Kate Pullinger - Landing Gear

In the sitting room, Harriet drank a mouthful and closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “Kate Winslet,” she said. “Gather. Gather.”

“What?”

“Oh you know, Oscar speech. The camera, brings out the diva in me. Maybe I’ll explode in a frenzy of swearing. Cause another YouTube sensation.”

“Don’t worry,” said Emily. “There won’t be any of that.”

“Any of what?” said Harriet.

“Clips on YouTube. At least not from me.”

“Outtakes? Bloopers?”

Emily shook her head.

“Turns out I’m much happier behind the scenes.”

“Me too,” said Emily.

“Okay. What do you want me to talk about?”

Emily drew a breath and took another sip of wine. “Let’s talk about my mother,” she said.

“This is our subject, isn’t it? Yours and mine.”

Emily nodded.

“This time for the camera,” Harriet said.

Emily nodded again.

“You do realize that I think of you as a kind of daughter?”

“And I thought of you as my mother for a couple of years before we met. Hard to shake.”

“I know,” said Harriet. “I’m sorry. That whole following me, friending you business.”

They fell silent. Emily shifted forward to turn on the camera. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“I’m ready.” Harriet cleared her throat and pushed her hair away from her face. “The short version. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“We were housemates. Your mother and me. She was the best friend I’d ever had. I loved her the way only a twenty-year-old can love somebody—I gave it everything I had. No one else mattered to me. Then she met George Sigo. He was a lunatic.” She put her hand over her mouth. “I can’t say that. You’ll cut that, won’t you?”

“Yes,” said Emily.

Harriet started again, speaking rapidly. “She ditched him, finally. But she was pregnant. Then she had the accident. She fell. You were born, but she died. I took you home with me and took care of you for a whole week. Her parents decided to put you up for adoption. I tried my best to keep you, I tried to get my parents to help me, but no one listened. I had no rights. And then you were gone. It was too late.”

Harriet picked up her glass and knocked back the rest of the wine. “More, please,” she said.

In the kitchen, Emily cut herself on a sharp bit of foil on the wine bottle. She ran cold water over her finger, dripping blood on the big yellow daisies in the bouquet she’d left in the sink. She thought about how in the first interview she’d tried to stop Yacub from including her in what he was saying. So much for that. She’d heard Harriet’s story before, many times. But that didn’t stop it from feeling like having her bones scraped with a razor blade.

She wrapped her finger in paper towel, filled Harriet’s glass and took it to her. Harriet was gazing toward the window. The camera was still running.

“That was a bit brutal,” Harriet said. “I’m sorry.”

Emily sat down. “When you’re ready.”

“We were twenty years old. We were students at what was then the Polytechnic of Central London. Journalism. Both of us. Me and your mother, Elizabeth Barry. Barry. She called herself Barry, so we all followed suit, though she was the least Barry-like person around. I guess she thought Barry would make her seem less posh. She wasn’t posh—her background was like mine, ordinary suburban London girls. We came from opposite ends of the Northern Line, Morden in her case, High Barnet in mine—but she was one of those English women who seem posh no matter what they do.

“We were all, I don’t know, what’s the right word? Adventurous. The Poly was a hotbed of radical politics, and it was the 1980s, after all, plenty to be angry about. We were angry. But we also had this incredible freedom. I’d spent my first year commuting between college and home every day but then I met a bunch of people who were squatting in Vauxhall, near the river, and they invited me to move in. They’d occupied a series of big houses in a terrace. An enterprising New Zealander called Mick—they were all enterprising, those Kiwis, they knew how to make stuff, unlike us Brits, we were useless—anyway, Mick had carved out an amazing room in the attic of one of the houses, all built-in shelves and a raised platform to sleep on, beneath a skylight that gave onto a little wild roof garden he’d planted.

“Mick got beaten up on an estate in Stockwell when he was trying to rescue a broken chair from a skip and he’d decided to go back to New Zealand. His room was vacant. I jumped at the chance, though I had to lie to my parents about it being a shared rental—they would have been horrified by the idea of me squatting. I had a bank account with the Post Office—god, I’m so old, it’s like I’m talking about the Dark Ages, you had to go in and stand in a long queue with your payment book—and I used to deposit the rent cheque they sent me every month. I used that money to pay for—”

Harriet’s grip tightened on the edge of the sofa.

Emily said, “Do you want a break?”

“I spent that money on flowers after she died, Emily. Six enormous bouquets of the most extravagant flowers in the whole of South London. Elton John for a day. She would have laughed. I don’t know where I thought they would go because her parents dealt with her funeral—in the end I filled her room full of flowers. I used to take you in there to feed you.” Harriet smiled. “There was a famous actress called Elizabeth Barry. Restoration. Did you know that? Barry used to mention it but then she began to think it was part of what made people think she was posh, so she stopped.”

Emily said, “I looked her up online.”

“Did you?”

“Not the best-looking woman.”

Harriet laughed. “Barry used to claim she was descended from her. No idea if it was true. But Barry, well, the main reason people thought she was posh was because she was so beautiful. Those classic English Rose looks. You have that, Emily. The fine white skin. The symmetrical features—the straight nose, the clear blue eyes, that hair that’s somehow always silky and smooth. You look so much like her.”

“It’s a Brazilian blow-dry.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s this hair treatment I get every six months or so,” Emily said. “It’s a chemical blow-dry that makes your hair smooth and silky. Takes hours and costs a fortune.”

“Oh,” said Harriet. “Well, that’s disappointing.”

“Is it?”

“I thought you were a natural beauty.”

“But I am,” said Emily.

“What else is fake? Come on, tell me.”

“Nothing!”

They both laughed and paused and drank.

“You really were my baby, for a while at least, for a whole week.”

Emily looked at Harriet. She wished she could remember it. With all her heart she wished she could remember being three days old and being held by Harriet. She felt tired. “Okay,” she said, “that’s enough for today.”

“Okay,” said Harriet. “Do you want to come home with me for dinner?”

“Not tonight.”

Harriet began to take off her microphone.

“Hey,” said Emily. “One more question? It’s not one we’ve discussed.”

Harriet sat back. She looked nervous. “Yes?”

“Your own parents. Why are you so… detached from them?”

Harriet let all the breath in her lungs go in one long sigh.

“I’m sorry,” said Emily. “Big question. You don’t have to answer.”

“It’s okay. The answer’s simple, really. You were denied your family, so why should I get to have one? I was angry. I was twenty. They were hard on me.”

Emily did not reply.

“I have to go cook for the boys.”

“I don’t have much to say. What’s there to say?” Jack looked straight at the camera. “What do you want me to say?”