Of Things Gone Astray

by Janina Matthewson

  A voice called out from the other side of the plastic, causing Mrs Featherby to start for the second time.

  ‘Hello,’ said the voice, and Mrs Featherby sighed and smiled.

  ‘Hello Small Girl Bonny,’ she said. ‘How nice to see you.’

  Cassie.

  THE BARK WAS COVERING CASSIE’S lips, and people were finding it hard to talk to her. It’s always hard to talk to someone who can’t reply. They talked at her, but it always felt as if they were trying to avoid a response rather than encourage one. The people who knew her best had almost stopped talking altogether.

  Maeve came to show Cassie terrifying and hilarious facts from her pile of pregnancy books. She never said so, but she wholeheartedly believed Cassie was the reason she’d finally managed to get pregnant. Which meant she was responsible for the jokes and laughs over choosing baby names, the excited shopping for cots and pushchairs, and the general lifting of the cloud Maeve had been living under for so long. Maeve was one of the many who, despite the evidence, didn’t truly believe that Cassie’s transformation would ever be complete. She couldn’t imagine it happening, even though it was, and right in front of her eyes.

  Cassie had made another woman in the airport happy, without ever knowing about it. A young deaf girl had heard about the strange situation in Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport and been desperate to see it. A young deaf girl who’d been raised on superstition and wanted to believe in magic. Cherry’s daughter came to see the tree-girl at the airport. She stood near her for ten minutes, too shy to approach her and that evening her life changed.

  Cherry had made her daughter a late-night hot chocolate before bed. They’d been sitting together quietly when suddenly something had changed. Cherry’s daughter looked up, her brow furrowed. She shook her head briefly, as if there was water in her ears, and concentrated. She walked over to the window and looked out into the street.

  It was late at night and the street was quiet, but every so often a car would drive past, and for the first time ever, Cherry’s daughter could hear them.

  Cassie didn’t notice that Cherry had stopped glaring at her, and if she had, she wouldn’t have thought to ask why.

  Her mum would fuss over her, brush her hair, shoo away the curious, but she would rarely say a word. She would avoid looking Cassie in the eye. It was only now that Cassie noticed that she was looking older. It was only now she noticed her mum’s ill-fitting clothes, her clammy-looking skin, her broken hair.

  Jasper still checked on her frequently, but he was also looking sad more often than usual.

  Bridie was quieter than she had ever been. She’d sit in her row of seats, which would now be forever stuck in its inconvenient position, diagonally cutting across the thoroughfare, and read, or write letters. No one else was coming.

  Cassie had started to wonder what they’d do once she was all tree. Would they come and visit her? Would they leave flowers, as if the tree was her gravestone? Would the airport let her stay here? Would they try to have her removed?

  It occurred to her that she’d picked a pretty average place to become a tree. Surely there was a glade or a grassy knoll somewhere that was short of a tree. But of course, it was too late now. And she supposed that few trees really got to choose where they grew. At least here she would be a feature. ‘We’ll meet by the tree,’ people would say.

  Maybe, when Floss did come back, she would meet someone by the tree. And maybe she wouldn’t want to leave it. Maybe, without knowing why, she’d want to stay at the airport, want to sit beside the tree she didn’t realise she knew. Maybe she’d remember Cassie when she saw the tree. Maybe she would remember loving her. When she came back.

  Jake.

  THE GIRL, DELIA, WAS EATING with one hand and using the other to flip through Jake’s photos. Jake had never seen an adult eat like that, not at dinner time. She hadn’t said anything in a while, but she kept glancing at the empty chair. Jake had the impression she was trying hard not to say anything.

  ‘Why are you looking at those pictures instead of talking to me?’ the empty chair said suddenly.

  Delia smiled to herself and looked up. ‘Oh, you should look at them too.’

  Jake’s mouth felt dry suddenly as Delia pushed the pile of photos across the table.

