The Migration, page 15
* * *
—
The officer is back. He stares at me through the window as he struggles to fit the key into the lock while keeping a hold on two take-away boxes.
A draft of cool air bursts in when he manages it. I have to shuffle over, twisting with my bound hands so he can slide in next to me.
“I’m Police Constable Trefethen.” He’s calmer now, the gruffness smoothed out of his voice. He balances the two grease-laden boxes on his knee, fishes through his pockets for another set of smaller keys to release the cuffs. Watches me warily once he’s done it.
“Hungry?”
I nod. He tears the lid off and hands one of the boxes of fish and chips to me. “Thanks,” I manage.
Eating is more important than talking. My body is calorie starved, amped up with adrenaline.
“Thought you might need that. Thought your parents might appreciate you coming back sober.”
“You aren’t going to take me in?”
He picks at one of the chips thoughtfully, as if he is surprised by it, by its existence, here in this car. “No,” he says. “I’ll take you home. Just this once.”
“Why?”
He shifts on the seat. The firearm at his side seems like an uncomfortable weight, one he isn’t used to. As if he doesn’t like it very much. But he doesn’t answer me.
“What happened to my friends?”
“The JR if they’re hurt. Some of them may go to lock-up while they cool off. We can’t hold them forever. Not enough space, but overnight, maybe. The Colleges will be after us if it’s any more than that.”
He stares at me and I realize from the glazed look that he’s in shock. “You’re young, aren’t you?” he asks. “Young for the Colleges, I mean. For—what happened out there.” Disgust in his voice now. “We never wanted to hurt any of you, but what were we to do? That thing in the sky…and then all of you lot, it was like you all went mad. Never seen anything like it, not here. You’re supposed to be the best and brightest but you were damn near trying to rip us apart.”
“We didn’t mean it.” He just blinks his eyes in disbelief. I wipe my lips on the back of my hand, return his stare. “You shot it down.”
“Rubber bullets,” he spits. “All this civil unrest, the curfew, now they’ve issued us with fucking riot gear. We’d just heard about a gathering of you lot. Drunken kids, you know. But then it was—”
“It was a kid.”
He stares at me in disbelief. “That was no child.”
“It was,” I insist. “Or it was, once.”
He cradles his head in his hand, pressing his palm against his forehead. “Bloody hell.” His hand spasms into a fist. “Bloody fucking monsters now. It wears a man out, watching this. The dead should stay dead.”
“They aren’t dead,” I try to tell him but he doesn’t seem to hear me.
“I lost me own. My boy was thirteen. I was teaching him football. Jesus fucking Christ. It was bad enough when he passed. It’s no wonder they burn the lot of them up. Imagine looking up and seeing your own? It’s wrong.”
“We just don’t understand it properly.”
“What’s there to understand, girl? This is madness. You all went mad out there, but I don’t know if I blame you. Maybe the whole world has gone mad. Rotten at its core.” Remembering where he is, who I am, a note of pleading creeps into his voice. “You weren’t doing anything, were you? You were just scared. Can’t lock you up for being scared, can I? So I’ll bring you back to your mum and dad, safe and sound. Food in your stomach. And you’re damn well going to mind what you do with yourself, understand? Sit tight, wait it out. Forget whatever you saw tonight.”
Welcome to the monster club, Bryan said.
Trefethen takes the soggy boxes once we’re finished eating, exits the car and deposits them in a trash can on the street, then settles into the front seat again.
“You know you’re wrong,” I tell him. He raises his eyebrows. “You’re wrong about what’s happening.”
“You think what you want, girl,” he says, his expression thickening from disbelief to a dull anger. “But this won’t be the last of it. If there’s more of those things out there, by god, it won’t just be rubber bullets they give us. Just you wait.”
22
Trefethen parks on the street outside the house and insists on walking me to the door. I try to tell him there’s no one in there, that Aunt Irene is away, but he doesn’t believe me.
