Thetford-May 2050

The room was quiet in the way only bedrooms are quiet.

The curtains were thin and drawn, and the light coming through them was pale and flat, the sort of light that is not quite morning. It fell across a shelf of comic books arranged in an order that would only make sense to the person who owned them, and across a Superman action figure on the desk that stood upright, facing the door, because that was where it was meant to stand. Three Superman posters were fixed above the bed. The oldest had curled at the top corner where the Blu-Tack had dried out, and it had been curling like that for a long time.

On the bedside table, angled slightly towards the bed, sat a small framed photograph. The glass was clean. The frame was not.

Under the duvet, something breathed.

It was a slow, thick, asleep sort of breathing, the kind that belonged to a boy who had not moved in hours. A tuft of brown hair showed at the top of the pillow, flattened on one side. One pale arm hung out of the duvet and over the edge of the mattress, fingers loose. Tucked inside the crook of the other arm, pressed against his chest, was a Superman doll. Softer than the figure on the desk. Older. The cape was faded to a dull red, and one corner of it was frayed where it had been held too often, too tightly, for too many years.

The clock radio clicked once. A red light blinked on.

A man’s voice came out of it, already mid-sentence, friendly and too awake.

”…and that’s you up to date here on Radio Norfolk, broadcasting to Thetford and across the region on this gorgeous Thursday morning, the fifteenth of May. Look at that — not a cloud in the sky. Proper summer weather, if it holds, and they’re telling me it’s going to hold right through the weekend, so—”

A shuffle under the duvet.

“—now, if you missed it two nights ago, you’ll want to catch up, because everyone I’ve spoken to this morning has been talking about one thing — and I mean everyone — and we’ll get into some of the reaction coming in overnight because some of it is… well—”

A hand came out from under the duvet. It moved without the boy attached to it appearing to wake. It found the radio by memory, slapped the top of it, missed the button, found it on the second try, and the voice cut off mid-word.

The silence that followed felt thicker than it should have.

The hand withdrew.

Under the duvet, he muttered something that was not a word. It was the shape of a complaint without the effort of making it. The duvet pulled tighter over his head.

The room was quiet again.

Then, from somewhere on the other side of the wall, a voice.

“Ethan.”

Footsteps on the landing. Quick ones. Not quite stomping.

A fist hit the door. Three hard knocks, close together.

“ETHAN. IT’S TWENTY TO. GET UP.”

He stayed where he was.

“I’M NOT JOKING. IT’S TWENTY TO NINE. DO YOU HEAR ME?”

The flat of a hand hit the door. The door shook in the frame. The Superman figure on the desk did not shake, because it was heavy, but the photograph on the bedside table did, very slightly. Somewhere downstairs, the television was on too loud.

“I’M NOT GETTING FINED AGAIN. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? GET. UP.”

Her voice cracked a little on up, the way a voice cracks when it has already been shouting from downstairs for a while.

Then footsteps, going away. The door stayed shut. The door always stayed shut. That was how it worked.

Under the duvet, Ethan opened his eyes.

He looked at the inside of the duvet, which was dim and grey and close to his face, and he listened to the sound of his mum going back down the stairs, and he thought about how warm his feet were, and how the pillow smelled faintly of himself, which was not a bad smell but a familiar one.

Then the words arrived.

Twenty to.

He held them in his head and looked at them.

Twenty to what.

Nine.

He had heard her say it. He had heard her say it twice. He had known what she was saying when she was saying it, and he had not moved, and now the information was arriving a second time, slower, and this time it was coming with the rest of it attached.

Nine was when school started.

School was fifteen minutes away if he walked fast, and he could not walk fast today because he had not got dressed and he had not eaten anything and he had not brushed his teeth and he did not know where his bag was, no, he did know where his bag was, it was by the door, but his PE kit was not in it, and today was not a PE day, so that was fine, but —

He sat up.

He sat up too fast.

The Superman doll, which had been against his chest, slid sideways and dropped off the edge of the bed and landed on the carpet with a small soft thump.

He looked down at it.

He looked at the door.

He looked back down at it.

