22. Goldie #2
Wren and Starling exchange glances, then widen their eyes at me. I’m going to have to intervene, smooth it over.
We’ve murdered a man, and they’re still bickering like children.
“Stop it,” Crow says. “It’s not all some grand agenda in keeping you in your place. And I thought you liked your place. Aren’t you always telling me that?”
“What does it all matter anyway?” Cuckoo says. “Surely you’re all going to want to stay here now, after everything we’ve done together.”
“Stay here?” Crow echoes, appalled. “I can’t think of anything worse.”
Oh God. The silence is a dead weight, and Cuckoo can’t hide her crumpled expression, the remark hitting her like whiplash.
Even Crow seems to realize she’s gone too far because she backpedals. “I mean, you know we’re all going off to university. Me to Durham, Starling to Exeter . . . Wren to Cambridge. And Goldie is going to London.”
“Strolling around Buckingham Palace,” I say, trying to keep my tone light. “I’ve already bought my train ticket.”
It’s the first time I’ve mentioned this to anyone.
My single, no-return train ticket to London Paddington.
I went to Temple Meads and printed it out early, and it’s in my jacket pocket with me now.
I like to carry it around as proof my ambitions are really going to come true.
It’s not a conversation anymore, a pipe dream.
I really am moving to London. Working weekends before lockdown paid off enough to afford me this ticket and a few nights in a hostel, and then I’m sure I’ll meet someone else wanting to live in London and we can be roommates, or I’ll get on SpareRoom and join a flat that way. I have it all figured out.
But I don’t say this to Cuckoo, who looks sadder by the second. “You can visit me when I’m set up. We can explore the capital together!”
“Right.” Crow nods, eager to make amends. “You can visit me too, Cuckoo. Come up whenever you want.”
Starling nudges her cider can against Cuckoo’s. “Exeter isn’t that far from here.”
Cuckoo smiles, shrugs. “Of course I’ll come visit you guys. Right, as if you’d stay here. I was only joking.”
We know she wasn’t. But we pretend anyway.
It’s going to be alright.
But then Wren says, “I have something to tell you all.”
“This isn’t the gnomes again, is it?” Crow says.
“Gnomes?” I repeat, baffled.
Crow rolls her eyes. “Trust me, don’t ask.”
“No, it’s not the gnomes.” Wren takes a sip of cider, her face scrunching up as she swallows. She obviously isn’t enjoying it.
Me, on the other hand—I’m loving it. My stomach is warm, and my head feels funny, here and not here at the same time. I’ve been missing out. When I get to London, I’ll become one of those women at bars after a long day, having their drinks bought for them because they’re so beautiful.
“It’s Cambridge,” Wren says. “I’m not going.”
Now it’s Crow’s turn to look horrified. Cambridge meant everything to her.
When she didn’t get in, it was like she was replaced by a different person for a while.
She was stunned, absolutely stunned, that her planning and efforts hadn’t produced the result she was expecting.
It was okay at first because Starling hadn’t gotten in either.
But then Wren was pressed for an answer when it became clear she was too quiet about the whole thing, and she had to confess she’d been accepted.
“What do you mean?” Crow asks.
“I’m going to withdraw my acceptance. I wanted to before all of this. From the moment I got in, it felt wrong. I never wanted to go to Cambridge. It was my parents. I applied and didn’t think for a second I’d make it.”
“That’s funny, because if you really didn’t want to get in, you would have bombed the entrance exam,” Crow points out. “You would have walked into that interview and did somersaults instead of answering questions. You can’t have not wanted to go that badly.”
“Okay, maybe I wanted to prove I could get in,” Wren says. “For my parents. So they’d be proud. But I didn’t expect it to actually happen. I thought if I proved that trying my best wasn’t good enough, they’d . . . let me do what I wanted instead.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
Cuckoo brightens. “You want to stay here?”
“No,” Wren says, and Cuckoo’s face falls. “I’m moving to Japan.”
She may as well have said, “I’m going to the moon.”
“What?” Starling says. “How can you move to Japan?”
“I’ll teach English.” Wren’s voice is wavering; this clearly hasn’t gone how she wanted. “I want to live out there.”
