Flyaway (11 page)

Then I see her eyes. She's still watching me. I stumble, look across at the trees. There's no one else here. Only me. I stare back at her. I even start to run a little towards her. For a moment, it's as if she's drawing me there. I'm gasping for
breath, sucking the cold wind down into my lungs. Her feet smack harder on the surface of the lake and she inches ahead. It's almost as if she's urging me to go faster as well. It's ridiculous. Swans don't race each other like this, and they definitely don't race humans.

I hear the breath rasping in my throat, the strain in my ribs. I slow down, I have to. The swan watches me, falters for a moment. I wave my arms at her, try to scare her into taking off. Instead, spray splashes from her feet as she lowers her body back to the water and refolds her wings. Instantly she's calm, as if she were never running to take off in the first place.

I collapse onto my hands and knees, and gasp for air. My body's hot, my school shirt's stuck to my back. I turn my head sideways to the lake. I take a breath, as long as I can make it, then another. I see her, now floating further away. Why did she follow me like that? Why didn't she just fly? If Dad were here, he'd probably be able to explain it. Perhaps racing humans around a lake is some strange swan behaviour thing that I've never heard of. Perhaps it's what swans do when they're stressed. I don't know.

I wait until the breath stops rattling in my throat before I sit up properly. I watch the swan float further away. She's so uninterested now. I stand up, shakily. I glance back at the track. My footprints are there, digging into the muddy surface. I know I didn't imagine what just happened.

CHAPTER 21

I
walk straight through the hospital entrance and take the stairs two at a time. All the while, I'm starting to doubt what just happened. That swan can't really have been following me. Swans just aren't that interested in humans. Perhaps I've gone mad. Maybe it's because I'm stressed. I remember some TV programme Mum was interested in, where they were talking about how stress affected behaviour. The people who were interviewed did all sorts of strange things. Some of them had even hallucinated whole conversations with imaginary people. Perhaps that's what I've done; I've imagined the swan following me. Or at least, imagined the way she was looking at me. But it felt so real.

I need to talk to Dad. I know he'll be able to explain it. Maybe that kind of thing has happened to him before; perhaps it's just what swans do, sometimes.

Visiting hours are over, but I go to Dad's ward anyway. The nurse at the entrance desk takes one look at me and shakes her head.

‘You've got mud on your shoes,' she says with a thick Scottish accent. It's difficult to understand what she means straight away.

I look down. All the way behind me there's a trail of marks on the shiny floor.

‘But I need to tell him something,' I say, my thoughts still full of the swan. ‘It's important.'

I keep the feathers grasped tight in my pocket. If the nurse is unhappy about the mud, she probably won't like them much either. She scrunches up her face into that sympathetic look I've seen a lot recently.

‘I'm sorry, hen, but you need to have your mum here with you. We can't let you in without her permission . . . even if it were visiting hours.'

She comes around the desk and stands close to me. I think she can see how worked up I am.

‘Tell you what,' she says softly. ‘Why don't we look at your dad, together, from the doorway?'

Her voice goes up in pitch, making it sound as if she's talking to a five-year-old. It's not what I want, watching Dad from the doorway with a nurse's hand on my arm. I want to go right up to him and give him the feathers. I want to hug him and ask him about the swan. But what else can I do?

The nurse leads me to the entrance of the ward. She stands behind me, her hands on my shoulders. I feel like a suspect
in a cop show; it's as if she's about to march me off to the police station. The curtains are open around Dad's bed, but I can't see him properly, not from here, not even when I stand on tiptoes. I think he's asleep. He's very still. So still it doesn't look like he's breathing. I feel my heartbeat speed up. I'm being paranoid. There'd be beeping and alarms and nurses running to him if he stopped breathing. I take a step away. I don't want to imagine it.

‘See, hen, he's fine,' the nurse coos. ‘No problems at all. Now what did you want to tell him?'

I shake her off and make for the door. She's calling something else out to me, something about trying to find my mum, but I deliberately block it out. I hate this; I hate all these other people being responsible for Dad . . . controlling when I can see him and what I can say to him. I know it's not how he'd want it.

The door to Coronary Care thuds shut behind me. Already I'm walking down the corridor. I'm going to see Harry. My feet know it before my brain's clicked in. He's the only one who might be glad to see me. The only other person who might have seen what happened in the reserve.

CHAPTER 22

M
y shoes make little squelchy noises as I hurry down the corridor. At the door to the children's cancer ward I hesitate. It's locked shut. I lean up against it and peer through the glass section.

Then the door clicks open and I fall through. There's a nurse on the ward desk, smiling at me. I think she's the one I saw last time.

‘Here to see Harry?' she asks.

‘But is he . . . am I allowed?'

She nods. There's something tired about her expression, but I think she's trying to be friendly. ‘If it's all right with Harry, it's all right with me,' she says.

She leads me down the corridor. It doesn't feel as busy in here today. There's less noise, and fewer people. Not so many visitors. Harry's door is shut. The nurse knocks it gently, opens
it an inch and looks in.

‘Isla's here,' she says. ‘You up for it?'

I hang back. I can't hear him reply. What if Harry is really sick? What if he doesn't want to see me? I feel my stomach tighten as I wait. The nurse turns back to me. Gives me a wink.

