It’s only two weeks now until we leave Moscow so I won’t see Jack again. I mustn’t hope any more. That’s what I’ve decided. So when I see the outline of a head which looks like his, I take care not to notice. The head remains poised above us on the Metro steps. Rob and I are ten steps below, rucksacks on our backs, feeling too hot. We’re pushing our way up the side of the staircase, close to the rail. A throng of people elbow their way down towards us. The outline of that head touches on the edge of my vision. But Moscow is such a vast city you never bump into anyone you know.
A checked shirt, a brown case with a broken strap. He comes down towards us, but still I’m sure it isn’t him. I hold on tight to Rob’s hand. A Tannoy announcement echoes up into the roof of the platform above. The straps of my rucksack cut into my shoulders. Two steps more and I hear his voice. I don’t look at him. He’s the ogre with the blank eyes, the jabbering lips, the long brown teeth. Rob is talking to him. I wrap myself up tight inside. The air around us is wrinkled by the smell of hot bodies and soot. I look down at my foot resting on the concrete step, worn into a dip by years of tramping feet. Rob and I have become small and white, our bodies shapeless, our muscles slack. We are the rag doll and the plastic soldier. Leave us alone, Jack. Leave us alone. Let us have our small world of occasional shy sex, and cooking supper together. Leave us alone in the attic bedroom, with the model aeroplanes, and the biscuit-tin drum and the pine-cones in the grate.
He asks me something, and the rag doll opens and shuts her mouth, but I still don’t look at him. Instead I watch his hand gripping the metal rail beside us. His sleeve is rolled up and my eyes follow the route of a familiar vein which stands up on the back of his hand. I see us together in Room 815. The sheets on the bed are tangled. I’m standing between his legs and his hand reaches out to touch my hip. My heart is beating between my legs. A train sweeps in and the crowd surges towards it.
‘We must go.’ I grip Rob’s hand. ‘We need to get home.’ Again an announcement echoes through the station. Rob and I are swayed by the movement of the crowd. A man in a dirty military uniform pushes against us, cursing at the obstruction we cause. Above us, someone shouts and metal clanks against metal. Jack says that perhaps he’ll write down his address for me. I look up at him then and he isn’t an ogre. Instead he’s a man with death staring from his eyes. His cheekbones are sharp, his eyes far back in his head. A part of me is disappointed. The ogre image is easier to deal with than a real person.
‘It’s all right, I have the address.’
‘No, you don’t. I’m staying in Malakhovka.’
I don’t have any idea where that is. Ahead of us, we can see people pushing and stumbling onto the Metro. Jack’s hand is fumbling with the strap of his bag. His skin is thin and the colour of putty. The blade of his collar-bone sticks out where his shirt is undone at the neck. He pulls out one of his blue notebooks, his hands fumbling as he tries to rip a page from it. I support the weight of his bag. His fingers tremble as he takes off the lid of his fountain pen. He writes clumsily, then hands the piece of paper to me. The side of his finger brushes against the pad of my thumb. The touch of it fizzles up through my arm. Again I see the hotel room, the tangled sheets, his hand reaching out to me.
I turn and Rob pulls me towards the waiting train. But we’re too late and the doors close. When I look back, Jack has gone. I keep his paper held tight in my hand. The departing train seems to have sucked all the air off the platform. Only a few people sit on benches, or pace along the wide platform. Rob is watching me as though he’s never seen me before. His eyes are clouded by a look of quiet horror. I push Jack’s address into the pocket of my skirt. Both of us struggle for words and can’t find any. Rob knows, somehow he’s seen. Perhaps it was there in the way that Jack fumbled with his pen, or in the touch of his finger against mine.
I want to talk but my jaw is locked. I stand staring at Rob, my tongue straining. Then words come and I gabble, trying to push back the silence. Rob responds but his voice is empty. Our eyes come together, move apart. I may be scared of the accusations he may make, but he’s more frightened of what I might admit. I want to take that knowledge back from him. I want him to pretend he hasn’t seen anything. ‘Only two weeks to go now,’ I say. ‘Doesn’t it feel strange?’ Another train sweeps into the station, bringing with it a gush of hot air. I keep talking, even in the silence of the carriage.
