by Liz Jensen
‘It’s an ark,’ he tells Stephanie as she comes in and settles on the sofa opposite us. It has new cushions. There’s also a lamp I don’t recognise and a rug whose weave I identify as West Moroccan. There’s more feminine clutter than when I lived here. ‘Look.’ Freddy points to the animals he has lined up ready to board the vessel when it’s complete. Plastic farm animals, mostly, scuffed from over-zealous play. But also llamas, lizards, wolves, vultures and a giraffe. A few dinosaurs. ‘Hey Steph, is there anything else to eat?’
‘What do you want?’
‘Crosps! Crosps! Crosps!’
‘Hmm. The thing is, they’re for treats,’ she says. ‘I don’t think Mum would like that.’
The deep voice again: ‘Moom’s not hoyah. So gov me som crosps.’
‘If you want something, what do you say?’ She wants to please him more than she wants to please Kaitlin. That makes sense. She already has Kaitlin.
‘I say, ond som jooz. Ploz.’
A moment later she’s setting a packet of crisps and a glass of orange juice in front of him. ‘Foonk-you-fonk-you-fank-you.’ Outside, a police siren wails, and he mimics it: weew-weew-weew-weew! then tears the packet open and starts feeding himself. They’re cheese-and-onion flavour.
Stephanie nods at me. Now. I start rocking very gently, gearing myself up.
‘I’ve got a story for you, Freddy K,’ I say.
‘Cool,’ he says, shifting closer. He likes my stories. Maybe he thinks I make them up. But I never do. I would be incapable of it. Stephanie is sitting very still.
‘A man called Sunny Chen spotted that some people were breaking the rules at work. So he told on them. But then he died. Just before he died he did some drawings.’
‘Cool. Is he good at drawing?’
‘You can decide for yourself. I’ll show you them.’ I’m about to open the folder when he says suddenly, ‘So did he say “AAAAGH” when he fell in the machine?’ Soggy crumbs fly out as he speaks. The smell stings my nostrils. I put the folder down.
I ask, ‘What did you say?’
Freddy grins. ‘Did he die like this?’ He reaches for a little red Lego figure in a white hard hat and holds it up in front of his face between finger and thumb. ‘I’ll be the machine.’ Then quickly he tips his head back, opens his mouth, still full of half-chewed crisps, and drops the little figure in. It happens almost too fast for me to register. Stephanie’s face is rigid, but she draws in a sharp breath as Freddy pretends to chew on the Lego man, making loud eating sounds. I just watch him and rock. ‘Mmmm,’ he says. ‘Delicious. Nice crunchy bones. Nyca-crooncha-boonz.’
Then he spits out Sunny Chen with some saliva and pieces of crisp and licks the salt from his lips.
I need to make some ozuru. From the corner of my eye I can see the little Lego figure in a pool of spittle, with blobs of mashed crisp attached. When Stephanie speaks I can hear she’s struggling to keep her voice level.
‘Freddy, how do you know how Sunny died?’
He shrugs. ‘I just do.’
She glances at me. Now you. Still rocking, I say, ‘And then after that, another man died. In another country – Sweden.’ No reaction. ‘Do you know where Sweden is?’
‘Schwoodoon? Nope.’
Freddy’s globe is on the sideboard: Stephanie gets up and passes it to me. I settle it on the coffee table next to the ship.
‘Geography lesson,’ I say. I show him Taiwan, and then Sweden. Stephanie’s paleness almost glows. She is very talented at keeping perfectly still. Lizards and other reptiles can do that. Freddy, apparently unaware of the impact he’s made, munches more crisps and takes a glug of juice which trickles down his chin. Stephanie tries to wipe his face with a tissue, but he wriggles out of her reach.
‘So then the Sweden man died,’ says Freddy.
‘Swedish,’ I correct him. ‘People from Sweden are called Swedish. Or Swedes. Like the root vegetable.’
‘Shwoodoosh,’ says Freddy. ‘Schwoods. I bet they talk like that. Hulloo, yoi um a Shwoodoosh man from Schwoodoon.’
I pass him a second Lego figure. Yellow. Still holding the bag of crisps, he settles the man on the carpet, then roots around in the Lego and pulls out a green truck.