“I’ve heard that enough times,” he says, chewing on his bottom lip, “you don’t want your mum and dad to know what you’ve been up to. But I can’t leave you here by yourself.” I wonder if he’s a little bit afraid of me, what I might do. He knocks at the door with three hard, short raps while I linger behind him. We wait a while together. I shuffle my feet, wondering what happens when no one comes. Will he have to bring me back to the station after all?
But then I hear footsteps. The door opens a crack. “Sophie? Is that you?” Mom’s face is pale in the bald light of the porch and her eyes widen with surprise. There are lines I don’t recognize. I want to hug her but the situation is so weird. Her gaze flicks to the man next to me. “And…you. What are you doing with my daughter?”
“PC Daniel Trefethen,” he supplies.
“Right,” she says slowly. “Police constable. Sorry, I. I didn’t realize.” The door opens. Mom leans awkwardly against the frame, pulling unconsciously at a thread in the sleeve of her jumper. “What’s all this about then?”
“I wanted to bring your daughter home. She was…” His gaze fastens on me. “Out past curfew. I knew you’d be worried, waiting up for her.”
“I was, yes.” She blinks again, looking lost. “Thank you, sir. I’m sorry if she’s caused any problems.”
“Is that it?” I ask him. “Can I go?”
“Right,” he says. “Mind the curfew next time. The other officers aren’t as soft as me. You don’t want to spend the night at the station, hear?” He doesn’t touch me, doesn’t shake hands or anything like that. He just turns and marches down the steps. Mom’s eyes continue to follow him as he gets into the squad car.
“Mom?” I say, shivering now. “When did you get home?”
“Hours ago.” She looks as if she wants to say more but instead she nudges the door open and I follow her in. I wish she would yell at me. I wish she would look at me. But something stops her: guilt, maybe. It’s almost as if she’s afraid of me.
* * *
—
The house is quiet. Just inside the hall I see her suitcase, her shoes. I want to crawl into bed, bury my face in a pillow. Let the night drift away from me. But Mom is finally home and I know I can’t.
“Mom?” I follow her into the kitchen. I hate this: the way she’s treating me. Like I’m a stranger. “I’m sorry about all this. I was just out with friends and I lost track of the time. I didn’t know you would be back tonight.”
It’s then I notice the mess. She has upended an album of photographs. They’re scattered across the tablecloth, some spread out across the chairs, a few have drifted to the tiled floor. There are photographs of Kira by herself, playing in the garden at the old house in Toronto. Another with a face smeared with chocolate cake—her fourth birthday party maybe?—still that silly grin. Even one of her and Dad though you can’t see much more than his hand, which I recognize immediately from the long fingers, the same fingers I have. I pick up a piece of glossy paper. The bottom edge has been cut in the shape of a crescent moon. It’s a picture of me, young, staring at something outside of the frame now, but I have a look of thorough concentration on my face. I realize this is me holding Kira as a baby for the first time.
As I try to make sense of it, Mom pours herself a glass of water. “How long have you been back?” I ask at last.
“My train got in just before dinner. I didn’t know where you were, where anyone was. Your phone wasn’t on. Sophie, if anything happened to you—”
I don’t let her finish. The evening has been too awful and for a moment I don’t care about anything beyond that she’s here with me now. I gather her in my arms. “I really missed you, Mom,” I say and it’s true. I want her to know that. After everything that’s happened tonight I just want things to be the way they were before. When if I screwed up she could scold me and even if it made me angry I’d know eventually things would be good between us again.
“You aren’t angry with me for leaving you?”
There’s a wariness in her movements as if she’s waiting for me to hurt her. And all at once I know I could. She’s my mother but she left when I needed her. I could turn away now, cut her out—and she’d let me because some part of her thinks she deserves it.
The sudden swing in our relationship leaves me dizzy. “You did what you had to,” I tell her at last. “It’s okay, Mom. Really. I’ve been okay.”