As we walk back to the flat through the evening sun, we talk about our week in Leningrad. How good it was to get away. How strange it feels to be back. The two cities are so different. This afternoon we must start to pack. Tomorrow he’ll fly to Kiev, but he’ll only be there one night. We both know all of this but still we repeat the details again and again in voices as serious as prayer.
We’ve been away for a week. Our landing is piled with fly-infested rubbish bags, doubtless left there by our next-door neighbour. His dog lies stretched across the landing, chained to the stair-rail, slobbering. In the flat, dead flies lie on the sitting-room windowsill and the loo smells bad. Rob and I rattle from room to room, opening windows, chasing the dust and the stillness away. I unpack some bread, pickles and smetana we brought in Leningrad. My mouth still babbles comments about how we should do this – or perhaps that? But Jack’s sunken eyes flash in my mind again and again. The piece of paper he gave me rests against my thigh. In my mind I’m already on a train going to find him.
It’s six o’clock and Rob and I didn’t have much lunch so I make sandwiches and we sit down to eat. I cough and my head thumps. I must be getting a cold or flu. Even with the windows open, the air wraps around me, tight as a woollen jumper. While Rob and I were in Leningrad it seemed possible that we might slip through the barriers unnoticed into happiness.
‘That guy – Jack,’ Rob says. I wince, ready for the blow. ‘He looked ill, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, he did look bad. I think he’s been ill for some time, in fact. I was thinking I ought to try and see him before I go.’
‘You won’t have time.’ The way Rob says that is so calm and definite, a statement of fact. But I hear it as an instruction and it makes me angry. I must see Jack. I want to see him now. It’s Sunday 18 August today and we leave on the twenty-ninth. Twelve more days.
The phone rings and I go to answer it. It’s Maya and she wants to know about Leningrad. Yes, we went to the Hermitage, and the Akhmatova Memorial Museum. Yes, the city was spectacularly beautiful. Yes, we took a boat along the canals. As we talk my mind calculates – if I make an arrangement to go and see Maya this afternoon, then could I use the time to go to Jack instead? But the address he’s given me is somewhere miles out of town. Maya asks me if Rob and I want to go round for supper on Wednesday. I say I’ll ask him and ring her back. Rob has finished eating and is sitting behind a newspaper. ‘I’m busy that night,’ he says.
The heat and my cough make me so irritable that I feel ready to scream. Some demon inside me wants to punish Rob for having seen too much. ‘Why don’t you like Maya? What’s the problem with her?’
‘I don’t have a problem with her.’
‘Yes, you do.’
He lowers the newspaper and glares at me. ‘OK. You want to know? She doesn’t know where her life stops and another person’s begins.’
‘Why? Why do you say that?’
I wait for him to say, ‘Oh, I can’t really remember,’ but he doesn’t. ‘When you were ill she wouldn’t listen to what I said. And she was just the same with your mother.’
‘No, she wasn’t.’
Rob sighs and, for a moment, shuts his eyes. ‘Eva, she insisted on his having exhibitions, and parties, even when your mother didn’t want it and your father had been ill. Even when people were grieving …’
‘Yeah, but Rob, Maya wasn’t even in England then. She went away to Rome the summer before.’
‘No, she didn’t. She organized that exhibition, didn’t she?’
No, no, no. The kaleidoscope is turning again. Maya did go away to Rome the summer before, I’m sure she did. I stand staring at the back of Rob’s newspaper. I go into the bedroom and take out that photograph which is in the back of my address book. I’m close to my father now. Soon I will know him. Fear breaks like sweat over my skin.
From upstairs, a sound like splintering wood judders through the air, followed by a crash which makes the ceiling vibrate. A scream hangs in the sullen air. It’s followed by another, then another. The sound is like an animal in pain. Oh my God, Mrs Balashova has murdered her husband, I think. But it’s a man making that sound.
Rob runs up the stairs ahead of me. Mr Balashov is stumbling against the banister above us. Bent double, he’s screaming, his hand flailing against the wall. Other doors open below us. The Communist medal man and his wife appear and stand holding hands, uncertain whether to come up the stairs or not. The man with the shaved head crashes out of his flat, unties his dog from the stair-rail and pulls it inside.
In the Balashovs’ flat, the yellow plastic flowers stand up stiff in their vase, the goldfish still swim in their bowl. Orange hair spreads on the floor. Mrs Balashova is lying face down, filling all the space in the kitchen. Her flower-scattered dress has risen up to reveal an expanse of mottled thigh. Her inflatable arm lies stretched to one side. Her leg is twisted, her red stiletto bent against the kitchen cupboard.
