‘It’s better this way,’ Clara says, eventually. ‘We’ve hurt each other enough. Right?’
Nora is coming over. Seb watches her. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘This is better.’
Now Nora is tugging at her mother’s hand. Now Seb is saying goodbye to the little girl, and Clara is steering her towards the road.
‘Clara,’ Seb says, after her.
She looks back.
‘Text me,’ he says. ‘About Nora.’
And all the estate agent can think is: I don’t look at my friends like that.
a passenger
It is not the best weather for an open-top bus tour, but everyone back in Seoul had told her to expect rain. So, she wears a poncho, and she spreads her arms wide to welcome it, feels privileged to experience all of this under an authentic London downpour. And yet, for everything she sees – from the Marble Arch to Sherlock Holmes’s house on Baker Street and on towards Piccadilly Circus and Big Ben beyond – nothing will touch her quite as much as this: the sight of a father and daughter, sitting in their raincoats at the back of the bus.
The girl’s red hair pokes out from beneath her hood, and she is held rapt by everything her father says. The father points to old buildings with his tattooed hands and tells her stories.
‘That got blown up in the Blitz,’ he says. ‘That, too. And that.’
‘What’s the Blitz?’ the girl says.
‘A time when a lot of things got blown up,’ the man replies. ‘I was in a film about it. A lifetime ago.’
The girl nods thoughtfully. Then she puts her small hand in his, and a smile cracks through his beard.
another passenger
A tube train, deep beneath the city. The mother and daughter opposite have been onboard for a while, chatting quietly. The mother, in a black dress covered with black feathers, has taken care to twist further feathers into her tangled hair, to black out her eyes with enormous kohl wings. The daughter is dressed as Pippi Longstocking, and swings her stockinged legs back and forth.
‘I wanted to be the Hulk,’ she says.
‘It’s a book theme,’ says the bird-woman. ‘Although I suppose that is a comic book.’
They’re pulling into a station, and a flurry of passengers head out on to the draughty platform and up towards the cool spring evening above it. Only a few people board. The passenger sitting opposite the mother and daughter watches one of them with bemusement. He’s a lot taller than the rest, and he’s painted green, wearing a black blazer with tin-foil bolts on either side of his neck. He grabs a railing with one big, green hand, surveys the carriage for a seat. When he sees the girl, when he sees her avian mother, it’s as if he’s seized by rigor mortis. He glances, briefly, back towards the doors, but they’re already closing, and Pippi Longstocking has already seen him.
‘Seb!’ Pippi yells, waving her hand.
The man grimaces, waves his own green hand. He takes the free seat on the other side of Pippi while the bird stares down into her feathered lap.
‘Are you the Hulk?’ Pippi asks.
‘I’m Frankenstein,’ he says.
‘Monster,’ the bird can’t help but add. ‘Frankenstein’s monster.’
‘Right,’ Frankenstein’s monster says, without looking at her. ‘And you’re—’
‘The Raven,’ says the bird. ‘It’s a poem. By Edgar Allan Poe.’
He nods. ‘I should have gone with a poem. Knowing Maisie.’ He leans in a little, as if he doesn’t want to be overheard. ‘There’s no business doing fancy dress when it isn’t Halloween. People are staring.’
‘You should have come as Scrooge,’ the raven says, with a smirk. ‘Or maybe Heathcliff.’ She’s getting into her stride. ‘Dark and stormy. Back after a long absence, shrouded in secrecy.’
There’s a pause. Frankenstein’s monster turns stiffly, as if in character. ‘I understood the Scrooge bit.’
Pippi kicks her colourful legs. She looks like she’s in her happy place.
