Kite Spirit Read online

  She takes ages, crawling on her hands and knees over the wooden bars. She’s clinging on so tight that her knuckles turn white. I give her my hand and she takes it and stands up. It’s funny because she didn’t look very tall from down there.

  It was difficult to know now as Kite looked back through time whether she was doing what everyone else was, reinventing Dawn, reading into things that had never been there; back then Kite would probably have described those soft hazel eyes as shy, but maybe there had been a sadness lurking there too. Kite squeezed her own eyes tight shut and tried to imagine herself flying on the cloud swing. It was what all her training on the trapeze was for, so that one day she would be strong enough to fly between great oak trees performing at some open air-festival floodlit beneath the stars. But it felt like a childish dream now. Everything was spoilt, even her dreams. For the first time all this seemed nothing more than a fantasy. Now when she thought of it she felt no wings fluttering in her belly, no kite spirit rising.

  Her stomach burned with a bitter, angry feeling that she couldn’t make sense of. She wished she could find a way of delving inside herself, grabbing hold of it and tearing it out. I only need to understand why she did it, Kite told herself. Maybe then she would be able to cry, to sleep . . . to feel something like her old self again.

  The Valley of Death

  Ruby had said the funeral would help, give everyone a proper opportunity to say goodbye to Dawn, for Kite to finally cry . . . and after that . . . to sleep.

  Kite was standing a few rows back from the simple wooden coffin. Hazel and Jimmy stood alone in the small pew closest to Dawn, Jimmy’s arm enveloping Hazel’s slumped shoulders. A handful of people Kite had never seen before gathered in the pews surrounding Jimmy and Hazel. Behind her the little chapel was filling up; some friends of Jimmy and Hazel from work were wearing their hospital uniforms. The whole thing felt clinical. There were no flowers. Everyone had been asked to make donations to a charity of their choice instead. Ruby had donated money to ChildLine because she’d volunteered for them in the past. She’d tried to involve Kite in a discussion about why it was so important to see the bereavement counsellor their GP has offered.

  ‘Sometimes, my darlin’, it’s easier to talk about your feelings to someone with no connection to you,’ she’d explained. Kite had remained silent. There was no way that she could tell a total stranger all the thoughts that were passing through her head right now.

  The ‘no flowers’ request felt sensible but it seemed so cold to leave the coffin bare, as if no one cared. Ruby stood to one side of her and Seth to the other, like bodyguards, Kite thought. There was a heavy silence full of questions and misery. The only person who could answer the insistent cry of ‘Why? Why? Why?’ that echoed through this silence was lying in that coffin.

  Kite glanced around and found Miss Choulty’s compassionate smile. To one side of her were three students in school uniform. She recognized them from Dawn’s music class. Jamila had swapped her green headscarf for a white one. She too smiled at Kite sadly. To Miss Choulty’s other side sat two women, whispering loudly.

  ‘Had high hopes for her . . . So proud with her music grades and everything! I was just talking to her teacher. She reckons she was set for Oxford or Cambridge for certain . . .’

  Kite’s gut twisted as hot acid seemed to fill the well from which her tears should have drawn. The thought of all these people gathering to bury Dawn felt so wrong, like a nightmare that she’d got herself stuck inside.

  In the pew in front of her stood a tall man in a long black coat. He had thick greying hair, and beside him stood a boy with a messy mane of his own. It took Kite a while to place them. Of course! They were from Dawn’s orchestra: the conductor and the saxophonist Kite had teased Dawn about. The man had his arm wrapped around the boy in a comforting gesture. Next to them stood a tall girl wearing a short black skirt, ballet pumps and a cream long-sleeved top. As she turned in profile Kite recognized her too – this was Esme from the Brahms concert. Her shiny blonde hair shone like ripe wheat as she now walked to the front of the church with her oboe. It looked somehow swankier than Dawn’s. The wood was dark and rich and the silver keys gleamed.

