Shared Skies Page 2

  Back in bed, she lay with the photo of her parents close to her face, trying to lose herself in it, and will herself back to when they lived on a wooded hillside in Inverness. She turned over, thumped the pillow, pulled the duvet snug under her chin and set about designing the perfect person to talk to. Someone who understands what is happening to me and can explain it. Someone, who’ll talk about ideas rather than discos. Fun, tall, handsome, interested in art, music, maybe only the music I like? No, I won’t be closed-minded about music…Maybe very handsome? Someone interested in wildlife? Hmm, maybe.

  The photo slipped from her fingers and she fell asleep before she could decide.

  During their silent breakfast next morning, Gaiah kept an eye on the clock. She was determined to finish this business with Bryant before it got any worse. While she was getting dressed, the shrill of the doorbell made her jump. What? Oh no! It’s only nine thirty. What the hell?

  To her horror, she heard her father, who was still finishing breakfast in the kitchen, shamble out to answer it.

  The front door groaned open.

  “Mr. Andrew Hansfort?” The voice of Officer Bryant carried clearly up the stairs. “I’m from the School Liaison Department of the local police. Thanks for meeting me. I’d like a word with you about Gaiah, if I may come in for a minute?”

  “Of course, come in, I’ll call Gaiah.” He sounded bemused,

  “No, if you don't mind, Mr. Hansfort, it would be better if the two of us could have a few moments alone, first.”

  The drawing room door swung closed behind them.

  Chapter Two

  Crap. How could this have happened? Her last chance to ‘suggest at' Bryant was gone. Gaiah still had to finish her hair and get dressed. It only took a few minutes, but it felt endless. She ran downstairs and burst into the spacious, sparsely furnished room.

  Bright sun through the wide bay window made silhouettes of the two seated figures.

  “You said ten o’clock,” she accused the policewoman.

  Officer Bryant nodded, “Well, it seems your father knew nothing of this appointment anyway.” Her face suggested she wasn’t a bit surprised.

  Andrew, sitting at the opposite end of a large sofa from the policewoman, seemed even more haggard and lost than ever. “I don’t understand this, Gaiah. What’s going on? You…attacking people? It’s not possible. This woman says you appear to be friendless. That the pupils and teachers all avoid you. I can’t believe it. What about all the friends and parties you tell me about, the shopping trips, the drama club…the chess…?”

  A cold paralysis of shock and guilt held Gaiah in place, staring at father.

  “Dad... I…” There was nothing to say. She forced her legs to move and walked hesitantly across the room and sank to her knees beside him, at the edge of the sofa. Tentatively, she touched his arm, her eyes reddening with tears. Andrew leant forward and buried his face in his huge sculptor’s hands, kneading and massaging his forehead and temples, as if trying to force understanding of the situation into his head.

  Gaiah knew all the lies, all the stories she had told him, were now revealed. She’d told him she was getting on with her life. She knew he just wanted to hear all was well, that she was sociable and normal in the outside world. The world he was incapable of dealing with. Until this moment, Gaiah had maintained the image, but now the truth was clear. She was as lost as he. She had never seen her father look so broken.

  He sighed, “Oh sweetheart” and opened his arms to her.

  Bryant coughed gently. Gaiah glared up at her, furious at this woman for tearing down the façade of her life. Bryant’s face had softened as she watched these unguarded family dynamics, the sympathy in her eyes obvious but Gaiah knew she’d been cornered by her own loneliness and lies.

  The officer stood. “Look, I’ve been in touch with the Stack family and they say there’s a history of trouble with you, but they won’t press charges as long as you don’t return to school.”

  Gaiah, searching in her pocket for a tissue, gave up and dragged her sleeve across her eyes. “That’s okay with me. I’m old enough to leave school, and I really can’t bear that place.”

  Bryant shook her head. “Abandoning your education at this stage is not really a solution, is it? You're far too clever to give up and waste all the work you've put in. I'm sure your father wouldn't want that either?” She glanced at Andrew for confirmation.

