Helen Oyeyemi - The Icarus Girl

Jess began to shake her head, then looked at Lidia properly. She could see that Lidia was frightened, really quite badly frightened. Obediently, Jess nodded.

Lidia gave a trembling sigh, and let Jess go.

“Don’t do that again,” she said sternly. Then: “Tell you what, why don’t we all play snakes and ladders?”

The next day was Sunday. Jess was tired and feeling unwell again, but she got up early to say goodbye to Dulcie, who was being picked up by her parents. Dulcie had been asking her questions for ages the night before.

“Where did you go when you vanished?”

“Through the stairs,” Jess had replied sleepily, one side of her face pressed into the pillow. The insides of her mouth still hurt. That was how she knew the whole thing, or at least the end of the fall, had been real.

“Where after that?” Dulcie persisted.

“Just down.”

“Down where , Jessamy?”

“Just down !”

Jess hadn’t told Dulcie about TillyTilly because she didn’t think TillyTilly would like it.

All through breakfast, Dulcie eyed Jess suspiciously, then finally asked her aunt why her daughter was so weird.

“What?” her mum said, laughing.

“She disappeared yesterday, you know!” Dulcie said, widening her blue eyes for effect. She moved her toast to illustrate what had happened. “She just vanished! And she says she fell through the staircase. Maybe the staircase isn’t safe, Aunt Sarah. You probably need to get that staircase fixed, Aunt Sarah.”

Jess squirmed as her parents glanced at each other, then looked at her in puzzlement, waiting for her to say something.

“I was only joking about falling through the staircase, you idiot.” Jess scowled. It was appalling that she and Dulcie were wearing matching My Little Pony pyjamas. It made them somehow the same. Dulcie’s were purple, and Jess’s were pink. The gaudy, raised ponies lined up on the front were staring at her with fake-gentle eyes. Jess hoped her ponies were staring at Dulcie the same way.

Jess’s dad tutted. “Jessamy, don’t call your cousin an idiot.”

Jess spattered her cereal, pretending that she didn’t know her mum was eyeing her. She felt a quiet surprise at herself for having spoken up and called Dulcie an idiot in the first place. Ever since she had come back from Nigeria, she felt as if she was becoming different, becoming stronger, becoming more like Tilly.

“Sorry,” she said, in as low a voice as she could manage.

As soon as her dad had returned to his Sunday newspaper, she glared at Dulcie and mouthed, Idiot.

Dulcie grinned and put down her toast. “Ohhhhhhhh, Uncle Daniel—!”

Uncle Adam and Aunt Lucy arrived to pick up Dulcie and take her to Mass. Dulcie threw her arms around her mother’s waist. Jess noticed that her mum and dad looked embarrassed, as if Aunt Lucy was making them feel uncomfortable.

Aunt Lucy waited. Jess’s dad cleared his throat and looked around, somewhat nonplussed, then appeared to remember something.

“Ah, Jessamy, guess what?” He beamed. “You’re getting another cousin soon!”

Aunt Lucy blushed in a pleased sort of way, and Uncle Adam put his arm around her. They looked like a picture-book family: blond man, blond woman, cute little blond child. Jess hummed to herself under her breath; she did that sometimes when she was confused. She realised that everyone else already knew and they were looking at her as if they were expecting her to say something. Her mum was smiling, but her mouth was a little wobbly so it didn’t end up looking like a real smile.

“Ummmmmmmm,” said Jess. “Yeah, cool. Where am I getting this new cousin from again?”

Uncle Adam laughed and laughed, and so did Aunt Lucy and Jess’s parents.

“What your dad meant was that I’m having another baby,” Aunt Lucy said, patting her stomach. Jess looked at her with her mouth slightly open, then remembered to smile. Aunt Lucy smiled back.

“That’s why she’s been getting sort of fat,” Dulcie explained, grinning, and her dad and Uncle Adam laughed again, although Aunt Lucy didn’t.

“These kids,” she said, looking up at the ceiling, “these kids.”

Jess wasn’t really listening to all this: she had been watching her mum for a few seconds now. What was the matter with her? Her mum’s laughter was strained, and straightaway she began collecting the dishes from the table. She took them to the sink and began washing up, her elbows jabbing in and out of the space around her as she scrubbed. Jess continued to hum underneath her breath. She heard her father ask Dulcie if she was pleased that she was getting a new brother or sister, but Dulcie said, “No! I don’t want a stupid new brother or sister! I hate them already.”

Her dad raised his eyebrows and looked at Aunt Lucy and Uncle Adam from beneath his fringe. Now Jess’s aunt and uncle looked flustered.

“Well, that’s not the way to talk about your new brother or sister,” Daniel said.

“I know,” said Aunt Lucy, hurriedly helping Dulcie into her coat. “But what can you do?”

“You could take her to church,” Jess’s mother said from the sink. She suddenly sounded a lot more cheerful. Jess wanted to remind her mum of that complicated thing she had said about giving up on organised religion, but sensed that there could be big trouble if she did.

Aunt Lucy’s face was properly flushed now, and she half pushed Dulcie out of the door. Uncle Adam followed, pausing to waggle his ears at Jess. Jess laughed. Uncle Adam was always mucking around when no one was looking, and a lot of the time he’d put sweets and money in her pockets.

Jess’s dad looked at her mum, who was still washing up, then he looked at Jessamy.

“Hey, Jess, enormous girl,” he said, “d’you want to play out with Tilly, or go and play in your room, or something?” Sarah had told him about Jess’s new friend, and he hadn’t been able to say “Titiola” properly either.

Jess shrugged. She’d just realised that she didn’t know how to find TillyTilly, or whereabouts she lived. It might be near Colleen McLain’s house, because she’d known where that was and Jess hadn’t.

“I’ll go and see if I can find Tilly, I suppose,” she said, and got down from her chair.

“Let’s go to the park and have a picnic,” Jess said, after some thought. She had been standing on the pavement outside her house, looking up and down the street. How was she to find TillyTilly? Then she’d had an idea, and she’d called, at first in a low voice, then in a louder one, “TillyTilly! Oi! TillyTilly!” And before she’d had the chance to feel stupid, Tilly had come down the street, laughing, skipping. Tilly had found a piece of rope from somewhere. Jess didn’t want to touch it; it looked dirty. Tilly’s green-and-white school dress was as crisp as ever, but the hairbands at the ends of her plaited pigtails were coming loose.

The first thing TillyTilly had said was, “What shall we do?”

So Jess suggested the picnic.

“A picnic?” said TillyTilly. “Good idea!”

Jess smiled, pleased at TillyTilly’s approval. Usually Tilly was the one with all the ideas.

“I’ll get my mum to pack us some food.”

“OK,” said TillyTilly. She leaned on Jess’s front gate to wait.

Jess ran back into the kitchen. Her mum wasn’t there anymore, but her dad was. He was standing by the sink, looking out of the kitchen window as he sipped at a cup of milky coffee. She knew that any minute now there was going to be a cascade of brown liquid when he decided that he’d drunk enough. Her father never finished his coffee.

“Daddy, can we have some food for a picnic?”