19. Cuckoo #2
The basement is transformed. Yes, it’s still full of broken furniture and boxes.
The stairs leading up to the main house are as broken and splintered as ever.
But it is transformed even so. The girls have set up a circle of blankets in the middle of the space, which must have been brought here on some other night, when I wasn’t aware, red and purple and yellow across the floor.
Crow’s snacks are in the center, crisps and cocktail sausages and sweets and chocolate, and then there is a chocolate cake, complete with lit candles.
“Happy birthday!” they yell.
“How did you . . .” I still can’t speak. My throat is lodged, and I feel like I’m going to cry. I never cry. I can’t. I’ve always been the strong one for everyone else.
“We pooled the money we had together,” Goldie says. “I went out and got the cake, and I nicked the blankets from one of Patricia’s airing cupboards and brought them here last night. Crow did the snack shopping. Wren brought the lighter. Starling brought . . .”
“Vibes,” she says. “And cigarettes? But I put the most money in!”
“Not that that matters,” Goldie says hastily. “We wanted to do this for you. Because we knew thanks to lockdown you wouldn’t get a proper party.”
She’s putting it kindly. Lockdown or not, there wouldn’t have been a party for me.
“We wanted to have it here whether you mentioned it or not,” Starling tells me. “Alright, it’s only the basement, but this is where we first came in. It feels fitting. It’s our house, like you said.”
“Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you so much.”
“Come and blow out your candles!” Crow says, and maybe I misjudged her. Maybe she was awkward because she didn’t want to spoil the surprise.
“Make a wish!” Starling says.
I close my eyes, know exactly what I’m wishing for, and blow.
“I know what you wished for,” Wren says. “For us to be friends forever, right?”
“What’s the point in wishing for that?” Starling says. “It’s already going to be true!”
“It’s bad luck to say your wish,” Crow warns. “Don’t tell us, Cuckoo.”
“I won’t,” I promise, but Wren is wrong. That’s not what I wished for. Like Starling said, that’s already guaranteed.
“And one more thing,” Goldie says. She takes something else out of the carrier bag. It is a small box, carefully wrapped in shiny silver paper and even tied together with pink string and a bow. “We had to order online, obviously, so it might not be perfect. But we got a present for you.”
My throat swallows of its own accord as I really have to fight the urge to cry now.
I have never had a gift like this. When Mum was still around, there’d be trips to the park together where I’d have two ice creams instead of one, and my favorite meal at dinnertime.
We went shopping and I was able to go to every charity shop along the street, thumbing through the children’s books and picking out as many as ten, the total cost never coming to more than a fiver.
And the biggest treat of all, we’d head into Waterstones last, a shop I could spend hours in, reading all the books and marking the pages gently with my fingernail to save their space for every time I came back in, “my” book shoved to the back so no one could buy it by mistake.
But on my birthday, I was allowed a single brand-new book.
I spent forever choosing, and whichever one ended up being the lucky selection I forced myself to love and read again and again.
Now I walk into Waterstones and stroke them wistfully and promise myself that one day, money will be no object and I’ll buy every new book they have.
My chest swells up. “You guys bought me a present?”
“Duh,” Starling says. “It’s your eighteenth. We had to mark the occasion.”
“Come on,” Crow says. “Open it!”
They gather around me as I take the present and begin cautiously unwrapping it.
At first I want to be delicate and not damage the paper, but Goldie has sealed it with so much skill I have no choice but to tear it apart.
Once sheathed away, the paper reveals a simple-looking black box, no logo or information to speak of.
I lift the lid off, and my breath catches in my throat.
It is a necklace. Silver chain, with an amber stone.
“We know how much you loved your mum’s necklace,” Starling says. “That you wished you kept it instead of . . . We went on the hunt for one just like it. What do you think?”
“I . . . I love it. Thank you.”
I take it out with trembling fingers. It is almost an exact match.
Mum’s was actually damaged, a nick in the stone from where I apparently was playing with it as a toddler and dropped it.
Not a real amber, a plastic copy, but precious all the same.
This one is perfect. I grip it tightly, so hard the stone begins to make an imprint on my palm.
“Do you want to put it on?” Crow asks.
“Yes, please.”
Wren fastens it behind me with a click of the clasp.
It feels strange to wear it, the gentle tug of the stone taking a second to get used to.
I wrap it around my hand again and close my eyes, and for a moment I am with her, Mum, and nothing can ever go wrong.
Then I open my eyes and I am with my friends, and maybe that’s not so bad either.
“I love it,” I repeat, “and I love you. Thank you so much.”
“Love you too,” Goldie says. “Though don’t say we’re always going to be this soppy.”
She smiles though. They all do.
And I am so happy I forget about my plans for tonight for a while.
We eat all of the chocolate cake and all of the snacks, drink most of the vodka provided by Goldie, and even try a cigarette each, which mainly makes us cough and tastes absolutely disgusting.
It feels like a real party, like we’re in the basement of someone’s actual house and part of an exclusive guest list.
But after everything has been eaten, I rise to my feet, brushing off the dust. “Come on. We’ll catch him on his way back if we’re quick.”
“Tonight?” Goldie says, surprised. “I thought, seeing as it’s your birthday, you wouldn’t want—”