  He nodded. “Gaiah, I know you don't want to drop out of school. I've seen the prospectus for university in the kitchen. Surely, there’s some solution? Maybe if she apologizes to the girls?” He looked up, hopefully, at the policewoman.

  Bryant’s hair fell forward as she shook her head. “I think it’s gone beyond that. The Stacks really will press charges if she goes back there, and even if it is only circumstantial evidence, there is enough here–,” she indicated the file she was holding, “to call for an investigation, which would be very unpleasant. The school, even if they never took action, took copious notes, which have now been sent to my department and while there is nothing major here, there is a long history of problematic behavior.”

  Bryant sat in one of the two large armchairs facing the couch and leant forward.“I know you are eighteen, but the fact these assault complaints came to my desk and you are still at school means that I get to keep an eye on you. I'm not here to cause trouble, Gaiah. I'm here to help you if I can.”

  Gaiah sighed and moved up onto the couch, sitting as close as possible to her father. How could things have fallen apart so quickly? The sound of passing traffic seemed to belong to a different world.

  Andrew ran his hands through his disheveled, sandy hair. The lines on his long face seemed deeper than ever. Bryant broke the silence. “What can you tell me about your grandparents? Could they help? It says here that you lived near them in Scotland?”

  “Well, until I was six, as they didn't stick around long after mum died.” Gaiah could still almost see the visibly diminished figures of her beloved grandparents, as they told her that they needed to grieve on their own for a while.

  Andrew took Gaiah's hand. “They just seemed to disappear. I know I wasn't functioning well, but I couldn't even find their house.”

  Gaiah's cold hand tightened on his, as she remembered her father, in a fog of grief, driving around and around familiar areas without once finding the haven that had been her grandparents' house.

  “Perhaps if you give me any phone number you have, I may be able to trace them?”

  “It's disconnected.” Gaiah said. She knew, because they had tried and tried. For a week or two it had just rung out. Then there was only an automated voice saying the number didn't exist.

  “Do you even have their last address?” Bryant asked Andrew, who shrugged helplessly.

  “I do,” Gaiah said. She crossed over to the mahogany desk that filled the bay window. She didn't need to look up the address, she remembered it perfectly. The address in Craigphadraig, Inverness where she had sent a card every Christmas for years, before giving up when the seventh one was returned with ‘address unknown’ stamped across it.

  As she handed it over she said, “You're not going to find them, you know. I saw them every week of my life, without fail, for six years and then, they just left me! Never heard from them again. Maybe they blamed dad and me for their daughter dying, I don’t know.” She spoke lightly, but she couldn't keep the hurt and loneliness from her voice.

  Bryant spoke. “Look, leave it with me. It’s quite obvious your dad wasn't aware of this situation.”

  Andrew spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I'd no idea. I'm afraid I…I wasn't…I'm not...very aware of what happens outside my studio. I haven't been any help to Gaiah at all. I'm so sorry.” Gaiah took one of his hands. “Oh Dad, there´s nothing you could have done anyway. Please don´t worry.”

  Bryant looked at them both and said, “Look, if I could get Gaiah in somewhere else, just for the next few months, to finish her education, woul
dn't that be good?” She turned slightly towards Gaiah. “A new place where no one knows you, no preconceptions or history, and then you could be off to university with all this behind you.”

  Despite her bravado, Gaiah knew she really didn't want to give up her studies. They were all she had been interested in for the last year or two. The challenge of upping her grade every term had been her main occupation, as she definitely hadn't been socializing. “I suppose so.” was the most enthusiastic reply she could muster.

  The policewoman stood. She packed away her files and pens. “As I said, leave things with me. Study at home for the next day or two, these things take time, I’ll be in touch.”Andrew escorted her to the front door, clearing his throat and swallowing hard as he thanked her for her concern.

  Perhaps I should run down the road after her, pretend I have their phone number as well, and I’ll get her on her own. Try to make her decide all was as it should be and close the file.