He got off the bed, picked the doll up by its middle, and placed it back on the pillow. He straightened the cape so it lay flat. He adjusted one arm, which had bent the wrong way in the fall, and stood back and looked at it for half a second to check.

It was right.

Stupid, he thought.

He stepped forward and his bare foot landed on the glass of water that had been next to the bed for longer than one night. It did not break. It tipped, sloshed, and half of it went into the carpet in a dark spreading circle.

He stared at it.

He would deal with it later. He knew, standing there, that he would not deal with it later.

The chair. His uniform was on the chair. He walked to the chair. The trousers were on top. He picked them up and put them on. One leg, then the other leg. That part worked.

The shirt was underneath. He pulled it on and started the buttons from the bottom, because that was how he did them, and he had got three buttons done before he realised the collar was behind his neck instead of in front of it.

He stopped.

He looked down at himself.

“No,” he said, quietly, to the shirt.

He undid the three buttons, took the shirt off, turned it around, put it back on, and started the buttons again from the bottom, because that was how he did them.

Downstairs, something slammed. A cupboard, maybe. Or a drawer.

His fingers got faster and worse at the same time. He put a button into the wrong hole. He put the next one into the wrong hole after that. He noticed that one, because the two sides of the shirt no longer matched at the bottom, one side hanging lower than the other, and he stared at it for a second, and thought there isn’t time, and left it.

Socks.

The socks were on the floor by the chair. He bent down, picked them up, and then, because he was in a hurry, he tried to put the first one on standing up.

He got it halfway.

His balancing leg wobbled. He hopped once to correct it, did not correct it, and went sideways.

It was not a dramatic fall. He did not cry out. He tipped, slowly, and landed on his side on the carpet with one sock on and one sock in his hand and his shirt done up wrong and his hair sticking up at the back.

He lay there.

From the carpet, at that angle, he could see under the bed. There was a crisp packet under there. There was also a trainer, a single one, which he had been looking for and had assumed was somewhere else entirely. He looked at the trainer for a moment with the quiet interest of someone who had temporarily forgotten what he was doing.

Then he remembered.

Stupid stupid stupid.

He got up. He pulled the first sock the rest of the way on. He sat on the edge of the bed, properly this time, and pulled the second sock on. He stood. He found his shoes. He put his shoes on. He picked up his school bag from where it leaned against the bedside table.

His hand brushed the photograph frame.

He stopped.

He did not pick it up. He never picked it up. But his hand stayed on it for a moment longer than it needed to, and then, with the care of something practised, he nudged the frame so it was facing the bed the way it was supposed to.

He always checked it was facing the bed.

In the picture, much smaller than he was now, he was on somebody’s shoulders, laughing with his mouth open, both hands raised. The person underneath him was mostly the back of a head and a shoulder and one hand on Ethan’s ankle, holding him steady.

He straightened the frame one last time.

He left the room.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

On the landing he went into the bathroom and did not close the door.

He brushed his teeth fast, counting in his head to thirty because thirty was the number, and stopped at twenty-six because he could not wait the last four seconds. He spat. He rinsed. He wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist. He did not wash his face. He did not look in the mirror for long. A towel lay on the tiles where someone had dropped it. The bin under the sink had not been emptied, and the top of it was a tower of tissues and cotton pads and an empty bottle balanced on the very top that would fall the next time anyone opened the bin. He did not open the bin.

He left the bathroom.

At the top of the stairs he stopped.

The television was on downstairs, too loud, the sort of loud that meant nobody was listening. A voice came up the stairwell, a woman, brisk.

”…where fighting along the Kosura border has continued for a fourth consecutive night, with reports of renewed shelling in the early hours. A school and a medical clinic were among the buildings struck overnight. Aid organisations say at least nine children are confirmed dead, with more—”

He stopped moving.

His hand was on the banister. He had been about to go down and he had not gone down.

Nine.

He did not know what the Kosura border was. He did not know where it was on a map. He knew what a school looked like, and he knew what a clinic looked like, and he knew what nine was. Nine was a number he could picture. Nine was more than a classroom row. Nine was almost a full table in the dining hall.

