Four

A few miles south of Manchester, England. As the car leaves the motorway and her dad says something about having almost missed the bloody junction as usual, Suzie is faintly disappointed to have almost arrived already, because it’s taken her nearly an hour to get comfortable in the car, and to stop coughing or sneezing every time she tries to open her mouth to speak.

Suzie is eight years old, and has developed a cold overnight. “What are you like?” her mum had asked, as if developing a cold were somehow Suzie’s own fault, and not the fault of tiny germs that you can’t see, which is whose fault it really is as far as Suzie understands it, which she thinks is quite far compared with other boys and girls her age.

The car drives a little way further before finally turning in around a roundabout covered in flags from various different countries. Suzie doesn’t recognise more than three or four of them, which frustrates her. “Here we are!” her mother says in a patronising voice which frustrates her more.

Inside, no one’s thought to press the button in the lift, so everybody is standing there with their bags and suitcases, and no one’s really talking because it’s uncomfortable to talk too much in a busy lift, yet it’s not moving anywhere. And eventually Suzie’s dad says, “Silly question, but has anyone pressed the button?” and the girl in front of the panel looks embarrassed.

Suzie sneezes. “I think I have the flu,” she says as they step out on the floor above, but her mother says to stop being so ridiculous.

They’re going on holiday. Somewhere nice. Not somewhere hideous. Suzie’s dad had been moaning about people who asked you about this. “Of course I’m going somewhere nice,” he’d said. “Where would I have opted to take a holiday? Some dingy horrible back alley or something?”

“You’re always so difficult,” Suzie’s mum had said, and Suzie’s dad had said “Well!” but then not finished the thought.

Through check-in and in the departure lounge,  Suzie and her mother and father are shopping for something to keep them entertained during the flight. Suzie is standing next to her mother while she looks at magazines, and on the front of one of the magazines it says, “LOOK INTO MY EYES,” and then, underneath, “How to peer through the window of the soul.” Suzie asks what this means.

Her mum says something like, “Well, people think the eyes are the window to the soul.” Suzie asks what this means, and her mum says some people think in interesting ways. Suzie asks what this means, and her mum says it doesn’t matter. Suzie asks if the eyes are really the window to the soul, and her mum says no, they can’t be, and Suzie says why, and her mother says, “Because the soul doesn’t exist.”

In Brighton, England, Suzie is 20 years old. The southern trees are sturdy, she thinks as she walks through the extraordinary winds towards the seafront. They stand firm, only wavering minutely, in the face of gusts which almost send Suzie flying sideways on a number of occasions. Back in the north, she thinks, they’d have given up and collapsed long ago.

Suzie carries a bag with her everywhere: a dark green rucksack that she suspects might be intended for boys, but she’s been wearing it for several years and nobody has ever commented to that effect, so she’s never self-conscious. Not that she’d ever let on to feeling self-conscious anyway, but secretly does, every second of every day. Just as secretly, she suspects everyone else she knows feels exactly the same way.

In the bag she keeps receipts. She daren’t ever get rid, even for items such as bread or jam from the supermarket, which she knows – unless they’re mouldy at the time of purchase, which they wouldn’t be – won’t ever get returned to the shop. Richard told her in no uncertain terms to bin them, which is why she transferred them all to her bag, a place she knows will rarely if ever be out of her sight.

That’s also the reason it contains her doll.

Above Salford, just south of Manchester, England. The city below looks like a model replica of itself. Suzie wants to ask her mother if she’s sure the soul doesn’t exist, but she’s engrossed in a new book, and her dad is staring out of the window looking like he wouldn’t respond even if you prodded him again, and again, and again.

Over Stoke-on-Trent, England, now. Suzie’s father has fallen asleep. Her mother continues to read from the same book, occasionally pausing to glance out of the window. They’re high enough now that, were it cloudy, there’d be nothing but a sea of fluffy white below them. Suzie can spot some clouds ahead.

Then, later, over somewhere indiscernible through the layers of grey below, perhaps no longer England, both her parents are asleep, and the man with the trolley comes by and asks if she would like an orange juice or anything, and Suzie says, “No, thank you.” Instead she delicately reaches down to the bag stowed safely in front of the seat in front of her, as it has to be for some reason, and carefully, quietly, gently unzips it. From the bag she takes the doll, picks it up and brings it to her eye level. Its cold glass stare engulfs her.

