little treat,’ said Dad, and held out a blue envelope.

  I couldn’t believe what it was – tickets for a weekend in Paris.

  ‘Time we had a little break,’ he said and gave her a really soppy smile.

  ‘And we’re having Molly, darling,’ said Henry. ‘So you and Peter can have a proper second honeymoon.’

  Suddenly the champagne felt cold and gassy in my stomach and the salmon on my plate looked greasy and too pink. Ever since Dad moved out I had spent every weekend with him – first in the apartment on the riverside and then in the house he and Fiona had built on the site Henry and Pamela had given them for a wedding present. OK, I’d probably missed the very odd one – but basically that was what I did at the weekends, and I liked it. I didn’t want anything to change.

  * * *

  Fiona swung her legs against the gate we were sitting on and sighed – a happy sigh. I tried to catch her mood. In the field a few horses in their winter rugs nosed the bare ground for the few bits of grass still sticking up through the mud. The greedier ones, like Joy, Fiona’s mare, hogged the feeders at the gate, chewing on haylage. Flight, his rug splashed with mud where he’d been rolling, was standing still, eyes fixed on something in the distance. His lovely chestnut head was alert, ears pricked.

  Look how lovely he is and how lucky you are, I scolded myself. Never mind that the show is only a week away. It’ll be fine.

  Fiona turned and smiled. ‘You can’t imagine what a treat this is,’ she said. Just sitting here looking at the horses. No one demanding attention.’

  ‘But you love Molly!’

  ‘Course I do. To bits. But being someone’s mother – well, it’s just so full on. Nothing prepares you.’

  Fiona always talked to me like that – like I was grown up. She never tried to do the stepmother thing, thank goodness. But she was nowhere near as much fun as she used to be. She used to give me riding lessons and show me how to do really good make-up and let me stay in her bed and watch DVDs with her when Dad was away. And all my friends were like, ‘Your stepmother is just so cool.’ But this was the first time since Molly was born that she’d been to the yard with me. And I was glad of her – there wasn’t anyone my age at the yard. Cam was too busy to chat on Saturdays, and Tony didn’t work weekends so there was just old Jim who always looked at me as if I was a spoiled brat just because he was paid to clean up after my horse.

  ‘It might get harder when she’s a stroppy teenager.’

  ‘She won’t be stroppy,’ Fiona said firmly. ‘She’ll be charming, like her big sister.’ She grinned.

  Big sister. It still sounded strange. What would Molly be like when she was sixteen? I would be older than Fiona was now. Weird. It was hard to think of her as a person. I wondered if they would get her a pony when she was old enough. I wondered if Dad loved her more than me.

  I didn’t allow myself that thought ever so I was glad to have my attention caught by the slow clopping of unshod hooves. A small, plump woman led a dark brown cob with a bandaged foreleg round the yard below the field.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘There’s Sally with Nudge. Is she getting better?’

  ‘Well, the vet said she could lead her in hand for twenty minutes a day. Let her stretch her legs. But it’s still fifty-fifty whether she’ll ever be sound again.’

  ‘And if not?’ I curled my foot tighter round the bar of the gate to keep my balance.

  ‘She could breed from her – at least she’s a mare.’

  I tried to think of keeping a horse for years without being able to ride. No shows, no jumping, just a lame horse hobbling round a field. I shivered and looked for reassurance at Flight, healthy and sound, trotting up the field now as he caught sight of Nudge, who had always been his mate before the accident with barbed wire which had mangled her leg. He nickered and the cob lifted her head and squealed back.

  ‘I thought of asking Sally to exercise Joy,’ Fiona said. ‘I’m not going to have time for a while.’ She shifted on the gate and I remembered her talking about having stitches after Molly’s birth. Gross. ‘All Sally’s spare cash goes on Nudge, and her vet’s bills are horrendous. She might be glad of something to ride for nothing. Come on, let’s go and ask her.’

  I let my hair fall forward to hide my face. Cam had already asked me to let Sally ride Flight during the week, to keep him fitter for me to jump at the weekends. I’d said no. I hoped she hadn’t told Fiona. ‘Hold on, there’s my phone. It’s Mum. I’ll catch you up.’

  I’d already spoken to Mum at lunchtime. It wasn’t like her to phone twice on a Saturday. Maybe she really did miss me.

  But it wasn’t that.

