We've Come to Take You Home

by Susan Gandar

  ‘Yes, I’ve read it, yes, the letter. Look, Dad, can I call you later, when I get back? Yes, I promise…’

  She held out the mobile.

  ‘Sam, what’s the matter? Is something wrong?’

  The box, the letter, the photographs inside the locket, Jess and Tom, it was all too complicated to explain. And her mother would never believe her.

  ‘Supper will be ready soon.’

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘But where are you going?’

  ‘To see some friends…’

  Sam ran out of the kitchen into the hallway.

  ‘Hello, yes. I don’t know. Some friends. Yes, that’s what she said. The girls I expect, Katie, Lou and Shelly. It is her birthday…’

  She pulled open the front door and ran down the hill, across the road and onto the promenade. The moon rode high in the night sky. A seagull shrieked overhead.

  Poppy wreaths were laid out in rows, in front of a plaque, just above the base of the angel statue.

  “Our loved ones have departed and we ne’er shall see them more,

  Till we meet before the pure and crystal sea

  Till we clasp the hands we loved so well upon the golden shore

  What a meeting, what a meeting that will be!”

  For a moment, the waves rolling off into the far distance seemed to solidify, their peaks and troughs changing into the ridges and hollows of a sea of mud rather than of a sea of water. Almost instantly the sea transformed itself back, the mud once again reverting to water.

  ‘May I introduce you…’

  He had been standing underneath the statue exactly a week ago. He had turned and smiled as she walked past on her way home from the fairground.

  “To the Angel of Peace.”

  The young man, dressed in khaki breeches, knee-high leather boots, a wide belt with a strap going over his right shoulder, gestured to the statue. Wings outstretched against the sky, right hand clutching an olive branch, it towered above them.

  ‘Out in France, I thought my men were crazy. They were always talking about angels, but then I saw one. She didn’t have wings nor was she carrying an olive branch…’

  ‘Not that olive branches work…’

  Sam twirled round. Ankle-length coat, lace-up boots: it was Jess.

  ‘That statue was put there in 1912. Six years later, nineteen million people had died in the so-called war to end all wars…’

  ‘I can see you. I can hear you. You and Tom…’

  The clock striking five o’clock in a house where there was no such clock. The fair, being on the ghost train, going through those doors and instead of sitting in the cab next to Leo, she was standing on a platform, of a station, watching stretchers being unloaded off a train. Standing out on the balcony, waiting for the fireworks to start, the flash of white light and then seeing the sea of mud. The deep boom reverberating up towards the sky, the air shuddering, and then the road, the houses, the cars, all disappearing, just as if a bomb had fallen out of the sky.

  ‘But why, why did you show me all those things…’

  ‘Only you, Sam, nobody else, not even me and Tom, could follow your father and bring him back.’

  ‘But you were there, in the plane, you opened the door. You helped me…’

  ‘Only when you asked…’

  They were standing on either side of her. Jess on her left. Tom on her right.

  ‘But, first you had to do what Jess and I have had to do…’

  A memory was nudging at her. It was years ago. It was night and she was lying curled up under the duvet, eyes tight shut, alone in her room, listening to the very large, very angry giants rumbling up and down overhead. There were solid walls above, underneath and all around her. But that wouldn’t stop them. Nothing could stop them, not even her parents, if the giants wanted to come and get her.

  ‘Sam.’

  A voice whispered her name.

  ‘Come out now, don’t be afraid.’

  The duvet was tugged back. She opened her eyes. The young woman took her left hand. The young man took her right hand. They led her, across the room, over to the window. The man lifted her up onto a stool. The woman pushed back the curtains. Lightning forked, thunder rolled, wind howled and rain lashed. But there were no giants.

  ‘You had to face your fear.’

  ‘It was you – you and Tom – you were my invisible friends. And when mum made us move, to this house, you went away…’

  ‘If you want Jess and I to go–’

  ‘No.’

  Sam pulled the locket out of her jacket pocket.

  ‘I want you to stay.’

  Jess’ fingers were soft. Her breathe was warm. She fastened the locket around Sam’s neck.

  ‘Happy birthday, Sam.’

  Sunshine flooded into the cottage through the open door. Lambs skipped and jumped on the Downs, starlings were nesting in the thatch below the chimney and bumblebees were buzzing in and out of the blackthorn. Soon it would be warm enough to eat outside. Along paths, up lanes and over hills, wherever they ended up, sitting on top of Highdown Hill, her father telling her stories about the people who had lived there thousands of years before, or on Burrow Head watching the peregrine falcons circling over the white chalk cliffs, or in one of the valleys, the deans, hidden away below the Downs, he would always find a perfect place for a picnic.

  But the memory she cherished most was the last few moments she and her father had spent together. She had nursed it, keeping it alive inside her head; walking out of the door of the cottage, through the garden and onto the track, climbing up the hill, side by side, her hand in his hand, and then stopping there on the ridge.

  Her father stepping forward and putting his arms around her and the hoping, the longing, that she would never ever have to step out of them. That they could stay that way, father and daughter, daughter and father, up there on top of the world, together for ever. And then the low, insistent drumming, getting steadily louder and nearer. And there, without any warning, swooping down on them out of the sky: the white plane with black crosses on the underside of its wings.

  And there it was now, right there, directly above her. She could see it through the glass roof of the warehouse; the same white plane with the same black crosses.

  ‘Jess?’

  It was her father’s voice. She instantly recognised it and then just as instantly denied it. How could it be? He was dead. But there he was, exactly the way she remembered him. And standing behind him, cradling her baby brother in her arms, both of them plump-cheeked and laughing, was her mother.

  He stepped forward and put his arms around her. She buried herself in his familiar warmth.

  ‘We’ve come to take you home.’