  Before Gaiah could act, Andrew called her. “Gaiah, we need to talk.” She followed him into the kitchen, well aware that once again there was a lost opportunity to ‘suggest’ at Bryant.

  They sat across from each other at the gleaming wooden table. Her dad filled two mugs with coffee and slid one across to her. His constant coffee drinking was one American habit he never lost in his move to Britain. “I’m so sorry, Gaiah, so sorry. I can see I've left you alone far too much, while I tried to cope with…everything. I didn't realize how lost you were too, how you were struggling.” The sleeves of his denim shirt were rolled up to the elbows and his hands engulfed his cup. “I know you think if you knew all about your mother, everything would be fine. And honestly, I’d love to tell you about her, but the truth is, whenever I try to think about that time, a fog comes down, it’s a blur. No memories are clear, just the intensity of the feelings. Your mother was the most incredible person I ever met.” He paused, staring into his coffee cup as if it were a window to the past. He chewed the inside of his bottom lip; the effort of dredging up these memories and talking about them was obvious. “My life lit up when I met Nia, Gaiah. Your mother and I were radiant and complete together, it was like I saw and felt everything differently. And when we found out we were going to have a baby, we felt truly blessed. From the moment she discovered she was pregnant, your mum called you her ‘Darling Gaiah. A name I’d never heard before, but I loved it immediately. Then when you were born…my God…it was unbelievable…”

  “We were very happy, weren’t we Dad? I mean, really, truly happy–I remember Mum playing in the woods with me.”

  “Happy is too small a word. Oh, Gaiah, I’d give anything to be able to tell you every detail about your mother. But the more I try to remember Nia, the more I lose her. All I know is that from the day I met her, I was filled with pure love, pure art, with the will and the ability to do anything, to create anything. That was when I started on the biggest work of my life, Spirit of the Forest. Your mother would bring you to the grove where I was working, you danced and played there like a little forest cherub until, in what seemed like minutes, the day was over and I had done wondrous work. I remember that happiness alright.”

  He paused and smiled. “We were a trinity, Gaiah, and in that trinity we were far, far more than just three people, we were a kind of force. Your grandparents, Alasdair and Kaley, added even more to us. When they arrived every weekend, it was as if our world was complete.” Gaiah closed her eyes. Andrew was opening the curtains on a magical panorama; she could nearly smell the pine cones in the forest.

  “When your mother died, I…we...lost all that. You were only six. I thought time would heal us, and then Kaley and Alasdair left. I still tried Gaiah. I spent a whole year trying to cope there. But I couldn't. So, when the sale of The Spirit of the Forest made it possible, I jumped at the chance to take us out of Scotland and move. But since then, I've been living a half-life. Trying to…trying to…” His voice broke.

  Gaiah’s eyes blurred with tears as she rounded the table to hold her dad. The shock of discovering her unhappiness and loneliness had made him open up to her more than ever before, and while she was glad of this she was still filled with unanswered questions.

  Andrew took a deep breath and banged his mug down on the table. He reached for the kitchen roll and blew his nose loudly.“Right, well...will we do something together today? Go to a park or something…a cinema…?” He trailed off and Gaiah had to smile at him. He was going to try to fix ten years in an afternoon.

  “It’s okay dad, I’m fine, honestly, go back to your studio. We’ll work things out and I really do have work to do.”

  He protested, but was already on his feet heading for the door. “Things must change, Gaiah. I’ll come back down soon and we’ll talk more.”

  The day slipped by. Gaiah finished some projects and caught up with the soaps she was following on TV. He appeared for the dinner Gaiah had cooked from the freezer. He was covered in clay and scribbling designs in a notebook, as usual. However, during the meal he also questioned her on her school life, and his eyes watched her carefully as she tried to make light of her situation.

  Later, he kissed her goodnight, hugged her tightly and said, “Sleep well, don't worry. Let's see what tomorrow brings.”

  Gaiah worked up a smile and hugged him back. “Okay Dad, you too.”

