Little Wing by Joanne Horniman Page A

Emmy, my darling?’ peering anxiously around the door before he came in, as though afraid of surprising her in some unspeakable medical procedure. He held her close for a long time.
    â€˜So this is the little one.’ He turned back the edge of the baby blanket, and said coyly, ‘May I?’ before picking her up and cradling her in her arms. ‘Oh, look, Margaret,’ he said. ‘Our first grandchild.’
    Emily’s mother allowed the baby to be thrust into her arms; Emily saw her soften slightly, before returning the child to her husband.
    â€˜What is the babe’s name?’ he asked shyly.
    â€˜Mahalia,’ she said.
    He didn’t quite understand, and she had to repeat it.
    â€˜Mahalia,’ he said. ‘That’s . . . unusual, isn’t it? But I like it, I think,’ he said warmly, turning to his wife, who nodded, curtly.
    Emily remembered the way her parents had always made her feel hemmed in. Her childhood dream of horses had been a way of escape from them. A horse had strength, and swiftness, and unpredictability. You could be free on a horse. She’d written a story when she was in primary school about running away on her imaginary horse. In the story she’d gone as far as Western Australia, and when she saw headlines in the paper that her parents were looking for her she hadn’t felt one bit of remorse.
    When she was too young to know what she was doing they’d stuck her in a white dress and taken her to the church and had her confirmed in a faith that she could never take seriously. Years later, she had coaxed the priest into allowing her to climb up the church tower. And she’d taken Matt with her, pulling him up the dim stone staircase, and kissed him for the first time right on top of the tower. She hoped that everyone would see them, but feared that no one had.
    And she’d jumped into the river one day, just to see what it felt like. It had been cold and muddy and exhilarating. She’d wanted to shock herself awake, to experience everything. She’d wanted more than the pretty pink bedroom in her parents’ house.
    Lying in the hospital bed with her baby beside her, she could see that not only had she hemmed herself in again, she’d also thoughtlessly implicated a child who hadn’t asked for life at all.

10
    As Emily walked away from Charlotte’s house, there were very few people about, and the streets had the weary flatness that she remembered from other Christmas afternoons. She walked past Martin’s house through habit. One of Pete’s sneakers still lay sole up on the front verandah in exactly the same position it had been in last time.
    In the town centre she went into a milk bar and stood waiting to be served. The girl behind the counter was wiping down the stainless steel with a thick grey rag; it swirled around, leaving beads of water on the gleaming surface. Three people about Emily’s age sat at a booth in the dim recesses of the café. She heard a boy’s voice say, ‘Hey! She’s hot!’ and a girl’s derisive laugh. Finally the shop assistant came up to her with an expression that implied she was being interrupted, and Emily asked politely for a chocolate milkshake.
    She glanced towards the back of the shop to the faces in the booth; she noticed only a girl with a plump, freckled face who looked away from her and down into her milkshake with a smirk.
    As the shopgirl dipped a ladle into the refrigerator to scoop up the milk, Emily realised that she had come out without her bag. ‘I’m sorry,’ she interrupted her, ‘I’ll have to cancel that – I’ve forgotten my purse,’ and fled without looking back.
    She found a park and squirted water into her mouth from a bubbler. The place had an air of desertion, and because of the welcome lack of people Emily sat down on a seat. She didn’t want to go back to Charlotte’s place yet. It would