Little Bird. Camilla Way

around her neck, she idly plays with a strand of black, springy hair that has come loose from the older woman’s headscarf, tickling her ear with it until Yaya starts to laugh and pulls Elodie towards her in a hug.

      But their laughter comes to an abrupt halt when a sound from the door distracts them and they both turn to see Ingrid staring in at them.

      Elodie isn’t sure what it is about the expression in Ingrid’s eyes, only that both she and Yaya react to it instantly by jumping apart. It’s brief, the look she shoots them before quickly turning away, but Elodie is seized by unaccustomed and confusing feelings of guilt. The moment passes. Quietly, Elodie goes back to her own chair and her books and the four of them continue with their work.

      But still Ingrid’s expression confuses her. Later that night when Elodie is getting ready for bed the little gnawing feeling of doubt returns. There had been something unrecognisable in Ingrid’s eyes, a dark and painful thing she couldn’t understand. That night, when Ingrid comes to say good night, instead of the brief kiss on her cheek that she usually bestows, Elodie finds herself pulled into a tight embrace. And when Ingrid releases her, the sense of unease lingers.

eleven

       Deptford, south-east London, 15 December 2003

      Historically, Frank’s track record with women wasn’t great. At twenty-five, it wasn’t that he ever really found it a problem attracting girls – it was the keeping hold of them he always seemed to struggle with. He had a habit of falling hook, line and sinker for a person, putting her so high upon a pedestal that the only inevitable direction they could go after that was down. All would be great for the first few months, but then, out of the blue, entirely without warning, everything he had once found so charming about her would start to sour. Her laugh would begin to grate, in mid conversation she’d say something dumb, he’d notice that when she stayed she’d leave her things all over the bathroom floor. Suddenly, reality would come screaming into focus and the relationship would become instantly and irretrievably intolerable. Pretty rich, he knew: he was hardly catch of the year. But there it was.

      When he was ten, something happened to Frank that would stay with him forever. It was a few weeks after his dad had left and his Aunt Joanie had taken him and her spaniel Bongo to Greenwich Park. It was a beautiful day and the place had been full of sunbathing tourists, picnicking families, kids playing football. The dog had been running in circles at their feet as they walked, and Frank remembered thinking how strange it was that the sky was so blue and the air so warm when inside he felt so horribly cold, so horribly grey.

      ‘You’re going to have to be a big, brave boy now Frankie,’ his aunt was saying as they tramped along. ‘The thing is, sometimes grown-ups find life difficult …’ He tried his hardest to block out her voice but suddenly he couldn’t bear it any more. Why was everyone talking like his dad wasn’t coming back? Why had his mum not gotten out of bed for three weeks? It was disgusting, stupid the way they were all talking. He pulled his hand from Joanie’s and throwing a stick for Bongo, began to run.

      Ignoring his aunt’s call he threw the stick further and further, tearing after Bongo up the steep hill, on and on until he’d left the crowds and Joanie far behind. Of course his dad was coming back. Of course he was. He ran until he was in a part of the park secluded from the rest, on the heath side, near the deer and the big oak trees. And then he’d seen her. Under a tree twenty yards away was a girl of about seventeen, her legs stretched out before her, a book resting upon her lap. Bongo was sitting next to her, his big stupid tongue lolling out. Both of them watched him as he approached.

      ‘Hello,’ she said, when he reached her.

      He had opened his mouth to speak, but it seemed he’d forgotten how. The sun was low in the sky behind her and shone through her curls so her face was framed in a flaming halo of golden red. Her eyes were luminous; dragon-fly green. Never, never had he seen anything so beautiful. He could barely breathe, certain that if he even blinked she’d disappear, or he’d wake and find himself back in his bedroom, staring at his collection of dinosaurs. A feeling of perfect calm settled upon him.

      She was very slender, across the pale skin of her chest was a faint sprinkling of freckles. Through the thin white cotton of her top he could just make out the swell of her breasts and he felt himself flush red as something unrecognisable began to stir in his underpants. He gazed at her. Everything – the green of her eyes, the golden red of her hair, the blue of the sky – was supernaturally bright. With a little sigh, Bongo had flopped down and rested his head in her lap, and Frank had almost groaned with jealousy when her small, white hand had reached over and stroked the dog’s ears.

      ‘Are you lost?’ she’d asked.

      And even though he wasn’t, not really, he had nodded. She’d smiled, and after considering him a while said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll find your way back.’

      He felt as if he could stand there looking at her for the rest of his life. The world was perfectly silent, perfectly still. The sun sank lower in the sky. Just at that moment he heard Joanie’s voice calling him. ‘Frank! Frank!’ His name drifted to them like a sound from another world. He held his breath and willed her to go away.

      ‘Who’s that?’ asked the girl.

      ‘Auntie Joanie.’

      ‘Ah.’ She continued gazing at him for a while, and then smiled. ‘Well then, Frank,’ she said, ‘give me a kiss and then you’d better go.’

      As if she was an exotic bird that might take flight at any moment, very, very slowly he had knelt down and carefully kissed her cheek.

      She smiled. ‘Bye then, Frank. Be good.’

      And then he had turned and run towards Joanie’s voice, Bongo racing after him.

      ‘Did you see her?’ he asked urgently, when he reached his aunt. ‘Did you see her?’

      ‘Who?’ Joanie had squinted over in the direction he’d run from, scanning the grass. ‘No dear, I don’t see anyone.’

      He had turned and raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, but Joanie was right: there was nothing there. The girl had vanished.

      Since that day he had tried to find her again, had got into the habit of searching for her in crowds, of scanning the faces of every passing woman, but nothing. Sometimes in his dreams he would find himself back there, under the tree the summer he was ten, but just as he was about to kneel down and kiss her, he’d wake. Occasionally, listening to music, he would come close to finding again that sense of beauty – there amongst the notes and melodies and beats – but it was never quite enough: the thing he was searching for was always just out of his reach. His whole life he had been trying to find that perfection again, and in Kate he knew he had found it; he had found her.

      At first, their meetings were maddeningly infrequent. Kate was the most evasive person he had ever met. She had no mobile phone, moved from job to job, avoided talking about her home (to which he was never invited). And yet, just when he was about to give up hope of ever seeing her again she would appear at his door or at the record shop where he worked, saying simply, ‘Hello, Frank,’ with that same, breathtaking smile of hers beneath that same, steady gaze.

      But still she would offer nothing concrete for him to hold onto, and he was always under the impression she might disappear at any moment. Whenever they parted she would leave no trace of herself. And he had never met anyone who talked so little about themselves – women, in his experience, always liked to talk about themselves. For hours. In contrast, Kate’s silence was like a blank sheet upon which people were invited to draw whatever version of her they wished.

      ‘Your accent,’ he said, the second time they met. ‘Sometimes you sound American. Did you used to live there?’ Her response – a short, blithe account of a New York childhood, a car crash that had killed her parents, her move to London to live with an aunt – was so brief and delivered