  ‘Are these yours?’ the empty chair asked.

  ‘No,’ said Delia. ‘They’re someone else’s. They’re good, aren’t they?’

  ‘I like this one of the dog. I think this dog lives around here.’

  Jake had hated the dog next door for months. He hated most dogs these days; they reminded him of bad things. Then he’d decided to take photos of it and had spent an entire hot Sunday perched on top of the back garden wall leaning over as far as he dared with his camera. By the end of the day, he and the dog understood each other.

  Jake sat listening to his dad talk as he went through his photos. He noticed that the girl Delia had stopped eating and was gripping the table. She kept looking at Jake, and he kept nodding at her to let her know that he could hear what his dad was saying.

  ‘Hey,’ said the chair, ‘I’ve seen these ones before. These ones at the zoo.’

  ‘I took those ages ago,’ said Jake. ‘Months and months ago.’

  ‘What was that?’ said the empty chair, which for a moment was not empty.

  Delia, sat up straight and looked at Jake. Jake chewed his lip and sank down in his seat. He was suddenly afraid, but he didn’t know why. He hadn’t been afraid in the longest of times. Not since those moments on that day. The ones before he knew he had nothing left to lose.

  ‘What?’ said Delia.

  ‘Someone said something. It wasn’t you, it was someone else.’

  ‘It was Jake,’ said Delia. Jake swallowed twice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Jake, Anthony. Your son. He took those photos months ago.’

  Anthony stood up from the table. ‘Do you want dessert?’ he said. ‘I think I have ice cream.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Delia. ‘Sure, fine, but don’t you want to keep looking at the photos?’

  ‘Oh, that’s OK; they might get dirty. We shouldn’t really have them at the table. You’ll have to give them back to the person who took them, right?’

  ‘Your fucking son took them, idiot! Sorry Jake.’

  Jake didn’t say anything. He got up from the table and walked around to where his dad had been sitting. He slipped the pile of photos off the table and carried them out of the room. He heard Delia calling after him, but he kept walking, up the stairs and into his room. He put the photos back into the shoebox he kept them in and sat on his bed, looking at his collection.

  It had been days since he’d found a lost thing. That was probably why he felt so sad.

  The Wedding Certificate.

  ITEM: MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE

  Place found: living room cupboard.

  The month on the certificate was April. The place was Akaroa, New Zealand. The names were Holly Grey and Anthony Baxter.

  It had been packed in a large box with a lot of other papers, where it had stayed for several months. When the box was unpacked and the bank statements and bills and letters filed in sensible places, the certificate was left out for a while. Its owner didn’t know what he was supposed to do with it.

  Eventually, he slipped it into the cupboard, resolving to find a more appropriate place. But other things were added to the cupboard and the certificate got lost beneath them.

  Every once in a while, the owner would remember it, and resolve to search for it, to find it, and decide how it should be kept.

  Mrs Featherby.

  THE SHEET OF PLASTIC WAS down. If Mrs Featherby had been overseeing its removal, it would have been folded immediately, pressed and put in its rightful place in whatever closet was designated for the storing of house-sized plastic sheeting. But it was Bruno who was in charge, and so the sheet was draped over the small front garden, forming dirty white mountains and valleys, spilling out over the
low stone wall and onto the footpath and road beyond.

  The sheet of plastic was down because a wall was going up. Mrs Featherby stood in her sitting room, watching as bricks were laid and mortar was spread. When the wall was up to her waist, a small girl appeared on the other side of it.

  ‘Good afternoon, Small Girl Bonny,’ she said.

  ‘Hello,’ returned the girl, with serious eyes. ‘Is your house being fixed?’

  ‘It certainly is.’

  ‘Oh. Will I still be able to get into it?’

  ‘I dare say you will. There is going to be a door.’

  The two of them stood, facing each other, as the wall rose. As it covered Small Girl Bonny’s face, she called over it, ‘Goodbye, um, Mrs.’

