George had ended up having an in-town t-shirt printer do a rush job at his own exorbitant expense to reproduce another batch for the hen party and hoped to God they hadn’t found any sudden EasyJet bargains to Riga as well. Mehmet, meanwhile, was feigning stomach illness to try and leave early, which he regularly did on Friday afternoons, and George had also spent the entire day toiling over the almost literally incredible news that Kumiko had yet to acquire a mobile phone that worked in this country, so he had no way of calling or texting her, or obsessing over calling or texting her, or obsessing over not calling or texting her and had reached a point of near-implosion about having nothing but her word that he’d ever see her again.
When, of course, in she walked.
‘My impertinence,’ she said, laying the suitcase on the front counter.
She removed her feathered tile of the dragon: white, tightly woven strands of feather and stalk on the plain black background.
And beside the dragon, she’d affixed his cutting of the crane.
‘Holy shit,’ Mehmet said, seriously, peering over George’s shoulder. ‘That’s amazing.’
George said nothing, because if he spoke, he would weep.
‘It’s a picnic,’ Amanda said the next morning, handing JP over to George in a pile of biscuit-smelling flesh.
‘Grand-père!’ JP shouted.
‘Bit cold for a picnic, isn’t it?’ George asked, after he’d kissed JP and taken him inside. Amanda followed him in but didn’t sit down.
He saw her glancing at the papers and clothes and books galore that made his sitting room not the most obviously child-friendly place in the world. It didn’t matter. JP adored George, and George adored his grandson. They could have been stuck in prison and made a day of it.
‘Not for Rachel and Mei,’ Amanda said.
‘Rachel?’ George asked.
‘You remember,’ she said. ‘The girl from work who came to my birthday a few months back. Mei, too. Both pretty, both vaguely evil-seeming. Rachel more so.’
‘Yes,’ George said, bouncing a giggling JP up and down in his arms. ‘I think I remember them.’
‘We sit in the sun. We look at boys. We drink wine.’
‘Sounds nice.’
‘They hate me. And I think I hate them.’
‘I met someone,’ he said, so quickly it must have been obvious he’d been holding it in. ‘She’s called Kumiko.’
Amanda’s face froze for a minute. ‘All right.’
‘Came into the shop. We’ve gone out the last two nights. And again tonight.’
‘Three nights in a row? Are you teenagers?’
‘I know, I know, it’s a lot all at once, but . . .’ He set JP down on the sofa, burying him in dusty, old cushions so that he’d have to escape, a game JP loved.
‘But?’ Amanda asked.
‘Nothing,’ George shrugged. ‘Nothing. I’m just saying I met a nice lady.’
‘All right,’ Amanda said again, carefully. ‘I’ll pick him up before four.’
‘Good, because–’
‘Because you’ve got a date, gotcha.’
But George wasn’t embarrassed, felt too full of sunshine to even be bashful. ‘And wait,’ he said, ‘just wait until I show you the dragon and the crane.’
He kissed Kumiko that night. For a moment, she was definitely the one being kissed, but then she did kiss him back.
His heart sang.
‘I don’t understand it,’ he said to her some time later, after they lay together under sheets he hadn’t even bothered changing, never imagining for a moment that anything like this was going to happen. ‘Who are you?’
‘Kumiko,’ she said. ‘And who are you?’
‘I’ll be honest,’ George said. ‘I haven’t the foggiest idea.’
‘Then I will tell you.’ She turned to him, taking his hand as if bestowing a blessing. ‘You are kind, George. The sort of man who would forgive.’
‘Forgive what?’ he asked.
But she kissed him for an answer and the question was lost, lost, lost.
1 of 32
She is born a breath of cloud.
She sees neither her mother nor her father – her mother has died during the birth and not hung around; her father is the cloud itself, silent, weeping, consumed with grief – and so she stands alone, on legs unfamiliar.
‘Where have I come from?’ she asks.
There is no answer.
‘Where am I to go?’
There is no answer, even from the cloud, though he knows.
‘May I ask, at least, what I am called?’
After a hesitant moment, the cloud whispers into her ear. She nods her head and understands.
2 of 32
She takes flight.
3 of 32
The world below her is young, too young to have quite grown together. It exists in islands of floating earth, some connected by rope bridges or bamboo walkways, others reached across expanses of sky by rowing boats made of paper, others to which she can only fly.
She lands on an island that is mostly meadow, the grass bowing to her in the breeze. She pinches it between her fingertips and says, ‘Yes. Just so.’
In the meadow, there is a lake. She goes to it, following the sand along its shores, until she reaches the river that flows from it. She stands on tiptoes and sees that the river empties over the edge of the island and into space in an outrage of angry water.
Why does the water do so? she thinks.
4 of 32
There is a fisherman on the far shore. She calls to him. ‘Why does the water do so? Will it not spend itself completely and leave only empty earth?’
‘This lake is sourced from the tears of children who have lost their parents, my lady,’ the fisherman replies. ‘As you see.’
‘Ah,’ she says, looking down to see tears falling from her own golden eyes into the water, sending out ringlets across the lake’s surface.