Focus, she thinks.

Below, the clouds stand still, and the blue above is a solid pastel colour. The patterns on the walls of the aircraft look like something out of the 1970s. The man with the trolley is swiping a credit card belonging to the woman behind her, who has ordered a Bloody Mary, which Suzie would think sounded a bit rude, had she heard it: had she not been otherwise engaged.

The eyes aren’t the window to the soul, because the soul doesn’t exist. But Suzie looks into the doll’s eyes, and thinks focus, and then a wave of discomfort crashes over her, and then suddenly she’s gone.

Suzie is four years old. Leeds, England.

Three

“I don’t know,” says Suzie, then pauses. “It’s… dark.”

“Dark?” he says.

“Dark. Oh, look, I know. I’m being silly,” she says.

“No, it’s not that. It’s just. Well. Yes. You are being a bit silly,” he says.

“I am, aren’t I?”

“Yes.”

Richard smiles, and says something comforting but firm, like, “Come on. You know this is what we’ve talked about for, like, ages–”

“–I know, I know–” she says, cutting him off.

“–and it’s just, I dunno, we can’t afford anything more–” he continues regardless.

“–I know. Richard, I honestly know,” she says, then another short pause. “I know.” Her voice drops to a more hushed tone. She doesn’t want anyone nearby to think she’s involved in an argument: the idea makes her embarassed, even though if she were to overhear an argument she wouldn’t think the slightest of it

“Look,” says Richard, and places a hand on Suzie’s shoulder, trying to dodge any conflict himself. Then he says something like, “We’ve driven… fuck, I dunno, a really, really fucking long way, right? And I’m tired, and I’m sure you probably are as well, and I think the absolute best possible course of action right now is to open the door, walk inside, take advantage of the fact that there’s a kettle already in the kitchen, and drink a lot of coffee. You with me?”

Suzie smiles. There’s a pause.

“As long as we can see what we’re doing in the dark,” he teases, and flashes a smirk.

Suzie laughs. Thank goodness, he thinks, even though he suspects Suzie may have forced it.

Meanwhile he’s unlocked the door. The house on Hollingdean Terrace. Brighton, England. The properties aren’t fantastic and the area enjoys a less than wonderful reputation, but rent prices are low for the south east, and it’s near enough to the centre to be convenient. Secretly Suzie always wanted to live in a big, tall, white house, like she always saw in her head whenever she imagined the town. But she’s not had the heart to tell Richard explicitly that her heart’s not in this small, ordinary terrace.

Inside the house it is indeed dark. The walls are lined with a sort of lavender paper which, in this diminished light, desaturates and becomes a forgotten grey. The carpets don’t fit. They’re those standard blue carpets that adorn every low-rent property in the country by the looks of things, and which always peel up at the edges even if you lay them with absolute perfection. The ceilings are high, though. If Suzie ignores the light, and the walls, and the floor, and the entire outside of the building, she can just about pretend that she’s in her dream house, right in the middle of the town she’s so desperately adored since goodness knows when.

Suzie is twenty years old.

Suddenly Richard asks if she’s ready to start grabbing the kitchen stuff from the car, which interrupts Suzie’s thoughts as she stands staring at the unusual repeating pattern in the nothing-coloured wallpaper. Richard has already been into the kitchen and noticed there’s some damp in the corner, but he’s not going to tell Suzie about that yet because he knows that’ll only lead to trouble. Except Suzie already knows, because she noticed it when the letting agent showed them around the place, but in her deep desire not to offend she hadn’t been brave enough to say anything.

In the front yard a small bird sits atop a low wall. It turns its head to the left, then snaps it back to the right, where Suzie and Richard are both unloading overstacked boxes from the boot of Richard’s car. It opens its beak to make a sound, but nothing comes out. The head of Suzie’s doll peeks out from the disorganisation of the couple’s packing. Its eyes are so entrancing that even the wildlife is affected.

Leeds, England. Suzie’s mother isn’t drinking. Not tonight. If she can manage tonight, she can manage tomorrow, and she can manage the day after, and that means everything’s under control. Instead she makes a pot of coffee for one, and smokes a cigarette out of the kitchen window. She hasn’t smoked since – when was it? – at least ten years ago. Not properly. But she’s bought a pack from the garage because she thinks sometimes, whatever it is, you just need a vice.

