28. Cuckoo
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CUCKOO
There is a sense, when your friends disappear to university, that you are “left behind.” That your accomplishments, however grand or important to you, are seen as lesser.
It is embarrassing, surely, for someone of reasonable intellect and ability to not want to further their education.
No matter the circumstance. If that person were to become successful in their own right, there would still be astonishment from other successful people.
Not a graduate? Not part of our echelon, really.
I used to think it too, that I’d be “left behind.” But my family needed me, and there is honor and achievement in that too.
It might not be judged by the world as such, and there are no external markers or certificates as rewards, but I know it to be true.
I work in a supermarket on the tills, and it will forever be seen as not good enough for someone like me.
But who is someone like me? If I enjoy it, so what? If I am fulfilled, what then?
God, I am happier than the other three, I know that.
I have tried my best to keep my distance from them.
I haven’t checked on them, haven’t stalked their social media.
The time will come, I believed, when we will be together again, and I will wait them out.
One of us will get married, or pregnant, or something huge will happen in our lives, and we will have to tell each other.
We are with each other forever, however present that might be in reality.
And here we are. Together again, just like I thought.
But they are cloudy. That’s the best word I can use to describe them.
Half there, half not. Like someone has drawn them from memory.
Their features are in all the right places but seem sunken, somehow.
Less visible. They are tired, I think. I must ask what they do now.
I don’t think Crow is an author or Starling is a journalist, and Wren certainly isn’t in Japan; she’s here in Crow’s posh living room staring down at her mug of tea.
This is not the news I wanted to bring us together.
I certainly won’t tell them I’ve been back to Bishop’s House myself.
Once or twice. Perhaps three times. Never inside—not that far—but I stand by the gate and think about the times we jumped over it with ease.
The garden is even more overgrown now, obscuring more of the dusty path we dutifully used to head to the house beyond.
I avoid looking at the trees down the way, even though she is around the corner somewhat, and invisible.
There is a pull; I can’t resist walking down this street even though I live miles away.
If I ever have a spare afternoon, which is rare, I find myself walking and stopping and staring and remembering.
It has stood for decades, it hasn’t been disturbed since the nineties, and now it must come down. It is wrong for many reasons. It feels as if it should have lasted forever, that I should walk down this street in fifty years and see the garden had swallowed the house whole.
Hugo Fletcher didn’t get to do it, but someone is.
“Your mother is sure the sale is even going to go through?” Starling says now, returning me to the uncomfortable present. “Regular houses sometimes fail to sell, right? So what’s stopping something as complicated as this?”
“The sale has gone through,” Wren says. “Keys exchanged and everything. Whoever it is, it’s theirs.”
“She didn’t say who?”
“No, but what does it matter? We can’t change it now.”
“I suppose not.”
“And they have the same plans,” Wren says. “Bulldozing the house. Turning the plot of land into flats.”
“Which means the trees might be affected,” I say. “The ground disturbed.”
“And if that happens . . .” Crow doesn’t need to finish her sentence.
I finish it for her anyway. “If that happens, we are going to be in deep trouble.”
“We don’t have this issue with Hugo,” Starling says, the name causing raised eyebrows from Crow and Wren. His name will always stir a mixture of pride and revulsion in my stomach. “He’s never going to be discovered.”
It is true. Hugo disappeared into that river and never came out, and he has never been found.
Despite the fact his family were paying endless sums of money for private investigations and the police were exploring every avenue.
They even did search a part of the river for a few weeks, downstream from our spot, and I watched with bated breath the entire time.
But they found nothing. He is gone, decomposed and impossible to discover.
All that’s left of him now will be some bones and the wedding ring that was around his finger.
“Rightly so.” I finish my cup of tea and place it on the coffee table. “But Goldie is our focus.”
There: I’ve said it. Goldie. This causes more than raised eyebrows. Crow, paler than the moon, pales further. Starling looks across at something on the floor, an upturned book I can’t make out the title of. Wren nods, solemn, but can’t meet my gaze.
Goldie finds this all amusing. She nudges me with her elbow, rolling her eyes at them. Always so dramatic, she says.
If you were here, I say, we would already be there sorting this out.
If I was here, she retorts, we wouldn’t have this problem to begin with.
“The development won’t start until after New Year, according to Mum,” Wren says. “We have time.”
“Jesus Christ.” Crow shakes her head. “I can’t believe I’m here again.”
“What about tomorrow night?” Starling says. “If we meet outside Bishop’s House at midnight, can everyone do that?”