Rob goes to her and, kneeling down, starts to take her pulse. Behind me, people hurry up the stairs, crowding forward. The heat clings to my skin, a sour smell fills my nostrils. I cough and steady myself against the wall. Voices are coming to the boil. Mr Balashov is on his knees, his head pressed into a corner. I go to him and lay my hand on his shoulder, but he doesn’t know I’m there.
Rob comes to me. ‘She’s dead.’
His words vibrate inside me. ‘She can’t be.’
This is all so senseless and random that I suppress a desire to laugh. The bottles of pills, the visits to the hospital … but I’d never thought it was serious. I’ve seen a dead body before in a street in Lima, but that wasn’t someone I knew. People I’ve never seen before are coming up the stairs. Mr Balashov pushes towards his wife. A space is cleared for him. He kneels beside her, kissing her hungrily, pressing his lips against her red-painted mouth.
Hours seem to pass before anyone in authority arrives. Under the strip-lights people hurry back and forth. Silence, then weeping, then silence again. Everyone wants something to do, but there’s nothing to do. I start to cough and can’t stop. A grimly festive air develops. People make bitter cups of tea and pass around vodka. A woman I’ve never seen before starts mopping the floor. The Communist medal man and his wife continue to stand outside their flat, stiff and formal, heads bent in respect, as though they’re already attending the funeral. The shaved-head man tries to get Mr Balashov away from his wife’s body, but he won’t be moved. The goldfish swim round and round in their bowl.
Eventually, men dressed in a collection of different uniforms arrive. Two of them stand smoking while the others assemble a stretcher which is nothing more than a patched piece of canvas between two poles. The corridor is narrow and the door of the flat narrower still. They push and pull at Mrs Balashova but without success. ‘Nyet, poverni yeyo siuda.’ No, move her this way. They pull her around so that one of her legs sticks out of the doorway. ‘Nado budyet dver’ sniat’.’ They argue about whether the door should be taken off its hinges. From above I hear shuffling and swearing, then something scraping along the floor. I start to cough again and my throat burns.
Mrs Balashova is no longer a person, she’s debris to be cleared away. They sit her up and, with two men shoving from behind, and one pulling in front, they push her lolling body through the door. Spit runs from the corner of her mouth, down her chin, and into the folded flesh of her neck. She’s stripped of her watch and jewellery. Her rings are more difficult – the men twist at her fingers, pulling them off. Mr Balashov lies in a heap on the floor, moaning. As they try to take her down the stairs, one of her legs slides off the stretcher and her red stiletto falls to the floor. They heave her leg back into place, but the shoe is left on the stairs.
Mr Balashov gets up from the floor and staggers down the stairs after the stretcher. His hands grasp the jacket of one of the uniformed men. He’s shouting and trying to tug the man back. He’s reaching out for his wife’s body. The shaved-head man takes hold of him, but grief has made Mr Balashov strong. I expect Rob to help them but he doesn’t. He’s standing watching and his face is green. Finally, some of the neighbours manage to drag Mr Balashov away from the stretcher. Now she’s gone and the crowd on the landing stand, hands hanging by their sides, uncertain what to do. No one looks at the shoe. Mr Balashov is lying on the floor of the flat, exactly where she lay, his fist thumping up and down, as he sobs and yells.
Ten, eleven, midnight. He doesn’t stop. Rob and I go up the stairs to him. We offer the only painkillers we’ve got, but he won’t take them. We try to get him to eat, or to lie down, but he doesn’t even know we’re talking to him. Finally we come back downstairs. Rob sits in the swivel chair in the sitting room pretending to watch television. I lie on the bed in the ochre light, my eyes following one arm of the five-armed lamp and then another. To me there’s something strangely comforting in the undiluted and abandoned quality of those sounds from above. I want to add my voice to his and scream until I’m emptied out.
At one o’clock, Rob comes to bed. He needs to be up at six to get his flight to Kiev. The wailing is less but enough to keep us awake. The night is heavy and still. We cover ourselves with the duvet, take it off, pull it back over us. The wailing changes in tone but it doesn’t ever stop for more than a minute. Footsteps scuffle on the landing, doors open and close. Conversations scurry along the pipes like mice. Rob and I pull pillows over our heads and try not to hear.
