I heard a big engine pull up out front and doors slam. In the sky there were blue flashing lights. I heard men’s voices in our house. The back door was open and I heard shouting and a steady sound and every now and then a heavy noise as though they were dragging something heavy.
Not long after I had finished my second hot chocolate, Father came back and said it was all over. The damage was mainly by the front-room window.
Mrs. Pew said: “How on earth did it start?”
Father said a brick had been put through the living-room window. He said there was a rag tied around a brick. The rag was soaked with petrol. A match had probably been thrown in afterward. He said it all very calmly.
Mrs. Pew blinked and blinked and touched her throat. I thought she was going to faint. She said: “You must stay here tonight! You can’t go back.”
Father said: “I think Judith had better, but I want to keep an eye on the house, so I’m going to sleep in the front room.”
“But the window is smashed!” said Mrs. Pew.
“The firemen are going to board it up,” said Father. “I’ll come and get Judith in the morning.”
I went to the door with him. “
“No. You’re better off with Mrs. Pew tonight.”
“It’s one night, Judith.”
I SLEPT IN a room at the back of Mrs. Pew’s house in a soft feather bed that smelled of potpourri. The smell made me feel sick. The softness of the bed made me feel I was falling. I wanted to race back to my room, where there were floorboards and blankets and it didn’t smell of anything at all. I began to rock back and forth.
“God,” I said, “how could You let this happen?”
“If I were you, I would be asking Myself the same question.”
“What?” I said. “What do You mean, I should—Hello?
That night I dreamed of a house made from a shoe box. A Lego brick had been pushed through the window. There were flames of orange paper, and when they moved, they crackled. The flames reminded me of something, but I couldn’t think what. The fabric doll was asleep in the front bedroom and I shouted to her to wake up. The doll ran along the landing and woke the pipe-cleaner doll. Flames were climbing the stairs. They beat at them, but they faded then glowed into new life again.
When I woke, it was like coming up through water, the opposite of drowning, though it felt just as bad. And then I remembered what the flames reminded me of: the cellophane wrapper from a bottle of sports drink.
THE NEXT MORNING, while it was still early, Father came to take me home. I looked at him as we went through Mrs. Pew’s gate into our back garden, but his face didn’t tell me anything; there was no expression on it at all.
Inside the house, everything smelled of smoke. The front-room tiles were black and the walls were black around the window and there were pools of black water on the floor. The armchairs were black and eaten down to the stuffing. The paint on Mother’s sewing machine was bubbly and flaking. Where the window used to be there was now a board.
The front garden was like one of the pictures in the leaflet showing what it would be like after Armageddon. The golden cane around the front-room window was burned to the ground and so were the Christmas roses. The cherry tree was charred and the ground full of cinders. A rug, armchair, and table were piled up by the gate, and they were black too.
My room was as I left it: the bedclothes thrown back, the Land of Decoration just the same, the two little dolls I dreamed about safe and sound.
I got down on my knees. I said: “Thank you!” over and over, and clasped my hands. Then I opened my eyes. And I stared.
Because in the middle of the Land of Decoration was the cornfield, the one that caught fire, and one half of it was covered with the wrapper from a bottle of sports drink.
Master and Servant
I SAT ON the side of the bath and said: “I don’t understand, I don’t understand, I don’t understand.” I wiped my mouth and flushed the toilet.
Then I went back to my room and I screwed up the drink wrapper and rolled up the field. I stamped on the earth and threw away the grass heads. I put the people and the containers of water back where they were. I said: “I don’t understand. I didn’t want to make a fire. I was playing.”
“Didn’t you realize that whatever you make can become real?” said the voice.
“No!” I said. “I thought I had to make something on purpose.”
“When you made the field, you were frightened,” God said. “Fear can make things happen. It’s like praying for disaster.”
“But that would mean something could happen at any time,” I said, “that things come from nothing—out of thin air!”
God said: “It’s worth considering that that model world has got a life of its own.”
“Then I’ll throw it away!” I said. “I won’t keep it! Anyway it isn’t me! It’s You! It’s not
“Power can be a difficult creature to tame,” God said. “Sometimes it’s not certain who the master is and who the servant. Anyway, I’m afraid you can’t just hand it back.”
“Why not?” I said. “No one said anything about having to keep it.”
“Well you’re becoming very useful to me. And anyway, you can’t switch the power on and off, you know.”
“Then it’s simple,” I said. “I won’t do a thing—ever again.”
“Easier said than done.”
“Watch me!”
“The power won’t leave,” said God.
“Please take it,” I said and I bit down hard on my lip so that I wouldn’t cry. “Nothing happens the way I think it will. Something always goes wrong.”
“That’s because Something and Nothing are more closely related than people think,” God said.
Dark Matter
FATHER TOLD ME that there is a lot of Something in the universe and we can see it and measure it and it takes up space and things bounce off it and go on their way again. But for all of the Something there is just as much Nothing which can’t be seen and can’t be measured and people only stumble upon it by accident.
I have wondered if God made the Nothing or it came about by itself. Perhaps there could be no Something without Nothing. Just because the Nothing is invisible doesn’t mean it isn’t strong. It’s more dangerous than Something, because you can’t see where it is and it makes things disappear. In some places the Nothing is so strong that everything we know vanishes altogether. This is called Dark Matter.
Father said Dark Matter was what God used to create the universe. It drew things into itself, and those things were never seen again or came out the other end so misshapen they didn’t look like themselves anymore. He
