style="font-size:15px;"> ‘I just like flying,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s what I was born to do.’
Over that first week, Sarah and me’d sit talking for hours. She told me all ’bout the places where she’d flown from, the ladders, the walls, the garages, the buildings. She told me ’bout how she was finding landing a bit of a bugger.
‘I keep forgetting my feet,’ she said.
She told me ’bout all the times she’d ended up in A&E and all the times that no one’d listened when she’d tried to explain that it was the landing and not the flying that was the problem.
I understood, the bit ’bout no one listening. I understood that bit, because no one’d listened to me either. No one understood why I couldn’t eat the food that they said I needed to eat to get better.
‘It’s not that simple,’ I’d said.
‘It is, just eat,’ the doctor’d said.
Six weeks later, Saturday the nineteenth of March, Sarah told me that she was itching to fly again. She told me while she was eating her tea, said how there wasn’t enough height for take-off, not anywhere on our ward. She’d tried from the cistern, but ended up banging her head on the cubicle door; she’d been concussed when the nurse’d found her.
That day, Sarah said that she needed to get out, that she’d heard, ’bout a bridge ’bout half a mile away, that it’d be her highest challenge yet. She was itching, she said, really itching. She told me that she needed to spread her wings and fly, that being cooped up was driving her mad, that flying was what she was born to do.
‘Will you cover for me? Just tell them I’m in the loo. Say I’ve got the splats,’ Sarah said and we both laughed.
Turns out no one asked me where Sarah was, I don’t even think they noticed that she’d gone, not until someone phoned. Then holy hell broke out on the ward, with nurses running around, patients being counted, lights going on in the middle of the night. Some of the inmates screamed, others sang Christmas carols; a change in routine brought out the worst in them.
I needed to find Sarah, because she’d know what was going on, she’d been cooped up on the ward for months, she’d know what to do.
I walked the ward, past the part-closed curtains, past the beds, past the other freaks, counted them, one two three four five six seven.
And then I came to Sarah’s bed.
I found a nurse there, she was packing up Sarah’s things into a Walkers Crisps cardboard box.
This is what I do:
First, I take off my clothes, leave them hidden in the field behind the bus stop. Now I vault her wall and I land in her back garden. I shrink myself down – turn myself into a cat – the same colour as hers (it’s all in the detail) – and I squeeze through her door and into her kitchen. I pad over to the basket and curl up there.
I allow myself a happy meow. She’ll be awake soon.
All I have to do is wait.
The love story ended on the beach. You know, I thought we were so happy, so together, so in-tune. I thought we were linked. But you did it again, that thing. And right then, right there at the beach, I realised.
You’d done it at dinner the night before. I was telling you my plans, suggesting a future for us, and you, you pulled away, you went somewhere else. Your eyes were not on me. I don’t think you heard my words. I think you were looking for another future, one just for you. You were looking out of the window.
And, now I think about it, you’d been doing it for years. You were always late. Even on that first date I read the menu twenty-two times before you arrived. You didn’t even look flustered. I don’t think you’d rushed. Twenty-two times, Emma. I counted. I remember.
You were always pulling away.
It didn’t matter where we were, we could be anywhere, you were always looking the other way, always moving away from me.
Your course at the university, your placement, your friends. None of that was for me. I was unwelcome.
It hit me on the beach.
I was talking. Do you remember what I said? I doubt it.
Emma, I was talking about the house that you said you liked. I was explaining how we could afford it. I’d done the sums. I had stopped to explain it all to you.
And you kept walking. I was no longer talking to you, I was no longer looking at your face. I couldn’t see your eyes, your mouth, your fringe. I was left looking at your back, at your shoulders, at your ponytail. I was left looking at the shapes the soles of your feet made in the sand. I was left watching you walking away from us.
And I knew I couldn’t stop you. I knew I couldn’t follow. I knew I needed to let you go.
That’s why I turned. That’s why I went back to the car.
That’s why I went home.
Our love story ended on the beach.
We were walking along the sand. You were talking about that house, the one I’d needled you to view, the one I’d said we needed, the one I’d said I couldn’t live without. You’d laughed, kissed my forehead, called me a drama queen. This walk was your way, a romantic gesture, you’d wanted to tell me how you’d figured out the sums, how we could afford that house. And I didn’t even reply to you, I didn’t nod or even smile.
Jamie, I’d wanted to tell you a week ago, I’d wanted to tell you at dinner last night. And then it hit me, right when you were talking about rising interest rates and first-time buyer incentives, right then I realised that if I didn’t say my words out loud then my head would explode into a million squidgy pieces.
‘I’m pregnant but I shouldn’t be,’ I whispered. I kept on walking, kept my eyes fixed on the pier, too scared to even look your way. I knew that if I saw even a flicker of joy, then I’d shatter into smithereens. The wet sand tickled my toes and on any other day I’d have made you take off your trainers and raced you into the sea. On any other day I’d have been telling you just how alive I felt, that I loved you, that having our baby growing inside of me made me feel normal for the first time in my life.
‘I wanted to tell you yesterday,’ I whispered. I wanted to tell you what the doctors had said. ‘I wanted to say, “My heart doesn’t work properly”, I wanted to say, “50
