Page 22 of Out of the Blue
‘So, your dad,’ she says. ‘What was he planning on doing with the Being when he found it?’
‘I have no idea. Sell it, maybe.’ I sigh. ‘Before the Falls started, he was always working late or on business trips. I don’t know if he thinks this is an easier way to make money, or if he’s just swapping one obsession for another. Maybe both.’
Allie screws her nose up sympathetically. ‘Our parents are a bit like that,’ she says. ‘Well, they’re not Wingdings or anything. But they’re always so distracted – work, our exams, exactly where I am and what I’m doing . . . Sometimes I just want to plonk them down with a bottle of vodka and tell them to chill the hell out.’
‘I don’t think that’d help my dad,’ I say, laughing. ‘If the Wingding stuff is anything to go by, he’s got a bit of an addictive personality.’
She smiles. It’s the sort of smile that takes over her whole face: dimpling at her cheeks, crinkling at her eyes. I get that lurching feeling in the pit of my stomach – like someone’s grabbed me by the ankles and flipped me upside down. I haven’t felt like this for ages. Not since Leah and I got together.
Almost immediately, that upside-down sensation turns to guilt. Though I haven’t seen her since April, Leah and I never broke up. Then again, we were never officially going out. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t count.
‘Well, even if you came here for your dad to go Beingchasing, I’m glad you did.’ Allie glances down at the wrapper in her hands and folds it into quarters. ‘For Teacake, I mean.’
The tips of her ears have turned pink. Before I can reply, Calum appears, three 99s balanced between his hands. As I take the fast-melting ice cream from him, I picture myself snuffing out that flicker of guilt between my fingers. Leah’s moved on with her life. Here, hundreds of miles from everything that’s happened over the past eight months, maybe I can start to do the same.
FOURTEEN
Over the next few days, our feather hunt shows me more of Edinburgh than I’ve ever seen before. We take the bus down to Portobello Beach and collect plumes from a seabird lying on the sand. We search the trees in the Meadows, ignoring the curious looks from Frisbee players and families having barbecues as we pick sparrow and chaffinch feathers from the long grass. Each time, I wish we could have brought Teacake with us. It feels wrong for us to be enjoying the air and the wide, open sky, when all she gets are small, square glimpses of blue from the window of the flat.
But the Fringe Festival is just a few days away, and the city’s so busy it’s far too dangerous for Teacake to go out even for a minute. The rumours about the pink feathers have spread too. When we go back to Arthur’s Seat, we find Wingdings all over the hill, whispering to each other and scanning the grass. We probably look just like them, picking through the bracken and briar along the paths, but I still can’t help but worry that one of them is watching us.
On Tuesday, we find a huge haul under a bridge near the Parliament – the result of some poor seagull colliding with a windscreen – and Allie finally decides that we have enough feathers to repair the wing. We arrange to meet at the flat the next day, as we have every day of the past week. We’ve spent so much time there that I’ve now started thinking of it as Teacake’s place rather than Shona’s.
When I go downstairs the next morning, I find Teacake asleep on the table, her good wing curled around her body like a blanket. She’s turned the radio to a folk music station, all guttural vocals and nimble fiddles. Outside, the buskers and bagpipes have been joined by clunking, drilling noises as stages are set up on the Royal Mile. Between the Wingdings and the festival-goers, the next few weeks are going to be utter chaos.
Somehow Teacake sleeps through it all, her eyebrows knitted in a tight frown. Now and then, her hands twitch, and sometimes she mumbles words in her low voice that sounds tense and panicked. Whatever she’s dreaming of, it’s not all white clouds and golden gates.
A loud bang comes from a truck outside, and Teacake wakes with a start and a scream. She leaps on to all fours and spins around, blinking wildly. I scramble to my feet, babbling that it’s all right. Her eyes are still wild, but she takes a breath and sits back. She pushes her tousled hair out of her face and rolls back her shoulders, making her wings ripple like pink-dappled waves.
‘Morning,’ I say, holding my palms up. ‘Did you sleep OK? You looked like you were having a nightmare.’ I try to mime sleep, closing my eyes and resting my head on my hands.
Teacake opens her mouth. Her lips move silently and she puts her fingers to them, as if tracing the shapes they’re making. For one breathtaking moment, I think she’s going to speak – but instead, she just tilts her head back to look at the ceiling, at the dull white plaster hiding the sky.
‘You must be so homesick,’ I say quietly. ‘There must be people waiting for you. People you’re missing too.’
As if on cue, the radio starts to play some wistful Gaelic tune. Teacake turns towards it, drawn in by the emotion of the song. I try to picture what she’s thinking about: what her home might be like, the friends and family she might have left behind. Soon, I find myself thinking about Leah’s dad.
He flits into my mind a lot these days. I think about him alone in that house, where his wife and Leah used to be. I think about the empty chair at their kitchen table, the silence behind the bedroom doors. Loss is mathematical: two-thirds less laundry, two-thirds less washing-up, two-thirds fewer footsteps thundering down the stairs. Subtract music blaring through the walls. Subtract eyeliner smudges on the towels. Add silence. Add more silence.
I’ve done those sums. The results are always greater than you think they’ll be.
Teacake turns to look at me. She puts her fingers to her mouth again and murmurs something I can’t make out. Even if we can’t communicate, I feel like there’s something we have in common: loss. I have some faint idea of how she’s feeling, at least.
I start laying the feathers out on the carpet for when Allie and Calum arrive: soft downy ones and semi-plumes on the left; long, elegant flight feathers on the right. A few minutes later, there’s a knock at the door. I open up to find Calum standing on the step, red-faced and panting, with Allie on his back. Her skinny arms are wrapped around his neck, her trainers dangling in mid-air, and she has a tube sticking up her nose.
‘Oh my god, are you OK?’ I ask. ‘What happened?’
Allie gives a weak smile. She’s wearing pyjamas: baby-blue trousers decorated with clouds, paired with chunky hi-tops, a navy duffle coat and a striped blue-and-white scarf. Calum is dressed in jeans and a hoody, but his hair is sticking up on one side and there are deep bluish bags under his eyes.
‘I’m fine,’ Allie says. ‘Had a bit of a bad night, that’s all.’
‘Mind if we chat inside?’ Calum asks in a strained voice. ‘You’ve got about three seconds before I drop you.’
I move back to let them in. As Calum shuffles past, I notice he’s holding Allie up with one hand and dragging something with the other: a small green cylinder on a sort of metal trolley. He hurries into the living room and gently lowers Allie on to the sofa. She looks exhausted: her face has gone from its usual chalky colour to a sickly grey-white, and her normally neat hair is pulled into a scruffy ponytail.
‘Don’t worry,’ she says, letting out a cough. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’
I have about a hundred questions, but before I can ask any of them Teacake leaps on to the coffee table. She bounds towards the kitchen, ruffling my hair up with her good wing, and begins rummaging through the cupboards and drawers for biscuits. She comes back chewing on a Ryvita, but it doesn’t go down well: she pulls a face, makes a sound like a plug draining and spits it out. I get up to check the cupboards, but Shona’s supply of sweets has finally run out.