“I’m a teacher now,” Wren says. “I’d sooner Friday or Saturday night.”
“Too risky,” Starling says. “This isn’t lockdown anymore. There will be plenty of people about then.”
So Wren is a teacher. She’s half achieved what she wanted, though she’s in the wrong country. Maybe that’s why she seems so exhausted. I wonder where she teaches, how she feels about it. If she has any students who remind her of us.
“I’m on a late shift,” I say. “I finish at about eight, and I need to help Dean with his homework, but he’ll be in bed by ten. I should be able to.”
“A late shift?” Starling echoes. “What do you do?”
“I’m at Sainsbury’s.”
There—the flickers of something indescribable.
“What do you do, Starling?”
“I’m, like, a true crime influencer.”
This information puzzles me as much as everyone else. “What’s a true crime influencer?”
“I do makeup tutorials while talking about true crime cases,” she says. “Here.” She pulls out her phone and shows us a few TikToks, the editing frenetic and the music at the beginning too loud. “I upload longer ones on YouTube too.”
“You actually get paid to do this?”
“Well. No. Not yet. But I will.”
Definitely not a journalist then. And, let’s be real, not an influencer either.
“Tomorrow night, then?” Starling says impatiently when she realizes we are not impressed. “Midnight at Bishop’s House?”
“Tomorrow night,” Crow says.
We are interrupted by a banging sound from outside Crow’s window.
On closer inspection, we see a view down to the garden at the back of the house, and Chelsea stomping around with a watering can, even though it rained this morning and it’s pitch black out there.
She has the outdoor lighting on, and it’s far too bright.
“She’s fun,” I say. “What the hell is her problem?”
“She makes my life a bloody misery,” Crow says. “She is never happy with me. She’s determined to make me move out, I reckon, but I refuse.”
“Not a nice person,” I clarify.
“Absolutely not. I overheard her the other day in the hall telling off one of the binmen for leaving our bin not quite outside our front gate. Told him she could see why he had that job as he was obviously hopeless at everything else.”
Easy-peasy. That’s settled it. I walk over to the kettle, pour another cup of tea.
It’s freezing cold water by this point, but something to be glad for.
Even I have my limits. I make sure to leave the teabag in, return to the window, and open it wide.
It opens forward, enough for me to lean on the windowsill and have half my body out.
Chelsea has not noticed me, the others are in awed silence because they understand what I am about to do, and then when Chelsea is in the perfect position, I let the contents of the mug loose, and cold, brown water pours over Chelsea’s head, the satisfying wet thunk of the teabag slapping against her forehead before slithering down her face and onto the ground.
“Oh my goodness!” I call over, ever so contrite. “I did not see you there. I’m sorry!”
“How dare you!” Chelsea screeches. “What do you mean you didn’t see me? What are you playing at?”
“It was freezing cold and I wanted rid of it!” I shout. “I can come get that teabag if you want—didn’t realize it was in there!”
“I want you out of this house!”
“Not your house, I’m afraid! Now be careful because I’ve got a terrible tea addiction and I’ve wasted several more I’ll have to throw out soon.”
This works; she lets out another shriek and then darts inside her flat. I am half expecting a battle, a thundering up the stairs and banging on the door, but there’s nothing. A true coward. All mouth and nothing else.
When I turn around, triumphant, the others are howling with laughter.
“For God’s sake, Cuckoo,” Crow says, but she’s grinning; even she can’t help it. “You haven’t changed at all, have you?”
“Why would I change?” I shrug. “You don’t mess with perfection, do you?”
“I’d forgotten this,” Wren says. “Forgotten what we were like. Or no, that’s not quite right. I’d put it to the back of my mind. Refused to think about it.”
Later, on my way home, I think about what Wren said.
This is what we’ve all done, one way or another.
I was so convinced we’d come together again, but having spent an evening with their new selves, I’m no longer sure.
I think we needed Goldie, we always needed Goldie, to keep us whole.
Not so much glue, but a blanket. A way of reminding us we are soft and gently keeping us together.
It comes back so fast: the laughter, the way of being me that I can only be with them.
We have been apart seven years, and it feels like seven minutes in some moments and seven decades the next.
Are you okay with this? I ask Goldie as she joins me walking home. Today she is wearing our old school uniform, and she hasn’t aged a day.
She ponders this for a while, then gives a lift of her shoulders. I don’t really have many options, do I?
You would have liked London.
She chuckles. Not for dying. That was for living.