I sink into a wooden chair beneath the organ. My legs are shaking, and it takes a few seconds for my pulse to stop racing. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing something like that.
‘Looking good, Tea,’ I call in a shaky voice. She comes hurtling back to the floor after just a few seconds, but at least she doesn’t crash-land into the scaffolding this time. I clap, laughing at the way she beams at me. She takes off again, giving a word-perfect recital of a poem by Emily Dickinson as she flies, arching so high the edge of her right wing brushes the ceiling. It looks much better than when she first fell: stronger and straighter, even if there is still a large gap where Allie hasn’t attached the rest of the feathers yet.
My phone buzzes. Leah, I think. I pull it out of my pocket, but it’s a message from Allie telling me she’s feeling too ill to make it over. The disappointment stings. Only I can’t work out if I’m disappointed because she’s not here, or because Leah still hasn’t been in touch.
Though I still feel dizzy with confusion when I think about seeing Leah on the roof yesterday, things have started coming back to me too. There was the time Marek was making fun of the Standing Fallen, and Leah snapped at him to shut up, that ‘at least they believed in something’. Another time, when we were having a debate about where the Beings came from, she walked out without an explanation, standing up so fast she knocked her chair to the ground.
There were clues. I can’t tell whether I didn’t see them, or if I chose not to.
Part of me is itching to call Emma and tell her about what I saw yesterday, but so far I’ve held back. Emma’s got a huge mouth, and Leah might come back to her normal life one day. If she does, she probably won’t want half of Scotland knowing about the months she spent living with a cult.
Another secret I’m keeping for her.
After a few more flights, Teacake makes a wobbly landing on the wooden barrier in front of me. ‘We have Thomas from Auchtermuchty on the line. Tell us, what are your thoughts on wind farms?’
‘Nice work!’ I beam at her. ‘You’ll be home in no time.’
My heart pangs at the thought. It’s all we’ve been working for – getting her well enough to leave – but watching her go . . . that’s going to hurt. She leans against the stone pillar, and we open a packet of teacakes. She eats them the same way Allie does: biting off the chocolate shell, then licking out the marshmallow inside.
‘Listen,’ I say, wiping the chocolate from my mouth, ‘I wanted to talk to you about yesterday. About what you saw on the TV screen.’
She replies with a quote about disability benefits. I try to spell it out in shapes as I talk: a rectangle as the TV screen; my falling hands for the Beings we watched tumbling to earth; fingers drawing tears on my cheeks. Teacake’s expression doesn’t change, but she comes towards me, leaping up and balancing on the back of a chair.
‘It’s not your fault. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why they fell, or why you did,’ I say. ‘And maybe you feel guilty that you survived and they didn’t . . . But, listen, they wouldn’t have felt anything. It was over before it could hurt.’
I swallow and realize that there’s a lump in my throat. My eyes start to prickle.
‘You have to know that,’ I say. ‘You couldn’t have done anything. So don’t feel guilty, OK? Don’t blame yourself.’
The wings twitch. Teacake takes one of my hands in both of hers; it feels like sand brushing over my skin. She opens her mouth, and starts to speak: an advert for the Bank of Scotland, and the chorus of ‘Call Me Maybe’.
I laugh. I laugh until tears roll down my cheeks. Teacake joins in, a weirdly musical noise that sounds a bit like water pouring out of a bottle. There are a billion songs that she could have quoted from, that I could have read something into – ‘Nothing Compares to You’, maybe, or ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ – but not ‘Call Me fricking Maybe’. It doesn’t matter though. Like everything she does, it’s kind of perfect in its own weird way.
We’re both still laughing when the door opens. I look around, still grinning, expecting to see Allie or Calum walking towards us. Instead a blast of shock makes my head spin.
‘Rani?’
My sister is standing in the doorway staring right at Teacake. I swear under my breath: in all my panic about her following me, I must have left the door unlocked. Teacake yelps and falls off the back of the wooden barrier; with a beat of her wings, she freezes in the air just a metre above the floor. My sister’s jaw drops. In an instant, my shock turns to anger.
‘What are you doing here?’ My footsteps echo as I storm across the hall. Rani shrinks back, her hands pressed against the door. ‘How did you find us?’
‘I took your phone – you were in the bathroom. I saw your messages . . .’ She trails off. Her eyes are fixed on Teacake, who’s scrambling to her feet, a half-eaten Tunnock’s teacake still in one hand. ‘That’s a Being. That’s a Being, Jaya.’
My throat is tight. ‘I know, genius.’
This is it. This is the end. She’s going to tell Dad. He’ll march right over here, snatch Teacake from us and sell her to the highest bidder. She’ll be paraded around the country like a circus freak, or experimented on in some awful lab. She’ll never be free again, not even to hang out with us, eating biscuits and listening to the radio. She’ll never get to fly.
‘Ran, you can’t tell him,’ I blurt out. ‘You have to keep this a secret, OK?’
But Rani looks like she’s actually frozen, her eyes buglike behind her glasses. Teacake’s wings finally give out and she lands on the tiles with a bump.
‘What’s she doing here?’ Rani stammers. ‘Where did – Jaya, how is this . . .’
I’m scared she might pass out from the shock, like she did when the policewoman told her what had happened to Mum. My anger evaporates. I take her hand and lead her to a seat, then make her eat a biscuit and drink some water. Teacake comes to join us. Her head swerves from Rani to me and back again, as if connecting the dark brown eyes we got from Mum, the long noses we got from Dad.
‘This is my sister,’ I tell Teacake. ‘Rani.’
Her fingers shaking, Rani holds up one hand in a wave. Teacake blinks at it for a second, then slaps her own hand against it. I burst out laughing; she’s finally figured out how to high five. Rani’s mouth opens and closes, opens and closes, but it’s a full minute before she can speak again.
‘Where did you find her?’
I tell her everything. I don’t hold anything back. I don’t think I could – I didn’t realize how much this secret had been weighing on me. The story bursts past the dam and comes pouring out, details and plot points getting all tangled up in the rush. For once, Rani doesn’t interrupt. She listens to the whole unbelievable tale, her eyes growing wider by the minute, until I reach the point where we are now: hiding in McEwan Hall, with no real idea as to where we’ll take Teacake next.
Rani bites her lip. ‘We have to tell Dad,’ she says.
I knew she’d say that. But instead of making me mad it just hurts. I wish she’d take my side for once. It was different when Mum was still here. If she and Dad wouldn’t let Rani do something, I’d always back Rani up. When our parents were arguing, she’d come to my room and we’d make a duvet fort and watch stupid YouTube videos to take our minds off it. Us against them. We were a united front.
‘This isn’t about Dad,’ I tell her now. ‘We have to do what’s best for Teacake, and that’s helping her get home. You should have seen her when she fell – her wing was a total mess; she couldn’t stay in the air for more than a few seconds. Allie hasn’t even finished fixing it, and she’s already so much better.’
As if to demonstrate this, Teacake springs off the barrier. She floats towards the skylight, spins through the dusty shafts of light, then swoops past us. The edge of her left wing brushes Rani’s cheek. My sister gasps and lets out a nervous giggle.