Landing Gear (19 page)

It took Harriet a full minute to process this information. Emily. Emily was at the party.

“I’m going to the supermarket,” she said to Michael.

“It’s ten-thirty,” Michael said, looking up from the television screen.

“It’s open all night on Saturday.” Harriet grabbed her bag and went to the drawer where the car keys were kept. “Shit.”

“What?”

“I won’t be long,” she said. “Don’t wait up for me.” She hoped he’d forgotten about the car. Going out at this time of night without a car would make him think she was having some kind of breakdown. She thought of the moment earlier in the day when she’d kissed him.

Michael let out a dissatisfied sigh as she went through the front door.

The taxi dropped her off on the main road; the lane that runs down one side of Dukes Meadows was blocked with cars, which was not a good sign. It was a mild, bright night for early spring, and although the cars were packed tight, there was no music, which Harriet found disconcerting. As she made her way toward the meadow, a plane passed overhead.

The sound of the crowd rose up on the night air as
Harriet walked down the lane, weaving between the cars. And there it was: in the darkness, a large mass of people stretching all the way to the river, lit only by the screens of their phones, talking and shouting and drinking, at least half of them lost and trying to find each other, phoning, texting, messaging: “Whr r u? Whr r u? Come find me. Find me.” The whole of West London youth, gathered together in one place.

She moved forward along the edge of the crowd and thought for a moment that the ground was covered with stardust, but it was beer cans and bottles, thousands of them, carpeting the edges of the field, crumpled and shiny, smashed and glittering, a sound like dull cowbells as they were kicked around. And still no music.

She tried to phone Jack but it went straight to voicemail. She wasn’t sure where to go, how to find him, how to find Emily, or even whether she was here to find Emily or to stop Jack from finding Emily—to stop these two lives from colliding.

24

Jack tried to get the girl with the blood-red hair to go away but she wouldn’t. He hoped Yacub had understood the international hand signal for “run away.” The girl kept filming Jack and asking questions.

“Was that the falling man?”

“He’s been known to fall from time to time, if that’s what you mean.”

“What’s your name?”

“What’s yours?”

“You’re Jack, aren’t you?”

“If you know so much already, why are you asking so many questions?” Jack was a bit drunk and thought he’d try being clever, but he was also sober enough to know he wasn’t really clever at all.

“You live at home with your mum, Harriet.”

She made it sound like Jack was a thirty-year-old who couldn’t be bothered to move out because he didn’t want to have to do his own laundry. “I’m sixteen!” he said. And now he felt like a total idiot, because this red-haired girl was definitely older, most definitely considerably older, and she’d think a sixteen-year-old was basically some kind of little kid.

“What’s Harriet doing these days?”

“Why are you so interested in my mum?”

When Harriet and Jack had their “events,” the press had taken an interest. Photographers lurked across the street for a week or so and the tabloids got hold of Jack’s phone number and started ringing him. His mum had anticipated this happening, so she’d prepared Jack and he wasn’t taken in. Harriet was convinced their phones were hacked as well, so they got new phones and let the old ones sit there on the kitchen counter. They’d ring from time to time and Harriet would shout “Not on your nelly!” and they’d laugh and let the damned things go to voicemail. Jack listened to the messages every once in a while; after a few days the callers started offering money if he’d call them back, but he wasn’t tempted. And then, after not too long, the interest in them went away. Harriet was old news. This far down the road Jack thought he would probably have to pay to get a journalist’s attention. So why was this girl behaving like she was filming him for some kind of fresh tabloid scoop?

“That’s enough,” Jack said.

To his surprise, she lowered the camera and smiled. “All right,” she said. She held out her hand. “I’m Emily,” but she didn’t say it in the way most people say their names when they meet somebody. She said it in this overemphatic special way that meant she expected Jack to slap himself on the forehead and shout, “Oh!
You’re
Emily!” as if he’d been waiting his entire life to finally meet her and he was a moron for not recognizing her straight away. He felt a flash of annoyance and was about to tell her to go
fuck herself or, more likely, something much lamer, when he felt an arm slide around his waist.

It was Ruby.

“Bye, Emily,” he said, “nice to meet you.” He leaned down and gave Ruby a kiss on her lips, and to his astonishment she kissed him back.

“Let’s go down to the river,” said Ruby.

Jack could tell she had taken something: her eyes were very wide and she was speaking in a breathless way as though her heart was pounding and everything and everyone was tremendously exciting. She was doing this thing that she did back in the day when they used to hang out at Dukes and smoke her brother’s draw—she’d fold and thread her fingers together over and over again, as if she was going to say a prayer but decided against it but then changed her mind yet again. And when she walked she held her hands parallel to the ground, moving them from side to side, as though she was about to tap dance or something.

Jack could see that she was heading away from the river—they needed to go toward the big trees, not away from them. The crowd had begun to thin a little, as the thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds finished trashing their young brains before being picked up by daddy at the arranged time and place. In another hour an older crowd would arrive and things would get scary. Jack took Ruby by the hand and turned her in the right direction. They picked up the pace; moments later she stopped short.

“Hey, Jack,” she said, reaching into her pocket, “take
this.” She unfolded a small piece of foil, licked her finger and stuck a little pill onto one end. She gave him one of her Ruby smiles and said, “Open wide.” He hesitated. David McDonald. All the bad things. But then he looked down at Ruby’s face. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue. Then he closed his lips around her finger. She looked up at him, smiling.

They walked through the crowd and down to the river and all the while he began to feel lighter and lighter. He couldn’t stop thinking about Yacub, he couldn’t stop imagining what it must have felt like when Yacub was released from the landing gear of the plane and falling. Flying.