When I pull back I can see the damage the last months have inflicted in her lined face but there’s something else. She looks stronger. Her muscles are toned, skin coppery from the sun. And when she looks at me I can see her relaxing visibly, despite the shine of tears in her eyes.
“Sit,” she says.
“I’m sorry.” I try again but she waves her hand.
“Hold on. I know we need to talk about this—you missing curfew when your aunt is away—but first, how are feeling? Is there any pain? Nausea?”
“On a scale of one to ten?” She’s her old self again. A ghost of a smile crosses my face.
“You haven’t been drinking, have you?”
“A little, yeah,” I say at last.
“Sophie, you shouldn’t…”
“I know,” I tell her. “It was a dumb thing to do. But I’m okay.” I don’t let her see my hands. “Aunt Irene’s been taking me to my appointments. There isn’t much news though, nothing that anyone seems to be able to do for me. So mostly I’ve just been trying to get by. Keep it together, you know?”
“I do.” She sighs, then glances at me. “It isn’t easy, is it?”
“Maybe it shouldn’t be.”
We’ve both got things we’re sorry for. We’ve both made mistakes with each other. But as the silence lengthens I’m glad she’s here. Even if it means more questions. I thought I could do this by myself but what if I was wrong?
“What was it like up in Warwickshire?” I ask her.
She’s hesitant at first but when I lean forward she begins to talk. “It was a warm winter. Jackie wanted to try out peaches, she thought they might grow now. They bloomed early and we had to pollinate them by hand because the bees hadn’t come out yet. We used old paintbrushes for it. I had to press the bristles into each flower, one by one.” She shakes her head at the absurdity of it.
“It looks as if it was good for you.”
“It was.” It’s weird. She’s talking to me as if I’m Aunt Irene, as if we’re both adults. “Things moved more slowly up there. They’ve had floods too, particularly around the Avon, but it wasn’t so bad. Everyone turned up to help with clearing the damage. There was glass in the fields, bits of debris. If we hadn’t all pitched in they wouldn’t have been able to start planting new crops. The government isn’t moving fast enough. They can’t cope with the scale of this.”
“Aunt Irene’s said the same thing,” I tell her.
“Sophie, I want to be better now. For you. And for Kira too. I know she isn’t…with us anymore. There are times I miss her so much it feels like I’m drowning and…and I just didn’t want to pull you under as well.”
“I know, Mom. It’s just…you’re staying now, right?”
She nods slowly.
“I want to be here with you. I couldn’t protect Kira but I want us both to find a way to remember her that doesn’t hurt so much. We can’t give up on life, Sophie. We can’t retreat from it. I don’t want you to do that.”
That’s when I realize what the mess on the kitchen table is about, what she’s beginning to make. A collage for Kira. Together the two of us look at the foundations of what she’s been laying down.
“What is it?”
“I don’t rightly know yet. We never scattered her ashes. It all feels unfinished.” She touches one of the photos of Kira she has been reshaping. “I used to think that joy was an accretion, something you could build up and make physical. It was almost like a shell, a way of trying to ward off danger. But when your sister got sick the fear made that harder. It put a crack in things. I couldn’t do it anymore.”
“And now?”
“If there’s anything of Kira left in the world, she’d want us to find a way to be happy, don’t you think?”
I glance at her sharply but she’s staring at the pictures. Does she feel something? Some trace of connection? Or is it just what all parents feel? I don’t care. I hug her again and it’s like touching a live wire, the voltage running back and forth, a shared moment of grief passing between the two of us. But dissipating afterward.
It’s good. It feels really good. Maybe the only good thing that’s happened today. It all comes back to me in a rush and I have to fight back tears.
“Will you tell me what happened tonight?” she asks me, catching the change in my expression. How she’s behaving is different. She never would have given me a choice before. I wish I could share the truth with her but I can’t. It would be too much, too soon. She’s stronger now but would she understand? I remember how Trefethen reacted, disbelieving, angry.
