Dreamland Prologue

Today I watched a man walk into the sea. Not walk, he was running, the top half of his body moving faster than his legs through the water. He stumbled once, twice, then thrashed his way back to standing.

At first, from where I was, it looked like he was making his way to a box that was floating. Then I saw it was a piece of clothing. A jacket. A jacket filled with air, a soft dome puff- ing out above the water, the shape of a jellyfish back. When the man got closer, he took the jacket in his hands. He turned it over – it was heavier than it looked. There was a body zipped inside it.

The man started yelling. He yelled again and again. I jumped down from the broken tidal barrier where I was si ing and started to run over. When I got closer, I saw it was a child’s body, small in his hands. The man lifted the body out of the water, held it up to his chest, then started to make his way back to land, waves crashing white against his shoul- ders. As he got closer, the sounds he was making got louder. When he hit sand, he dropped to his knees.

It was a boy he was holding. Four, five, thin. He held the boy’s head in the palm of his hand, he touched his face. He put the boy down on the beach and started pushing at his chest. He tried mouth to mouth, but when I got to them, I saw water coming out of the boy’s lips, more and more and more of it.

‘My son,’ he said. ‘He’s my boy.’

I started to say I could get help, that I could go and find someone, but it was too late. The kid’s lips, his eyes, his fingertips were purple. ‘Yesterday he went missing,’ the man said, ‘yesterday. But I had to work. I had to get work. I left him with his sister. I never should have left him.’

The man held the boy like I used to hold Blue, his arms like a hammock. The boy’s limbs hung slack either side. A walnut filled my throat till it blocked it completely. I couldn’t swallow. It felt like I couldn’t breathe. The sea started to pool in the dipped sand around us.

‘You have to get off the beach,’ I said. Each wave brought the tide higher. ‘Please.’

And finally, I got him to walk with me, his son in his arms, water dripping from both their clothes.

My legs felt heavy as I climbed the stairs back to our flat. My mum was lying on the sofa when I got there. She was stone asleep, her face tilted towards her shoulder. I went over, ran my fingertip under her left eye. When they’re open, her eyes can look a bit soft now, like soap left in water. I made space next to her legs, and found a place for my body at her side.

You never once saw inside my house, did you?

Even when you came to the door, I blocked you looking in. I stood on my tiptoes to make myself bigger and pushed you back out into the corridor. Not that the corridor was any be er.

I don’t know exactly how long it’s been since I last saw you. Standing right here in my doorway. Maybe a year and a bit, maybe longer, but it’s hard to tell.

However long it’s been, it’s been long enough for me to have forgo en the details of what you look like. Sometimes I know the edges, how your skin met your hair. But the most important parts, how your face made sense in the middle, I lost that one day.

You said that you would come back. You looked me in the eye and said that. Well, if you had, this is what you would have seen: soft wood, black cracks, fridges in the road. The broken spines of old rides at Dreamland. Me and my mum, tangled silent on the sofa.

I didn’t tell her what happened at the beach. We didn’t speak. At some point, she fell back asleep. And then it came – the knock on the door. Her eyes shot open. Mine did, too.

Two heavy, dull beats, the gap between them slightly too long.

‘That’s not Davey,’ she said. She turned to me. ‘It isn’t Davey, is it?’

I shook my head. I felt my body freeze. After the knock, a sound that shouldn’t have been possible.

The sound of a key sliding into our lock.