Farah shuffles backwards, sitting with her back against my chest. I put my arms round her and hold her like that.
“I’m cold,” she says, leaning her weight against me.
We don’t feel the cold in this place, but I don’t bother to point this out to her. She presses her cheek against my forearm and I’m filled with silent gratitude for her. I think that sleep will be impossible like this, but it comes quickly, a dark purple like anaesthesia.
And if tonight I should not wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.
I dream.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I’m young, seven or eight, and I’ve been spending a lot of time in the hospital lately for reasons I don’t fully understand. Now Mum’s started going to the hospital as well, which is why Grandad is picking me up from school instead.
“Does she have the same thing as me?” I ask. “Epilepsy?”
It’s a new word. An ugly word that reminds me of the figure I see watching me sometimes and I hope desperately I won’t have to see again.
“No, mate,” Grandad says. “What your mum’s got is different.”
“Can I go and see her?”
“Not right now.”
He upends a tin of beans into the pan and stirs them vigorously. He stoops down to check the toast. I don’t press any more. When I ask too many questions, Grandad gets moody, and I never get anything useful out of him anyway. The most I’ve ever got out of him is that she “needs a bit of a rest”, whatever that means.
“Uno?” Grandad says.
He sits at the tiny kitchen table and stacks and re-stacks a pile of Mum’s papers to make space. I take a wad from the main pile and place them on my lap so Grandad can start dealing. I don’t mind that Grandad is looking after me for a little while. The world always feels edgy around Mum, filled with a manic energy that I’ve always been instinctively uncomfortable around. “Stop the world, I want to get off!” she used to cry.
“Those forms still safe?” Grandad asks. His voice is casual, but I’m not fooled. “Those ones in the garage.”
I narrow my eyes. Dream Grandad always gets things wrong. “You’re getting muddled. You hid the forms later. This is before.”
Grandad is unfazed. “Oh, right. Sorry.”
He picks up a yellow seven and drops it immediately on to the pile.
“You need to get inside,” he says. “You’ve been out here too long already.”
I look up and find him watching me. His voice is calm, unhurried. In my dreams he usually plays along, acts like he doesn’t know he’s dead, to keep things nice and cosy. But there’s a serious note in his voice now.
The warmth of the moment leaches away. “You should have fallen through by now,” he says. “The walls of the world are too thin here. You can’t last.”
“Why not?” I say. “What’s out there?”
“Everything.”
TWENTY-NINE
“We should get going,” Farah says, stirring.
The morning air is damp and clammy and we can’t completely see the edges of the golf course. We stick to the treeline, walking slowly, our bodies heavy. The ground is uneven and littered with dried branches and hidden ditches. I lose track of how long we walk. There’s no movement of the sun or pressing need to eat or urinate. Only heaviness and the sky’s whiteness turning brighter whenever we’re not looking at it.
I guess about an hour later we hit the fence at the end of the golf course and track left until the grass gives way to the car park and the clubhouse.
There’s a high street on the far side with rows of newsagents and fruit shops, a phone shop, a kosher takeaway and a music shop with guitars hanging in the window. The shops are ordinary shops but they’re also thrillingly different. Souvlaki – what is that? Greek? This is my first glimpse of London. The shops are not purpose-built blocks of concrete like at home; they’re set into the frontages of what look like old Victorian terraced houses.
People must live up there, I think, a flight of stairs from a Spanish bakery and a Portuguese cake shop. The buildings have a weirdly satisfying, intricate look. The ageing brickwork creates delicate patterns and the big sash windows look grand, even though they are caked in grime.
“What’s wrong with you?” Farah says, bemused by my expression.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “It’s just that I’ve never been to London before.”
Farah laughs. “This isn’t London, mate. This is Barnet.”
We cut away from the high street as soon as we can and weave into the suburban side roads. We turn frequently, zigzagging left and then right. Farah keeps looking at her map, navigating us south as the winding streets curl around each other.
Chiu hops from paving stone to paving stone, avoiding the cracks. Farah joins him. If we keep going this way, weaving through the side roads, only occasionally crossing main roads when we have to, we’ll reach UCL before nightfall.
They think they’re safe, I think.
They’re imagining Jonah staring fruitlessly at the high street, trying to guess which of the side roads we’ve taken.
But what if he’s not guessing?
