Chapter One

Little Wing

Joanne Horniman

In the room where she woke late every day, there was a stain on the ceiling where rain had once seeped through. Charlotte had painted it over white again, but the mark had bled, brown and frilled at the edges, like a fried egg.

Emily lay and stared at it for a long time before slowly rolling over to sit up on the edge of the bed. She stayed there unmoving. There was no need to dress, as she still wore the tracksuit from yesterday.

The house was silent, the only sign of life the grey cat which sprang down from the top of the piano to follow Emily into the kitchen. It arched its back hopefully in front of the refrigerator, but Emily ignored it.

She let herself out of the house into the cloudy afternoon, walking through damp suburban streets till she came to the edge of town, and the lookout perched high above the valley.

In front of her there was only the sky, and the tops of the trees. The forest floor was hidden, but the smell of it drifted up, dank and earthy.

She was usually the only person there. But today she became aware of something behind her: a dark shape like a column, and a fluttering, like wings.

It was a young man. He stepped over the fence and stood on the edge of the huge drop as if he was afraid of nothing. He wore a great black overcoat, and he raised his arms and stood with his hands clasped behind his head. His coat was too heavy to flutter out behind him, but she imagined it fluttering.

She imagined wings. 

He turned to look at her, and it was as if he recognised her, and had known her for a long time. He had light-coloured eyes, and pale skin. Black hair curled round his face. He stepped back over the fence and stood beside her, leaning over the railing, so close that she could smell the fresh scent of soap on his skin.

‘I didn’t notice you standing there at first,’ he said. ‘I like to look at the view without the fence between. I don’t do it if there are people here.’

She said, ‘It’s dangerous to stand out there,’ surprised that her voice worked at all. He was the first person she’d spoken to all day.

'Yes. But then, life’s never totally safe, is it?’ He smiled, and held out his hand. ‘Anyway, I’m Martin,’ he said. 

‘My name’s Emily,’ she said shyly, taking his hand briefly and keeping her eyes averted from his face.

‘Do you come here often? Sorry … that’s meant to be a pickup line, isn’t it? I’m not trying to pick you up.’

Emily hadn’t thought that he was. She knew she no longer looked like the kind of girl anyone would want to pick up.

‘I come here every day.’ She stared across the top of the trees. It was like an ocean– the endlessness and the tossing of the leaves like foamy waves. ‘This is the first time I’ve lived away from the coast.’  She heard herself saying it, as if her voice belonged to someone else. 

‘Do you like it here?’

‘I don’t like anywhere much. It’s just a place to be, isn’t it?’

He looked at her, but he didn’t say anything, and they stood staring at the view for a bit longer. He said, ‘I have to go now, and get my son from pre-school. Might see you again some time, Emily.’

She followed him, through instinct, or through not knowing anything better to do. When he realised what she was doing he waited for her to catch up. She listened to the sound of their footsteps through the fallen leaves, and the currawongs calling from the sky.  He looked down at her and said, as though they’d been in the middle of an ordinary conversation, ‘I’m one of those stay-at-home dads – my partner’s the one working at the moment while I look after Pete.’

And Emily found herself saying, as if she was someone used to having such a conversation, ‘Do you enjoy that?’ And he replied, ‘Yes … yes I do.’

At the pre-school, mothers gathered at the fence. Emily stood with her hands in her pockets. A child exploded through the gate, waving a painting. ‘Look what I did, Dad! This is us at the beach!’

Emily stepped back as if something large and fast had roared past on a freeway. Martin held the child by the shoulder to steady him.

‘I like what you’ve done here – all this blue.’

‘They’re the waves, Dad. And this is the sky. I made it purple.’

‘Great colour for sky! And is this me? The tall person here?’

‘Yep!’

Martin took the picture and rolled it up carefully. ‘Ready to go home?’

The boy looked at Emily, and she looked away. 

‘Pete, this is Emily. Emily, this is Pete.’

‘Hello, Emmy.’ 

‘Emily,’ she told him. ‘My name’s Emily.’

But he didn’t reply. ‘Let’s go home, Dad,’ he said, pulling Martin by the hand.

She went with them, one step behind, listening to them chatting about this and that. They halted in front of a cottage, an old timber place with ragged trees in the front yard and a broken-down verandah and peeling front door. ‘This is home,’ said Martin, looking at her with a smile. ‘See you another time, Emily.’

Pete rushed to the front door and flung it wide, revealing a hallway. Martin switched on the hall light and they disappeared into a room at the side. The hall was bathed in a golden yellow light that made it stand out against the darkness of the winter afternoon, and Emily stood for a long time, staring at it.  It looked like a place where people were happy.

Then Pete came running into the hall with his arms held out like an aeroplane. Without noticing Emily still standing there, he zoomed around for a while until he reached the front door, and pushed it shut with a bang.

Emily let herself in, and heard Charlotte call out ‘Hel-lo-o!’ from the kitchen. She didn’t reply, watching herself reflected dimly in the mirror of an old carved wardrobe that stood at the end of the hall. She looked like a stranger even to herself.

Bookshelves, stuffed full, lined the narrow passage. Charlotte’s entire small cottage was a space that seemed to grow more constricted each day as her possessions took over. One day she and Emily would each have to hollow out a body-sized space to exist in.