The presenter kept talking. The UN were going to send people. They were going to send them tomorrow. The defence ministry had declined to comment. Adults, somewhere, were thinking about it and were not doing anything about it yet, and nine children were already dead, and more were going to be dead before anyone got there.

He stood on the stairs.

He thought, without meaning to, about the comic on the top of the pile in his room. The one where Superman flew through a wall to get children out of a burning building. He had read it enough times that he knew which panels were on which pages. In the comic Superman got there in time. In the comic Superman always got there in time. That was the point of Superman. That was the whole point of him.

There was no one flying anywhere near the Kosura border. There was no one coming for nine hours at least, and the children were already dead, and you could not un-die a child.

He felt something heavy settle, low, behind his ribs. He did not have a name for it. It was not sadness exactly. It was the feeling of knowing something bad was happening and knowing there was nothing he could do about it, and knowing the people who were supposed to do something were not going to, or not fast enough.

The feeling was familiar. He had had it before. He had had it a lot, lately.

He went down the stairs.

He saw the hallway before his foot hit the last stair.

Along the wall, bags. Supermarket bags, most of them, knotted at the top. Stacked three deep in places. The handles of the oldest ones had gone yellow. On the other side, the coat rack was not a coat rack. It was coats, and under the coats were more coats, and under the coats were shapes that might once have been other things. Between the two walls there was a path wide enough for one person, worn slightly clearer where feet had gone through it for months.

Through the open door on the right, the living room. The sofa was a sofa. The other sofa was boxes. DVDs in towers along the skirting board, some still in shrink-wrap, the plastic gone cloudy. Video tapes he did not know anyone still owned. A carrier bag split at the bottom had spilled its contents — film cases, a red one on top, Pretty Woman, he knew that one because she used to watch it — across the carpet, and the carpet around the bag had the grey shine carpet gets when no one has hoovered for a long time.

At the end of the hallway was the kitchen. The door was open. He could see the edge of the table, and a hand on the edge of the table, and the steam off a mug.

He adjusted his walking without thinking. The path had changed since yesterday. A bag had moved, or a new one had been added. He did not know which. He went through sideways at the narrow bit.

Halfway down the hall, a pile of post had slid off the hall table and spread across the floor. He stopped. He bent down. He gathered the letters, quickly, into a neat stack, and began to lift them back up to —

“Ethan. Don’t.”

Not shouted. Sharp, and tired, and from the kitchen.

He stopped. He put the letters where they were. He kept walking.

In the kitchen she was at the table.

She was in the same pyjamas she had been in yesterday, a washed-thin t-shirt and joggers that were not a matching set. Her hair was up in the kind of knot that had happened days ago and had been slept on since. The skin under her eyes was dark in a way that was not only tiredness. In front of her was a mug. Not a coffee mug. A bigger one, the kind you held in both hands. He knew what was in it the way he always knew, by the hour and by the smell and by the way she was holding it, not drinking, just holding, as if the holding were the point. On the edge of a saucer next to it, a cigarette was burning slowly, unattended, the ash bent into a small grey curve.

She did not look up when he came in.

“You’re lucky the bus isn’t running,” she said. “Walk’ll do you good.”

A pause.

“Cereal’s on the side. If you can find it.”

He did not answer. He nodded. Then he remembered she was not looking at him, and he said, “Okay,” quietly, to cover the nod.

He went to the counter. He had to move a plastic bag to get to the cereal box, and the cereal box was the wrong one. It was hers. The one she used to buy before the one he actually ate. He stood there holding it for a second. He did not ask. He poured it into a bowl. He opened the fridge, which had less in it than it should have, and got the milk, and poured the milk, and put the milk back, careful with the door because she did not like the fridge door slamming. He got a spoon from the drawer. The drawer stuck. He lifted it slightly as he pulled, which he had learned to do, and it opened quietly.

He sat down opposite her, bowl in front of him, spoon in one hand, the milk carton still in the other. He had meant to put the milk back before he sat down. He had not. He set the carton on the table next to the bowl and tried to remember if the cereal needed sugar and decided it did not.

