The shadow of a tall oak stretched across half of a bench. Susan pressed her face against the last autumn sun, eyes squeezed shut. The park was almost empty; a wind tossed clumps of amber leaves down the pathways. She reached for her bag, feeling the cool plastic of her phone. No new messages, no missed calls. Probably stuck at university, she thought, untroubled.
She pulled out a book, tried to read, but the letters melted into each other. Her mind stubbornly kept looping back to the mornings conversation. Her daughter, Emily, had been oddly distant at breakfast, her gaze slipping away.
Mum, you have no idea what this opportunity is! Just six months. Its London!
I know, Susan replied dryly. And I know where it will end. Youll quit university.
No! Ill come back and finish everything!
No one ever comes back, Emily. Every just six months turns into forever.
The dialogue stalled, Emily slammed the door and left. A regular argument, one of many lately. Yet today a strange, heavy stillness hung in the air, an unfamiliar weight.
Susan glanced again at her phone. Halfpast five. Emilys classes should have finished an hour ago. She dialed. Number unavailable. She waved it off, but a cold, clingy worm of worry began to coil inside her.
She gathered her things and left the apartment, unable to sit any longer. The flat greeted her with a hollow, watchful silence. She walked through the rooms as if seeing them for the first time. A shelf of Emilys picture books, a battered sticker on a wardrobe door, a photograph on the chest of drawers: mother and daughter laughing on a seaside, Emily sunkissed, her teeth bright. All of this had been Susans world, built around that childsolid, unshakable.
The phone stayed silent.
Worry swelled into a quiet, total panic. Susan called Emilys friends. Their answers were evasive; nobody seemed to know anything, or pretended not to. The last hope was James, Emilys boyfriend. He answered after the fifth ring.
Susan, good afternoon.
James, where are you and Emily? Her phone isnt answering.
A strained silence hung in the line.
James?
Shell tell you herself, he said, voice low.
What will she say? Where is she?
At the airport.
The world didnt crumble. It simply froze. The sounds outsidecars humming, the ticking clock in the hallwayfaded. Susan slowly sank into a chair by the phone table.
Which airport? her voice sounded foreign, flat.
Heathrow. Flight to London in two hours. Im flying with her, so dont worry. She was scared to tell you. Thought shed explain once she settled.
Susan didnt remember what she said. She dropped the handset, staring at a single point. Void. In her head, in her heart, in the flatnothing but emptiness. The moment shed feared for months had arrived. Not a shouting match, not a slammed door, but a quiet, tidy departure. A escape.
She walked mechanically into Emilys room. Everything was immaculate, spotless, almost too clean. Susan yanked open the wardrobe. Half empty. The green sweater, the warm cardigan, the wheeled travel bag were gone.
Then a wave of powerless, crushing rage crashed over her. How could she? Quietly, slyly, by deceit! She seized the first thing she could finda threadbare teddy bear, one eye a button, the beloved toy. She raised it to smash it against the wall, but her hand refused. Her fingers loosened, and she pressed the bear to her chest, burying her face in its worn fur, still faint with a childs perfume.
Rage dissolved into despair. She collapsed onto Emilys bed, curling into a ball. All those years of worry, sleepless nights, fighting for her daughters futurewas it all for nothing?
Suddenly she sprang up, sprinted to the phone. Taxi, book a cab now.
She raced through the flat, searching for keys, bag, any clue of what to wear. In her mind a mantra: Just get there, get there. Her hand automatically reached for Emilys coat hanging on the hall hook. She inhaled the familiar scent of the fabricthen felt the same paralyzing thud in her chest. She threw on her old coat and burst out, leaving the door ajar.
In the cab she sat mute, pressed against the seat, watching the city rush pastLondon blurred, indifferent. Neon signs, endless streams of traffic. Somewhere in that flow her daughter was already on her way, perhaps already airborne. Susan imagined Emily at the sleek glass terminalpale, frightened, no longer wholly hers. A stranger.
What do I say? she thought, fists clenched. Beg? Shout? Slap her on the behind like when she ran onto the road as a child? Or collapse and weep?
The cab pulled up at the airport. Susan paid frantically, leapt out, and thrust into the crowd. Voices, shouts, a cacophony of languages. She scanned the sea of hooded girls and backpacks, trying to spot her own. Her heart thudded in her throat.
Then she saw hernot in the crowd, but behind the security glass. Emily stood, back turned, holding her passport. James whispered something in her ear; she turned, smiled. That bright, free smile became the last drop for Susan. She realized she could not intervene, could not break the moment, could not become the embodiment of prohibition and reproach.