  ‘Vicky,’ she said, her voice really serious, ‘I have something to tell you. Something bad.’

  Chapter 3

  DECLAN

  The nurse is outside in the main ward but I catch most of what she’s saying into the phone. ‘Your sister-in-law, Theresa Kelly … alcohol … tablets …’

  I can’t hear Colette’s half of the conversation. Just a long silence.

  ‘Oh, no … got her in time … serious but stable …’

  Silence.

  I imagine Colette in her posh house, frowning at the phone and thinking, ‘what has this to do with me?’ I don’t know. But they’ve kept asking me who they should contact and she’s the only one I could think of. And when the nurse comes into the side ward where Mum lies wired up and twitching she says, ‘Your aunt’s on her way.’

  Picturing Colette getting into her car and driving up here stops me thinking about Mum. A bit. I should sit nearer the bed. Touch her. But I can’t. All those wires and drips. They keep telling me she’ll be fine but she looks terrible. Not bluish any more but yellowy. I wonder how long until Colette gets here? She lives on the Malone Road. That’s dead far. I look at Mum. Look away. Cream walls, grey floor, sink. Twist a Coke can round in my hands. Concentrate on the coldness of it. Feel the stickiness where the Coke has spilled. Don’t think.

  The doorway fills up with them. The nurse, big and bossy; Colette, small, dark, uncertain-looking.

  ‘They’ve pumped her stomach,’ says the nurse. ‘Just as well we got her in time.’

  I don’t meet Colette’s eyes. I focus on Mum, marooned on the bed in the middle of the room. I sense Colette trying not to stare at the tubes and machines. Feel her eyes on me. The nurse’s eyes on me. Asking, why did she do it? What did you do?

  There’s only one chair and I’m sitting on it. I turn my Coke tin round and round in my hands. Make myself look up and nod. I haven’t seen Colette for … must be more than a year. I’m always out when she calls round. Running the streets, as Mum would say.

  She speaks first. ‘Did you find her?’

  I nod. Don’t think. Don’t remember.

  ‘Did you phone for the ambulance?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I can’t think of another thing to say. Is she here to see Mum or to take me to her house or both?

  The nurse fusses round and then says, ‘I’ll leave you with her for a while then. But I think the doctor would like to speak to you.’ She means Colette.

  ‘OK,’ says Colette.

  ‘You have the chair,’ I say, uncurling myself. My legs and back ache when I stand up. Colette is the same height as me.

  ‘I’m sure there’s another one so
mewhere. I could go out and have a look in the corridor.’ She sounds like she wants out already.

  ‘No, I will.’

  Mum moans and mutters a bit, making me jump, but she doesn’t open her eyes. I have to get out. ‘I’ll get the chair.’

  I walk to the end of the ward even though there are plenty of chairs nearby and when I get back there’s a man talking to Colette. I hover in the doorway, holding the chair in front of me like a shield.

  ‘We’ll keep her in for a few days,’ he says. His words – tests, liver function, psychiatric assessment – wash over me. Is Colette going to take me home with her? I know they won’t let me stay home on my own even though I’d be fine.

  Colette pushes back out past me to find the nurse. I listen. She’s giving her her phone number. ‘I think I’d be as well taking him on home,’ she says. ‘There’s nothing we can do here.’ She comes back in and smiles at me. ‘So it looks like you’ll be coming home with me for a day or two.’

  ‘Is that OK?’

  ‘Course.’ Her voice warms up a bit. ‘We’d better go and pick you up some stuff.’

  Walking out of the hospital is like leaving a dungeon. But out in the real world, driving up the Falls where the street lights are on, and on out to our estate, the facts come crashing back in. She tried to kill herself. Not that anyone’s said that. They’ve said ‘overdose’ and ‘alcohol’ and ‘sleeping tablets’ but that’s all. What will Colette tell Princess Vicky?

  Mum’s told me all about growing up next door to Colette. How she thought she was too good for everyone else in the street. How she stayed in and studied and never went out to play. They were best friends till Colette went to the grammar school and didn’t bother about her any more. They sort of got back together when Mum started going out with Colette’s brother – my dad. Gran always said Colette had brains to burn and I used to think that was a funny thing to say, like why would you burn your brain?

  Colette turns off the main road. I always think our estate looks kind of unfinished even though it was built before Mum was born. It looks like someone just threw it at the side of a mountain and it clung on.