  Kite watched her take a deep breath and begin to play with a confidence she had never seen in Dawn. The notes sang out in the echoey church. Kite closed her eyes and listened. She understood exactly why Dawn had been made the principal in her orchestra. There was nothing technically wrong with Esme’s playing, no false notes, and the music sounded smooth and sweet. But when Dawn played there was a raw truth that made you stop and listen. Now, hearing Esme, Kite understood that Dawn had spoken everything that was in her heart through her music. It was her way of speaking. As she listened she was amazed to see that the boy who stood in front of her was racked with sobs.

  The fact that all these people had cared so much for Dawn made what she had done even more difficult to fathom. There was nothing that Hazel and Jimmy would not have done to help her ‘get on in the world’. Kite had been touched by the way they talked of ‘the world’, as if it was somewhere they had no place in but somehow, miracle of miracles, they’d had a daughter who was worthy. Or could have been. Watching the boy wipe his tears away made Kite feel like opening the lid of the coffin, grabbing hold of Dawn’s shoulders and shaking her alive. ‘Look how loved you are!’ she wanted to scream.

  I should have spoken, Kite thought as she watched Esme return to her seat beside the grief-stricken boy.

  When Jimmy had called round to ask if she would like to say a few words at Dawn’s funeral she’d said that she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ he’d said. ‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to speak myself, and Hazel can’t take the pressure of it. You were a great friend to Dawn. That’s better than words,’ he’d told her as he left, and this phrase had come back to haunt her. She stared at Dawn’s coffin. How could I have been a great friend if you felt so awful that you took your own life and I didn’t even know how bad you were feeling?

  Jimmy stood up in his smart suit, the one she’d seen him wearing only once, a few weeks ago, when they’d passed on the stairs.

  ‘On my way to a job interview. Wish me luck, Kite! If I get it, it’ll be the end of shift work for me!’ he’d said, unbuttoning his jacket. ‘Shows how often I wear this. It only gets an airing at weddings and funerals. Think I might have put on a few pounds since I last wore it,’ he’d joked, tapping his round tummy.

  As Jimmy stood at the front of the chapel, clasping his speech, she noticed that the suit jacket looked too big for him, as if he had stepped into someone else’s clothes. His whole frame seemed to have shrunk.

  Ruby reached into her handbag for tissues. Her hands looked small too, without their usual nail extensions and bright polish. Kite glanced up at Ruby’s face. She wore no make-up, giving herself over to the fact that the day would be full of tears. Seth reached over and placed his arm around both of them. As Kite watched Jimmy take a deep breath to speak she found herself standing up, pushing past Seth and walking to the front of the chapel to sit next to Hazel. It felt wrong that she should be sitting there alone. Hazel turned to Kite with a look of utter confusion and emptiness. Her hollow cheeks were stained with tears and her nose was streaming, but she didn’t seem to notice. As Jimmy began to speak Kite reached for Hazel’s hand, but Hazel did not register her touch. The tips of her fingers were ice cold. It was as if something inside her had died too.

  ‘Our daughter . . .’ Jimmy paused and coughed as he struggled to speak her name.

  ‘Our daughter, Dawn Melissa Jenkins, was our pride and our joy.’ He held up what looked like a long handwritten speech, but the tears fell heavily from his eyes and dripped on to the paper. He stared at the bare coffin and the paper floated to the ground. He stood in silence for a moment while he collected himself and looked out over the mourners at the round stained glass window at the far end of the chapel. Kite followed his eyes to the grim image o
f Christ’s crucifixion on a wooden cross. ‘She was our hope and our happiness.’ He bent down and picked up the piece of paper. ‘I wrote this speech about what she meant to us. I’m sorry, I’ve got no heart to read it now, but Miss Choulty, Dawn’s teacher, has a few words she wants to say.’ Jimmy bowed his head and walked back to his seat. As he sat down he nodded at Kite as if to say thank you for sitting with Hazel.

  Miss Choulty was wearing a neat navy-blue suit. Her St Christopher glinted around her neck as she opened a little notebook and began to speak. Her familiar voice blurred into a strain of sadness. Kite did not hear the individual words that she spoke except for when she said how full of ‘potential’ Dawn had been. At this, Hazel let out a cry so strange and deep that Miss Choulty stopped and lost her place in her speech, leaving the whole congregation flailing around in silence. She uttered a few more words and returned to her seat. There were hymns; ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ was the only one Kite recognized. The organ seemed to play a beat behind the congregation as if it was dragging a heavy load uphill. Nobody sang with much enthusiasm. Jimmy, Hazel and Kite remained silent.