Emily went through the doorway that led to the living room. A dresser filled with crockery, a sideboard and a piano stood against one wall. Three sofas faced them across the narrow room, and two coffee tables squeezed into the space in the middle. Every surface was covered by books, papers and ornaments. There were pots of ferns and African violets everywhere.

Charlotte’s own paintings decorated the walls, along with prints of famous pictures. Charlotte’s house was a place where lovers floated embracing in the sky, and an angel in a green dress carrying a posy of flowers flew through a window near the Eiffel Tower.

Emily went through to the kitchen, where Charlotte sat, a cup of strong tea in front of her and a welcoming smile on her face. Both Charlotte and her wood fire emanated warmth. Why then did Emily always feel so cold?

‘I was thinking of making veggie pasta for dinner,’ said Charlotte.

‘Oh – I’ll help, then.’

Emily lifted a pile of papers from the seat of a kitchen chair and hesitated, wondering where to put them. The benches were already piled high with newspapers, and books and folders. A pair of ear-plugs lay on top of a laptop. An electric drill sat in a bowl full of opened letters and postcards and offers from the takeaway pizza shop. She put the pile of papers on top of an already teetering pile on the bench and sat down.

Charlotte found some vegetables and a chopping board and put it all in front of Emily, with a knife. ‘Your mother rang while you were out,’ she said.

Emily didn’t respond.

‘Do you want to ring her back?’

‘No.’

Charlotte looked at her searchingly. ‘Okay then. Maybe another time,’ she said.

Emily frowned, and placed an onion on the chopping board. She heard Charlotte let herself out the kitchen door. There was a shed in the yard where she painted pictures, and at the end of each day she kept going to look at what she’d done earlier, unable to resist another daub here and there.

Emily fingered the serrated blade of the knife. She knew from experience that it was hopeless for chopping vegetables, but it was the one that Charlotte always gave her. The chair made a rasping sound as she stood up suddenly. She found herself at the drawer where Charlotte kept her knives. She knew them all by heart: the one with the short blade for fruit; the bread knife made of one piece of continuous metal; the older, blunter, bread knife with the wooden handle; a set of six steak knives they never used since neither of them liked steak; and the old Chinese cleaver with the wooden handle polished smooth from years of use.

She took the handle of the carving knife that was kept at the back of the bench and drew it out of its holder. The blade was smooth and fine. She pressed the tip to a finger and a bead of blood appeared on her skin. Quickly, knowing just how much pressure was enough, she drew the blade across the top of the finger. Her heart flipped over at the sting of pain; she felt a thrill at the line of blood that welled out. She stared at it for a moment, and then reached for a teatowel.

Charlotte came into the room.

‘Oh, Emily, what on earth are you doing? That’s a carving knife for meat!’

Without a word, Emily allowed Charlotte to wash the blood away and cover it with a bandaid.

They ate at the dining table, which Charlotte always set with linen place mats and a small vase of flowers, a glass of wine for herself and juice for Emily. After making an attempt to eat the pasta, Emily excused herself and went to bed. Charlotte stayed up listening to music and poring over her books of paintings.

Emily lay very still in her narrow bed. The house had only two small bedrooms, and the spare one was now Emily’s. Or so Charlotte told her. To Emily, it didn’t feel like hers. It was simply a place to be.

Like the rest of the house, the room was full with the overflow of Charlotte’s earlier life – a sewing machine, stacks of photo albums, and lamps with frilly shades. She’d offered to move it all out to the garage to give Emily more space, but Emily had told her not to bother. 

Apart from a few clothes, the only thing Emily had brought with her to the mountains was a cloth-covered notebook patterned with blue stars, which she kept wrapped up in a tiny baby singlet in a suitcase under the bed. Most nights, unable to sleep, she took it out, held the bundle to her face for a moment, and breathed in the odour of it. She had no need to read what was written in the book. She knew very well, since she’d written it herself, at a time that seemed far away from this time and the person she was now. She put the bundle back into the suitcase and stowed it away, then lay listening to the soft music of a symphony playing in the living room. The bandaid was a little too tight on her finger, which throbbed pleasantly, like a heartbeat.

If her finger throbbed, she must be alive.

The grey cat settled down on her chest. It was a young cat, dense with muscle, and it let her know that she’d invaded its space by sleeping on top of her every night. First it trod in the one spot with its front feet, and then it turned itself round and round in a circle before it settled, purring heavily.  

Now, the feeling of contact with a warm, living being made her cry, and she lay on her back in the darkened room with tears trickling silently into the pillow. Then, because she was so exhausted, she fell asleep.

If she dreamed, it was a dream of leaving, a dream of a bus station, and the interior of a darkened bus, where she slept fitfully, in between the flash of lights appearing along the highway. She didn’t think of what she’d left behind, and as for arrival – for Emily there was no arrival, no place where she was happy to be.

She woke with the house still and silent, her face wet with tears, and lay in the dark, crying, as she did almost every night. She huddled there, unable to move, feeling the darkness almost crushing her.

Dear You
You are here. I don’t know how I know that this is the beginning of you. I just do.
I should be afraid.
But all I feel is, we can do this. You and I.
Nobody knows about your existence yet but me. You are my secret.
We’ll be all right. I’ll look after you, always.