The Island of Missing Trees(5)

If her mother were alive, Ada might have shown her the magazine. They might have looked at it together, giggling. They might have talked, cradling mugs of hot chocolate in their hands, breathing in the steam that rose towards their faces. Her mother had understood unruly thoughts, naughty thoughts, the dark side of the moon. She once said, half jokingly, that she was too rebellious to be a good mum, too motherly to be a good rebel. Only now, after she was gone, did Ada acknowledge that, despite everything, she was a good mum – and a good rebel. It had been exactly eleven months and eight days since her death. This would be the first Christmas she would spend without her.

‘What do you think, Ada?’ Mrs Walcott asked suddenly. ‘Would you agree with that?’

Having gone back to her drawing, it took Ada another beat to shift her gaze from the butterfly and realize that the teacher was looking at her. She blushed up to her hairline. Her back tensed as if her body had sensed a danger she was yet to comprehend. When she found her voice, it came out so shaky, she wasn’t sure she had spoken at all.

‘Pardon?’

‘I was asking whether you think Jason is right.’

‘Sorry, miss … right about what?’

A suppressed titter rose.

‘We were talking about family heirlooms,’ said Mrs Walcott with a tired smile. ‘Zafaar mentioned his grandma’s hope chest. Then Jason said, why is it always women who cling to these souvenirs and knick-knacks from the past? And I wanted to know whether you agree with that statement.’

Ada swallowed drily. Her pulse thudded in her temples. Silence, thick and glutinous, trickled into the space around her. She imagined it spreading out like dark ink on to crocheted white doilies – like the ones she had once found in the drawer of her mother’s dressing table. Neatly cut into obsessively small pieces, destroyed, they had been placed between layers of tissue paper, as if her mother could neither keep them as they were, nor bring herself to throw them away.

‘Any thoughts?’ said Mrs Walcott, her voice tender but insistent.

Slowly and without thinking why, Ada stood up, scraping the chair noisily against the flagstone floor. She cleared her throat, though she had absolutely no idea what to say. Her mind had gone blank. On the open page in front of her the butterfly, alarmed and desperate to flee, took to the air, even though its wings, unfinished and blurred at the edges, were hardly strong enough.

‘I … I don’t think it’s always women. My father does it too.’

‘He does?’ asked Mrs Walcott. ‘How exactly?’

Now all her classmates were staring at her, waiting for her to say something that would make sense. Some had a gentle pity in their eyes, others crude indifference, which she much preferred. She felt unmoored by their collective expectation, pressure building in her ears as if she were sinking underwater.

‘Can you give us an example?’ said Mrs Walcott. ‘What does your father collect?’

‘Uhm, my father …’ Ada said in a drawl and paused.

What could she tell them about him? That he forgot to eat or even speak sometimes, letting whole days go by without consuming proper food or uttering a full sentence, or that, if only he could, he would probably spend the rest of his life in the back garden or, better yet, in a forest somewhere, his hands plunged in the soil, surrounded by bacteria, fungi and all those plants, growing and decaying by the minute? What could she tell them about her father that would make them understand what he was like when she herself had a hard time recognizing him any more?

Instead, she said a single word. ‘Plants.’

‘Plants …’ echoed Mrs Walcott, her face twisted with incomprehension.

‘My father is fond of them,’ Ada added in a rush, instantly regretting her choice of words.

‘Oh, how cute … he fancies flowers!’ Jason commented in a syrupy tone.

Laughter rippled through the classroom, no longer constrained. Ada noticed even her friend Ed was avoiding her gaze, pretending to read something in his textbook, his shoulders slumped and his head down. She then searched for Zafaar and found his bright, black eyes that rarely saw her now studying her with a curiosity that bordered on concern.

‘Well, that’s lovely,’ said Mrs Walcott. ‘But can you think of an object he cares about? Something that has emotional value.’

In that moment there was nothing Ada wanted more than to find the right words. Why were they hiding from her? Her stomach constricted with a stab of pain, so sharp that for a few seconds she thought she couldn’t breathe, let alone talk. And yet she did, and when she did, she heard herself say, ‘He spends a lot of time with his trees.’

Mrs Walcott gave a half-nod, her smile fading from her lips.

‘Especially this fig tree, I think that’s his favourite.’

‘All right then, you may sit down now,’ said Mrs Walcott.

But Ada did not comply. The pain, having darted towards her ribcage, was searching for a way out. Her chest tightened, as though squeezed by invisible hands. She felt disorientated, the room swaying slightly under her feet.

‘God, she’s so cringey!’ someone whispered loud enough for her to hear.

Ada clenched her eyes shut, feeling the burn of the comment, a raw scorch mark on her flesh. But nothing they did or said could be worse than her hatred for herself just then. What was wrong with her? Why could she not answer a simple question like everyone else?