When they got down to the riverbank Ruby wanted to sit on a bench and look out over the water. The Thames curved sharply here, and there was a chunk of parkland directly opposite. On the far side—not that far, as the river was fairly narrow at this point—a set of steps led up from the tidal river into the trees. Jack couldn’t see the steps, it was too dark, but they were there in his mind’s eye. He couldn’t see whether the tide was in or out, whether the river was low or high, and he felt the need to know.

“Wait for me here,” he said to Ruby, but she didn’t answer. She was sitting on the bench and looked like she’d fallen asleep. He scrambled over the railing and down the riverbank, along the uneven ground, slipping on rocks and gravel, through the stinging nettles, brambles and blackberries. The tide was high, and the river
churned past where he stood, and he could hear the water right in front of him, he could smell the wet of it. The party receded. Jack had always loved the Thames, his whole life he loved the river, it was part of why he loved Dukes with its enormous trees and its long grass and its big sky.

So he walked forward, and felt his trainers fill with water. He felt heavier and heavier, more and more weighed down by the water, pulled down into the water, as though by the force of gravity, just like Yacub must have felt as the ground rushed toward him that day.

25

Yacub wandered along the riverside footpath, dodging the revellers, thinking to himself that perhaps the Islamic Republic of Pakistan had got it right and making alcohol illegal was a good idea, though he had stopped feeling sick and now felt—well, he felt happy. He lifted his face to the breeze and smelled the river. The night air was soft and damp in England, and it was as though it washed his face for him, kept him clear and clean, far away from the dust of Dubai, the filth of Karachi. The mud on his hands had dried and he’d succeeded in brushing much of it away. He straightened the collar of his new jacket, adjusted his new trousers. These clothes alone were enough to make him happy. Something inside him had shaken loose, been set free.

He came to a bench to one side of the footpath, overlooking the river, with a girl curled up on one end, her hood drawn over her head as though she was asleep. Yacub felt tired—he was looking forward to the day when he no longer felt tired all the time—as he sat down beside her. The moon had come out and he had a good view of the river. Someone—a man, Yacub thought—was moving through the water, wading in as though he was planning on walking to the other side. The water reached his thighs;
he slipped a bit, and was suddenly in up to his waist. Yacub sat straighter. It didn’t look right. It didn’t look right at all. It—it was Jack.

As though she’d heard his thoughts, the girl on the bench woke up with a start and lurched forward.

“Jack!” Ruby screamed. “Jack! What the fuck are you doing?”

26

Harriet didn’t think it was possible to feel any older than she felt that night. The teenagers parted for her as though she was unclean. Despite the dark, despite being drunk or stoned or impaired in some way, they could tell she was someone’s mum. Harriet made her way across the field. A few times she saw kids she thought she recognized, friends of Jack’s, but they moved away from her rapidly, and she knew better than to try to speak to them. She heard an ambulance siren getting louder, drawing near, and she could hear shouting coming from down by the river. She began to run and had to push people out of her way, forcing her body through the crowd, which grew denser the closer she got to the riverbank. She broke through to a clearing and saw the paramedic closing the ambulance doors. A girl was standing behind the ambulance, lit up by red taillights and the blue lights that flashed on the roof of the vehicle. The ambulance gave a short siren burst and began to drive away.

She touched Ruby’s arm. The girl looked at her and collapsed in tears. “It’s Jack, Mrs. Smith. He got into the river.”

“What?”

“I don’t know why he went into the water, like he thought he’d go for a swim or something. His cousin went after him and pulled him out—I don’t know how—he—”

“His cousin?”

“Yeah, the cousin from Pakistan—”

“Is Jack all right?”

“I don’t know, he wasn’t speaking. His sister pumped his chest and made him breathe—”

“His sister?”

“With the red hair. She told the paramedic she was his sister. I didn’t know Jack had a sister. He was completely drenched and coughing up water and he—”

“Which hospital, Ruby?”

“West Middlesex.”

“Go home now, Ruby. Go home.”

And Harriet ran up the lane toward the main road, shouting into her phone for a taxi.

27

I open my eyes and then close them again. Too bright.

“Put the camera away,” I told her,

“you’re not allowed to film in hospitals.”

I didn’t say her name, not yet.

I open my eyes again. My mum. Who is she talking to?

“Why are you here? You said you’re his sister?”

All this time, all this waiting—and

here we are, and she’s denying it.

She’s denying
me
.

She thinks I’m her mother! Of course—

that was inevitable. How stupid of me.

Crazeeharree.

Crazeeharree. Did she think I’d never figure it out?

Sister? I have a sister? I can’t keep my eyes open. It’s too bright.

28

“I understand if you don’t want to discuss it in front of him,” Emily said, indicating the very long boy on the hospital bed. They were separated from the rest of Accident and Emergency by curtains.

“I followed you online,” Harriet said. “I’m not proud of it. But I needed to see you, to see how you were doing. I’ve worried about you all these years.”

“You followed me online and you’re still going to deny it?” Emily said.

“Deny what?” said Harriet. “You’re not his sister.”

Harriet watched Emily crumple. Her clothes were wet; her mascara had leaked down her face. She put the camera on the plastic chair by the curtain, pulled a soggy tissue out of her pocket, wiped her nose and began to cry.

“You look like her,” Harriet said. “You look just like her.”

Emily looked up. “Like who?”

“Like your mother.”

29

Jack surfaced once again and fought to open his eyes. His mother and that girl with the red hair were still standing beside his bed. They had their arms around each other. They were hugging. Shit, they’re crying. Just when it looked as though everything was going to be all right. Fuck, he thought. I must be dead. I’ve gone and died.

PART THREE