Free Your Father Sends His Love by Stuart Evers Page B

could stay for free. Therewas a pool. Huge and blue. They could swim; they could go to Disney World. It would be the first time they’d all gone abroad.
    She thought of the wings. She thought of the pool. She shook her head.
    â€˜I’m never getting on an aeroplane,’ she said. ‘You can’t make me. You know how scared I am of flying.’
    They had tried to convince her. They had failed. She said the fear was too great. The wings twitched every time she said she would not fly. They twitched with every untruth.
    It is the girls she thinks of as she observes the spreading, rousant wings on her back. When eventually she tells them of the wings, they will be delighted; they will trace their fingers over them; ask to hang on to her legs as she ascends. Her wings give a small shiver; she has been busy and has neglected them: she is glad to see them now in all their strength, in all their intricacy on her shoulder blades.
    The girls were born after Gwen died, though Chloe has developed a considerable interest in her namesake – Tom would not have Gwen as a first name, so they sandwiched it between Chloe and Carlton. From photograph albums, Chloe has extracted the pictures of Gwen, the unpleasant gloss of the late eighties, the bad skin and badly cropped hair, and tacked them to the noticeboardin the girls’ shared bedroom. Chloe asks Maria about her sister often, and already understands she is being given the barest minimum, only a partial truth.
    In the mirror the wings look as though they have always been there. Maria thinks of Gwen, un-illustrated, and begins to heave from the stomach, crying without tears. A kind of not-crying, a sort of anti-crying. She sits down on the edge of the bed and puts her head in her hands and imagines her sister laughing. The intensity of it spangles. The wings beat and she opens her eyes to see her sister standing in the mirror, staring at her, eyes fixed and dilated. Maria smiles at her sister, and there is no Gwen, just Chloe, her daughter, with red eyes and wet hair.
    Chloe is open-mouthed. Maria wants to say something but does not.
    â€˜Holy shit,’ Chloe says. ‘Holy shit. Dad!’
    Chloe stares at the wings, Maria closes her eyes. Soon Tom is at the door, paternal hands on Chloe’s shoulders, turning her away and onto the small landing.
    â€˜Go to your room,’ he says quietly and Chloe does as she’s told, though her mouth is open, desperate to speak. Tom walks back into their bedroom and closes the door. It is a small room, a double bed that doesn’t quite stretch as far as his legs, a wardrobe badly bolted to the wall, an inherited dressing table: far from the room he’d imaginedfor them. He looks at Maria’s wings, looks at the room. They will need money to move.
    The conversation they should be having is about this. About affording a new house, giving the girls a room each now Chloe’s first period announced itself at the pool. He should be saying: We knew this day was coming soon. He should be saying to her now: We knew they couldn’t share a room for ever. It should be the conversation for which they’d once prepared themselves, laughing at what it would be like with teenagers when both of them felt like teenagers themselves. He should be saying: We’ll get through this.
    Her shoulders are rounded, the tattooed wings lithe. He sits at a right angle to her; his hand on her back, just below the ink.
    â€˜I see you’ve been hiding something from me,’ he says.
    The wings are huge. Angels’, he thinks, with licks of what might be flame, though without colour it’s hard to be sure. They look large enough to support flight.
    â€˜It’s almost funny,’ Tom says. ‘I could laugh. Seriously, I could laugh.’
    He starts to trace the outline of the wings, then stops.
    â€˜What else have you been hiding from me?’ he says. ‘What else have you got tattooed? You