‘Yep,’ I say, copying his neon-bright tone. ‘Let’s do it.’
His Wingding friends are already waiting for us when we arrive at the hill ten minutes later. They’re not wearing tacky T-shirts or plastic halos like some of the tourists you see around town, but I can pick them out instantly. There are people of all ages and races, dressed in everything from suits to football tops, Dr Who T-shirts to floral dresses. What else would bring all these people together, if not the Beings?
Dad parks near the edge of the road and grabs a box of tools from the boot of the car. A couple of the Wingdings wave, and the Dr Who fan lifts a cigarette in greeting. Behind them, two people are working on a strange contraption of metal and plastic. Its base is a little like a giant four-poster bed, only with metal wheels for feet, waist-high handles meant for pushing and pulling, and a large steel hook linking it to the back of a pickup truck. Attached to the top is a huge metal contraption not unlike the engine of a plane, only much bigger: a giant metal sphere encasing eight enormous propellers. It looks a bit like a fan, just like Dad said it would, only seven metres tall and as wide as a bus.
‘That,’ he says proudly, ‘is what we’ve been working on up in Perth.’
‘Wow, Dad!’ Rani looks up at him and beams. ‘It looks amazing! It’s huge!’
A few of the Wingdings come over to greet us, all handshakes and high fives. Others wave from across the lawn, where they’re dragging lumps of bright blue plastic from the boot of a car. Dad introduces us, but I can’t keep up with the names: there are about twenty-five of them in total, more than I’d expected. Rani makes a beeline for the machine, where a black woman in green overalls is fiddling with a huge tangle of wires, while a lanky Nordic-looking man climbs a ladder to attach something to the frame. Rani begins to bombard them with questions.
‘We didn’t have much time to put it together, but it’s incredibly powerful,’ says the woman, who introduces herself as Maya. ‘It rotates at around the same speed as an aircraft, but we’ve modified the propellers to allow for greater resistance. Look, I’ll show you.’
She reaches up and presses a button on the side of the machine. The fan makes a roaring sound like a jet taking off; a couple of crows get caught in its airway and are blasted into the sky so fast some of the feathers are ripped from their wings.
The man, Lars, points to a row of dials just below the button. ‘These let us control the power and the speed. So, the idea is, we’ll direct the machine towards the Being, use the fan to break its Fall, then slowly lower the pressure, letting it make a safe descent to earth.’
I dropped Physics after second year, but all of this seems quite amateur to me. Lars tells Rani – who’s now questioning their credentials – that he’s a maths teacher, and that Maya has a PhD, so they must know their stuff. I suppose it’s just hard to make calculations when we don’t know much about the most important variables: how much the Being weighs, the angle and speed he or she is going to fall at, and when it’s going to happen . . .
Dad claps me on the shoulder. ‘Right, you two,’ he says, grinning from Rani to me. ‘Let’s get to work.’
The lumps of blue plastic that the Wingdings were pulling from the car turn out to be inflatable mattresses to cushion the Being’s fall. Rani and I spend the first hour helping a chatty Glaswegian called Amir unfold and inflate them using an electronic pump, then help Lars and Maya practise moving their machine across the grass. It’s quite tiring, but at ten o’clock Evelyn, the Dr Who fan, hands out choc ices – nobody questions having ice cream for breakfast – and we sit on the grass, chatting and licking cream from our hands.
To my surprise, I’m kind of having a good time. Having a task is distracting me from the guilt of letting Dad carry on with this farce, but also the Wingdings’ happiness is sort of infectious. They seem so convinced that the Fall is going to happen, all talking of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. Some are planning what they’ll buy when they get their share of the reward money; others have long lists of questions they want to ask the Being.
‘I’m no looking for proof of the afterlife, mind. I have my faith – dinnae need anything else, ken whit I mean?’ Amir says. ‘But there’s other things I’d like tae know . . . aboot what’s going on up there that’s making them fall.’
Evelyn nods. ‘I know it won’t be straightforward, that it all depends on how fast the Being learns English . . .’ (I bite back a smile at that – if only they knew.) ‘I just want them to tell me if I’ll see my Daniel again. That’s all.’
She crumples the choc-ice wrapper and goes to help Maya and Lars with the machine. Her words leave a lump in my throat. That’s all. As if it’s just some simple request, instead of the biggest question going.
By half past ten, a crowd has started to gather around the machine. There are dozens of Wingdings from other countries, all taking photos and asking tons of questions. Shona pops down and witters on about positive energy and the moon being in Scorpio as Rani gives her a grand tour of the site. There’s even a journalist and a cameraman wandering around.
‘Should we do a countdown?’ Amir asks, at 10.53 a.m.
Dad scoffs. ‘It’s hardly going to be on the dot! You know there’s a ten-minute margin on either side.’ But after a moment, he shrugs. ‘What the hell. Let’s do it.’
The audience buzzes. Some people look on with genuine hope and excitement, but most with ironic interest or even outright cynicism – half the crowd is clearly here out of curiosity alone. Lars flips the switch again, and the propellers start to whirl. The noise is deafening; even with more than a hundred people shouting, I can barely hear the numbers over the roar of the engine.
‘Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .’
The voices grow louder. Somehow, I find myself joining in. All these people, together, all focused on the same purpose, chanting the same words: there’s power in that, even if the numbers themselves are meaningless.
‘Seven . . . six . . . five . . . four . . .’
Just a few metres from me, Rani is standing beside Dad. Her eye catches mine. There’s an expression there I can’t quite read. After a moment, she looks away.
‘Three . . . two . . . one!’
We wait for a speck of light. We wait for the streak of gold or silver or copper, the things that we’ve seen in the YouTube videos. We wait for an answer.
It doesn’t come. Some of the Wingdings throw up their arms in mock defeat; others start to laugh. The crowd look around, confused by this countdown that has led to nothing. Dad grins and waves his hands.
‘Don’t worry – it’ll still be coming! Our calculations were never that precise.’ He grins at Rani, who gives him a weak smile in return. ‘Would have been a nice dramatic touch though, wouldn’t it?’
It would have been more than that. It would have been a miracle. But we’ve already had eighty-nine of those. This time, another one really would be too much to ask.
People talk about the stages of grief as if it’s something you complete, a training programme with a print-out certificate at the end. I’m not sure where I’m supposed to be, eight months since Mum died.
It changes every day. There are moments when I think I’m starting to accept it, but then there are times when I’ll see someone on the bus with an expression like hers or read something that would have made her laugh and I can’t believe – like, physically cannot believe – that I’ll never see her again. It all feels like a sad, slow dance, and I’m being passed back and forth between different partners: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, over and over and over again.