The phone rings, and startles her. She answers, and to begin with there’s only silence. Suddenly there’s a cough, then a slow, hesitant exhale. And then the line goes dead.

The rain pours down in Brighton, England. There’s a man standing on the seafront. He is not wearing a coat. Drops of water run through his thinning hair and onto his scalp, then down his face, to the end of his nose, before drip-drip-dripping to the ground below. He takes another deep breath, and looks around. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for, really.

His daughter? His life back? Who knows.

He looks back down at his phone. Water has quickly collected on the screen and refracted the light in all different directions. For just a moment he imagines he’s looking at countless tiny bubbles of information, all floating around, stored in this device he holds within his hand. Then he looks back up, and directly in front of him there’s a burned-out pier, and to the left primitive fairground rides are shutting down one by one in the weather.

He puts his phone back into his pocket, takes a deep breath, and begins to walk home.

Suzie sips her coffee. Maybe, just maybe, her and Richard might be happy here, she thinks. In Brighton, England.

Two

Somewhere where the sand sticks to your skin and covers your clothes in a terracotta matte. Afternoon. There’s a girl standing still in amongst a crowd of people, all moving around her, circulating, pushing. The girl looks upwards – she’s barely the height of anyone’s waist – and spins her head from left to right, and back. There’s a wall to one side, which she begins to approach, but stumbles. The crowd parts only long enough for her to get back to her feet; not for anyone to pay much attention.

The girl is Suzie. Meet Suzie.

Suzie finally makes her way to the wall, which is made of some sort of sandstone, or similar, and feels as though it could crumble with just her child’s touch. Nevertheless, she works her way along it, periodically reaching her head to the right in order to peer around the crowd and, just perhaps, make out the shape of her mother or her father. She can’t. She sees only anonymity.

Suzie is eight years old. She doesn’t think she’s ever been here before, but she feels a profound sensation of familiarity.

Minutes before, she’d clutched her doll and stared deeply into its eyes. Focus, she’d thought, as she’d taught herself to do. It rarely look long, but this time, for whatever reason, it had been several minutes before Suzie felt the first wave of nausea which always accompanied such efforts. She breathed, slowly, until it passed. Then she continued.

Focus.

The eyes were almost silver. Later they’d end up under a car, or beneath the tumultuous crashing waves of the English Channel. For now they’re slightly set back into the doll’s head, but still gleaming, still catching the light, even though they’re towered over by the heads and shoulders of hundreds of strangers.

This is where the doll has brought her.

The sun is too hot. It wouldn’t usually be a humid heat – more a baking, scorching dryness – but amongst the crowd people’s sweat fills the air and it’s dank and clammy. Suzie tries once more to move through the hordes of people, and slowly, very slowly, manages to do so. Eventually she emerges in a small opening, but a large man – midrif hanging over tattered jeans; vest top – clips her heel and she trips again. He stops and reaches down a hand to help her up, and says, “Eh, heh, heh. Easy up, little love.” Several beads of sweat roll down his arm and onto hers.

Onwards, through the swarm. Suzie stumbles her way between legs and arms, keeping the wall in sight, guided by the voices of the market stall workers who are doing their best to memorise and pronounce English catchphrases. “Asda Price,” several men shout, attempting to sell elaborately hand-crafted rugs, or grand hookah pipes.

Then Suzie drops the doll. This is bad. Even once she’s made the connection, it’s essential to maintain physical contact at all times. Otherwise, her projected reality falls away. At best it’s inconvenient. At worst it’s particularly dangerous.

She races back towards the doll, whose eyes she can see staring back at her, not as if pleading for help but as though accusing. She bends to pick it up, wraps her tiny fingers around its arm, then a boot comes crashing down and a wave of agony overcomes not just Suzie’s hand but her entire body. She cries out. No one pays much attention, still.

Suzie graps the doll with her other hand, the one which is not causing her horrendous amounts of pain, and sets off deliberately sideways: her family can wait. Right now she needs space – space to think, and to assess her injury. She doesn’t think the bones are broken – as much as an eight-year-old can think bones are not broken. She can just about clasp her fingers together. She thinks she heard somewhere that you can’t move broken bones.

