There’s a flutter of guilt in my chest. I haven’t spent any time with Rani in ages. It’s been months since we had a movie marathon or played Bananagrams and painted our nails. She hardly ever asked; she was always too busy helping Dad with his research.
But I didn’t ask either. If I’m honest, I used Dad as an excuse to avoid her. Spending time with Rani was just another reminder of everything that had changed. No chance of Mum coming in with a plate of cinnamon buns, picking through Rani’s nail varnishes and asking for a manicure. No chance of Dad sticking his head around the door to tease Rani about whichever boy-band member she liked that month. Spending time with Rani would have meant pretending everything was OK again, or acknowledging that it wasn’t. I wasn’t ready to do either.
‘Another day, Ran—’ I start to say, but I’m interrupted by Dad’s shouting from the living room.
‘Mate, it’s nonsense! It must be! They must have faked them somehow. There’s no way they can be real.’
My stomach lurches. ‘What’s he talking about?’ I whisper to Rani.
She trickles the last of the milk into her mouth. ‘Dunno. This is, like, the fourth phone call he’s had in the past hour.’
I ease the living-room door open. Dad is standing by the window, pinching the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
‘Tell you what, I’ll try to look up the IP address. Maybe we can track down whoever the seller is,’ he says. ‘Honestly, though, I think it’s a waste of time. Chances of them being real are one in a million. Less, even.’
A muffled, panicked voice keeps babbling on the other end of the line. Dad listens to whatever the person has to say, then mutters a grumpy goodbye and slumps on to the sofa. He’s wearing the same T-shirt he had on yesterday, with the same tomato-soup stain below the collar.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask, stepping into the room.
‘Och, nothing important.’ He shakes his head, and he sounds more exasperated than angry. ‘Some Being’s feathers have appeared online, and the seller says they were found in Edinburgh. A few of the other enthusiasts are worried that we might have missed the Fall.’
When I find my voice, it doesn’t sound like my own. ‘That’s not possible though, is it? Someone would have seen something.’
‘That’s what I said.’ He gives me an appreciative nod. ‘It’ll just be some idiot with bird feathers and spray paint trying to con us out of a few grand. I don’t know why anyone’s taking it seriously.’
The guilt in my chest tightens. I’m doing the right thing, I remind myself. I’m doing the right thing. I chant the words in my head as I make pasta for dinner, as Rani nags me about doing something tomorrow, as I lie in bed listening to a busker bleating out ‘Angel of Harlem’. I’m doing the right thing. Teacake is more important than Dad’s plans, more important than the uneasy feeling stirring in my stomach. Saving her is what matters.
But behind my words there’s another niggling voice telling me that the ‘right thing’ may not be the right thing for my family – and if that’s the case I don’t know if it’s the right thing at all.
THIRTEEN
Sometimes, when someone dies in a book or on TV, the people left behind say they can’t believe the world keeps on turning. They can’t understand how there are still people driving to the supermarket or queuing at the post office, that there are still cereal bowls in the sink, and piles of laundry at the foot of the stairs.
I never got that. The drive back from the hospital felt like being in a foreign country. The garden where Mum had spent so many hours planting and pruning now felt strange and savage. Our house seemed both bigger and smaller, as if the walls had been lined with fairground mirrors. Her famous pineapple and cherry scones, still on the cooling tray, had become inedible. I didn’t think I’d ever eat again. Her perfume was still lingering in the bathroom, but it smelt stronger than before. Sweeter.
Even weeks afterwards, once we’d had the ceremony and scattered her ashes in the Ness, after Ammamma and the rest of the family had kissed our foreheads and gone home to London, ‘back to normal’ was never what it had been before. The lack of her was in everything: in the overgrown grass, in the cookbooks gathering dust by the microwave, the sunny spot in the living room where no one stretched out to read any more. Everything was different, as if her leaving had shaken up the world’s atoms. And I only had myself to blame.
I get the same feeling when I arrive at the Botanic Gardens the next day. The weekend’s rain has been replaced by bright sunshine, and the place is packed: little kids playing hide and seek, students reading on the lawns, couples wandering between the flowerbeds. I keep catching glimpses of our last trip here as I walk through the garden to meet Allie and Calum: Mum kneeling by the edge of a flower bed, trying to take a photo of a grey squirrel; Perry chasing a terrified chihuahua across the lawn, being chased in turn by its irate owner. The garden hasn’t changed, but it’s not the same place it was a few years ago. Not with these ghosts wandering by the pond or between the trees.
Rani asked if she could come with us again this morning. I almost wish I’d said yes, instead of sneaking out of the flat while she was talking Wingding stuff with Dad. Most of my memories are these little scraps, threadbare and worn at the edges. Maybe together she and I could patch them into something bigger, something that would give us a bit of comfort.
Not all the changes are bad though. Now there’s Calum, wandering around the trees in the Arboretum. And there’s Allie, waving a feather at me as I walk up the path. She’s even dressed for the occasion: her skirt is patterned with tiny blue birds, and there are feather earrings dangling above her shoulders. She looks cute. More than that – kind of gorgeous, actually.
‘We’re off to a good start!’ She reaches a rubber-gloved hand into her bag and pulls out three long white plumes. ‘We’ve found all these already.’
‘Nice!’ I raise my eyebrows at her as Perry bounds ahead to say hi. ‘Go on. What kind of birds are these from?’
She clears her throat. ‘This specimen hails from the Larus argentatus,’ she says, in her best David Attenborough voice. ‘Commonly referred to as a seagull. Bit gross, but they’ll do the job. Though Mr Hypochondria here is convinced we’re all going to get bird flu and die.’
She waves the feathers at Calum, who scowls and swats them away.
‘I’m just being realistic! Birds are manky; they’re teeming with diseases,’ he says, taking a miniature bottle of hand sanitizer out of his jacket pocket. ‘Plus, Teacake’s immune system won’t be able to cope with the germs here on Earth. I’m surprised she can deal with Perry, or us.’
My eyes widen; I hadn’t even thought about stuff like that. Allie waves her hand dismissively.
‘Och, she’ll be fine. We’ll just need to sterilize them really well before we attach them to her wi—’ She breaks off as a woman edges past us with an enormous double buggy. ‘Her, um, winter coat.’
I grin. ‘Don’t you mean her windowsill?’
‘Wait, wait, wait,’ Calum says. ‘I thought we were repairing her windmill?’
We pace around the Arboretum, throwing out more words beginning with ‘win’ as we search. After just twenty minutes, we’ve found four blackbird feathers, two blue tit, two sparrow and three more seagull, all in that one area of the garden. Perry bounds between the trees chasing birds, her tail wagging happily. For the first time this year, I feel properly summery. It’s so hot that soon I have to take my jumper off, and every so often we take a break to stretch out on the lawn and soak up the sun.
There’s just one thing spoiling my mood: I can’t get Dad’s phone call out of my mind.
‘Are you OK?’ Allie asks me, as she stoops to pick a blackbird feather off the grass. ‘You’ve gone a bit quiet.’