The Way Back Home by Freya North Page A

and there was Oriana.
    There was Oriana.
    And Jed dropped the phone and just stared and stared while in the far-off recesses of his consciousness, Malachy’s voice was filtering up tinnily from the floor, calling Jed? Jed? You there, Jed? before everything went quiet and time was tossed in a centrifuge; the past battered, the present making no sense, the future wide open.
    I am not the sort of bloke whose heart beats fast.
    I will not be the sort of bloke with a lump in his throat.
    I am not one to imagine things.
    I am not a soft bastard.
    I don’t do sentimentality.
    But Oriana is out there.
    Jed was at an utter loss. He’d stepped back, almost tripping. Now he was rooted to the spot, looking out as Oriana came away from the cedar and into full view. He watched as she glanced up to the ballroom window and away again, up to the window and down at her feet, shyness and perhaps dread, a multitude of emotions. And Jed loved Csilla Shag Cleaner just then for thieving and leaving, and leaving the cleaning of the windows which meant that Oriana couldn’t see him in there, gazing out at her.
    And then he thought, but what if she goes? After all this time, and all that happened – what if she goes before I’ve talked to her? If she goes – was she ever really here? And then he thought, what if she’s not real? What if I let her go again – for another eighteen years?
    Eighteen years? Is that all? Such a long time.
    And then he thought, stop thinking and get out there. And he scrambled his bare feet into his brother’s docksiders that were a size too big, opened the double ballroom windows and stepped out on to the balcony.
    The commotion caught Oriana’s attention.
    She stood stock-still while the sunlight spun gold from her hair and cut a squint across her eyes.
    Jed. It’s Jed.
    ‘Oriana?’ He was still on the balcony and she was still motionless. They stared and wondered, both of them, what are you doing here? How come you’re
here
?
    I never thought I’d ever see you again.
    Jed knew the move, though he hadn’t performed it for many, many years. He vaulted the balustrade of the balcony, and winched himself down, swinging against the wall of the house, grappling the descent like a crazy, out-of-practice, ropeless abseiler. The stone scuffed and grazed at his skin. He banged his knee. One of Malachy’s shoes fell off. The ground seemed far away. Suspended, he wondered if Oriana might be gone by the time he’d made the descent. He remembered how she’d sing the
Spider-Man
theme at him when he’d done this manoeuvre when they were young. With the tune once more in his head, bolstering him, and a mix of clumsiness and confidence, he made it down.
    Terra firma. Rooted to the spot.
    ‘Oriana?’ His voice, barely audible to him, was painfully loud to her. And now she was turning away, moving off. No! He sprinted after her.
    ‘Wait!’
    She stopped but didn’t turn. Tentatively, Jed stretched out his hand and laid it lightly on her shoulder. The wind, then, lifted her hair and wafted it over his skin, just quickly, in greeting. With great effort, she turned, not all the way, but enough. They glanced at each other, too nervous to move a step closer.
    ‘Are you back?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Back –
here
?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I –’ Jed shrugged.
    Oriana raised her face, sucking her lips on words she could neither release nor swallow. ‘How are you?’ she asked. Formal.
    ‘I’m fine,’ he told her. And then he laughed. This was mad. Crazy. ‘I’m
fine
.’ He felt compelled to shake his head as if to dislodge any risk this might not be real. ‘And you?’
    She scratched her head. ‘Just me.’ She shrugged.
    Jed looked over his shoulder and nodded at the house. ‘Have you been in? Have you seen your dad?’
    ‘No.’ She followed his gaze though her childhood home was out of sight from here.
    ‘Are you going to?’
    He watched as she stared at the house for a long time.
    ‘I don’t know.’ She fidgeted.