On the wall above the table, the television was on. The same channel as the living room, half a second out of sync with it. The presenter had changed. A man now, lighter-toned, almost excited.

”…and now, two days out, and you can feel it everywhere. Tuesday night’s debut of Who You Really Are has been confirmed as the most-watched broadcast in British television history, with over forty million viewers tuning in across the UK alone. Among the identities revealed in the programme’s ninety-minute debut: a primary school teacher in Lisbon, confirmed as the reincarnation of the composer Antonio Vivaldi; a mechanic from Delhi identified as the astronomer Johannes Kepler; and — perhaps most controversially — an off-duty police officer in Warsaw revealed to be the former Soviet general Georgy Zhukov. Producers have confirmed that tonight’s second episode, airing at nine p.m., will include further reveals — but of course all eyes remain on Friday, with bookmakers across Europe now suspending bets on the identity of the individual the programme has described, since March, as ‘the most significant past-life match ever recorded.’ Churches in Rome, Jerusalem and Istanbul have issued statements ahead of the broadcast, and Downing Street confirmed overnight that—”

The television cut off.

Sarah had picked up the remote. She set it down again, face down, next to her mug.

“I can’t,” she said, to no one. “I can’t with this today.”

The kitchen was very quiet.

Ethan picked up the milk carton and tilted it over the bowl.

The carton was heavier than he had expected. He had been holding it in the wrong hand. He adjusted. A splash of milk went over the side of the bowl and onto the table.

It was not a lot. A thin white pool the size of a two-pound coin, spreading slowly towards the edge of the placemat.

“For f—”

The word stopped halfway out.

“Ethan.”

Her voice went up so fast it cracked.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU. JUST — CAN YOU NOT — FOR ONE MORNING — CAN YOU NOT JUST DO ONE THING WITHOUT —”

She was on her feet. The chair had gone back behind her and hit the cupboard and she did not notice. The mug was in her hand. She was pointing at the table with the hand that had the mug in it and the mug was tipping and she did not notice that either.

“DO YOU KNOW WHAT I AM DEALING WITH. DO YOU. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA. I AM TRYING, ETHAN. I AM TRYING, AND YOU CAN’T EVEN POUR — YOU CAN’T EVEN — “

He did not move.

He did not look up at her. He looked at the milk on the table. His eyes were very hot. His throat had gone tight. He held the spoon in his hand and he did not put it into the cereal because putting it into the cereal would make a sound and he did not want to make a sound.

He felt the tears coming. He could feel them at the front of his face, behind his eyes, in his nose. He told them, inside his head, no. He told them again. No. Not now.

One of them came anyway, and sat on his lower lashes, and did not fall.

She stopped.

She had heard herself.

He could feel her, across the table, realising.

Her breathing changed. The mug was still in her hand, tilted. She looked at it, as if she had just remembered she was holding it, and she set it down on the table very carefully, in the small white pool of his milk, and a little of the tea spilled out over the rim onto her fingers, and she did not flinch.

“Ethan.”

It was quieter now. Her voice had gone thin.

“Ethan, I —”

He still did not look up.

She stood there. He could feel her trying. He could feel the shape of the word that was about to come, the one she had not said in a very long time, the one that would have fixed the morning if she could have said it.

She could not say it.

Something in her shut, visibly, as if a door inside her had closed. Her shoulders dropped. She took a breath in and let it out through her nose.

“Just — “ she said. Flatter. Further away. “Just finish your cereal, yeah? Sooner you’re out, sooner I can go back to bed.”

She sat down.

She did not look at him again.

He ate.

He did not taste anything. The milk on the table had reached the edge of the placemat and had begun to run over it, onto the wood, a thin slow line. He watched it go. He ate two more spoonfuls very fast and pushed the bowl away.

The tear on his lashes fell. He turned his face before it landed so it went into his collar and not onto the table, because he did not want her to see it, and he did not want to have to explain it, and he did not want to give her another thing to feel bad about.

He got up. He took the bowl to the sink.He got up. He took the bowl to the sink, which was already full, and balanced it on top of a plate so it would not fall. His hand shook slightly when he let go. He did not know why. He hoped she had not seen.