In my head I’m talking to Maya, asking her why she lied to me. Even that first night, at her party, she was so insistent that she didn’t know why my father left. She wasn’t there at the time, she said, she’d already gone away to Rome. But that wasn’t true. It was as Rob said. She had organized that last exhibition, against my mother’s wishes. I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t told me that. What did she have to hide?
From below, someone bangs on the wall and curses. ‘I’ll have to go up there,’ Rob says, and goes to get some more vodka from our fridge. When I get upstairs, Mr Balashov is sitting in a chair and his fingers dig into Rob’s arm. He’s looking into his eyes, repeating the same words again and again. I intend to leave them together, but something about Mr Balashov’s words holds me. I look over to his wife’s armchair, which still has her shape pressed into it. Mr Balashov’s voice is rhythmic and insistent. The sound of it unnerves me and I head back down the stairs and go to bed.
Finally the noise from above stops, and Rob comes down. We he side by side without touching. My throat feels as though it’s stuffed full of dust. I shiver and pull the duvet around me. I know that we’re never going to sleep. Perversely I begin to yearn for the sound of falling furniture, the crack of a breaking glass, even a scream of pain. Anything would be better than this silence weighing down. ‘What was he saying?’ I ask.
Rob turns to look at me but his eyes are obscured by the shadows of the room. ‘He said that he loves her as the dry earth loves water. That no pleasure can be left for him now. That he is dead as well.’ Rob’s voice is flat as he repeats these words. I want to know what he’s thinking, but the shadows tell me nothing.
‘But she was vile to him,’ I say.
‘I know.’
‘So he couldn’t have cared that much. He couldn’t have done. People don’t love people who make them unhappy.’
‘No,’ Rob says. ‘No, of course they don’t.’
‘It’s like someone being in love with pain, isn’t it?’ I say.
‘I don’t know. Relationships are probably never as random as they might look,’ Rob says. ‘Perhaps she liked to wound and he liked to be wounded.’
‘And that’s OK while no one upsets the balance?’
‘Yes, but once the balance is disturbed then it’s gone for ever.’
And that’s how we go on, insisting that what Mr Balashov said was only really theatre and shock. That was all. He may have thought that he loved her, but he didn’t really. But even as we lie there, arguing, Mr Balashov’s words are still with us and that image of his hand gripping Rob’s arm. As I slide into sleep they whisper in my ears. He loves her as the dry earth loves water.
The beep-beep-beep of the alarm sounds at six and wakes us from shallow sleep. Rob switches it off and doesn’t move. Lights are on across the courtyard, but their shape is furred by a low mist which hangs at the window. Rob sits up, yawns and rubs at his eyes. ‘You know, I’m not sure I’ll go to Kiev. I’d rather stay and get some sleep. I was only going to say goodbye. I can telephone instead.’
‘Oh, but you really should go.’ If he doesn’t go then how will I get to Jack?
‘Really?’
‘Yes, because you’ve come to know the people there quite well, haven’t you?’
‘Perhaps.’ Rob’s eyes are staring into mine. He knows that I need him to go. We’re sitting up, with the duvet wrapped half around us. I take hold of one of his hands and rub it between mine. A breath of air moves at the open window and we both shiver.
‘If you don’t go, won’t it always feel like something unfinished?’ I hate myself and I hate Rob as well, because he’s allowed this to go on and on, although he knows it’s no good. Some bitter thread ties us together and won’t let us part. Rob stares into my eyes, then suddenly reaches out and holds me. His head pushes against my neck, butting me, while his hands knot around me. I hold him, feeling the warmth of his skin and breathing in his smell of morning sheets and Moscow soap. My hand strokes his hair.
‘Yes,’ he says into my neck. ‘Yes, you’re right – of course I should go. It’s only … you will be OK, won’t you?’
‘Yes, of course I will. Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Yes, of course. Just as you say. Silly not to go.’ He’s up off the bed and heading for the bathroom. For a moment I lie quite still with every muscle tensed, my jaw locked tight shut. Then I get up and make tea for Rob. I butter bread and wrap it in tinfoil. His coat is in the hall and I put it ready on the sofa next to his bag. We stand together while he sips his tea. ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘Sorry. Sorry about yesterday. I didn’t mean to argue. It was just the heat and the journey.’
