Jimi Odell

The bird

Kaye dragged her case out from under the bed and lifted it onto the mattress. She put Anny’s little case in the corner of the room out of the way. Her own case still had a few things in it that she hadn’t unpacked like her coat and her housekeys, which had no place in Collioure, and a plastic folder with all the paperwork, including three return ferry tickets, but only two passports because Hayley had held onto her own.

She threw flip-flops and sandals into the case first, then emptied the top drawer of the dresser, keeping Anny’s things in a separate pile, and stuffing her own smaller items into the corners of the case. She emptied the wardrobe, taking her remaining dresses off their hangers and folding them into the case on top of the underwear. The swallows continued their relentless song at the window.

She returned to the bathroom, gathered up an armful of shampoos and lotions, grabbed her own pink toothbrush and Anny’s chunky dinosaur-shaped one, and dumped everything onto the towel on the bed. Then she emptied the second drawer into the case, mostly tops and skirts, which she folded onto the dresses.

‘We’re doing this,’ she said.

Outside on the balcony, she stepped into her French sandals and crossed the hot stone floor past the closed door of Hayley’s room and the open door of the third room, where the deck of cards was still scattered from Anny’s magic show. Kaye leaned over the balcony, letting her wet hair dangle in the sun. She could still hear plates and cutlery sloshing through dishwater, and the hectic voices of Anny’s cartoon.

She peeled the clean clothes off the stone walls, collecting a pile of little t-shirts decorated with dogs and cactuses, and tiny trousers of orange and turquoise that had baked stiff in the morning sun and which folded neatly onto her arm. She carried them down to the courtyard.

She unpegged a shawl from the line and was about to wave to Hayley, when she saw a small pink form outside the kitchen door, plump and bulbous, like a raw turkey on Christmas morning, but no bigger than Anny’s clenched fist. It had feet and elbows, but no feathers other than a small crest of greyish down along the length of its neck. Its head was still pointing forward, as if it might yet take off and soar above the Côte d’Azur. Kaye looked up at the eaves, where the songs of the survivors still rang out around the muddy nest.

Life as a cat owner had not inured her to the horrors of disposing of the dead, and she still felt the sick shiver of untimely death every time she was around it. She took the washing upstairs and dropped it by the case. She found the yellow dustpan and brush in the third bedroom and walked slowly back down the steps.

She crouched and saw the bird more clearly, its loose translucent skin speckled with tiny bumps. She put the dustpan on the ground, braced herself to take the weight, and slid the lip of the pan under the bird’s belly. Jolted by the touch, it came alive and made a desperate crawl towards the shrubbery, one useless elbow at a time, one half-formed leg after the other.

She knew she should kill it, but she did not know how.

Kaye filled the moka pot with water, packed the tray with coffee, screwed the pieces together and balanced it on the stovetop, which was shaped like a crow’s foot and would only support the pot at a precise angle. She struck a match and lit the gas.

‘Un café? Un café pour ma fille?’ She tried for a one-beat laugh, but it collapsed into a sigh.

‘No thanks, Mum.’

‘Bah, non. Is Anny still watching cartoons?’

‘I just checked on her. She’s had a satsuma and some grapes.’

‘How are you?’

‘I’m all right.’

‘Thank you for looking after your sister.’ Hayley didn’t say half-sister this time. ‘She loves you, you know.’

‘I know.’

‘I do too.’

‘I know, Mum.’

‘And thank you for doing the washing up.’

‘Do you want half a croissant? I didn’t finish it.’

Kaye sat and took Hayley’s hands across the table. She could still see the bird, opening and closing its soft beak. She should have bashed its brains in. She should have snapped its neck. She should have severed its head with the sharp edge of the dustpan instead of just leaving it there to die. Who did she hope would find it?

Next door, the cartoon was reaching its climax. She looked into Hayley’s eyes. She should have bashed everyone’s brains in the moment they were born instead of leaving them to fend for themselves in this hostile world.

‘I believe you. You know that much, don’t you?’

‘Mum.’

‘I wasn’t thinking about whether it was true, I was thinking about what we were going to do next.’

Hayley shrugged. Kaye took a breath. She picked up the discarded croissant, turned it over, and put it back on the plate.

‘Let’s just go, then. We’ll get in the car, but we won’t go home.’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere. You pick the destination, I’ll pick the music.’

‘No, Mum. You’re not picking the music.’

‘OK. Italy then?’

‘Mum, we can’t.’

‘We can. I’ve already started packing.’

‘What about Dennis?’

‘Fuck him.’

‘Mum!’

‘I’m serious. Let me worry about that. We’ll tell him not to come. We’ll tell him we’re moving on, but we won’t tell him where or why. Let him sweat. Then, whatever you decide to do, we’ll do it. You, me and Anny, together. We will go home, and we will deal with it. But until we know what we’re doing, we’re on the road.’

Hayley picked up the stale croissant and took a bite.

‘OK.’

‘OK, what?’

‘OK, I’ll make a playlist.’

Kaye picked Anny up from the beanbag and turned off the television.

‘Time to go, baby girl. We’re going to pack our bags and take a trip.’

‘Are we going home?’

‘No, baby, we’re going on a trip in the car.’

‘Are we going to town?’

‘A long trip. Remember how we drove here to Collioure, and you played in the back with Hayley? It’s going to be like that.’

‘Are we going on another horrorday?’

‘That’s right, baby, we’re going on another holiday and it’s time to pack our things.’

She put Anny down and let her walk by herself out to the courtyard. At the kitchen door, she put her body between Anny and the bird, telling her to look out for caterpillars. Anny found one, danced ahead and stamped on it, smashing its black and green body into the ground.

‘Run upstairs to Hayley and she’ll find your suitcase. It’s in my room.’

Anny clambered onto the steps and Kaye returned to the bird. When she nudged it this time, it didn’t move. It had died alone, baking in the midday sun. She rolled its little round body into the shrubbery with the dustpan and buried it in a mound of earth, listening to the song of its mother overhead.

They drove through the village with Hayley sitting in the back, entertaining Anny. Hayley had a soft toy in the shape of an octopus and was making it climb up the car seat, say hello, and then fall back down again.

 ‘Hayley?’

‘Yeah?’

‘There was a baby bird in the garden this morning.’

‘From the nests? I didn’t see it.’

‘It was by the shrubbery.’

‘Was it dead?’

‘I thought it was but, when I went to clean it up, it moved.’

‘Jesus, Mum.’

‘I know.’ She took the second exit off the roundabout onto the narrow main road where they passed a sign saying Collioure with a thick red line through it.

‘Did you at least put it out of its misery?’ They were approaching a T-junction.

‘Which way shall we go, girls? Right for more France, or left for Spain?’

‘Spain!’

‘’pain!’

‘Spain, it is.’

Kaye flicked on the left indicator.

‘You did kill it, didn’t you, Mum? Please say you didn’t just leave it there?’

Kaye caught Hayley’s eye in the rear-view mirror and gave her a reassuring nod before Hayley turned her attention back to the octopus. She promised herself it would be the last time she ever lied to either one of her daughters.

‘Mummy?’ said Anny.

‘Yes, baby?’

‘I like horrordays.’

The road curved away from the sea, heading inland towards the mountains of the Albera Massif before it joined the main road south to the Spanish border.

‘Me too, baby girl. Me too.’

Jimi Odell is a graduate of City University’s Novel Writing MA. His fiction has been published in Flashquake, Quiddity and The Storyteller’s Refrain. He lives in London with his partner, their cat, and a small collection of beaten-up guitars.