  Mrs Featherby remained silent as the wall continued to rise. After a few minutes Small Girl Bonny’s voice sailed over again.

  ‘Oh, that’s right, my mum says you can come over to my house for dinner now because of all the building. Not right now. At dinner time.’

  Mrs Featherby swallowed and took a moment before she spoke. Before she could trust herself to speak.

  ‘Thank you, Small Girl Bonny. That sounds delightful and I’ll certainly try to make it.’

  Jake.

  THE LOST LETTER WASN’T REALLY lost. It had just gone wrong. It had been in the normal pile of mail that came every morning, but it was in the pile at Jake’s house instead of the pile it was supposed to be in at someone else’s house.

  The address was hard to read and the postcode was missing.

  The letter sat on the floor of his room for weeks, in between a one-armed stuffed gorilla and a set of car keys, and Jake wanted to open it. He could see where the letter had come from and it was a long way away. He could see how it had become jumbled up with all the other letters and gone into the wrong pile. He could see how it had made its way to his house instead of the other house, the right house. But he wanted to see which house it was. He wanted to see who was supposed to get the letter instead of him, and he thought that maybe if he opened it, and if he looked inside it, then he’d know.

  He wanted to be useful. He wanted to matter. He never used to think about whether or not he mattered. But now he had vanished to the person who mattered most to him. If his father couldn’t see him, he wouldn’t worry about him being gone, and Jake could be useful to someone else.

  It was wrong to open other people’s mail. Jake knew that it was wrong. But if he didn’t open it, he thought, it would never get to the right person. And wasn’t that worse?

  Just like he’d done dozens of times before, he picked up the letter from its position on the floor, amongst the clutter of loss. The flap was peeling off at the edges from the picking of Jake’s fingers.

  Someone was waiting for this letter, he knew. Someone was desperate for it. Someone was lost without it.

  Jake sat on his bed, his thumb flicking against the flap, wondering what to do. If only it would come loose completely. If it opened on its own it would be OK. If it opened on its own it wasn’t his fault.

  But it didn’t open.

  Jake stared at the envelope. He pushed his finger into the gap in the corner and pulled a little. A tear appeared, snaking tantalisingly down the front of the envelope. Jake could see the thin, folded paper inside.

  With a grimace, he widened the tear and pulled the letter out. Holding it in his hand, he tried to see where it had been going. He could see pictures – vague images that disappeared almost immediately – but he couldn’t see anything definite. He couldn’t see anything helpful.

  There was something Jake’s mum used to say that Jake had never really understood. She used to say it just after she’d eaten a chocolate biscuit and really wanted to have another one. She would say ‘hung for a penny’. Jake had never asked his mum what it meant, apart from that you got to eat a second chocolate biscuit, but he remembered it as he looked at the folded piece of paper in his hand.

  After you’ve opened a letter, no one will believe you didn’t read it.

  ‘Hung for a penny,’ he whispered to himself as he unfolded the letter.

  He looked at the letter for a moment, without taking in much of what was on it. He knew where to go. He knew who the letter was for. He’d seen her. He’d talked to her. He knew where to go.

  Cassie.

  THERE IS A TREE IN Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport. Were it in a glen, or on a hill, or by a river, as it should be, it would provide shelter from the sun and rain. Under it, children could play, lovers could kiss, the weary could rest. But it is not in a glen, or on a hill, or by a river, it is in an airport, under harsh artificial light, partially obscuring the arrivals board.

  There is grass spreading out from the tree; it almost reaches the far corners of the room, and in some places there are flowers. Benches and chairs and tables that used to be moveable have grown into the floor.

  There are complaints and mutterings about the difficulty of reading the arrivals announcements, about the challenge of pulling a suitcase along in a grassy area, but really people tend to smile at the sight of a tree in such an unusual place.

  It is a reminder that the world is not quite as we expect it to be.

