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Back The Harpy Save as PDF
Chapters (52)
  1. The Harpy
  2. Also by Megan Hunter
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. The Harpy
  8. Part I
  9. 1
  10. 2
  11. 3
  12. 4
  13. 5
  14. 6
  15. 7
  16. 8
  17. 9
  18. 10
  19. 11
  20. 12
  21. 13
  22. 14
  23. 15
  24. 16
  25. 17
  26. 18
  27. Part II
  28. 19
  29. 20
  30. 21
  31. 22
  32. 23
  33. 24
  34. 25
  35. Part III
  36. 26
  37. 27
  38. 28
  39. 29
  40. 30
  41. 31
  42. 32
  43. 33
  44. 34
  45. 35
  46. 36
  47. 37
  48. 38
  49. 39
  50. Part IV
  51. Acknowledgments
  52. Back Cover

Pre-­children, I found work at a university press, still within touching distance of intellectual life, of the PhD I had once abandoned. I moved between lines of dense, taut prose, seizing mistakes, making it perfect. I even stayed there when I had Paddy, submitting cringing apologies for every illness he had, every forced day off. I was surrounded by male colleagues working late, picking up speed, their sweat permeating the small office. Ambition was here, somewhere, I knew. But when I went freelance – after Ted was born, to be more available for the children – I was hired by whoever would have me: hotel brochures, private school prospectuses, company training materials. I told myself that I was seeing the world, that I was writing the world. Maybe I was.

But today I couldn’t concentrate. I walked in and out of rooms without purpose, looking out of windows, trying to find something to see. I watched a mother crossing the road with her children, all colour drawn from her face into the street around her, the houses, her children’s wide faces and bright clothes. As they moved across the street, she put her body in front, before theirs, the first thing that would be hit.

In the kitchen, I made a cup of tea, tried to drink it before it was cool enough, felt the scorch on the end of my tongue. I couldn’t stop thinking of Vanessa: her quick glances, her self-­possession, the way I’d seen her smiling at Jake. Like a son, I used to think. My stomach turned. I closed my eyes, tried to slow my breathing, but all I could see was the shape of Jake in the dark, the quickness of my movement towards him, the spectral outline of his scratch: like a drawn-­on mouth, trying to speak.

12

12

Jake was late that night, and I knew it wasn’t the trains. I had checked them online while the boys were in the bath, crouched on the loft stairs, the light from my phone a cool comfort in the twilight. My thumb streamed through the arrivals: every single one had a green tick beside it, running on time. These were just facts, I reminded myself, pieces of information: they weren’t personal.

There was no text. There was nothing from him, the expectant blankness of my phone reminding me of evenings – early on – when I had waited for him to reply. The first days of mobiles, the elegant, longhand notification: 1 Message Received. I would leave the phone in my room and go for baths for two or three hours, putting off the moment when I had to return to the screen. Jake and I were practically children when we met, I used to tell people. We were twenty, idealists, babies intent on saving the world. We didn’t know what we were doing.