“I met these students from the College. They were throwing a party. It’s been ages since I’ve really talked to anyone so I decided to go. I just wanted things to feel normal for once.”
She nods slowly, taking this in. I expect scolding but none comes.
“Are you going to ground me?”
“I don’t know. I’ll need to think about it.”
“You can if you like.”
Mom smiles at this, me offering to take on punishment. I wouldn’t have done that back in Toronto.
“Things were different with Kira,” she says. “She was so young when she got sick. But you’ll be eighteen in a few months. I know you’ve had to make decisions for yourself but you can’t be reckless. Last time, when I got the call from the police—”
“I’m okay. I promise you, I’ll do better.”
She picks up one of the photographs. “Your sister was beautiful, wasn’t she?”
“She was,” I tell her.
“You were a good sister, Sophie.”
23
I’m finally alone in my room and I desperately want to sleep but my head is a cauldron of worries. Mom has begun to heal but for me nothing has been solved. There are gouges and dark bruises around my wrists from where the handcuffs bit into my skin. She didn’t see them and I couldn’t tell her what had happened.
Sit tight, wait it out. Forget whatever you saw tonight.
That was Trefethen’s advice. Maybe it would be Mom’s too—but I can’t follow it. Kira is still at the cement works and Bryan could be dead. In the darkness all I can think about is the way that boot came down. The damage it might’ve done. And if he were to die, what then? There’s a terrible blankness in my mind when I try to imagine it.
Only: I can’t lose someone else.
The window is large, unsteady in its rotted frame, but I can pry it open with my fingernails.
“Sorry, Mom,” I whisper. I hate that I can’t tell her the whole truth when all I want is to find a way for us to rebuild our family. For a little while, in the churchyard, I felt joy. I understood it. Now all I can think about is survival: mine, Kira’s, Bryan’s.
The wind rushes in off the river, the amphibious smell of decay. The height makes my stomach turn as I crawl out into the night.
* * *
—
I ride toward the JR first. Trefethen said that’s where the injured would be taken and I need to know if Bryan’s alive. Kira can wait until after—at least that’s what I tell myself.
On the way two ambulances pass me, their sirens blaring. There are police cars trailing them, but no one else on the road. More lights are on than I’d expect in the houses I pass and once I think I hear a sound above me but when I stop and look up there’s nothing there. I squint into the night but the streetlights blind me. Eventually I get back on my bike and pedal faster.
At the hospital I find Liv by the nurse’s station. Her dress is matted with mud, the hem slashed to ribbons. Limp strands of hair, gummed with dirt, frame a face made sharp by strain. “Sophie? What’re you doing here?”
I shake my head, not bothering with the whole story. “I’m here for Bryan. Where is he? Do you have any news?”
“I’ve never seen him like that. He was covered in blood.”
“I know, I saw him.”
“That officer broke his ribs.”
“Is he—?” My heart jumps.
“He’s in intensive care. Martin too. I don’t understand it. What happened out there?”
Her eyes wander, unable to fix on anything. I grab her shoulder. “You’re okay?”
“My father woke someone up at the French embassy and had me released, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. The police took away my passport.”
I guide her toward a chair, bring her a cup of coffee. The waiting room is unusually silent, tense. Clusters of staff gather around the television monitors. The newsreel shows footage of the nymph from what looks like cameras worn by the officers. What they capture is like something snagged from a fairy tale. Androgynous. Its golden eyes are flicking left, right, left in pure panic, and its body begins to—I don’t know, undulate or bristle. The strange pearly white of its skin sucks in until I can make out the shape of its bones, the thin twig of its humerus, and a ridge that runs vertically down its chest. It leaps into flight.
“Oh my god,” someone murmurs, sparking a frightened rumble of agreement.
Liv follows my gaze. “The story just broke. There have been sightings of them all around the country.”
“Have they figured out what they are?”
