Wyld Dreamers

avocado bathroom suite. She would not understand what her daughter is doing in a house where nothing matches. Her daughter grins.
Amy peeks into the room from where the music comes. In front of a large fireplace three saggy sofas cluster like knee-splayed old ladies on deckchairs. Stacks of books are piled on the floor. Along a shelf between chest-high stereo speakers is a long line of records. Stella is flicking through them. She sees Amy and returns to searching. The room is also chilly. Amy returns to the kitchen.
‘Dad won’t mind,’ Julian is saying as he passes David a half full bottle of gin. They pull their chairs close to the Aga.
Julian will show them the cottage in the morning, he explains. He is pleased they have come to stay, there is so much fun to be had.
As the men talk, Amy’s eyelids dip. Drowsiness presses like a heavy blanket. Next thing she knows, David is shaking her shoulder and telling her to come to bed. Too sleepy to speak, she trails after him and Julian up the stairs; Stella has disappeared.
Julian gestures at one of the doors. ‘Take that room if you like. Any room really, except that one over there. It’s Seymour’s.’
In their room there’s a high wrought iron bedstead. Though she can barely summon the energy, she peels off her underwear and hauls herself up on to it, unwashed and unbrushed. Pushing David’s hand away, she falls into a dreamless sleep.

2
Shirley Taylor dries the breakfast things and puts the tea towel in the twin tub. The nylon sheets crackle as she pulls them off Amy’s bed. Her daughter left this morning. It is hard to find sufficient energy to breathe.
She sits on the carpet, scratching through its tight pile hoping to find a little piece of Amy, a strand of hair or a flake of skin which she could slip into her pocket. She runs her fingers lightly along the mattress and over the side table, lets them drift across the jewellery box with the ballerina on top as if to absorb traces of her daughter.
She crawls to the wardrobe, straightens her daughter’s sandals and shoes again, breathes in the tiniest whiff of feet. Slowly, tentatively, she draws open a drawer to rest her hand between a jumper and a blouse imaging she can feel the heart that once beat there. Gasping, she sits back on her heels when she cannot.
Shirley climbs on the mattress, clasps softly to her chest the cushion Amy embroidered in Year 7 and recalls the first time she saw her tiny and bawling daughter. How her heart swelled as though it would burst from her chest in a great arc of love. Proudly showing Amy to the midwives as though they had never seen a baby before. Memories of the toddler digging in the garden for worms. The schoolgirl frustrated when her socks pooled around her ankles because her shins were so skinny. The careful student who left her ‘O’ level revision notes on the bus. The truculent streak that blew in as she blew out the candles on her fifteenth birthday cake and her behaviour became volatile.
But even when sharp words were exchanged and doors slammed, it was never more than a day or two before the girl sidled to her mother’s side. The slight of a friend or an outbreak of spots, something would shake the girl’s universe and she’d be there, quarrel utterly forgotten, seeking solace. With her daughter’s head in her lap, Shirley would caress the proffered cheek, marvelled at the freckles that sprinkled her cheekbones like demerara sugar. Teasing the tangles from her daughter’s silken mane, massaging her scalp to chivvy off knotted thoughts, she and Amy breathed in tandem. Precious times, known and accepted, always and for certain, to be numbered. Now ended.
‘She got away alright?’ John asks his wife that evening.
‘Yes, fine,’ Shirley lies.
She puts his supper plate on the table. She does not mention the change of plans, how David explained his parents could no longer lend their car so the only option was for him and Amy to travel by motorbike. John would never have agreed to his daughter travelling this way; he would have locked her in the house and ignored the howls of fury.
She does not tell John that Amy hitched up her long skirt, clambered up on to the back of the motorbike and wrapped her arms around David’s waist. Or how with a single wave, their beautiful daughter roared away. And she does not admit, even to herself, that somewhere deep inside the thought of riding on a gleaming machine makes her breathless.
John touches her hand. ‘Shirley. Are you alright?’
‘Yes, I’m fine. It seems quiet somehow, knowing she’s not here. I didn’t say, John. Amy called from a petrol station, somewhere along the way. Everything is fine, she said. She’ll call again in a few days.’
Shirley carries the empty plates to the sink, washes the pans and carefully wipes the worktop. She watches her husband hoe the neat rows of vegetables, finding weeds where none grow, knee-deep in the foliage like he is wading in a green sea. And she knows he is as miserable as she.


3
Her watch says ten o’ clock when she wakes next morning, dry-mouthed. ‘Here Comes the Sun’ is playing at full volume and The Beatles are right. Dim light filters through rents in the red satin curtains making the room glow rosy-pink; how can David sleep?
Amy is washed with cheerfulness. Their high bed stands in the middle of the room. Against the wall is a wooden chair that reminds her of school; there’s a chest of drawers half-painted in gold. She slips down, not from under sheets and blankets as she is used to but a puffy eiderdown. Her bare feet hit bare floorboards. Taking a dressing gown from the back of the door, she tip-toes along the thread-bare carpet looking for the toilet. Stella appears in a floor-length nightdress and disappears