27
Saturday, 18 June 1966
She urged the bike forward and went faster until the bushes and leaves were a whizz of green and brown. She stood up on the pedals and, her feet working furiously, she leant into the bend.
Michael and her dad were timing her from the other end of the park, but she didn’t need the stopwatch to know she would break the land speed record.
There was a dreadful grinding and the bike shook. Even though she pedalled harder she did not go any faster. She pressed on the other pedal and the scraping got worse. The bike tipped and Mary somersaulted on to the path. Hot pain rushed up her leg and she knew that, like the man in the Bluebird, she was going to die.
A whirring as if she was winding down. She opened her eyes. A pedal was spinning; it slowed and stopped. Silence. Above Mary was a blue sky with no clouds.
She sat up and stretched out her leg. Beads of blood dotted it like the dash of a red crayon. She twisted around. Michael and Daddy had gone.
Mary got out of bed and in her nightdress pattered across the matting and squeezed through the door, keeping quiet as a mouse. Michael’s bedroom door was shut. If he came out she would send him back to bed. She scurried along the landing and down the first three stairs from where she could see the hall.
Her dad had on the black suit he’d worn for Michael’s funeral. He was combing his hair at the mirror; it was shiny and Mary imagined stroking it. He lifted up his briefcase and gave her mum a quick kiss. Mary hadn’t seen her because she kept still, just as she did when Mary kissed her. Daddy opened the front door and went out.
Her mum stayed where she was. Mary knew she was not waiting for her dad to come back, but for Michael. She waited in the hall a lot now and only moved when Mary’s dad returned from his insurance visits – since Michael had died he even went out on Saturdays. Mary had tried to get her upstairs once and her mum had looked at her as if she were a ghost.
Mary wouldn’t try now. She ran back up the stairs. Outside Michael’s bedroom she listened. She couldn’t hear him. She glared at the door, doing the magic spell that worked with corn flakes in the kitchen, but instead of wishing herself back in their old house, Mary wished that her brother were fast asleep in his bed.