“You can do that after,” Crow says. “Why give up Cambridge? I don’t get it.”
“You wouldn’t,” Wren says. “This is what I want. Me. Not you, Crow, or my parents. These past few months have changed something in me, made me see things differently. This is my life. No one else’s. I thought you’d all be happy for me.”
Crow is crushed, furious. The cider can she is holding crinkles under her tight grasp, and she bites down hard on her bottom lip, probably to stop herself from saying something she’ll regret later.
Starling looks bewildered, and Cuckoo is staring down at her shoes.
But I understand perfectly what Wren is talking about.
It’s how I felt arguing with Patricia before we came out.
We’re learning what freedom is, and we want it to stay that way.
A roar of thunder from outside interrupts us, and I seize the opportunity.
“There must be a storm,” I say. “Why don’t we watch it from the roof? There’s that balcony up there. We haven’t been in the attic yet. We can take the drinks up, make tonight a proper celebration.”
“Or commiseration,” Cuckoo says, but now she really is joking.
“We got that man out of our house. It’s a celebration all round.”
“What about the lightning?” Wren whispers.
“Only two or three people are killed each year by lightning,” Starling says, because of course she knows that. “Even if we had a direct strike, most of us would be alright!”
“Crow?” I say, because she hasn’t spoken.
She is twirling a lock of hair in her hand, gazing off into the distance, but snaps to attention at her name. “Right. Whatever. We’ll go up there.”
We finish our first set of cans, I return the rest of the drinks to my backpack, hitch it on my shoulders, then lead the way.
We’re still on a phone ban thanks to Starling’s paranoia, but in recompense she’s brought her torch again.
It lights the way brilliantly, a steady beam, and the encroaching darkness around it is unable to penetrate.
Once upon a time, this place must have been so grand.
A home for a proper Victorian upper-class family, with servants and everything.
It has decayed in the years since, original features ripped out or left to rot, and there are signs from when it was an assisted-living home, with extra bars for support along the banister and sterile-looking decor.
Upstairs has more furniture left behind, as if the removal people couldn’t be bothered and left half a job.
Along the corridor, with fake, dusty plants and cheap plastic painting reproductions on the walls, is the telltale square indent of an attic above, and a hanging string waiting to be pulled.
“I’m surprised they didn’t cut it off,” Starling says. “Prevent people from getting up there.”
“Well, we don’t know if we’ll be able to just yet,” I say.
I’m the tallest, so I tell the others to stand back, and stretch up on my toes to pull the cord.
At first it’s stiff and refuses to budge, but after another particularly hard pull, the latch suddenly comes loose, and a stepladder comes down, barely missing hitting me by inches.
A shower of dust falls down with it, making me cough and covering me in a fine layer that turns to brown smudges as I try and wipe it off.
“Great,” I groan. “I like this outfit too.”
“But you did it!” Starling squeals. “We can get up there now.”
“Do you think there will be spiders?” Cuckoo hides her face.
“Now that might be a bit more common than lightning strikes, I’m afraid!”
Finally, Crow cracks a smile again. My plan might just be working.
It’s funny, I took the role of peacemaker as more of a burden before. Since everything, maybe it does mean more to me than I realized. I don’t want to head to London with any bad vibes between us. We’re in this for good.
The attic is full of cobwebs, enough to make me nervous.
I’m expecting a treasure trove of abandoned goodies, but sadly other than a few boxes of old files, there isn’t much.
There is the entrance to the balcony, though, at the end, stiff double doors that open inward and take all of us pulling together to open.
There’s no rain or wind; what I hoped was a storm is more of a vague rumbling. There must have been rain while we were inside because the balcony is wet. It’s too small to fit all of us comfortably, but on the other side is a flat roof among the sloping slates.
“Shall we?” I say, indicating my head toward it.
“Over the balcony?” Wren says. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Oh, come on, Wren.” I lift a leg up and place my foot on the stone ledge, secretly impressed with my flexibility. “Isn’t that what we’ve been doing this whole time? Living dangerously?”
“Let’s do it,” Crow says, and there’s that look again, the one we all get, when that other part of ourselves is awakened.
I’m not even sure if it’s sleeping anymore. We’ve woken it for good, and trying to tame it is going to be the problem.