Kate Pullinger - Landing Gear

Jack came into the kitchen. “When’s supper?” he asked.

“I’m about to start cooking. It’ll be quick.”

Jack nodded. “Supermarket special,” he said approvingly. Normally he would shuffle off at this point—he had to shuffle because he wore his trousers slung so low he walked with his legs spread wide apart. But this time he didn’t walk away. Instead he stood there, looming over Harriet.

“What are you doing?”

She looked up at him. He was peering at the screens, and Harriet could see he was actually interested, which in and of itself was peculiar and worrying.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Nothing?” he asked.

Harriet looked back at the screens. He couldn’t possibly figure out what she was doing—what happened yesterday.

And then she saw it. There was a message in one of the streams: “Is it a plane? Is it a bird? Or is it a man, falling?” followed by a crunched photo URL.

Harriet suppressed a gasp by pretending to clear her throat. “I bought some of those Belgian waffle biscuits you like—they’re in the cupboard,” she said, knowing that nothing could be interesting enough to divert Jack from biscuits.

“Yum.” He hoiked up his trousers and ambled to the cupboard.

Once he was gone, she clicked on the link.

A photo of a man, falling, indistinct yet unmistakable. A cloudless day, an empty sky. The airplane Yacub had fallen from already out of the frame, so it was as though he was falling from Heaven itself, an angel without wings.

Whoever took it was not in the supermarket car park, she could tell, but a distance away. Harriet enlarged the photo, disturbing the pixels, making the whole thing even more blurry. There was the roof of the supermarket. There was the main road to the bridge. The photographer was somewhere above ground level, maybe two or three floors up, in a block of flats or offices perhaps, looking south. She opened the map on her tablet and watched the globe spin round before she used the touchscreen to find her virtual way to the supermarket. She’d figure out where the photo was taken from. And then what would she do?

Someone else saw Yacub falling.

Harriet was not sure why she felt compelled to keep Yacub’s presence in the house a secret. She knew it was not a good idea. But Harriet was a keeper of secrets; keeping secrets was something she excelled at. She had never told Michael about Emily. By the time they met, keeping that secret had become second nature to her. It was something that nestled inside her, kicking her sharply in the ribs from time to time. Soon it was too late for it to be anything other than a shocking revelation, so it remained a secret. She kept secrets from Jack too, as parents do, all the smoking and drinking and drug taking and inappropriate sex with the wrong men at the wrong time in her past. Her dread fear of losing him, her terror that he wouldn’t love her when she was old: she kept those secret, of course. It was not difficult to keep secrets from Jack. It hadn’t occurred to him yet that his parents had lived lives of their own.

All in all, Harriet was a fan of secrets, and she wished Michael had seen fit to keep what happened in Toronto to himself. But she had guessed and he had confirmed her guess, as though he expected to be forgiven simply for having told the truth. But she hadn’t forgiven him, not really. And now that was a secret too. So, not telling her husband and her son about Yacub was perfectly reasonable. How do you tell someone that a man fell out of the sky and onto your car, like a Pakistani David Bowie, and that you felt compelled to bring him home with you and hide him, even though you weren’t entirely sure if he was dead or alive?

After she recovered from the shock of finding the photo, Harriet cooked. She had long since banned the use of laptops and phones during dinner, and neither she nor Jack broke that rule often. Once they were sitting together at the table, she would try to start a conversation, which was never easy. Like his father, Jack wasn’t much of a talker. Harriet’s attempts at light and breezy tea-time conversation rarely succeeded and—she tried to stop herself but was unable—their discussion usually deteriorated into a series of pointed questions about Jack’s homework, his social plans and his friends, none of which he wanted to discuss. But she kept trying anyway.

“Do you have any plans for the weekend?”

“Don’t know.”

“How’s your essay going?”

“Okay.”

“How is Ruby?”

“Don’t really see her these days, not since she switched schools.”

They had gone through phases where talking was easier. When she lost her job, it became apparent that Jack was worried the family would no longer have enough money to stay in the big house, to keep taking holidays, so they’d talked about that a fair amount. There was plenty of money, and as long as Michael kept working there would continue to be plenty of money. They also spent a lot of time discussing the “events” that had led to Harriet’s losing her job, which was understandable given that Jack was with her when it happened, though she lied about George Sigo—one more secret—claiming she had no idea who he was. Other allowable topics included Jack’s elaborate critiques of Harriet’s cooking, as though they were on The Great British Bake Off , Harriet a hapless competitor and Jack an exacting judge. But apart from that, Harriet and Jack lived their lives so separately that there was nothing to discuss. They didn’t even watch TV together—Jack watched what he wanted on his laptop, and Harriet watched what she wanted on her tablet in bed. Michael worked late, came home, and left for work early the next day.

Harriet had spent the day trying to sort out the car. It had been impounded and towed away and it took her hours to track it down. She didn’t want to talk to Jack about that. And there was the ghost of Yacub in the little room. She didn’t want to talk about that either. Plus the photo she’d found online. With all these hidden things pressing in on her, tonight she decided to take the easy way out and opted for silence.

“So,” Jack said, “how’s the job hunt?”

She could not remember the last time he had started a conversation voluntarily.

“Well,” she said, trying not to sound too pleased, “not so great. I mean, it’s tough out there. Plus I’m past my sell-by date. I’ve expired.”

Jack laughed and she laughed too; she was filled with happiness because he had shown an interest in her.

“Past your sell-by date. Come on, no you’re not.”

“I am, actually. Who wants to employ a middle-aged woman who has been out of work for two years and who was sacked from her last job?”

“You weren’t sacked.”

Harriet took a deep breath. “I might as well have been.”

“Are you even looking?”

That was the kind of loaded, not-very-nice question that Harriet was prone to ask Jack, like “Are you even bothering to revise your paper?” She was startled to think he’d learned the technique from her. She took another gulp of air. “You’re right. I suppose I have given up looking.”

“You should volunteer.”

“I’ve got enough on my plate, taking care of you and your dad.”

Harriet thought about the empty, immaculate house.

They finished eating and Harriet cleared. Jack retreated to his bedroom with his laptop. She waited for a while to make sure he was thoroughly ensconced. Then she knocked as quietly as she could on Yacub’s door.

Yacub looked the same as the last time Harriet had seen him awake. But now, she noticed, he smelled. Harriet recognized the smell: it was like stepping outside the terminals at Heathrow—jet engine fuel. He wouldn’t have had a chance to wash properly since he arrived, and Harriet felt bad for not thinking of that earlier. The hearty pong made her feel relieved; if he was dead, he wasn’t likely to be suffering from body odour. However, if he was alive, maybe he needed to pray, but he couldn’t pray if he wasn’t clean. And god knows which direction Mecca might be.