Songbirds(60)

‘That’s OK. But I am hungry.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But first, would you tell me about the Sea Above the Sky? I’m feeling sad. I’m missing Nisha and I think I would like to hear a story.’

She looked at me for a moment, then said, ‘OK, then. Close your eyes.’

I did as she said.

‘You mustn’t peep. I can tell if you are peeping!’

I scrunched up my eyes, to prove that I wouldn’t cheat.

‘Most boats go forwards and backwards, but this one goes upwards,’ she said. ‘Into the sky. We have to go through the layers of sky and then we get to the sea.’

‘Isn’t the sea on the ground?’ I asked.

‘No. And don’t interrupt. Just be patient,’ Aliki said.

I smiled at the scolding. Just be patient. Those words reminded me of Stephanos. I was always more eager than him to get on with things, to make plans, to get married, to get pregnant. Chill out, Petra. Just be patient. It’s not because he didn’t love me, I had no doubt about that, but he was a man who wanted to take everything a step at a time, slowly, as if we had all the time in the world. It was also how we made love, so unrushed, so slow, and it made me go crazy for him.

‘We’re there,’ Aliki said. ‘But don’t open your eyes.’

I nodded and kept my eyes closed.

‘Up here it’s eight hours ahead,’ she said, ‘so the sun is coming up. But just coming up, so it’s still kind of dark. The sea is shiny, all silver and gold. The sea is as wide as the sky, it never ends, so you can sail above any country in the whole world. When you look down through the water, you can see the earth, all the trees and rivers and houses. And the people.’

‘Are there people up here, too?’ I asked.

‘Sometimes, but not today. There are plenty of birds, though. They are birds that have died and now they are here and they make promises to each other. Some of them used to be human and they came here to find each other again. But not all – some of them were birds before.’

I opened my eyes now and looked at my daughter. Her hair was wild about her shoulders, and shining a deep glossy brown. She was wearing her pyjamas and her wrists and ankles seemed to be bursting from them. How had she grown, this child of mine? I could see the past in her eyes, Stephanos looking out at me, just for a second, before the memory of him vanished and then there was only Aliki. Aliki. Aliki in her own right. With her beautiful almost-translucent skin and silver veins on her lids and flushed cheeks and soft ridge in her brow and cheek bones like half-moons. She took my breath away.

The cat jumped on my lap and rubbed its head against my arm, my shoulder and my face, its soft purr close to my ear.

‘Can we have dinner now, Mum?’ she asked.

Mum.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Mum?’

‘Yes?’

‘I miss Nisha.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘So do I.’

‘Is she coming back?’ Aliki asked.

‘I don’t think so, but I don’t know for sure.’

‘Are you trying to find her?

‘I am.’

Aliki was quiet for a while and then in a very serious voice she said, ‘She was worried about the birds.’

‘The birds?’ I said.

‘The ones that get trapped on the lime sticks by their feathers and legs. She was going to tell the man to stop stealing all the birds from the sky.’

‘What man?’

‘He’s called Seraphim.’

I tried not to react. I chose my words carefully. ‘Did she go to speak to him?’ I said, as gently as I could.

‘Yes. When we came back from the mountains. When she tucked me into bed, she told me that she was going out to talk to the bad man about the birds and that I should be a good girl and stay in bed. You know, because sometimes I need to wee and I knock on her door because it’s too scary at night for me to go to the toilet all on my own.’

I didn’t know that, but I nodded.

‘I think we should go back now,’ she said. ‘The waves are getting bigger. We can come again another night.’

I nodded.

‘Would you like to come up here again?’ she said.

Once more I nodded, but I found that I couldn’t speak.





The man with the army boots is walking out of the water, wet to his ribcage. He is completely dressed in black, with a windbreaker that has an orange trim around the lapel. Guided by the light of the moon, he bends down to pick up his phone, which he has left on the yellow rock by the side of the lake, and makes his way up the crater until he comes across the decomposing hare. He flashes the light of his phone over the corpse. A beetle climbs out of the empty eye socket.

The man walks away from the lake, picking up a black rucksack that he’s left beneath a wild thyme bush; he catches the smell as he bends, and he pauses for a moment and inhales the scent with closed and distant eyes. Perhaps he is trying to replace the smell of death, which is clinging to his nostrils. With the rucksack over his shoulder, he walks a few yards to his car. He does not turn on the headlights as he drives away.





20

Yiannis

E

ARLY IN THE MORNING, THERE was a knock at the door. I jumped out of bed thinking it was Nisha, but Petra was standing there, looking pale as the moon.