‘Of course. It’s quite all right.’
I can’t bear him apologizing for something that was my fault. He was right about Maya – he’d been right all along. Why didn’t I see? Why do I never see?
He picks up his bag and I follow him into the hall. I want to thank him but the words would be too specific. We kiss before he goes, clinging to each other in the hall, the stiff material of his jacket pressed against my nightdress. My cold feet come off the floor because he squeezes me so tight. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ I say. ‘Of course I’ll be all right. You know I will.’ It’s not surprising that he doesn’t believe that because I don’t believe it myself.
As soon as the door closes, I go into the bedroom and pull on my clothes. In the fresh silence of early morning, I can hear my own heart thumping in my ears. I find Jack’s piece of paper and a guidebook with a map of the area around Moscow. I work out that I need to get to the Kiev Station, which is near where Maya lives.
Maya, Maya, I don’t want to think about her. Perhaps nothing she told me about my father was true? I was always so sure that she was the one who understood him, and that my mother knew nothing. Maya told me that she didn’t take that photograph of my father wearing his blue frock–coat. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. But I’m certain that she was there that night and, for some reason, she’s never wanted to admit that. But why? Why?
I push my travellers’ cheques into my bag. The morning air at the windows is sharp so I reach for a coat. The one Maya gave me is hooked on the back of the door, but my other one seems to have disappeared. I look for it in the wardrobe, on the back of the kitchen chairs, under a pile of Rob’s shirts. But it isn’t anywhere. I must go, I must go. I reach for Maya’s grey velvet coat and slide my hand into its silk-lined sleeve.
The child is lying in bed, a prickly blanket pulled up to her chin. The speckled glow of the toadstool night-light rises in an arc up the wall. The door opens and a black shoe with a gold buckle appears. The child starts to pull the covers up over her head, then she hears her father’s voice. He comes to stand beside her but she can’t see him clearly. The silk of his jacket rustles as he kneels down and reaches for her hand. Come, he says.
She feels her father’s hand wrap around her own. As she climbs out of bed she shivers and looks down at herself. She’s wearing a short red tunic and red tights – her costume for the party. Red shoes are lying near her bed and she puts them on. They’re too large but she pulls the straps tight. Although the radiator is on, the room still feels damp and icy.
Come on, her father says. Come, quickly. The gold buttons on his jacket catch the light. The child knows that the sky must have cleared and that her father can see the stars he has been looking for through his telescope. This is the moment they’ve been waiting for. She imagines the picture in the atlas, the fat, pink country with the long tail and the stars which come down to earth. Her father can see that star through his telescope. He will see it tonight. You must find a coat, her father says. She follows him to the door, then turns back to look again at the familiar shapes of her room.
As she steps out into the hall, freezing air rises from below. The house smells of grown-ups and parties – spilt wine, cigarettes, wax. Music thumps from the sitting room, its beat making the floor-boards vibrate. But she can’t see her father. She heads towards the back stairs, stumbling in the darkness. Voices from outside on the drive are muffled – a car engine coughs, splutters, dies. Down below, the back corridor is lit by night-lights in jam jars. Streaks of yellow leap up from the bottom of the walls. A lady in a Victorian gown sweeps past, her skirts catching against the jam jars so that they appear to be licked by flame. The child takes two steps down the stairs, then hears her mother’s voice. Now she will be sent back to bed.
She turns and runs across the landing to the front stairs. Below her, a woman dressed in a tinsel skirt tumbles out through the sitting-room door. The table in the hall is crowded with empty glasses, and a candle drips wax on to the floor. The White Rabbit and March Hare stand by the front door. Then Maya appears, dressed as a witch. She wears a long black evening dress, black pointed shoes, and spikes of black paper stuck onto her fingernails. The child knows that Maya won’t make her go back to bed. Maya will help her to find her father. She helped her to put her costume on earlier and brought her a packet of crayons from London. As she moves down the stairs, Maya holds a camera in her spiky-nailed hands. The child looks into the lens and hears the shutter click.
