Free Birdy by Jess Vallance

They didn’t say as much but you knew they thought it. We’d walk the streets for hours, asking everyone. We had leaflets – Nan got them all done up proper in the print shop. We took the bus all around. Even did a week in London – Bridget always talked about London – but where do you start with a place like that?
    ‘We hadn’t seen her for exactly one year when Nan flipped. I’d been expecting it really, in a way. I just came home once and found her sitting on the floor. Smashed glass everywhere. All the pictures, all the baby photos, first day of school, blowing out the candles on her ninth birthday, roller-skating on her eleventh … all broken. And Nan, just sitting there, cuts on her hands. Crying. Crying her heart out.’
    Granddad’s voice cracked then. I looked at him, alarmed, but he dragged his sleeve across his eyes and seemed to pull himself together.
    ‘So I picked her up. I tidied away the photos, in albums, in drawers, tucked away for when she wanted them again. Then I washed her hands in the sink and tied them up with bandages and when I was doing it Nan says, “She’s gone, hasn’t she? She’s gone.” And she had, Frances. Bridget had gone from us. And that was it. No more searching, no more tears, no more photos.’
    I’d never seen Nan cry. I couldn’t even imagine it. I didn’t want to. ‘Poor Nan,’ I said quietly.
    ‘You’ve never known your nan how she was, Frances love. You never saw the best of her. What she is now … she’s not the same. She’s just a shell. When we found out Bridget had died, there were no tears, even then. Not from Nan anyway. She’d already accepted it. I hoped that when we got you home, it would … I don’t know, snap her out of it. Give her a second chance or something. But it was too late. She’d already shut down.’
    I looked at my hands then and swallowed hard. I was just so angry. That
stupid
cow
Bridget. She thought she was so special but she was horrible. She’d ruined everything. She’d broken Nan. She’d broken them both.
    Granddad must’ve seen me looking strange and assumed I was upset because he put down his dirty rag and held my hand. We stayed like that for a minute but it started to make me feel funny, so I wriggled free and placed my screwdriver in the drawer at the top of the red toolbox.
    ‘Have we got time to have ice cream before Nan’s home?’ I’d said, forcing myself to be bright and cheery. I didn’t want Granddad to say anything else. I didn’t want to hear any more about Bridget, not ever. She’d taken up enough of everyone’s energy as it was.
    ‘I expect so, love.’
    At first, we’d ignored it when Granddad got my name wrong.
    ‘Hello, Bridget love, how was school?’
    ‘Get Bridget to help you with the sweeping.’
    Once though, I caught a look at Nan when he did it and I saw the expression in her eyes – a brief flash of something that looked a lot like alarm. Panic, almost.
    Then, one evening, we were sitting in the living room after dinner watching some awful quiz programme, and Granddad turned to me and said, ‘Turn it up, would you, Bridget? Can’t hear a word over here.’
    All of a sudden Nan leant forward and turned the TV off. ‘That’s enough,’ she snapped. ‘That’s enough of that rubbish. Come on, time for bed.’
    ‘Is it?’ Granddad asked. ‘Already?’
    ‘Yes,’ Nan said firmly. ‘It’s late.’
    It was barely nine o’clock, but Granddad nodded obediently and shuffled out of the living room. Nan didn’t move for a minute. She just sat in the chair, staring at the blank TV. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t want to move.
    Neither of us said anything for a minute or two, then Nan spoke.
    ‘She tried to kill you too, you know,’ she said, her eyes still fixed on the empty TV screen. ‘Never told you that. She dissolved some of those pills into your milk. Tried to get you to drink it. You wouldn’t though, of course. Even a baby knows that’s not right. Never told