Free For the Forest of a Bird by Sue Saliba Page A

hospital,’ Nella spoke as if only to herself.
    â€˜I made it for my aunt to give to your dad,’ Isobel explained. ‘She said he liked those strange white birds that screeched a lot.’
    â€˜The angels?’
    â€˜Yeah, the angels.’
    Isobel looked directly at Nella.
    â€˜You’re close to your dad, aren’t you?’
    Nella felt the blood run to her face. She looked at the drawing of the corellas caught in flight.
    â€˜Are you embarrassed? There’s nothing wrong with being close to your dad.’
    â€˜It’s not that.’
    â€˜What is it, then?’
    Nella bit her bottom lip.
    â€˜You were surprised when he introduced us,’ she said at last. ‘He hadn’t even mentioned me.’
    â€˜That wasn’t why I was surprised.’
    â€˜No?’
    â€˜No. I was surprised because . . .’
    â€˜Yeah?’
    â€˜. . . because my aunt had described you differently. I imagined you to be very different.’
    â€˜But she hasn’t even met me. How could she describe me? What did she say?’
    â€˜It doesn’t matter.’
    â€˜It does, Isobel. I want to know.’
    â€˜It doesn’t matter, really. Look, she’s not a bad person. It’s just that she’s a bit insecure, a bit threatened sometimes.’
    Nella waited.
    â€˜And she thinks if there’s something to be said, then she has to say it straight away. She can’t seem to let things float or remain unsaid, she has to speak out without waiting. It’s like she has to nail everything down, to make it neat and controlled, I don’t know. Sometimes she’s so abrupt and blunt, but she doesn’t mean to be hurtful. It’s just the way she is. She’s different from my mum and from me and from you too, Nella, I think.’
    â€˜Then I don’t understand why my dad would want her as his . . . girlfriend.’
    â€˜Well, like I said, she’s not a bad person. She can be really nice. And maybe there are parts of your dad you don’t know.’
    â€˜No, that isn’t true,’ Nella said quickly.
    Isobel breathed deeply.
    â€˜She’s not going to take your place, if that’s what you’re thinking. No girlfriend can do that, take the place of someone’s child.’
    Nella felt her breathing slow.
    Isobel glanced at the dressing table beside her bed.
    â€˜Why don’t you talk to him, Nella? Tell your dad how you feel?’
    Nella looked at the corellas.
    â€˜Maybe,’ she said. ‘Maybe I will.’
    Nella couldn’t, not exactly. She couldn’t use words to tell her dad all that she felt and all that she wanted, all that she feared. But she would find another way. She would tell him about the swallows.
    The time had not been right until now because she hadn’t felt everything she needed to feel, everything that the swallows would allow her to say, everything that the swallows had come into her life to let her express.
    Uncomplicated, glimpsed in its barest, sudden form: love.
    A love for her father and a love even for herself.
    She would tell her father how she felt.
    Nella thanked Isobel as she dropped her off at her father’s house.
    â€˜I’ll tell him,’ she said.
    And Isobel smiled back, as if a piece of her own life might be falling into place, and drove the car away.
    Yes, Nella would tell her father how she loved him. She would tell him about the swallows, how they returned each year, how their young ones flew into skies impossible to be sure of but with the strongest wing beats because their parents had flown in those skies a hundred times before. She would tell him how much she trusted and loved him, knowing nothing could stand between a parent and its child. A father and his child. Her father and her.
    She would tell him.
    But first she would tell someone else.
    She would tell Matthew. She would write back to him and she would say that he was wrong, he