Tiny Uncertain Miracles by Michelle Johnston

Author:Michelle Johnston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 4th Estate
Published: 2022-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

Claudia took to school with a quiet tenacity, and Diane again grew concerned.

‘I don’t think she should be anywhere on her own, or be out of the teachers’ sight. What about the trees in the playground? Disasters waiting to happen. She shouldn’t be climbing them, Marick.’

‘But she doesn’t want to do any of those things,’ he said.

‘There’s that, too. She shouldn’t spend so much time indoors. It’s not healthy for children. I’m worried she doesn’t want to do normal childhood things,’

‘Some kids are not designed for the rough and tumble,’ Marick replied. He had no idea what normal childhood things were. ‘And she hasn’t had a seizure in years. We should let her grow into whoever Claudia is meant to be. Let her find her own normal.’

These conversations were difficult, and Marick grew accustomed to his answers landing like tiny mortars.

Claudia was bookish, there was no argument there. A girl alive inside pages.

The heartening thing for Marick during those early years, with their daughter climbing the rungs of her own Claudia-shaped ladder to the world – grade one, a pantomime, the recorder, grade two, grade three, outstanding report cards, with ‘very advanced reader’ making repeat appearances, grade four – was that Diane and Marick were in its enterprise together.

Diane enjoyed the freedom of working for somebody else.

‘What was I thinking, wanting to run my own business?’ The company she worked for was winning awards for its designs, and often Diane’s ideas were at their core. She earned herself the title of consultant and could exercise her creative whim. She found a posse there, too. Adding to her friends from college, several of whom had stuck around during the lean times, there was a bunch of girls from the office who met every Friday night for drinks.

‘We’re such a diverse group,’ Diane said. ‘There’s a buyer, one of the girls from accounts, two of us designers, and the part-time book-keeper, who’s a whiz at tax time. I love them; I really do.’

Marick found his own job dwindling into background noise. He turned up, met deadlines, gave the company no trouble, and had the sort of reliability that meant he wasn’t noticed, the best sort of reliability there is.

The firm had grown into a huge clanking outfit. Diane’s father never returned, instead taking early retirement and a deal that danced on the edge of the law – endowing him with the sort of money Marick could barely conceive of, with details of an agreement Marick did not want to hear.

‘I thought I’d miss them more,’ Diane said one day. ‘I’m just glad they’re happy in Seville.’

After they left, Diane had tried to set up a video call once a month so they could see their rosy-cheeked, bloomingly healthy granddaughter, but the months stretched, dates were forgotten, and Claudia progressed from not sitting still during the forced encounters, to not being found at all.

Claudia and Marick read books together like fiends. Every one they could find. Library books, hand-me-downs, second-hand-store discoveries, and occasionally shiny-paged ones from shops about magic and myths and monsters.

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