As her feet touch the tiled floor, she explains to Maya that she must go with her father, she must hurry. But first she must find her coat. In the back corridor, coats are piled on to hooks, they hang over the stair-rail and are heaped on the wooden chest. The child trips in her too-big shoes and stretches her hand up to the hooks, trying to find her duffel coat. Her head is buried in wool and she can’t see anything. She throws her weight against the coats on the wooden chest and they slide on to the floor. But hers is not among them. Her father will go without her. She’ll never get to the place where stars come down to earth.
What’s the matter? Maya’s voice slurs behind her.
My coat – I must find my coat.
Maya shakes her head. You’ll never find it here, she says. It’ll be under all the others. But take this – it’ll be all right. Look. The child stands while Maya drapes the short cloak around her and ties the bow under her chin. The cloak – light and warm – folds down over her shoulders. The child hides her arms under it. She runs back into the hall.
Her mother stands near the front door. She wears a long dress of floral cotton which is laced tight at the waist. Her shoulders are covered by a chiffon scarf which falls almost to the floor. Tiny shoes, embroidered with flowers, poke out from under her gown. Her mother’s face is taut and pale. Eva, what are you doing? she says. You should be in bed.
She’s all right, Maya says. She’s quite all right.
The child dodges into the sitting room and hides behind the door. She watches her mother and Maya through the crack which runs between the hinges. They stand on either side of the hall table. The child thinks of dogs – the way they circle and growl before they pounce. Wax drips down in a spreading pool.
She’s all right, stop worrying, Maya says.
No, no. She must go back to bed. You don’t understand, you don’t understand. He can’t be trusted, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I don’t want her anywhere near him.
Just calm down, Maya says. Stop trying to control everything.
No, no, no. Please just stop interfering. This is my house and my family.
The child turns her head away from the crack in the door and waits. When she looks again, a man in a top hat and tails is speaking to her mother. Jump leads? Anti-freeze? Her mother shakes her head and follows the top-hat man.
The child goes back into the hall. Two musketeers and a man in pyjamas block the front door. She asks Maya. Where is he? Where is he?
Don’t worry, dear, we’ll find him. The child is sure that he’ll have gone down towards the lake, to the boathouse. That’s where he goes sometimes at night to watch the stars. The child tells Maya that she needs to go out into the garden and Maya guides her through the sitting room and out through the French windows. The cold is raw as a wound. A bonfire smell rises over the frosted lawn. The garden is alight with torches and candles. The child looks up and sees a perfect round moon, large and low in the sky. Shadows dance in the light of the fire. She steps down from the terrace and on to the lawn. A face painted in gold flashes in front of her and then is gone.
She turns back towards the lights of the house and sees the familiar shapes of the sitting room – the sofa, the wall-lights, the mirror above the fireplace. Maya is standing near the front windows, watching her, and she waves. The child moves through the shifting shadows. The blue frockcoat appears in the distance, near the path to the lake and the spider’s-web gate. Under her feet, the grass is stiff with frost. Her nose runs, her lips are numb. Trees are patches of dark against the darkness. Wait for me, wait for me. Behind her, someone shouts about fireworks. The child reaches the spider’s-web gate. Her father is ahead of her in the trees. Behind her, the sounds of music and laughter fade.
She hurries down the path, through stripes of moonlight. A brick and flint wall and an open door appear ahead of her. She stops still, looks down at her red shoes, feels the cloak around her. She must never go through that door. She must never go through that door. Her shoes will not move. Her father has gone, his shadow sliding down the frame of the door.
Then his voice calls out to her, breaking the night air, spiralling upwards into a sky heavy with stars. Its sound grows and spreads, drawing her to him. They will go to that place and a star will come down to earth. Her foot hovers by the gate. The voice comes again. Then she’s running down the path, through the tall marsh grass, towards the edge of the lake and the jetty. A light shines out from the boathouse. That’s where he’s going. He’ll have turned left onto the path which runs around the lake.
But that’s not where he’s gone. Instead he’s ahead of her, far out on the lake, walking on water. He turns in the moonlight, glittering. She hears his call. Eva, come, come. His head is tipped back and he’s staring upwards, pointing. He’s floating above the water, riding over the top of it. Eva, come, come.
Then from somewhere far behind her, a woman’s voice screams. Fear comes down on the child like cold water. Her father is standing on ice, and ice can break. She knows that the lake is shallow at the edges but at the centre it’s deep as the ocean. No, no, no. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know. She must tell him, she must stop him. His hand is on the hot-plate, but he cannot feel it burn.