She’s told me this fact about the little nuthatch every time I’ve visited for about the last two years, but I don’t mind. She doesn’t know her family, or what day it is, or what she had for lunch, but she can tell you everything there is to know about British garden birds. It’s like they’re her link to the past– back when she was a farm kid hanging out in the woods with her dad’s binoculars.
I’ll pretend to be interested in nuthatches all day long to give her that.
I catch Lucy’s eye off to my left. She’s been there the whole time, hanging back a little, giving us space. She smiles when our eyes meet, her expression soft and understanding, not even a trace of pity in her eyes.
Then she starts to move, grabbing another stool and sitting on Gilly’s other side, next to the window.
‘Hi, Gilly,’ she says, her voice beautifully bright and calming. ‘I’m Lucy. You haven’t met me before.’
Gilly doesn’t look at her, and I can see by the shrink of her shoulders away from Lucy that she’s suspicious. She doesn’t deal well with meeting new people. Lucy doesn’t push her to respond, she just sits, looking out of the window at some bird that might or might not be the little nuthatch. I don’t even know how you’d tell.
None of us speak again for a while, and I can almost feel the tension building in the room. I start to wonder if this was a mistake– if I could have unknowingly upset my mother by bringing Lucy here. But before I can dwell too much on it, Lucy speaks, breaking my train of thought entirely.
‘Do you have a favourite bird?’
‘Yes,’ Gilly replies abruptly, her good hand clasping into a tense fist, and I’m just about to intervene, to say that we’re going to go, when Lucy speaks again.
‘My favourites are goldfinches.’
She’s so calm when she speaks. Despite Gilly’s apparent rudeness, Lucy hasn’t lost an ounce of the cheer in her voice. Not that she’s getting very far. The three of us are just sitting in a silence I’m finding more and more difficult to deal with every passing second.
Until, all of a sudden, I hear Gilly speak.
‘Goldfinches like niger seeds.’ Her voice is steady– the easy rhythm it finds when she talks about birds. ‘Put niger seeds out if you want to attract them to your garden.’ And then sheturns to Lucy, her hazel eyes studying her, eyebrows pinched in concentration.
‘Thank you,’ Lucy says, her face breaking into a huge, beautiful smile. ‘I will.’
And just like that, I suddenly feel like I can’t breathe in all the way.
Gilly is still studying her. ‘I’ve met you before,’ she says eventually, and I think it’s a question, even though it doesn’t sound like one.
Lucy shakes her head, the action freeing a curl from behind her ear. ‘No. This is the first time.’ Her eyes dart to me for a moment, just a split second, and it makes something somersault in my chest. ‘But I hope I can come and see you again.’
I’m pretty sure she’s just saying it to appease Gilly in this moment, butGodI hope that too. For a few seconds I let my brain go to a dangerous place: I let it think about how nice it would be to have someone to share this with.
And by someone, I obviously mean Lucy. I can’t imagine wanting to do this with anyone else.
It’s crazy– I realise that. We’ve been safe in our little bubble since last night, but it’s bound to burst at some point. This time tomorrow, Lucy will be on her way home, and who knows if we’ll ever see each other again.
I mean, is a relationship between us even a possibility? It’s not a question I would have asked myself two days ago, but a lot has changed since then. I know that we barely know each other, and that we’re not at all into the same things, and that she’s mortal and I’m not. It’s just that the more I get to know about her the less those things seem to matter.
Somewhere along the line I’ve forgotten my golden rule about falling for a human, and it’s entirely because the more she shows me about the kind of person she is, the more I’m certainthat that’s the kind of person I want in my life. I’mnot even that scared of Mina anymore. Even she couldn’t get mad about this.
I shove my hands into my jacket pockets and am distracted when my fingers find the hard shape of the pebble I picked up yesterday. I fish it out and put it in Gilly’s hand.
‘This is from Stephen,’ I say, as she looks down at it. ‘He’s at sea now, but he wanted me to bring it to you.’
She can never remember that my dad is dead, and after the first few times of breaking her heart all over again, I gave it up completely. She remembers him, but as he was back then, and I don’t have the heart to correct her anymore. Instead I bring her a token from the sea every time I visit. I’m quite sure that must be where the essence of him is these days anyway, particularly after we scattered his ashes off the side of a fishing boat a mile offshore.
I found this pebble on the beach yesterday, noticing the heart-shaped hollow worn into it by the waves. It felt like I was meant to find it– to bring it to her here. I don’t know if she remembers the beach, but I remember. I’ll remember enough for the both of us.
‘He’ll be home soon,’ she says, turning the pebble over in her hands, her fingertips finding the groove.
I nod, swallowing back the wave of grief as it hits me. ‘He will,’ I say, and then I try like hell not to cry like a baby in front of the two of them.
‘You’re good with her,’ I say to Lucy later, as we walk back along the corridor. Our half an hour with Gilly was lovely, but she doesn’t have the stamina for long visits these days, and so I always like to go before I tire her out too much. We leaveher merrily chatting away to her birds, a smile on her face that wasn’t there when we walked in.
I try not to think about how long it will last.