  After the priest had said a few words about the ‘tragic circumstances of this loss for family, school and community’ and how Dawn would be ‘welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven like a Lamb of God’, and after people had muttered their ‘Amens’, everyone followed the coffin bearers out to the patch of ground that had been prepared for Dawn. Kite peered down into the deep hole that had been dug where now a murky pool of water was forming. Jimmy followed Kite’s gaze into the hole and as he did two great tears rolled down his face and dropped into the filthy mud puddle. Jimmy and Hazel clung together, holding each other up. Hazel’s face was still blank, as if her kind, lively spirit had flown out of her. Kite recognized something of how she herself felt mirrored in Hazel’s eyes.

  ‘You can’t let her go into that hole,’ Kite called out suddenly. Seth and Ruby stood on either side of her, holding her close and steady, but as the young priest committed Dawn’s body to the earth and talked of ‘walking through the valley of death and fearing no evil’, his own strength seemed to falter. He nodded at Kite briefly and took a deep breath before continuing.

  After the ceremony was over he sought her out.

  ‘That was my first funeral,’ he explained.

  ‘Mine too,’ Kite whispered back.

  ‘So hard to bury someone this young.’ Kite sensed that he was trying to coax her into talking.

  ‘Do you have faith?’ he continued.

  Kite shrugged. She thought of Miss Choulty’s St Christopher and Grandma Grace, who was a fellow devotee. If she could pray for anything right now, she would ask for St Christopher to have appeared to Dawn, like a miracle, lifted her in his arms and carried her out of the depths of her sadness.

  ‘I understand that this is not your church, but if you ever want to talk . . .’

  Kite felt a gentle hand on her shoulder and turned away from the priest with a mumbled, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Are you Kite?’ she asked.

  Kite nodded.

  ‘I’m Esme!’ the girl said. ‘She talked about you all the time . . .’ She waited for a response, but no words came to Kite. ‘I wish she hadn’t been so shaken by that last concert,’ Esme continued. ‘It was only temporary, you know, me replacing her on first oboe, just to take the pressure off for a bit. She was always so much better than me.’

  Kite felt as if she was listening to Esme through a shroud of fog.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Didn’t she tell you?’ Esme looked shocked. ‘At the last concert we played she froze during the first solo. We told her it happens to everyone sometimes, you just have to ignore it and carry on, but instead she laid her oboe on her knee and stopped, just stopped. Like she’d given up. My dad, he’s the conductor –’ she nodded over to the tall man in the black coat – ‘he didn’t have a choice, I had to take her solos for the rest of the concert. I didn’t want to. I kept checking to see if she’d start playing again.’ Esme’s shoulders were shaking and the tears streamed down her clear rosy cheeks. ‘It was torture – she just sat there for the whole concert. What made it even worse was that there were some important people who’d come especially to hear her play.’

  Kite could almost feel the heat in her friend’s face as she sat exposed and humiliated, willing the concert to end. It had been nearly two years since she’d gone to watch Dawn at her first full-blown recital, when she’d played her favourite Brahms symphony and she’d looked so happy. Kite had seen her in loads of things since then, playing like a professional. How could it all have gone so badly wrong?

  ‘But I only went with her to Howarth’s a few weeks ago, to buy more reeds.’ Kite grabbed hold of Esme’s arms and shook her. ‘What do you mean, she froze? When was this? She didn’t tell me anything.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought . . .’ Esme pulled away from Kite’s tight grip. ‘Dad and I, and even Eddie, phoned her,’ Esme explained, looking over at the boy who had been so distressed, ‘to tell her we needed her back.’ She wouldn’t answer our calls, so in the end Dad sent a letter to her parents to meet and talk everything through. But they never replied.’

  ‘I don’t understand . . . she was at rehearsal every Saturday.’