‘Here’s the road. And here comes the truck, and here comes the Schwoodoosh man. Come on da trucka-ducka, and run Mister Swoodoosh over!’ The truck in one hand, and Jonas in the other, he makes classic noises, like the ‘kapow’ of my childhood comics: ‘Nrrrrr, nrrr, nrrr, vroom, ka-donk, aaagh.’ He slides them towards each other on the floor until they collide. ‘Oooh, ooh, the kids hate me, says Mister Schwoodoosh, I must run under a trucka! Boof! AAAGH! Noo oi am DEAD!’
‘How do you know he died like that, Freddy K?’ My voice is a croak. ‘You weren’t there.’
‘One of us was.’ He rummages in the Lego pieces, then looks up. ‘Maybe the one who did that.’ He points at my left arm, then pokes it with his small finger. ‘You made us be born and then you made us live like that. So you should go to prison.’
‘What do you mean, Freddy?’ asks Stephanie.
‘What?’ Suddenly his face goes lax and his body slumps slightly. He yawns, as if exhausted, then blinks rapidly several times. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Freddy?’ she repeats. He gives his head a small sharp shake, as though an insect is bothering him, and fingers another crisp. ‘Freddy? Can you answer me? Can you explain what you’re saying?’
‘Is there a football match today?’ he asks me. We used to watch sport together sometimes, at weekends. ‘Cos I’d like to see one. I’m really tired now.’
‘No. But you can lie on the sofa and have a rest for a bit. How about that?’
‘No. Wait.’ He takes a deep breath and a shudder runs through him. It’s clearly visible: a wide current working its way down his body. Then he sits up very erect, smiles, grabs the crisp packet and downs a huge handful in a single go. ‘So what about the other man?’ he says. All his energy is back. ‘Come on. Let’s do him!’
Stephanie says, ‘What other man?’
‘The other man! In the other place!’ Freddy says excitedly, scrabbling around in the Lego.
Stephanie licks her lips. They seem very dry. Her lipstick has disappeared. ‘But how do you know there was another one?’
Freddy shrugs his tiny bird-boned shoulders. ‘I just know. There’s always three, in stories.’ This is true. Perhaps it’s even something I have told him. Three brothers, three wishes, three chances. Three ways to die. ‘Except there’s lots more. You just don’t know about all the others.’ He grins. ‘Say it Hesketh. Go on.’ He pokes me in the ribs with his tiny finger. He means, say yet. But I don’t want to. He picks up the little Jonas figure and then makes the truck run over him again. And again. And again. Nrrr, nrrr, nrrr. Ka-donk! Aaagh! ‘They got scared. We scared them. It was cool. We made them stop.’ He rummages in the box until he finds the figure he wants. It’s brown. He holds it up.
Stephanie says, ‘What do you mean, we scared them? Who’s we?’
‘And then this one died.’ He licks the crisp salt around his mouth. It’s burned a pink halo on his skin. The colour alarms me. There’s a tightening in my throat. Often, this is a sign that I am feeling something. It might be deep and terrible. I make a swift mental ozuru. Then at high speed, a frog, a water-bomb, a kite and a lotus flower. But I botch them and they crumple.
I say, ‘What do you mean, Freddy K?’
He sticks his finger on the globe. ‘There.’ Freddy has left a greasy little fingerprint on the Arabian Gulf. Ahmed Farooq. ‘He ate something poisonous. But his eyes didn’t pop. Then the other one jumped off a tower that wasn’t finished yet.’ He fishes a pink man out of the plastic box, sets a green hat on his head and fits a spanner in his hand. He stands the man on the edge of the ship and tips him off. De Vries.
I ask, ‘How do you know?’
He shrugs. ‘You saw the girl with him. I’ve got that skyscraper in my bedroom. It’s called the Leaning Tower of
Pizza.’ He turns to Stephanie expectantly, but she doesn’t speak. ‘That’s a joke. It’s really called Pisa. It’s in Italy. Hesketh thinks she wasn’t real.’
‘Who wasn’t real?’ says Stephanie.
‘But she is. She was there on the skyscraper. He saw her. She’s one of us.’
I know what is real and what is not real. I have forged a career out of knowing the difference. Stephanie looks at me. There’s a question on her face, but I can’t answer it.
Freddy’s busy arranging another Lego man near the edge of the table. He wriggles himself so that his mouth is level with it, settles his chin on the surface, puffs out his cheeks and blows hard. Crisp crumbs come flying out, and twinkles of salt. The white Lego man tumbles off the edge.