‘It makes the fish tender,’ the fisherman says, reeling in a specimen with shiny golden scales. ‘Though they do taste of sorrow.’
‘I am hungry,’ she says. ‘I have yet to eat anything at all.’
‘Come over to the fire, my lady,’ the fisherman says. ‘I will feed you your fill of grief.’ He tosses the golden-scaled fish into his basket, its gills gasping fruitlessly in the air. ‘And perhaps after,’ he says, almost shyly, but only almost, ‘you will lie with me to show your gratitude.’
He smiles at her. It is full of ugly hope.
5 of 32
She bows her head in reply and flies to him, her fingers delicately skating across the surface of the lake, pulling two long watery arrowheads behind her. She lands next to the fisherman and places her hands on the sides of his head, kissing him gently on the lips.
It is a new sensation. Wetter than she expects.
‘You wish to trap me,’ she says to him. ‘Your thoughts are clear. You will take the spear you have lying next to your basket of fish, and if I do not agree to lie with you, you will use it to force me. You are perhaps not even a bad man, perhaps just one twisted by loneliness. I could not say. But what I do know is that you do not really ask for my body. You ask for my forgiveness.’
The man’s face has become a curl of sadness. He begins to weep. ‘Yes, my lady. I am sorry, my lady.’
‘I believe you,’ she says. ‘You have my forgiveness.’
6 of 32
Quickly, mercifully, she bites out both of the fisherman’s eyes and plunges two sharp fingers through his heart. He slumps to the muddy shore.
‘You have killed me, my lady,’ he says, regarding his body, squelching in the mud between them. ‘You have set me free.’
‘This I do gladly,’ she says.
‘I thank you, my lady,’ says the fisherman. ‘I thank you.’
A wind whirls around them, scattering the fisherman’s spirit, which thanks her until it can thank her no more.
7 of 32
She feeds on his basket of fi
sh. They do taste of sorrow, which is bitter but not unpleasantly so. After she has sated her appetite, she takes the fish that remain and places them back in the water, holding them between her hands until they wriggle back into life and swim off. When this is finished, she rolls the body of the fisherman into the lake, too, bidding him farewell when he catches the current, making his final journey as the angry water hurls him out into the space between the islands.
She looks at her hands, turns them this way and that, as if in curiosity of what she has done with them. She washes them in the river and dries them on the material of her dress.
Then, once again, she takes flight.
II.
‘I want to ask her to move in with me.’
‘Yeah, and I meant to see if you could take JP on Saturday again? I’ve got queue counting to do in Romford, if you can believe it. On a Saturday. Some kind of sporting event, I don’t know–’
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Yes. Hiring a cleaner. Blah blah blah. I’d have to drop him off criminally early, like before six, but he’ll easily sleep till eight, so really, it’s just–’
‘Did you hear the reason I’m hiring a cleaner?’
‘The reason? I don’t know. To have a clean house? What kind of question–?
‘I think I’m going to ask Kumiko to move in with me.’
‘. . .’
‘. . .’
‘Move in with you?’
‘Well. I want to.’
‘MOVE IN WITH YOU!?’
‘I know it’s a bit sudden.’
‘A BIT SUDDEN? You’ve known her for two weeks! If that! What are you, mayflies?’
‘Amanda–’
‘Dad, you’re talking crazy. You barely know her.’
‘That’s the thing. I want to know her. I almost feel greedy about it.’
‘And this is how you want to find out? Look, you’re smitten, and I’m happy about you being smitten, but it also makes me worry, George. You break. You love and it’s too big and they can never love you back enough and you clearly can’t ask her to move in with you now, she’ll run a mile. And why wouldn’t she? Any woman would.’
‘She’s not just any woman.’
‘That’s as maybe, but unless she’s an alien–’
‘There’s a thought.’
‘–she’s going to think you’re a crazy person.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d met her. It just seems so natural already, so easy–’
‘See, this is how much too soon it is for you two to move in together. I haven’t even met her.’
‘Why don’t you come out with us for dinner on Saturday?’
‘Because I’m in Romford, and I need to bring JP over–’
‘Come after, when you pick him up.’
‘I can’t. Henri’s got his call with JP that night and I–’
‘I just want you to meet–’
‘Why should I? Why should I even remember her name just before she never speaks to you again for asking her to move in with you after two weeks?’
‘You know, Amanda, I sometimes wonder why you think it’s okay to talk to me like this.’
‘I . . .’
‘. . .’
‘. . .’
‘Amanda?’
‘. . .’
‘Oh, don’t cry, sweetheart, I didn’t mean to–’
‘No, no, I know you didn’t, and that’s why I’m crying. You tell me off and you do it so kindly and you’re right and I don’t know what’s wrong with me and I’m just such an evil shit–’
‘You’re not an evil–’
‘I am! Even this! How can we be sure I’m not bursting into tears so you’ll rush in and tell me how not-evil I am?’
‘Are you?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘Sweetheart, what’s the matter?’
‘. . .’
‘A sigh that long is never a good indicator of–’
‘I think I’ve fucked it up with the girls at the office.’
‘Oh, Amanda–’
‘I know, you don’t need to tell me.’
‘Which girls?’
‘What?’
‘Which girls at the office?’
