Again, I said, laughing, and Dad threw me higher. I flapped my arms and flew just a little way before he caught me, his mouth open in disbelief.
Two summers later I tried from the apple tree in the garden, but I thudded to the ground and sprained my ankle.
When I told you, a few dates in, about flying as a little girl, you nodded as though you knew. It was enough. My dress rippled with tiny strips of white fabric like feathers – like a swan, you said, at the reception.
Eventually there was a child, but the wait took its toll on us. It was me who watched her in the playground with her friends, swinging high and tipping off their seats at precisely the right moment to sail to the ground. I brought home tales from my job at the airport, but you laughed in the wrong places, your head elsewhere.
I went back once to the old house, to look for the apple tree, the ghosts of my parents. In their place, five executive homes formed a crescent.
Last summer, our child flown, we found a new freedom heading south through sun-baked fields. We took ourselves by surprise, overcome in the warm nights by a forgotten lust. Back home, you’re unreachable again.
Out on my morning walk by the lake, those golden nights shimmer briefly through the mist as two swans swim into view and bend their heads to form a heart. I run towards them and launch clumsily from the wooden jetty. My arms flap out of synch to start with, but the breeze lifts me up over the water as I find a steady rhythm, and slowly, slowly I gain height.
Anthea has had several flash fictions and short stories published in the past, and is trying to get back into the writing saddle. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London, and is a long-time member of the Angles writing group in Cambridge where she lives. She tweets sporadically at @antheamorrison.
The original version of 'Flight' was published by Reflex Press in the Reflex Fiction Volume Three anthology, A Girl’s Guide to Fly Fishing in 2020.
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