She froze at the glass, a fish in an aquarium, helpless and mute. Emily passed through the checkpoint, took a few steps, thenwithout warningturned. Their eyes met through the thick, unbreakable pane.
Emilys smile vanished, replaced by shock, fear, guilt. She tried to shout something, but the sound didnt travel; Susan only saw her lips move: Mum.
Susan didnt answer. She raised her hand slowly, deliberately, not to beckon, not to stop, but simply to wave, as if sending her off.
She fumbled for her phone. Her fingers trembled, barely managing to type. She watched Emily, still staring at her, reach into her backpack for the device.
One message appeared. Two words: Happy flight!
Susan saw Emily read it, her face twist, and she pressed her forehead to the cold glass, sobbingnot from fear nor joy, but from a sudden, deafening comprehension of the price of this flight.
She turned and walked away without looking back. Her spine was straight, as if a steel rod ran beneath her coat. She had done the hardest thing a mother could dolet go. That letting go was scarier than any argument.
The driver, seeing her pale, frozen face reflected in the rearview mirror, said nothing. They rode in a thick silence broken only by the distant hum of the London night road. Susan stared out the window, but saw nothing. Only the distorted, weeping face of her daughter behind an invisible wall.
The doors opened into that same profound silence she had left hours before, now final. She entered, slipped off her coat, hung it up.
She walked to the kitchen, flipped the light on. Her hand drifted toward the kettle, then stopped. She could not drink. She could not eat. She could not breathe.
Instead she went to the fridge. Among magnets from Whitby and Emilys crayon drawings was a slip of paper with passwords. She peeled it off, found a line: EmilyVK. The password was simpleher cats birthday, the one that had died five years ago.
She sat at the table, opened the laptop. She had never before intruded on her daughters online world, but now everything was upside down. A foreign account, a foreign life. She logged in.
The first thing she saw was a new profile picture: Emily and James, grinning in front of an aircraft window. Caption: Off we go! Susans heart clenched into an icy knot.
She scrolled the feed: hurried packing photos, screenshots of tickets, posts for friends and classmates. Everything sharedexcept with her. She was the only one left out of this jubilant secret.
Then she found a recent chat with James.
Are you sure you wont tell mum?
Shell have a fit. Better later, when things settle.
What if
Shell survive. Shes strong.
Susan closed the laptop, pushing it away as if it were scorching. Strong. The word echoed with bitter sarcasm.
She went to the window. Outside, nightlit London stretched below, millions of lights. High above, a plane cut through the dark sky, carrying the girl she had once taught to tie her shoes and read syllables.
She didnt cry. Tears come when you expect sympathy. Here, in this stillness, there was no one left to sympathise.
She dimmed the kitchen light and slipped into Emilys room, flopped onto the madeup bed, pressing her face into the pillow still scented with her shampoo.
Only one thought whirred: Why did I treat her this way? Where did I miss the crack? She tossed, searching memory for the moment everything went wrong.
And then she recalled a trivial thing. A month earlier, after dinner, they were clearing dishes. Emily stared out the window at a passing plane and said, oddly melancholy for her age:
I wonder if up there you feel as tiny and unfree as we do down here?
What are you on about? Susan had brushed her off. Wash the plate, not philosophy.
Emily sighed and never returned to the topic.
Susan closed her eyes. It was either later or earlier. She feverishly pieced together snippetsEmilys tired eyes at dinner, her sudden silence when she put on headphones and slipped into herself.
She had missed not a moment but a person: that Emily who grew into a stranger while Susan, busy wiping counters and ironing shirts, believed sturdy walls were love.
She fell asleep, still in her nightclothes, under the streetlamps weak beam spilling onto the bed.
Morning brought a persistent knock at the door. Her heart leapt: Shes back! She changed her mind! She stumbled to answer.
A courier stood on the doorstep, holding a massive bouquet of white lilies and an envelope.
Susan? This is for you.
She shut the door, hands trembling, tore open the envelope. Inside lay a card, the printed words:
Mum, Im sorry. I couldnt look you in the eye. I was scared youd see me the way you see yourself when I let you down. Im not running away. Im trying to catch up with myself. You always said I could do anything. So Im trying. Thank you for everything. Youre the most precious thing I have. I love you. Emily.
Susan pressed the card to her chest and slowly sank to the floor of the hallway. At last the tears camequiet, bitter, endless. Yet there was no longer fury, only a crushing, universal sorrow and a tender ache for the girl in the plane who had fled in silence so as not to disappoint her.
She sat on the cold floor amid the white lilies, weeping for both of them: for a mother who realized too late that walls could be prisons, and for a daughter who felt she had to escape to be free.