I ask, ‘Did Mum tell you about these men?’
‘Nyet,’ he says. He’s tearing his crisp packet apart and flattening it out.
‘Stephanie then?’ I sense her shift. ‘Or maybe Stephanie knew about them and she told your mum and you overheard.’
‘No,’ says Stephanie. ‘That didn’t happen.’ I glance across at her. She is paler than ever.
‘Nyet,’ agrees Freddy. ‘That didn’t happen.’ Then he does the archaeopteryx voice again, even deeper this time. ‘Thot dodn’t hoppon.’
I ask, ‘So who told you about the men, Freddy K?’
He wipes his nose on his sleeve. ‘The other kids.’
‘Kids where?’ I ask.
He shrugs. ‘Everywhere. We talk about killing grown-ups.’
‘And why would you do that, Freddy?’ asks Stephanie.
‘What?’ he slumps again. ‘I’m tired. You’re being a weirdo, Steph. And you’re being a weirdo too, Hesketh. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I want to lie on the sofa and watch football.’
I pick up one of the ship’s tiny solar panels and hold it between finger and thumb. Stephanie stays perfectly still on the sofa. She doesn’t blink. Just then there’s a sound in the hallway. The front door opening, then closing shut. If Stephanie registers it, she doesn’t let it show. Her eyes stay concentrated on Freddy.
Stephanie says urgently, ‘And how do you feel when you and your friends talk about how to kill grown-ups?’ Freddy looks up and crumples his empty crisp packet and grins slowly. Who is he now? His eyes are panes of blue light.
‘It’s epic,’ he says. ‘We feel good.’ And he smiles wider. You can see all his teeth and the gaps between.
The door opens. It’s Kaitlin. She sees me right away. Her voice is cold. ‘Well hello everyone.’
Raindrops glitter in her hair.
‘Hello Kaitlin,’ I say. She looks older than when I last saw her, three months ago. But she is still beautiful and her hair is still messy and piled high, like a bird’s nest. I see some grey in it now, at the temples. She’s brandishing a bouquet of white roses.
‘Hi Mum,’ says Freddy. He’s looking in the Lego box for a plastic cog.
‘Hello pumpkin,’ says Kaitlin.
Stephanie leaps to her feet. ‘Hey. Lovely that you’re back so early.’
She reaches to touch her, but Kaitlin blocks it by flinging the bouquet and her handbag on to the sofa, then turning her back to remove her raincoat. She is dressed differently from usual, in bright colours: Jade Mist and Sea-Burst. I quote Sanderson, 1993. They hurt my retinas. Stephanie must have had an influence.
‘Mum and Steph are lesbians,’ Freddy tells me matter-of-factly, still rummaging. ‘Mum didn’t used to be a lesbian but now she is. They sex each other.’
There’s a silence. ‘Yes I heard about that,’ I say. My throat feels very dry. I would like to run away and drink water. In a café. A large bottle of it. With ice.
Kaitlin says, ‘Well it’s a surprise to see you, Hesketh.’
‘Not for me,’ says Freddy. ‘Steph told me he was coming.’
‘Did she now?’ She addresses Stephanie in a voice I know well. ‘Has he eaten anything but crisps this afternoon?’
‘Pooporooni pooza,’ says Freddy in the archaeopteryx voice. I think of the mess not cleared up. ‘And the crisps was just one packet. I wanted salt and vinegar, but I got cheese and onion. So can I have another?’
‘No,’ says Kaitlin. ‘You know the rules Freddy.’ Outside, a police siren wails in the distance. Freddy mimics it: ‘Weew-weew-weew-weew! Nee-naw, nee-naw!’
‘How was your mother?’ asks Stephanie, folding Kaitlin’s coat. She is good at appearing calm.
Kaitlin looks at me again and shakes her head, then addresses Stephanie. ‘Actually, I never got there. The train was cancelled. It’s chaos out there. Have you heard anything?’ For a moment I think things may work out after all. If there’s an external distraction it might deflect the tension.
‘We haven’t seen the news,’ says Stephanie. ‘But there’s something we really need to talk about. Freddy, perhaps you could go upstairs so the grown-ups can have a chat.’ Her mouth shapes a smile, but her eyes don’t join in. ‘Me and Mum and Hesketh.’
