vindice

Jenny's friend kept an angel in her car. A cartoon of a doll, made out of straw, turning slowly on its string above the dashboard. Her godmother had a trio of silver sculptures on her mantelpiece, each with tapered, metallic wings.
And cards had fluttered through the letterbox when Jenny's Mum died the year earlier. Some had the simplest outlines of angels on them, solemn images supposed to bring Jenny a feeling of acceptance.

Mum had longed for a grandchild. When she got the test results, that July, eleven months after Mum died, Jenny thought of the baby inside her; a spark of life, a light. And when she lost the baby, a month later, the blood flowed like a cloying torrent of grief. Jenny had the impression that the baby was coming away in fragments with the blood, and that if she could only stem the flow then the baby would stay inside.

A silence fell on the household. Jenny's partner, Mark, seemed bewildered by a sort of unrealised disappointment. Jenny felt that she could not cry; she must be brave for her child and not let them see her shed a tear. Crying was what she had done while she was young and selfish. When she and Mark fought, and she played games with him, sobbing so that he would apologise and cuddle her like a little girl. Now, in her bereavement, she almost felt angry at him, irrationally, because he could not understand how she felt. And she was sure that he, equally irrationally, felt angry with her, because her body had not been strong enough to keep their baby safe.


The sun scorched the pavement, turning the city into a desert. She walked through the market. Her body felt heavy. How cruel that she should have been growing heavy with pregnancy, and instead was weighted down with sadness.
The crowd pushed and bawled, a teenage boy swearing loudly at another. They were so rowdy and vocal when they should have been in silence for the baby she had lost. How could they not know?

And then a sudden instant that she couldn't have explained. A man brushed past her, and instead of the thoughtless jolt she expected on the collision, the pressure of his shoulder against hers was as soft as wings. He was a thin man, with hair like straw. A delighted feeling swelled up in Jenny's chest, a feeling almost like joyful laughter. But no, at the same time, she almost choked on the sadness in her throat and her eyes stung as though she would cry. More than anything, she had never wanted Mark so badly. Wanted him to hold her, not out of pity or because she thought that he could make life easy. But because she wanted to connect with him. Gone were the power struggles of a past in which her future was the only one that mattered, and now, strangely, a new sort of freedom lay ahead.
And all around her, heat shimmered.