  Esme shook her head. ‘We haven’t seen her for nearly two months now.’

  ‘Then Hazel and Jimmy can’t have got that letter . . . They didn’t know either. She must have felt so alone.’

  The boy with the black hair came and stood next to Esme. ‘Kite, this is Eddie.’

  ‘I’ve seen you play.’

  The boy nodded, his dark eyes red and swollen.

  ‘I told her you liked her but she wouldn’t believe me.’

  The boy opened his mouth to speak then hesitated and closed it again.

  ‘Kite was Dawn’s closest friend,’ Esme explained.

  ‘I wasn’t,’ whispered Kite. ‘I can’t have been or she would have told me what was going on in her head.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Esme, and she and Eddie seemed to float off into the crowd of mourners.

  Kite wished she could cry. It was as if she had become an instrument with only two notes – flat and sharp; she was either dull and empty or filled with bitter acid anger that made her want to lash out at someone or something. Suddenly the sky darkened and the rain began to fall. Umbrellas sprung open and people scurried away to take cover in the eaves of the chapel.

  ‘Come in from the rain, Kite,’ Seth called over the din of the downpour as he sprinted towards her with his umbrella. She shook her head at his offer of protection. Instead she stood in the middle of the courtyard and held out her arms. It was a relief to be bombarded by something as simple and clean as rain.

  Kite Song

  Kite heard the doorbell but pretended to be asleep on the day that Mr Scott called round to discuss the possibility of finishing her exams. Through her bedroom wall she could just about make out the gist of his conversation with her mother. It seemed to be going around and around in circles until Ruby raised her voice.

  ‘Let the child be! Surely she can take exams at any time.’

  Kite recognized that tone; it meant that Ruby was not expecting any further discussion.

  ‘Of course I understand your feelings right at this moment, but you have to consider how this might affect her future,’ Mr Scott answered not unkindly. He was such a tall imposing man that Kite had never noticed the surprisingly weak strain in his voice, especially when weighed against Ruby’s.

  ‘But she has a future, that’s the point. And after what’s happened to Dawn . . . We’re not putting any more pressure on her,’ Ruby continued. She was adopting the ‘stuck record method’ that she had taught Kite to use in difficult situations. ‘Just say the same thing over again in different ways, and eventually your message will get through,’ Ruby had instructed her.

  Seth must have passed Mr Scott in the doorway because their voices mingled to
gether and fused with the drone of traffic from the street outside. There was silence for a while between Seth and Ruby. They were probably going through their ritual of hugging and kissing and comforting each other. Even though one of them was always off on tour, and they weren’t even officially married, Ruby and Seth were probably the most ‘together’ couple of anyone’s parents Kite knew.

  Kite’s mind flitted back to the day when she and Dawn had watched them snogging through a crack in the living-room door, and Dawn had laughed so hard that she’d almost wet herself!

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever even seen my mum and dad kiss like that!’ Dawn giggled.

  Kite continued to listen through the wall. Her parents were sitting on the sofa that backed on to her bedroom wall, the sofa from which she had overheard so many of their ‘secret’ half-whispered conversations.

  ‘What about this bereavement counsellor the doctor’s set her up with?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘She’s still refusing to go. Says she prefers to speak to Miss Choulty. I contacted the woman today about it and she says that we should keep a close eye on her, especially the not sleeping and eating, and definitely sign on with a local doctor as a temporary patient as soon as we get there. She’s written a letter for us to take.’

  ‘I suppose it’s only for a few weeks, but she can’t carry on like this with no sleep, Seth.’

  ‘It’s OK, Rubes, I know what to look out for. If it continues, or there’s any sign of hallucinations, we’ll have to take her to hospital and they might give her medication, but the doctor said that’s always the last resort.’

  ‘She doesn’t need pills. She needs love and support and to talk it all through.’ Ruby was crying.

  ‘It’s OK, Rubes. This counsellor, Lucy, says she’ll talk to us too, all of us if it helps, and she’ll see Kite any time when we get back for as long as she needs her for.’

  ‘I’m thinking of cancelling my tour.’