right. I guess I’ll home-school her until we’ve found somewhere else.’
‘How will you meet your deadlines?’
‘I’ll have to work that out, won’t I? I don’t have anything due till the middle of next week.’
‘We have the best kid, Mara.’
‘The best.’
She sighed and pulled out the chopping board.
‘How was your day?’
‘Oh,’ said Robert. ‘Fine. You know. Nothing as dramatic as this.’
The day no longer seemed real to him. The impossibility of his work having actually vanished was far more real than his memory of it having done so. He wondered if he’d imagined it. He’d go back to work the next day and it would all be as normal.
JAKE SAT AT THE KITCHEN table and did his homework without being asked. He started reading a book his teacher had said was good. His dad came in and looked in the cupboards. He looked in the fridge. He took out the leftover chicken from the night before and made soup. He defrosted bread rolls. He asked Jake about school and nodded as Jake talked. They went to the living room and silently watched some reality TV.
Jake blinked a couple of times as he looked at his dad. He seemed unclear, almost blurred. It was as if Jake was looking at him through a faint mist.
When Jake went to bed there was a card on his pillow. It had a picture of Spider-Man on it. Inside, below the printed message, it said, ‘Love you. Sorry. Dad.’
CASSIE WAS EXHAUSTED. THE TIDE of people that had surged around her after the discovery of her roots had baffled and broken her.
Her mother’s panicked screams had first brought security running. Then there had been medics, and a call over the loudspeaker for a doctor that resulted only in a seething crowd of curious onlookers.
All attempts to prise Cassie out of the floor had failed. The roots that her feet had become looked small, but they were strong and seemed to run deep. It wasn’t until Cassie was shaking with hysteria that someone saw fit to move the people on. They had brought some screens, like the kind you see in hospitals, and placed them around Cassie so she was protected from the curious stares. Cassie had forbidden her mother from spending the night behind the screens with her, but she was sure she was somewhere around. The nearest chair, probably.
The relief at being alone, or at least feeling alone, was dizzying. The freedom to think hit her like a drug. There was one thought that she had been frantic to return to: where was Floss? Cassie had checked the flight details until she had them by heart, and then gone on checking them. She couldn’t have been wrong.
And Floss must have been on the plane. If she had missed it, there were hours in which she could have let Cassie know what had gone wrong and how it was being fixed. She had been coming. She had been coming to Cassie.
Cassie didn’t doubt Floss’s intent to be there. Floss loved her. Floss would do anything to be there. It was not possible that Cassie could love Floss with so much of herself and Floss not love her back. It was not possible that the tether connecting Cassie to Floss went only in one direction.
Floss was coming. She was coming and Cassie was determined to be waiting for her.
ONCE UPON A TIME, GEORGE Fortescue had status. Until one day, he lost it.
He had always been the kind to turn heads. Not because he was particularly good looking, he wasn’t. Not because he was tall, he was average. There was simply something about him. At school he’d been listened to by his peers. When he gave answers in class, the other students were silent. No one ever made fun of him, not because they were afraid of him, or liked him particularly, but because somehow the idea of making fun of George was too remote to consider. When he started work he was quickly promoted, although his work was not noticeably better than anyone else’s. He was marked out for leadership from the start; without talent, or charisma, he had status.
And then he didn’t. He himself didn’t realise that he’d lost it. But all of a sudden people were slower to make way for him in the street. His success rate at hailing cabs went down by 40 per cent overnight. The board of directors took no note of his opinions. His staff started whispering behind his back, nothing he wanted done got done.
A few months later he would retire and move to Cornwall. He would get a cat on the misplaced assumption that it, at least, would show him some respect.
WILL GOWAN AND JEFF BROWN lost a fight. Both boys knew where it was when they left their respective houses. They walked confidently towards it, flanked by their gangs. They met a block away from the fight’s last known location, but pretended not to notice each other. Their gangs didn’t pretend not to notice each other, they scowled and glowered for all they were worth.
Two crowds of boys headed down opposite sides of the street until they reached the same corner, the corner around which the fight was.
It wasn’t there.
For the first time, the leaders looked at each other.
‘Where is it?’ said Will.
‘Have we lost it?’ said Jeff.
‘We can’t both have lost it,’ said Will.
But they had.
WINIFRED GRAHAM LOST HER LOOKS. She hunted for them carefully and methodically, but they were all gone. It seemed remarkable for them to have all disappeared at once, but although she tried, she could not find a single one.
Her looks had been so many. So many looks, and they were glorious: a look to show a secret, a look to freeze blood, one to curdle milk, a look of longing, a look of rejection, a look of despair. A look of love.
It would be several weeks before she managed to leave her house. To confront a world in which she would now have to rely on words.
AND BARNABY JONES LOST HIS heart. He was fifty-seven years old and had kept a good handle on it until that day.