  ***

  Around three o’clock in the morning Gaiah gave up trying to sleep. Restlessly changing positions and dozing for ten minutes at a time, she’d squirmed the sheets into hard, uncomfortable ridges. Something had to happen, to change. Her hair, her ability to influence people, it wasn’t normal. It had to mean something, or at least, be good for something. She tip-toed down to the kitchen. Her soft slippers and thick, white dressing gown turned her into a ghost figure, floating through the silent emptiness of this great house.

  Toast–the answer to everything. The melted butter dripped through her fingers as she bit into the warm, crunchy thickness of the wholemeal bread. But she still fidgeted and somehow fizzed inside. Anticipation, even excitement bubbled through her. Whatever this whole situation with school and Bryant meant, it was forcing something to happen.

  Returning to bed, she fell into a fitful sleep until the doorbell, shrilling through the morning silence, shocked her awake. According to her bedside clock it was only ten past nine. By the time Gaiah had pulled on her jeans and an old grey sweatshirt, Andrew was opening the door yet again, to Officer Bryant. Hearing who it was, Gaiah flew back to her room, piled her hair into a black wooly hat and joined her father in the drawing room.

  Officer Bryant’s grim face matched her tone, as she said, “I must say I’m surprised and distressed at the lies you both saw fit to tell me yesterday.”

  “What?” Gaiah’s voice squeaked in shock.

  “How dare you?” Andrew’s voice overlapped Gaiah’s.

  Bryant held up a hand, and continued. “Directory enquiries had no trouble giving me a number, when I gave them the name and address you’d given me. Not only are Kaley and Alasdair Shaman at that address, when I rang them last evening, they told me they have always lived there. I had a long chat with them. They were sad, but not surprised to hear you'd told me they'd disappeared. They said you'd gone off the rails after their daughter died and refused them all contact with Gaiah.

  “That’s not true,” shouted Gaiah.

  Andrew grabbed for one of the ornate chairs, and collapsed into as if someone had just punched him. Gaiah ran to him. “Tell her, Dad, tell her this is bullshit! I don’t know who she was talking to but it sure as hell wasn't my grandparents. Tell her.”

  Getting no response from Andrew, Gaiah turned on Bryant. “This is completely mad. Show me any paperwork, any documentation at all to prove it.”

  Bryant stared blankly back at Gaiah, her eyes narrowed and she scrubbed at her temple with her fingertips. Frowning, Gaiah glanced at her father to see if he was noticing this, but he was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, looking over his twisting hands
at the carpet.

  Bryant shook her head as if to clear it, and focused on Gaiah again. “Look, I double-checked all their information with the Inverness police, who told me they are a well-known couple in the area, because of their involvement with the search and rescue volunteers. Now, this is clearly a most unusual situation. I don’t know what´s going on, but I have a suggestion, which, given the circumstances, I would strongly advise you accept. Your grandparents sounded like lovely, caring people. They suggested you go and live with them.”

  She held up her hands to forestall Gaiah's outraged comments. “As it happens, they are friends with the principal of the local college which is having an open day next Sunday, so you could join the school with any other new intakes. Kaley herself suggested to me it would be best to get you there by then. They are willing to help you comply with any supervision requirements and help you complete your studies. So you…”

  Gaiah interrupted her “No. No, No! That’s not going to happen. They left us! They didn't write or call. This is impossible, it can't be them. I'm not going anywhere. It can’t be true! I don’t want to see them… how could they…”

  The policewoman shook her head. “This appears to be a great shock to the two of you and I don’t understand it. Nevertheless, it’s the most appropriate course of action, and while I can't actually force you Gaiah, I'm strongly recommending you grab this chance to leave all the unpleasantness here behind.”

  Andrew was silently shaking his head. Bryant approached him and rested her hand gently on his arm.

  “I'm sure you want what's best for Gaiah, don't you? She has obviously been deeply unhappy at this school, whatever has been going on. And, no matter what the reasons for the relationship breakdown with her grandparents, it would be lovely for her to be reunited with them, wouldn't it?”