He went to the kitchen doorway. Bag on his shoulder. Shoes on.

He stopped.

He turned.

“Mum.”

She was looking at her mug.

“What?”

The snap was fast. It was not at him. It was at the word mum arriving before she was ready for it.

He stood in the doorway.

He had had something to say. He was almost sure he had. He tried to find it. It had gone, or it had not been there, or it had been something else, and he could not tell which.

“Never mind,” he said. “I’ll tell you later.”

She did not answer.

He said, quieter, because he had to, “Love you.”

Her shoulders changed. Very slightly. She did not turn around.

He waited one beat longer than he should have.

Then he left.

The front door closed behind him and the cold got at the back of his neck.

He walked to the gate. He opened the gate. He closed the gate, because she had told him a hundred times about the gate. He turned left onto the pavement, which was the direction of school, and he started walking.

He got twelve steps.

The water.

The glass of water.

He had knocked it over. It had gone into the carpet. The carpet was next to the bed. The bed was next to the bedside table. The bedside table had the lamp on it, and the radio, and the lamp’s cable went down the back of the table and along the skirting board, and the skirting board was where the damp was now.

He kept walking.

Water and electricity. That was how it started. He had seen a programme. He had read it in a book about how houses worked. The cable did not have to be in the water. It had to be near it. The damp could get into the plug socket. The plug socket was on the same wall. If it shorted while no one was home —

He kept walking. He walked faster.

He was already late. He was already in trouble. If he went back in, she would hear him. She would ask what he was doing. He would have to explain, and explaining was hard when she was like this, and she was always like this, and —

He stopped.

He stood on the pavement. He looked at his shoes. A car went past. A woman across the road was pulling a bin to the kerb.

No.

He turned around.

He walked back to the gate, through the gate, up the path. He put his key in the door as quietly as he could and turned it slowly so the latch did not click. He pushed the door open three inches at a time.

From the kitchen, no sound. The television was still off. She had not moved.

He slipped off his shoes and carried them, so she would not hear him on the stairs, and he went up.

He closed his bedroom door behind him with both hands, holding the handle down until it was shut, and then releasing it so it made no sound.

The room was as he had left it. The duvet thrown back. The glass on its side. The wet circle on the carpet, darker now.

He moved fast, but quietly.

He picked up the glass and put it on the desk. He went to the airing cupboard on the landing and took the oldest towel from the bottom of the pile, because that was the one she would not miss, and he came back and pressed it into the wet patch, pushing with both hands, moving it when one part got heavy. He checked the skirting board. It was damp along the bottom. He pressed the towel against it too. He unplugged the lamp. He unplugged the radio. He moved the cables up and over the back of the bedside table so they hung clear of the floor.

He stood back.

He looked at the wall. He looked at the carpet. He looked at the sockets. He looked at the cables.

It was all right. It would be all right. The damp would dry. Nothing was plugged in. Nothing could catch.

He folded the towel wet side in and put it at the bottom of the laundry basket, under the other things, where she would not see it.

Then he stopped.

The Superman doll was on the pillow where he had left it. Cape flat. Arms straight.

He went to the bed.

He pulled the duvet back up properly, straightening the corners because corners mattered, and he picked the doll up with both hands and laid it in the middle of the bed with its head on the pillow, the way he would have wanted his own head to be. He pulled the duvet up to the doll’s chin. He tucked the edge under, on one side and then the other, so it would not come loose.

He adjusted the cape so it lay flat outside the duvet.

He looked at it for a second.

He bent down and kissed the top of its head.

“Be good,” he said. “I’ll be back after school.”

He stood there a second longer.

“Look after the room.”

Then he turned and left.

He went down the stairs with his shoes still in his hand. At the bottom he put them on, one then the other, sitting on the second step because tying laces standing up was what had caused the sock problem and he was not going to do that twice in one morning. He opened the front door. He closed it behind him with the same care as when he had come in.

He walked to the gate. Through the gate. Left on the pavement. He did not look back at the house.

He was very, very late.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​