‘The same ones. Mei and Rachel.’
‘Rachel. The one who talks in questions.’
‘And Mei is the one whose boobs aren’t fake but look like they are. See? It’s things like that. I think them and then I just say them–’
‘What happened?’
‘The usual. I opened my big, fat, fucking mouth–’
‘I wish you wouldn’t–’
‘Not the time to be shaming me for my language, Dad.’
‘Sorry.’
‘I just, I don’t get it. How do people do it? How do people talk so easily to one another? How do they just, I don’t know, fall into it and relax and there’s repartee and banter and, whatever, ease, and I just sit there and I think, Okay, what are we talking about? And what should I say? And what shouldn’t I say? And how should I or shouldn’t I say it? And by the time I do fucking say something, we’re three topics on.’
‘You couldn’t introduce topics yourself?’
‘That gets me into more trouble. I mean, this all really started to go downhill at that godawful picnic when I said how much I hated that monstrosity on Mayfair–’
‘Which monstrosity?’
‘The Animals In War Memorial.’
‘That? You don’t like that?’
‘. . .’
‘Oh, sweetheart, I don’t even know why you’re crying now, but please–’
‘Because I don’t understand how people talk to each other, Dad. I try, but I just blunder on in and knock over the china and spit in the soup and break all these rules that no one will even tell me–’
‘Ah, that’s an English thing. They do like their unknowable rules.’
‘Yeah, but I am English. I am they.’
‘I don’t think you’re the only one who feels left out, is all I’m saying.’
‘But that’s just it. Feeling left out. It was supposed to stop when I grew up but . . .’
‘Smart people often feel left out, love.’
‘I’m not that smart. I mean, I’m smarter than Rachel. And probably Mei, too, though that’s a well of many mysteries. So, I don’t know, maybe. But what good is being smart when you speak words and no one hears the ones you mean?’
‘I’m sorry, darling. Maybe they weren’t good friends for you to begin with–’
‘Well, someone has to be! I’m nearly twenty-six and I can’t even point to a best friend. Do you know how freakish that is for a girl? Girls are all about best friends, even when you hate each other.’
‘Boys have best friends, too.’
‘Really not the point. For me, it’s been two and a half decades of false starts, of sitting outside the glass, wondering how you get in. How you stay in.’
‘Could be worse. Could be nearly five decades.’
‘You’ve never had a problem getting inside the glass, George.’
‘I’ve had a problem getting other people to stay in there with me, though. Same thing, different angle.’
‘Mum stayed.’
‘For a while.’
‘For a long while. She’s still your friend.’
‘A friend is different than a wife, Amanda.’
‘Yeah, I know. I know. I’m having . . . It’s just been tough at work. And at home. Henri calls and talks to JP and he’s polite to me. Friendly and polite and fucking courteous. And it tears three pieces out of my heart every single time . . .’
‘Okay, I’m going to stop telling you to stop crying. Maybe it’s a healing thing.’
‘Not these. These are angry tears. Don’t laugh.’
‘Well, sweetheart, if it helps, I’m your friend.’
‘Oh, Dad. You know that doesn’t count.’
She wouldn’t let him see her working on the tiles.
‘I c
annot, George,’ she’d say, looking unexpectedly bashful (and how he couldn’t not touch her when she blushed, how he couldn’t not run his fingers across the line of her cheekbone, down to her jaw, under her chin, at which point he couldn’t not kiss her, apologising at every step). ‘It is too private, I am sorry.’
‘Even for me?’ he asked.
‘Especially for you. You see me, clearly, with love–’
‘Kumiko–’
‘I know. You have not said the word, but it is there.’ He tensed, but her creamy brown eyes were warm and kind. ‘Your observation is exactly what I would want,’ she went on, ‘but it changes my work. It has to begin with just my own eyes. If you are there to see it, it is already shared, and if it is already shared, then I will not be able to give it to you or to anyone, do you see?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean, yes, I do see, but that’s not what I was going to say.’
‘What were you going to say?’
‘That I do see you with love. That’s how I see you.’
‘I know,’ she said, but she said it in such a way that ‘I know’ became every type of love he ever wanted to hear.
‘Will you move in with me?’
And like every other time he’d asked that question, she just laughed.
On its own, her art was beautiful, but she wouldn’t stop insisting that it was static. The cuttings of the feathers woven together, assembled in eye-bending combinations to suggest not only a picture (the watermill, the dragon, the profile) but often the absences in those pictures, too, the shadows they left, black feathers woven with dark purple ones to make surprising representations of voids. Or sometimes, there was just empty space, with a single dash of down to emphasise its emptiness. The eye was constantly fooled by them, happening upon shape when blankness was expected, happening upon blankness when shape was expected. They tantalised, they tricked.
‘But they do not breathe, George.’
‘They do. I’m telling you, they do.’
‘You are kind. They do not.’
On repeated inspection, they revealed themselves to not always be exclusively feathers, either. She would sometimes sew a line of thread or a single mother-of-pearl button to suggest a horizon or a sun. In one, she included a flat curve of plastic which should have jarred against the softness of a feather’s spray, but somehow seemed a combination both apt and eternal.