She’s at the wall now, and she leans against it. She’s not quite tall enough to see over it to the streets below, but she can hear what she thinks might be a police siren. Two men look around themselves, nervously. And a wave of nausea, almost certainly triggered by the doll, washes over her entire being, and she has to sit down and breathe very, very carefully to avoid vomiting.

Brighton, England. A car pulls into a drive. Suzie climbs out, walks up the path towards the house, but doesn’t want to walk through the door.

Leeds, England. A car pulls into a drive. Suzie’s mother and father climb out, walk up the path towards the house, but don’t want to walk through the door.

One

Brighton, England. The sea collides with the pebbles. There isn’t any sand. It’s hot, too hot, sticky, even though the sun is masked by a layer of grey cloud and it’s even starting to rain a little. On the bed of loose rock where the beach should be there is an arm. There’s another one in someone’s front garden, brought home by a dog who wasn’t allowed back inside until he dropped it, and which the dog’s owner hasn’t bothered to throw in the bin yet because she’s always too busy trying to convince herself she’s too busy.

Further up the hill towards the railway station there’s a car, and underneath it is an eye. A young boy picked it up down by the seafront and his dad let him keep it after he realised it was only made of glass. Not even glass, probably, but some sort of cold plastic, as it hasn’t smashed and doesn’t look like it’s going to any time soon. The other eye is deep in the ocean by now, churned up by the waves, probably several miles away from the rest of the head, and the legs which came off as soon as Suzie threw the tatty doll from the pier and walked, hands in pockets, back to where Richard stood waiting for her, silent and expressionless.

Leeds, England. The eyes can’t be the window to the soul, because the soul doesn’t exist, thinks Suzie’s mother as she draws the curtains, which are green and have pink flowers on because she’s still not got around to changing them despite having lived here for three years. The news is on the television but the reporter is talking about something she doesn’t quite understand, so she tunes out. There’s a bottle of wine on the side which hasn’t been opened yet, and she considers opening it. But she doesn’t like to drink alone any more, even though secretly she likes it more than anything else in the world.

She opens the curtains again, just a touch, and sticks her head close to the glass of the window. It’s about eight thirty, but unless you had a watch on or the news was on the television you wouldn’t be able to tell, because it’s the time of year where the world is bathed in a sort of muddled half-light between the hours of four and ten, the sort of light where it’s too dark to sit without the lamps on but turning them on just makes everything look strange. She contemplates going to drink at the pub, even though she won’t know anyone there, because at least she could pretend. She could buy a bottle of wine and ask for two glasses, then place her coat and bag on the chair opposite as if reserving it for a friend who’s just quickly nipped to the bathroom, and who must be on her way back because both glasses are filled, and both have obviously been drunk out of, and who in their right mind would sit drinking out of two separate glasses containing the same wine? But then she realises she’s done this more than once before, so maybe she isn’t in her right mind at all.

She sits down on the sofa and tries to watch the news channel again. There’s an interview with a man whose name and position she didn’t catch, who is talking about tensions in the Middle East. She would love to understand better the tensions in the Middle East, but has never found the focus to sit and read about them. She mutes the television and picks up the phone, dialling a friend’s number, but it cuts straight to voicemail, so she hangs up without leaving a message.

Brighton, England. There’s a boy sitting on the wall outside his house, with a friend who is sleeping over. Most little boys would be playing videogames or watching the television, but these little boys like to get muddy and wet and point at lightning, so they’re sitting outside in the hope that the scattering of drops blossoms into a majestic storm. A man walks by with a dog, who is chewing on the remains of a tiny floral dress and quietly growling to itself. The man tells the dog to fucking drop it, then sees the boys on the wall and coughs, and looks away. The boys say hello to him, and he looks back and smiles sheepishly, cursing himself for letting the presence of two ten year olds make him feel so small and so ashamed.

The man coninues to walk down the road, then stops to sit on a bench on the grass by Montpellier Cresent. It’s raining more heavily now, the air beginning to breathe for the first time in the day, the smell of salt floating in the sky. He loops the dog’s lead around his wrist and, with the other hand, takes out his wallet. Inside it there’s a picture of a girl, about the age of the two boys revelling in the rainwater just twenty metres away. He realises he can’t remember her voice any more, and he starts to cry.