‘Don't stay too long, pet.'

She holds the door open for me to go through.

Harry's in bed, propped upright with pillows. He grins when he sees me, beckons me in, but I could be looking at a different boy to the one I remember. Today, there are dark, dark circles around his eyes, and his skin is even whiter. There are a few strands of hair on his pillows. He reminds me of some sort of furry creature, something that would live underground. I half expect him to scurry away, bury back under the covers.

‘Take a seat,' he says. ‘I didn't think you'd come back to visit.' There's a questioning look in his eyes.

‘Do you want me to go?'

‘No way.' He shakes his head as if I've said the most ridiculous thing. ‘You just missed my mum actually, could have been quite a party.'

I move to the chair beside his bed. He looks exhausted, as though he's run a marathon. I try not to scrape the chair when I sit down, I don't want to be too loud. Suddenly, what happened at the reserve doesn't seem so important. Not when Harry looks as ill as this.

‘What happened to you?' I ask.

‘It's just the chemo. My body doesn't like it too much.'

I find it hard to believe chemotherapy could make that much difference to someone, and so quickly. He was so casual about it before. But I start nodding as if I understand, then have to look away quickly as he catches my eye.

‘Does it hurt?' I say.

Harry thinks for a moment. ‘I'm not in pain, like how I guess your dad is. But it's just, kinda uncomfortable. Everything aches.'

His hand flies to his chest and he presses at something through his pyjama top. At first I think it's his heart.

‘Are you OK?'

He brushes away my concern. ‘Just my Hickman line.'

Again, I don't understand. I chew on my lip. It's as if he's living in a different world to me, knowing about a whole bunch of different things. I'm suddenly too shy to say anything. Whatever I say now is going to sound all wrong. So I look out of the window. The lake looks like a blur of colour, and I can't see the swan.

‘I've been watching you, you know,' he says quietly. ‘Out there on the lake.' He turns back to me, his pupils smaller from looking at the light. ‘Do you mind?'

I find myself nodding. ‘Yeah. I was . . .'

‘What?'

‘I was actually kind of hoping you were.'

We stare at each other. I feel like I've said too much. I should be looking away now, but I can't somehow. It's weird, a little like the pull I felt when I was watching the swan. Harry
doesn't look away either. His eyes are bright and shining, as if there are bonfires burning inside them.

‘What was going on down there?' he asks. ‘When you ran around the lake? Did you have food with you or something?'

‘I didn't have food.'

‘Then why was she following you?'

‘You saw it? Really?'

My face gets hot, even my ears go warm. I'm scared of saying any more. I can't just blurt out how the swan looked at me really intensely then ran after me across the water. I'd sound like a head case. So I drag my eyes from his and look down at the floor. I wait for Harry to laugh it off, to say something about me being a crazy twitcher. To say exactly what I'm thinking myself: that all of this is in my imagination. But suddenly he's leaning towards me.

‘You were on the path and she was on the water,' he says quietly. ‘Her wings were flapping, but . . .'

‘She didn't fly, I know.' I look at him carefully, check that he's not just making fun of me. But he's not smiling at all now.

‘That's pretty weird, isn't it?' he says. ‘For a swan to do that?'

‘Wild swans should be scared of humans,' I say. ‘She wasn't scared of me at all.'

‘Was she trying to attack you?'

‘I don't think so. Swans aren't like that, and I wasn't threatening her.'

I don't tell him how, for a moment, it felt like the swan
wanted me to go faster. But I want to. I want someone else to understand that there's something different about her; that it isn't just stress that made me think it happened. A thought pops into my head.

‘Why don't you come with me?' I say. ‘To the lake? You can see the swan properly then.'

Immediately I wish I hadn't said it. Harry is obviously too sick. He frowns as he thinks, as if he's trying to find exactly the right words.

‘I haven't been outside for ages,' he says quietly. He stops and looks down at the bed, suddenly awkward.

‘Sorry,' I say. ‘I didn't mean to ask you if you're too sick.'

He shakes his head. ‘I could go, maybe. If I got permission from the nurses.' He hesitates, still looking at the bed. ‘I'm just not sure . . .'

I swallow, thinking. Perhaps he just doesn't want to go down there with
me
. But if he could see that swan, just once, I know he'd understand. I touch the feathers in my pocket.

‘I don't have to come with you,' I say quickly. ‘You could go with a nurse or your mum or . . .'

‘I want to,' he says softly. He finds a stain on the bed sheet and scratches at it. ‘It's just . . . it's a hard place to get away from quickly. Do you get me?'

I frown. He's trying to tell me something without actually saying it. But I think I understand. Up here, in his cancer ward, there are nurses and painkillers and Hickman lines. Safe things. Things that he's used to. Down there, on the reserve, it's different.

‘You think it'll make you sicker, going there?'

He folds his hands in his lap. ‘I'd just rather watch from the window.' His voice sounds shaky and quiet.

It makes me wonder. Maybe he's scared. Maybe he's spent so long in bed feeling tired, that he's forgotten what it's like to do normal thinks like walk to a lake. Suddenly, I don't know what to talk about. I want to tell him more about the swan and how it felt to run with the wind behind me. I want to show him the photos on my phone. But it seems stupid now.