Kaitlin’s face flushes. ‘Of course. I’m very keen to hear what you have to say. Freddy, say goodbye to Hesketh.’
‘Why can’t he stay and finish the ark with me?’
‘Because it’s not something we agreed.’
I’m still holding the piece of Lego between finger and thumb. Very slowly, I put it down.
Freddy persists: ‘So when can he come again? When? You have to say when.’
She won’t make a scene in front of him. But I can see the fury. She doesn’t speak.
‘Maybe we should work out an arrangement,’ says Stephanie evenly. ‘If Freddy and Hesketh both want to see each other, why don’t we agree that they spend time together whenever Hesketh is in town?’
Kaitlin flushes. I know that later she will refer to this as an ‘ambush’.
‘Cool!’ says Freddy.
Kaitlin puts a forefinger to the bridge of her nose: her default ‘stress’ gesture.
‘We’ll talk about it.’ She claps her hands. ‘Come on, Freddy, up-up-up! I’m counting to ten and then I’m coming up. One. Two. Three.’ When he has run off she says angrily to Stephanie, ‘I’m not opposed to discussing it. I’m not a monster you know.’
‘No one ever said you were,’ Stephanie replies in a low voice. ‘But that’s not actually what this is about. Something’s come up. That’s why Hesketh is here. It’s urgent.’
Kaitlin makes an impatient noise. ‘OK. But whatever it is, I’m talking to Freddy first.’ She raises her voice. ‘Nine, ten! Freddy, I’m coming!’
‘I could do with a big drink,’ says Stephanie, when Kaitlin has disappeared upstairs. I tell her I could do with one too. We go through to the kitchen. Stephanie hunts about for a vase, but can’t find one, so she shoves the bouquet into the sink and runs some water. Kaitlin must have bought the flowers for her mother. I jettison the remains of our pizza and wipe the table. ‘Now that you’ve shown your face here, and Freddy’s had his say, she’ll come round,’ Stephanie continues, pulling a bottle of Australian Shiraz from the wine rack. ‘But in any case, given what he’s just told us, all that’s going to take a back seat.’ She twists in the corkscrew – its handle is a vine root, from a vineyard in Portugal – and pops out the cork. She pours out three glasses, but we don’t wait for Kaitlin. ‘Cheers.’
The wine is excellent. It energises me. ‘There’s no way Freddy can have known about Chen and Svensson and Farooq and de Vries,’ I say.
‘Or the girl on the tower,’ she says, taking a large gulp and looking at me hard. I don’t say anything. But she won’t let it go. ‘Come on, Hesketh. Was there really a child up there when de Vries jumped?’
‘I don’t know.’
She’s still looking at me. ‘That’s not like you.’
I drink some more wine and wait for the warmth to spread. ‘I know what I think I saw. I think I saw a child. The others thought the same thing. I didn’t mention it in my statement because she vanished. She was just . . . gone. It was very hot
up there. And stressful.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me about this in Dubai?’
‘I hadn’t processed it. I still haven’t.’
There’s the sound of movement upstairs.
‘She’ll be here in a minute. We’ll come back to it,’ Stephanie says quickly. ‘Look, we can’t keep her in the dark. She needs to know everything. If what Freddy says is true, then kids everywhere are discussing how to kill people. So this is potentially huge. It’ll expand and peak. In which case—’
She’s cut short by a scream.
There are moments in life – so few you can count them – when time’s perspective seems to shift quite literally. In those moments, a second can last a minute, or freeze to near-eternity. Soldiers know this. But homes can be war zones too.
The scream is so grotesquely extended that it seems to require more air than two human lungs can contain. Shooting up from the table, Stephanie knocks over two glasses and they crash to the floor, spattering wine everywhere.
Finally, the screaming stops to an abrupt halt and there’s a brief silence. Then Kaitlin shouts, ‘NO! Freddy, don’t! NO!’
Then she shrieks. There’s a scrambling sound then a huge thud, followed by banging. Then more thudding. We rush through to the hallway. Kaitlin’s lying halfway down the narrow staircase. There’s no sign of Freddy.
Stephanie groans and says, ‘Oh my God.’
Everything about Kaitlin is wrong. If she were origami, she would be a write-off.
