Come fly with me, p.26
Come Fly With Me, page 26
Maya only wanted to have to tell the whole truth once. Well, three times. Late last night, she’d called her sister Julie and told her everything, sobbing at some points, confessing everything and taking the comfort in Julie’s voice. All Julie had been concerned with was that Maya had kept this all to herself for so long and that Conrad had been making her life difficult with his threats to blow it wide open.
The conversation with Julie prepared Maya for calling Isaac afterwards. She’d wanted Isaac to hear the story from her and telling Julie everything first meant she had got some of the emotion out of her story; she could give him the facts without making her son too worried that his mum was in a terrible place because of this secret. Isaac, her darling Isaac, had responded the way she’d always hoped he would. He understood she hadn’t been in a very good place in her life, that she hadn’t purposely committed any crime, and most of all, it made sense to him now why she stayed in Conrad’s life so much.
‘Mum, he’s no right to do this to you.’ His jaw was clenched, something she knew happened when he was angry. The expression lost nothing over FaceTime. She’d first seen it when Isaac was a little boy and a kid had knocked over his snowman on purpose because it was the best one on the street. It was a look that said he was furious and contemplating his next move. ‘I’m done with him, Mum. It’s not for you to sort out. Dad is old enough to look after himself, talk to me however he wants and if we don’t get on then that’s between us now. You’ve tried your hardest; I think it’s time you stopped.’
She sighed, closed her eyes. And then he brought up her own dad.
‘I know things with you and Grandad aren’t great. Grandad knows it too. But the difference between him and Dad is that Grandad still loves and respects you.’
She was beginning to believe that for herself since they’d started to communicate.
‘I never said anything before because Grandad didn’t want me to. But he knew he had to sort it out for himself – that’s another difference. Dad expects everyone else to do the work except him. Grandad isn’t like that. He knows he made wrong decisions along the way and I can tell he has a lot of regret.’
‘We’ve talked, recently.’ And she’d smiled when she told her son that, as she explained what happened after her mother died, what her grandparents tried to do. ‘We’re getting there,’ she said.
‘Good for you, Mum. Grandad is a good man.’
‘He is. And I’m glad you and he have always been in contact.’
But Isaac hadn’t wanted to focus on his grandad at that point. ‘I see Dad trying to get one up on you by having time with me like this plan to go to Ireland. I’m assuming you’re not fighting it because of him threatening to tell the whole town the truth about you?’
‘I’m sorry, Isaac.’
‘Why are you sorry? You’re not the one blackmailing someone they supposedly loved once upon a time and the person they have a child with.’
Maya snapped out of her reverie at the open day. She showed an elderly lady the way to the bathrooms, answered some questions from a family about the helicopter itself and why it was called Hilda. And after Nadia did another talk about some of the upcoming fundraising activities they had or ways the general public could hold their own to support the charity, she knew she’d go crazy if she put it off any longer.
She had to tell someone the truth. Conrad’s job was on the line if Noah shared that recording, which meant her secret was safe. But Maya had had enough of her past hanging over her indefinitely.
She saw her opportunity when Nadia, mother hen of The Skylarks, headed to the kitchen with Bess, and Frank looked like he was on his way to join them. With the other crew perfectly capable of handling things outside, she slipped into the airbase building too.
‘Tea?’ Bess offered her when Maya joined the three of them in the kitchen.
Nadia sat on one of the chairs opposite Frank, who’d grabbed a pork pie from the fridge, and closed her eyes. ‘I’m just closing my eyes for five minutes; wake me after that time, would you?’
Bess laughed but not when she saw Maya’s face. ‘What’s going on?’
Frank was alert to trouble and popped the last of his pork pie into his mouth. Nadia opened her eyes and Maya only hoped the lot of them would understand what she was about to tell them. She never dreamed she’d do it today, but everything was coming to a head and perhaps a conversation that couldn’t last too long given the event today was better. Like ripping off a plaster, it would be quick, over with just like that.
She pushed the door closed. ‘I need to tell you all something and if I don’t do it now, I’ll lose my nerve.’
‘Go on, love,’ Frank urged. She wondered whether that same concern would show on his face when he heard what she had to say.
‘You guys have known me for years, ever since I moved to Whistlestop River. I’ve lived in the area for over two decades and I love this town. It’s a part of me. I’d do anything for Whistlestop River and its people, for The Skylarks.’ She felt the hard ridge of the sink as she leant against it.
‘We know you would,’ said Bess to a chorus of agreement from the others.
‘Then here goes,’ said Maya. But if she was ousted, she wasn’t sure how she would be able to pick up the pieces. She’d worked hard to earn a place in the town, respect, friendships and ties, and to lose them would break her heart.
All she could do now was start at the very beginning, the first day she’d ever come to Whistlestop River. She wouldn’t say all of the details out loud, just the basics, the dreaded bullet points to explain.
But it didn’t mean the details of what had happened all those years ago weren’t still in her head.
