‘I don’t know! I’ve told you, he got to her. She was a bit… odd when I told her I was pregnant, I think it was because she didn’t approve of David, somehow. She and Dad had only met him once, so maybe she thought it was a bit soon for us to be starting a family? I’m not sure.’
All this felt fuzzy. As though I were groping for the memories through a hot wet haze. Memories were overlaid on memories so that I seemed to have been pregnant and docilely awaiting the birth at the same time as netted with anxiety, pushing in labour and while simultaneously holding my daughter with heart-clutching terror. ‘Tilly didn’t sleep well and so I was always a bit… It was hard to focus. Mum said something about coming in a couple of months, when she knew whether she would be needed, so she could meet Tilly properly…’ Now, the memories wouldn’t come. Where recent memories ran as though on greased rails – this led to this, which led to this – those early days were lost in random recollections. The smell of baby shampoo. The feel of disposable nappies in the packet. Waking suddenly from deep sleep and having to force my body to move, to act.
‘So you haven’t spoken to your mother since you left David?’ Ross’s eyes were fixed on my face. They were very brown, I noticed, the same dark shade as his hair. Then I wondered why I was noticing this, in the midst of the fear and the stress. Ishouldn’tbe noticing.
‘No. The last time we spoke… the last time…’ It was so hard to pin any of this stuff down. ‘I told her that David was having me followed.’
‘And what did she say to that?’
I struggled through all the associated memory, which felt piled up: recollections on top of dreams, heaped up on the tottering structures of random thoughts. ‘It… She said… It was something like David was worried about me. But she soundedscared. Then I knew that he’d got to her. He’d been telling her lies about me, and I couldn’t trust her because I knew how plausible he could be. So she wasn’t my safe space any more, she wason his side, even if she didn’t really want to be.’ I slumped forward, putting my head on the steering wheel. ‘Ross, what am I going to do?’
He slipped an arm around my shoulders as I lay there, a brief moment of comfort. ‘I can’t save you, Libby,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m sorry. A few years ago I would have been taking you home and tucking you up in my place, hiding you from whoever was chasing you.’
I turned my head so I could see him out of one eye. ‘Well, thanks for that,’ I said with a note of sarcasm borrowed from the little bit of strength I had left. ‘Although I’ve seen your place and I’m not sure you could hide more than a couple of rabbits there.’
‘Aware of that, yes. But I just meant…’ The arm that partly encircled me gave a little squeeze. ‘I’ve learned that rescuing people doesn’t help them. Not ultimately. It just gives them something else to lean on and makes me the disposable one. As soon as they can see a way out, then they’re gone and I don’t feature anywhere. I’ll do what I can for you, but I can’t save you, because I don’t want to be the one that gets left behind.’ I saw him twist more towards me and bend a little, as though he suspected that Tilly might be taking notes. ‘Not with you. I want to be the one who stays this time.’ He almost whispered those words.
I half straightened in my seat and Ross’s arm fell back onto his lap. There was an expression of resolute determination on his face, although he was chewing his lip again. His eyes were kind but his jaw was set. ‘If we’re going to have anything, Libby, you need to save yourself,’ he said, his voice still low. ‘It wouldn’t be any good for either of us if it was any different.’
Facing the demons. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t risk confronting my mother and being talked round. The thought that she might have brought David with her and that he could be lurking in these woods just waiting to take Tilly… I started the engine and drove a few metres forward but in an undecided way, with the car kangarooing along as my feet tried to make up their minds and my hands hesitated on the wheel. Did I turn and face the horror? Or keep on running?
My windscreen was suddenly filled by a falling black shape, as though night was descending in pieces. Tilly yelled out, ‘Bird! Bird, Mummy!’ and then there was the bump and thwack sound of impact and the sight of the ragged dark image being thrown to one side as I hit it and it slid off the glass to land in the middle of the road. The car jolted and stalled.
I’d hit a crow. Or a rook or a jackdaw, I wasn’t about to hold an identity parade. It had flown almost straight at me and I’d hit it. I sat, paralysed, and stared as the bird flopped lopsidedly on the tarmac and lay flapping, one wing underneath it and the uppermost one trying to take off.
‘Oh God,’ I groaned, absorbing the extra horror of the sight of the feathers and the gaping beak as the bird struggled to right itself. ‘Is it all right?’
‘I don’t know.’ Ross looked across me at the flopped black shape squatting in the road. ‘It’s still alive anyway.’
‘It will be fine,’ I said, clenching my jaw. ‘It’s just getting its breath back.’
‘Ow, Mummy,’ Tilly said, peering past me to see the bird properly. ‘Mummy, bird hurt.’
The bird had managed to get itself up out of the mud and was sitting hunched, one wing outstretched as though to prop itself up. Long feathers trailed into the water that pooled in small puddles and it had streaks of mud along its back. Its beak was open and it seemed to be panting.
‘Oh God,’ I said again. What if it was one of Isobel’s birds? Would she miss it? Did it have a name, a connection to her so it came when called? Cautiously I wound my window down the tiniest fraction and said, ‘Bird?’ into the gap.
It turned its head and looked at me. For a moment there was an expression of brief hopelessness in the bead of an eye, as though the bird was resigned to sitting here until it died, clipped by the first car that came along in the opposite direction. The beak was huge, out of proportion to the sleek black head, like a fake nose, featherless and incongruous. One leg stretched alongside the wing and I thought I could see a trace of blood among the feathery top.
‘Oh God,’ I said again, the horror of meeting my mother being equalled now by the horror of the sight of those feathers, shiny with grease and torn into uselessness. ‘I can’t just leave it there.’ I looked at Ross. ‘Can you pick it up and put it on the side of the road?’
‘So it just dies slowly, as opposed to being run over and dying quickly?’
We both sat and stared at the bird, which stared back.
‘Big ow,’ Tilly said from the back of the car. ‘Mummy kiss.’
‘Mummy is most certainlynotgoing to kiss it,’ I said, shuddering as I looked over at the bird who was flopping itself around in a circle, clearly trying to take off but only having one working wing. ‘Oh, the poor thing, we can’t leave it.’
‘What do you suggest?’ Ross asked.
‘We could… take it to a vet?’
‘It’s a wild animal.’
‘I’m fairly sure vets treat all animals, they don’t ask for owners’ ID.’
The bird sat still again and its beak gaped. A surprisingly human-looking tongue, except with a slit in the middle, protruded and the one eye that I could see half-closed, as though the bird had run out of energy. ‘I think a vet would just put it to sleep,’ Ross said. ‘I mean, they’re hardly endangered, are they?’
