Читать книгу Flight of a Starling - Lisa Heathfield - Страница 6

RITA

The air in the alleyway sticks to my skin. The bricks sit too close, pushing grief deeper into me. I stop to touch the walls.

Were you here, Lo?

I listen for a reply. Listen hard for her laughter, but it’s not here. The silence grips so hard at my heart that I don’t know how I breathe.

Dean stands waiting at the end of the alley, framed by daylight. It’s only a few weeks since I’ve seen him, a few weeks since he was my sister’s whispered secret, but he looks so different. Lo loved his eyes, but they’re raw with a sadness I never knew could exist.

‘Are you ok?’ he asks, but he knows I’m not. Neither of us are.

‘She really liked you,’ I say, my words stumbling in the bricked-in air. But he just stares at me, this boy from a world I don’t know, a world that never moves on, unlike our circus.

‘It’s this way,’ is all he says.

A building stands in front of us and I know it’s the abandoned factory that he came to with Lo. But she said it was beautiful and it’s not. It’s grey and broken and I feel cheated.

‘Is this your ma’s old factory?’ I ask.

Dean looks surprised. ‘Lo told you?’

‘She wanted me to see it.’

I’m here now, Lo. But where are you?

The pain of missing her weighs on me, so heavy that I have to crouch down. I put my head into my hands, press so hard that my eyes hurt, dig my fingers deep into my skull until I can feel my hair pulling hard from my scalp.

I know Dean sits next to me. He moves my hands and puts them on the floor where Lo once walked. Then he stands up, this boy who burned so strong for her.

‘This way,’ he says.

He leads me down the side of the factory and we climb on to a rusting container and scramble through a hollow window. We’re in the room that Lo described, with its low ceiling and empty squares where glass should be. I remember her eyes lighting up when she told me about it, and I thought I’d find a place sprinkled with rainbow ends.

I follow Dean up some stairs. Through a door and there’s another with a lock on that he opens. It’s a small room and there’s a painting on the wall in front of us, two people sitting on a cliff, a blur of birds above them.

‘Did Lo come here?’ I ask. Did you leave your footprint?

‘She did this.’ He points to the wall next to us. There’s a long blue line and standing on the end of it is a stick girl with a too-pink face and a big red mouth. ‘She’s meant to be you.’

‘I’m smiling,’ I say.

A stick man has his arm round me. I know it’s my da. Lo must have stood here, concentrating, but still she painted a leg too long. I imagine her laughing, looking away at the wrong time.

‘Who’s that?’ I ask, pointing to a figure lying down on the line.

‘Your granddad. That’s him too.’ The next figure is sitting up and has wide, round eyes. ‘And that one, that’s your mum.’ The stick woman has been drawn in the same raggedy way, clumsy lines making her fall slightly from the wire. But her face is clear as daylight.

‘You painted her face?’

‘I just helped.’ Dean looks away.

‘Why?’

‘No reason.’ But there is. Lo has secrets hidden in this boy.

On the end, there’s a girl balancing tiptoe on the line.

‘Lo,’ I say quietly, but Dean doesn’t answer.

He’s painted her with open arms and she’s smiling. Leaves are weaved into her hair and birds are scattered around her hands. Feathered wings curve from her back and rise in an arc above her head.

‘She’s beautiful,’ I say.

Dean stands with his hands in his pockets. He has hurt and grief all folding in on themselves. Tears are on his cheeks, but I’m useless.

What should I do, Lo? How did you know him, when he’s a stranger to me?

Without asking, I go to the row of cans underneath the painting. I look through the colours until I find the one that I want. The lid is difficult to get off, but I pull until it’s free.

I want to paint it above Lo’s head, but she’s too tall, with her angel wings. So I hold the can next to her and spray it on to the wall, turning the drips into a clumsy red heart. In the middle I write ‘Lo’. It’s better than a footprint, I tell her. It won’t disappear.

With the can in my hand I look at Dean.

‘Where else did you go with her?’ I ask him.

He hesitates for long enough for me to know that he doesn’t want me walking in all their memories.

‘The beach,’ he says.

‘Let’s go there.’ But before we leave, I lean my hand on Lo’s wall. I want her angel wings to come alive and fold round me until I sleep and sleep and make it all go away. I need her to step out of the painting, her bare foot leaving the line and coming away from the bricks until she’s standing here next to me.

But she doesn’t, because she’s not alive. And all I can do is kiss her painted cheek and silently beg to go back to before.