37
When Maya finished school, she soon became restless. She had part-time jobs but nothing that engaged her fully. She lacked focus, she was lost. All she knew was that she still wanted to fly helicopters as much as she had as a little girl and without much of a relationship with her father, she was going to fund her training herself. But getting all that money together took time, patience.
The summer Maya turned twenty-one, she was bored and desperate for change. Temporary work had dried up and she spent more time out with old school friends. One evening, she got left in the pub with a girl she barely knew, a girl called Liz who seemed a whole lot of fun. Liz seemed dangerous. Like nobody Maya had ever been friends with before, like someone her father would totally disapprove of. Perhaps that was part of the appeal. The pair of them carried on drinking, they had a ball, a real laugh. They played the slot machines, they danced in a park, laughed their way down the slide, swung high on the swings, used the seesaw until it turned them both green.
They left the park, stopped at one more bar and then kept on walking until they ended up in Whistlestop River. Maya had never been to the town before; she’d always headed further afield in search of more excitement than her home county.
That night, Maya was ready to jump in a taxi home by the time they reached Whistlestop River. She wanted her bed badly but her father’s house wasn’t really home any more. It was a place with walls, somewhere to lay her head but with very little warmth apart from her sister’s love.
‘We need to amp this night up,’ Liz declared as they lay on a grass bank not far from the town’s main street, before Maya had a chance to mention the taxi.
Maya groaned. ‘I need to go home.’ She was beginning to feel the aftereffects of the alcohol rather than the buzzy high that came initially.
Liz leapt up from the bank and pulled Maya’s hand to haul her to her feet. ‘We need more booze.’
Maya thought about disagreeing but perhaps another drink enjoyed beside the river might send her to sleep right here in the fresh air, with nature and its sounds all around them. She’d never been scared of the dark, or of creepy crawlies; she wouldn’t mind one bit sleeping outside for the night.
And so she agreed and they headed off – so she thought – to the shops to find one that was open for them to buy a bottle of whatever took their fancy.
When Liz stopped at the back of the Whistlestop River pub and bent down, Maya assumed she was tying her shoelace but it didn’t take long to realise she wasn’t when Liz stood up clutching a handful of gravel.
‘What are you doing?’
Liz threw some to the upper windows of the pub. ‘Let’s make the owners think they’ve got a ghost.’
Maya had a bad feeling about this. ‘We should go.’
But Liz already had another handful and she’d scooped some up for Maya too.
Maya didn’t throw hers but Liz did. And then Liz began making animal noises – Maya had no idea what they were meant to be; she assumed owls. All she knew was that she didn’t like this, particularly when Liz got frustrated that her plan wasn’t working. She wanted to scare the owners and grew impatient when it seemed she couldn’t.
‘All we’ll do is give them a fright,’ Liz told Maya, who by now was begging her to leave it alone. ‘We’ll leg it as soon as we see the upstairs lights go on.’
After another ten minutes of getting no reaction at all, Liz went in for the kill. She picked up a much bigger stone and lobbed it at the window. And not just any window. Her aim was at the fancy stained-glass picture window. It was ornate, most likely it had been there since the pub was established hundreds of years ago.
In that instance, Maya felt sober enough to see the seriousness of what they were doing here, or what Liz was doing as the stone left her hand and hit her target head on. The window was smashed to smithereens.
A light went on, Liz grabbed Maya’s hand and before Maya could take in the enormity of what had just happened, they were running away. Liz’s laughter echoed in the moonlight. Maya’s fear pumped through her veins. And when they reached the little wooden boat moored beside the sign that indicated it belonged to the pub, both girls leapt in and set off down the river.
Maya rowed for her life; Liz was too weak to help, she was laughing so hard. Maya stopped about a hundred metres away when she could no longer hear voices, when she was so spent, she couldn’t carry on rowing, no matter how much she wanted to.
They tied the boat up and Maya thought that was it, but the drama was far from over.
Liz ran off towards a shed and Maya wondered whether she wanted to take shelter inside. But she quickly came back and had in her hand a can of something.
Before Maya could even question it, Liz poured whatever was in the can into the boat, pulled a lighter out from her pocket and threw the flame onto the boat.
The whole thing went up.
Maya had never been so scared in her life. ‘What did you just do!’ she roared.
But she moved quick enough when she heard a male voice yell that he was police, that they should stop right there.
They didn’t. They ran. Like cowards. Away from the scene.
Two days later, Maya had the biggest row she’d ever had with her dad. She hadn’t left the house since the night outside the pub, petrified the police would come to arrest her. She’d caught a glimpse of the local paper reporting the incident when she went to get a drink from the kitchen and she felt so much guilt, it almost swallowed her up.
‘Did you fill in another UCAS form?’ her father asked her as she tried to escape back up to her room and leave the newspaper article behind.
She turned halfway to the top of the stairs to face her father. ‘What?’
‘Don’t what me, Maya. You heard what I said.’
‘I did, but I’ve told you, university right now isn’t in my plan.’
‘This again…’ He turned to go.
Maya could’ve easily headed upstairs and closed her door on her father but something made her chase after him into his study.
‘You know what I want to do, Dad. I want to be a helicopter pilot.’