  There is little wind in Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport, but sometimes a breeze seems to ripple through the tree’s leaves.

  There are no birds in Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport, but some kind of life seems to live there, although the few who are aware of this enough to consider it, cannot fathom what that life is.

  There is a tree in Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport, where no tree should be.

  Robert.

  ROBERT STOOD IN THE KITCHEN not helping Mara make cannelloni for dinner.

  He stood in the kitchen not drinking the cup of tea that was sitting on the bench.

  He stood in the kitchen not answering the questions his daughter was asking him about trains.

  He hadn’t realised visiting Mara’s father had been restful. He hadn’t noticed that his mood had changed. He hadn’t noticed it changing on the flight out of London and he hadn’t noticed it changing over the days they spent on the beach, but he had noticed it as the flight home began its descent.

  It was as if the plane was flying into a field of nothingness that weighed a tonne. As though there was a toxic cloud over the city, which seeped into the plane through the walls and into Robert through his skin.

  He hadn’t noticed how little he’d been talking since he and his girls had got home. He hadn’t noticed how often Mara was looking at him or how many questions Bonny was asking.

  He didn’t notice Mara saying his name six times as she chopped tomatoes. He didn’t notice her wave her arms at him across the kitchen.

  He did notice when she put the point of her knife against his throat.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘If you’re not helping me here, and believe me you’re not,’ said Mara, ‘would you mind going over the street and getting Mrs Featherby?’

  Robert stood in the middle of the road outside his house. The street looked somehow unfamiliar.

  The last time he’d stood this long in the middle of this street was the day Bonny was born. He and Mara had been moving into the house. They were all excitement and expectation until they had been waiting four hours for the delivery van to show up. They’d stood in the middle of the road, both too cross to even hold hands, looking in opposite directions, each hoping they’d be the first to spot it.

  Robert had seen the van rounding his corner and been just about to crow at Mara, when she’d grabbed his hand more tightly than she’d ever grabbed it before.

  ‘My waters have broken,’ she whispered, almost too quietly to hear.

  ‘The van’s here,’ Robert had replied.

  ‘What?’ Mara had said.

  ‘What, wait, what?’

  ‘My bloody waters have mother fucking broken, and you’re rabbiting on about some shit-encrusted van, what van, why do we care about a van, I’m about to pus
h a whole entire living human out of my cunting cunt, and you don’t even seem to care, and holy shit this wasn’t a good idea. Why are we doing this? This is a stupid thing to do. I’ve changed my mind.’

  Robert paused for a moment and swallowed.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘Of course. It’s fine. I was just distracted because the moving van’s here, but that’s fine. Let’s just get you to the hospital.’

  ‘The moving van?’

  ‘The moving van. With everything we own inside it.’

  ‘Oh. Shit.’

  And then:

  ‘Oooooh shiiiiit.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Oh my god.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘No, fuck you, shut up, you don’t know, I just had my first contraction.’

  ‘Oh. Oh shit.’

  The van had pulled up at the kerb by this point, and the driver was stepping out.

  ‘Man, sorry about the wait, complete mare of an accident on Waterloo Bridge.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Why the fuck did you come via – no, sorry, Mara’s just gone into labour, um, we’re going to have to leave now.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the driver, whose name was Sam, and whose experience of childbirth was limited. ‘Oh fuck.’

  ‘No,’ said Mara, shooting the driver with hypothetical eye lasers. ‘You do not get to swear. All the swearing is mine.’

  ‘Look,’ said Robert, ‘here’s a set of keys. Pile it all in there as best you can and chuck them through the letter box, all right? Great, thanks, good luck.’

  The van driver was still staring after them as Robert drove round the corner ill-advisedly fast.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Mara, in the seat beside him. ‘Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. Holy mother fucking shit.’

  ‘Wow. Is it hurting?’

  ‘No, not at the moment, I’m just freaking right out. I can’t do this.’