I dreamed I phoned Penny in the middle of the party. I’ve never talked to the lass before. I phoned her and told her, “They attacked your mam. They made her fall and hit her head.”
If I phoned Penny’s house, they’d never hear the ringing anyway, because of the party’s noise.
A taxi driver climbed into his empty cab. Its doors had been left open like wings. Black on clean white. He drove off.
What vehicles did the superheroes have? Mr Fantastic of the Fantastic Four could invent anything. Cars like spaceships, with a seat for each of the four, that would transport them through the scary Phantom Zone that connected their universe with the fucked-up Skrull universe.
My chin resting on the cold, white-painted windowsill, watching over the road. The room behind me smelled of lager. I started dreaming about the Justice League and thinking, they wouldn’t have done what my lot had done. But the Justice League were squeaky fucking clean and that’s why I hated them. Why were Marvel comics always better than DC?
I could see people leaving the party, crossing the road, drunk and stoned and hopeless. I could see the snow getting ploughed up. I could see Penny in the street, wrapped up, yelling at the others, “It is her! It is her!”
And the whole party crowded around Liz. Light from the opened doors of all the friendly, open homes shone on the recumbent Liz. Everyone gathered and watched her regain consciousness. She stretched and yawned. Sleeping Beauty. She sat up. Penny helped her to her feet. “Mam, you’re back!” she must have been saying.
Liz supported herself on the walk to her house. Everyone followed. She appeared tired but unharmed. I was glad. The door closed behind them all. Liz was safe.
“Where is she, Andy? Where’s she gone?” Penny has forgotten to put a coat on. She’s standing in the main road with Andy, who has dressed himself hastily. Mark has gone home. The party is breaking up. Someone said Liz was back, but she hasn’t appeared.
The taxi driver leads Penny to his cab. They come hurrying over the snow. “She was here! She was here! I drove her from Darlington!” The driver is furious. He never got his money. Liz has left his car door open. “That’s twelve quid that!” he shouts.
Penny and Andy won’t pay him. They watch him leave.
“Maybe he was just trying it on,” Andy says. “Maybe she never came back at all.”
“No, she must have,” Penny says. “She just changed her mind about seeing me. She’s come back and lost her nerve.” Penny’s face is grim. She sets off, back to number sixteen. “She’s nicked off again.”
Andy follows her back to the house. Some fucking party. His body aches and he’s shivering now, the cold and anxiety are starting to get to him. Happy New Year, he thinks.
They pass the play park without a second glance. Liz’s white fur coat is camouflage in the snow, which falls heavier and heavier, covering her face.
SIX
Years later they went on Ricki Lake to talk about it: how the children in question always knew that they never quite belonged, that there had been a mix-up. They felt a nagging. Genetics pulled on them like magnetism, taking them back where they belonged. Andy couldn’t quite imagine that easy sense of belonging. Mind, there was Elsie and her Craig — how much they looked alike with those big facial features. Her face was a little-old-woman version of his, and her features looked more natural on him.
How many of the bairns in this room beyond the glass would grow up queer? He squinted along the rows for early signs. If there was a gene involved, then they were already queer. Gay babies.
The room was like a field, he thought. Or a battery-hen farm. It was completely fascinating. He remembered Logan’s Run and a scene early in the film where they look at a room of babies like this and it turns out that in the future no one knows whose baby is whose and all child-rearing is communal. There was no fuss, no nonsense and no need for straight parenting. He couldn’t remember what had made Logan run.
His favourite film of all time was still Escape from the Planet of the Apes, which ended with the death of a swaddled monkey baby; that scene broke his heart every time. So I must have a sentimental streak about babies, he thought, frowning. In Logan’s Run they executed all the adults when they got to thirty, he couldn’t remember why. Some weird, fucked-up science-fiction reason. They dressed the thirty-year-olds in red frocks, stood them in an arena and they got sucked up into a giant red crystal in the ceiling. It was like a rave. Dead by thirty, he thought.
It made him angry, suddenly, that last year Vince had tried to kill himself. He tried to poison himself with embalming fluid. He swallowed the whole bottle and only just made it. He was the healthiest, safest person Andy knew — how could he even have thought of doing himself harm? Ruining that perfection? Perfection that the clever Ralph, the Jane Austen expert, was getting the pure benefit of in Paris right now.
Andy closed his eyes, his forehead to the thick glass wall. When he opened his eyes, he thought one baby in particular was giving him a dirty look. Little bastard, Andy thought. He’s looking at me almost patronisingly. Then the child seemed to sigh and roll over, turning its face away from him. Andy felt the blood burn in his cheeks.
When Craig joined them in the main waiting room, he kept scratching himself. He worked his fingers through