His jaw twinged. ‘So you say.’
‘You don’t think I can do it?’
‘It’s a lot of study, a lot of money, and you might not even like it after all that so—’
‘Said every single person at university! Who knows that they’ll love their field of study?’ She was yelling at him now, something he wasn’t impressed with but seemed too shocked to address. ‘Helicopters will be my life, Dad. Get that into your thick head!’
She’d gone too far.
She knew she had.
And she couldn’t retreat fast enough to escape the bellow that followed.
‘I am still your father; you do not talk to me like this in my house. Under my roof. If your mother was here—’
‘Yeah, well she’s not, is she! Neither are my grandparents; you took them from me too!’
When she ran up to the top of the stairs, his voice followed, something about showing respect, she didn’t much care. All she knew was that she had to get out of here. And this time, for good.
She pulled a big rucksack from the wardrobe, the suitcase from under the bed and threw as many of her things in as she could.
‘Maya…’ Her door had opened so quietly she hadn’t heard her sister Julie come in. ‘What are you doing?’ But Julie knew what this was; that’s why her eyes filled with tears.
Maya sat down on the bed and held out her arms to her sister and they sat there together, sobbing, hugging, Maya doing her best to explain that she wasn’t walking away from Julie, only the man they called their dad, the man who hadn’t understood her in a very long time.
Maya left that night. She had no idea where she was going, she just knew she had to go. It was pouring with rain, she got on the bus that went from 100 metres past the driveway to the family home and sat on it until the driver announced it was the last stop.
Whistlestop River. The town she’d been in before. She stepped off that bus, saw the sign and almost tried to clamber back on again and beg the driver to take her anywhere but here. The place where she’d behaved so abominably.
But the driver had already driven away and she was stranded at the side of the road in the town that didn’t deserve her.
She walked away from the sign, around the back streets until properties spread out, landscapes came into view in the fading light. She found a bus shelter and decided to wait to see if another bus came at this time of night. The skies grew dark, the temperature fell enough that she dug out the blanket she’d put in her suitcase.
She huddled beneath it, clutched it tighter and tighter as the darkness surrounded her. Nobody else came to the bus stop, nobody bothered her; it was deserted. Maybe it wasn’t even an operational bus stop at all.
Whatever it was, she fell asleep in it.
Maya woke up to the sound of a distant car horn and realised it was gone midnight. Her body was stiff, she was hungry, she shivered. She knew she had to move. She hadn’t brought much money with her, she had no food, but how could she go home?
Maya wasn’t sure how long she kept walking. Going around another bend, her rucksack on her back, dragging the suitcase behind her, she saw a sign: The Whistlestop River airfield.
She drew closer to the airfield and when she reached a metal barrier, she threw her suitcase over, then her rucksack, and then climbed over herself. She hoped they didn’t have guard dogs here and almost turned back but as her heart thumped and no beast came barrelling towards her, she put one foot in front of the other to head for the building a couple of hundred metres away.
She reached the ground adjacent to the airbase building. It was the middle of the night now and she watched as someone dragged the helicopter from its helipad back into the hangar. She felt a sense of calm, a sense of peace. She didn’t care about being cold and hungry in this moment; she was watching something she envied and longed to be a part of.
She stayed in the shadows. She thought the air ambulances operated 24/7 but she must have got that wrong because the hangar door was closed by whoever was in there.
She left her suitcase and rucksack in the bush at the very edge of the field and ran closer to the airbase building, hid behind a car. Crew members emerged one by one.
She heard a couple of them yell goodnight and as soon as another car left and she couldn’t see anyone else, but the lights were still on inside the building, she ran to the door. It was open. She crept inside as quietly as she could. A few weeks earlier, she’d read in the newspaper that the airbase was fundraising for a new hi-tech CCTV system, which hopefully meant their security wasn’t great now. She’d worn a hoodie tonight for warmth and pulled up the hood just in case, making her harder to recognise if someone did catch her at it.
She slinked up the stairs at the side, into a room that had a couple of really small beds. She heard nobody and after ten minutes had passed, gradually all blocks of lights around her disappeared, one by one, until she was in total darkness. She heard the big door at the front close and the sound of it being locked but she waited another twenty minutes, until she knew the coast was clear.
She wasn’t going to do anything bad. She didn’t want to damage anything or steal, but she needed warmth, shelter, food. That was it, then she’d leave.
She went down the stairs on her bottom in the dark but there was enough moonlight filtering in that she could find her way through reception and to the kitchen. She found cheese in the fridge, some bread in one cupboard, chocolate in another. It had taken the edge off. She could go now, no harm done.
Maya made her way from the kitchen and into reception but with the door locked from the outside, it was hopeless. She was stuck. She looked around for a spare key but couldn’t find one and the drawers in the desk section were locked.
She went back up the stairs, searched in the kitchen but found no sign of a key there either. She was trapped.
She took a big knife and a smaller one back down to the reception. She managed to force the top drawer, then the second, where she found a cash box.
She looked at it. Was she a thief?
