A Nest of Nightmares

She smiled at me ironically. ‘And now the plane is coming in. Let’s go.’

We walked together through the featureless corridors in silence. It felt right and familiar for me to be at her side, as if we’d never been apart, as if we’d walked together many times before.

‘I wish she wasn’t coming,’ Jane said suddenly. ‘I wish I could have told her no. I wish I didn’t have to deal with her. Will I be running away from my mother all my life?’

I touched her arm. She was real. She was there. I felt very close to her, and yet I knew, sadly, that she must be lying to me, or crazy. One of us must be. I said, ‘You’ll be all right. You’re strong. You’re grown up now and you’ve got your own life. Just tell yourself that. Your mother’s just another woman. She can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.’

She looked at me. ‘You always thought I was braver than I really was. It’s funny, but your thinking that made me try to live up to it. In order to be as brave and strong as you thought I was, I did things that terrified me. Like the time I climbed from a tree up onto the roof of the house – ’

‘I was terrified!’ I said. Her words brought it back vividly, those moments when, from my own precarious treetop perch, I had seen her thin, small figure drop to the dark shingles of the roof, the breath catching in my throat as if I were the one in danger.

‘So was I,’ she said. ‘But it was worth it for the way you looked at me. I’d always been a quiet little coward, but to you I was wild and daring.’

Through the big window we saw a bright orange plane land and roll along the runway.

‘Thank you,’ said Jane. ‘I needed a friend today.’

‘Not just today,’ I said. ‘Now that we’ve found each other, we’ll get together again, often.’

She smiled and looked away. I followed her gaze and saw the plane docking.

‘That’s ours,’ I said, turning my head to look at her. She was gone.

I whirled away from the window, scanning the crowds for her dark hair, her white blouse, her particular way of moving. She was nowhere to be seen.

There hadn’t been time. I had turned my head only for a moment. She had been right beside me; I could feel her presence. From one second to the next, she had simply vanished.

Feeling dizzy, I moved indecisively a few steps this way, a few steps that. There was no point in searching for her. I already knew I wouldn’t find her. I wondered what airport she might be waiting in; I realised she had never said where she lived. Was she able to find me because our lives briefly intersected in the bland, anonymous limbo of an airport, or could she have come to me wherever I was, because of her need?

I am waiting, wondering if I will ever see her again. Jane is real; she exists; I know I didn’t imagine her. But did she imagine me?

STRANGER IN THE HOUSE

Sharon knew all the patterns of this neighbourhood. She was standing on the corner of Newcastle and Devon, near the house where she had once lived. She knew where she was, and what the women and children who would be home at this hour of a hot summer day would be doing, but she did not know why she was standing where she was. She felt dizzy and put a hand on top of her head, feeling the heat caught and reflected in her sleek dark hair, and wondered what were the realities of sunstroke.

She closed her eyes, trying to sort the confusion, but forcing memory made it more recalcitrant. She opened her eyes and again took in the familiarity of the neighbourhood she had lived in for the first twelve years of her life.

I must have blacked out for a minute, she thought. It was a temporary solution, not one she believed, but something to hold onto until she found the answer. It was not a serious problem, after all. She knew where she was.

She began to walk down Devon, towards the house she had once lived in. It seemed the logical place to go.

Bill drove with only one hand on the wheel. The other arm was draped across the back of the seat. ‘You’re the one who used to live here – so where do we go today?’

‘I haven’t been in Houston for years.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. What do you feel like doing?’

‘It doesn’t matter. What do you want to do?’ When she didn’t answer, or even look at him, his voice sharpened. ‘Come on, there must be something here you want to see – or some place you want to visit. You haven’t been here for . . . how old were you when your old man left?’

She lit a cigarette. A mistake: he saw her hand tremble.