Page 26 of The Man Made of Smoke

“I just need a minute to myself, James.”

He hesitates. “Okay.”

And then he waits by the tent, hoping that she’ll be better when she gets back. The seconds tick by. She returns a few minutes later with a bag of their belongings: a blanket and towel; a Frisbee. And he’s relieved to see that her mood has settled and she looks a little brighter.

“All right, then,” she says. “Let’s go and find the sea.”

It’s a longer walk than he’s expecting, down a trail lined with moreof that shivering grass. There are signposts warning that it’s not safe to swim here because of the currents. Which doesn’t matter to him—learning to swim is one of many things he hasn’t had a chance to do yet—but it does make him wonder why people come here. And when they get to the beach, it turns out to be more rock than sand, and the sea is a vast gray expanse: nothing like the way he imagined it. The tide is going out, leaving a web of scummy froth between the pebbles, and the shingle crunches beneath his feet.

But.

Just work with me, okay?

They play with the Frisbee for a while. It’s okay at first, and James feels good whenever the feathered plastic edge lands solidly in his hand. But his mother is already finding it hard.

“The wind!” she keeps saying.

It’s not that windy though, and he’s managing to throw it to her without a problem. As time goes on, she begins to fumble her catches more, and then James starts having to dart forward as her attempts to throw it back to him fall shorter and shorter.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

Her voice sounds tired. Smeared.

And James realizes why she wanted to go to the car by herself. At home, his mother keeps the pill bottles hidden away on the top shelf of the bathroom cabinet, but she’s lost track of how much James has grown recently, and he can reach them now if he stands on tiptoes. The bottles are very old, the original labels all but worn off. He thinks his mother used to get the pills from the chemist, but that at some point she started getting different ones from somewhere else instead.

“It’s okay,” he tells her.

“I just… all this exercise. Maybe I need a little lie down.”

She sets out the blanket and curls up, and within a minute she’s fast asleep. James spreads the towel over her as best he can. He knows from experience that it’ll be an hour or so before she wakes up, which means that he’s alone for now. But that’s fine. For one thing, Barnaby will keep him safe.

And anyway, there’s nobody else here.

You’re brave!Barnaby tells him.You’re very brave!

Yes, James thinks. I am.

The stretch of coastline here is formed of a series of inlets, separated by steep ridges of rock. The tide has retreated enough for him to walk around the edge of this beach and into the next, which turns out to be a little wider than the one behind, but just as stony underfoot. The wind has picked up a little now. It’s cold, and comes in sudden gusts that he can see rippling on the surface of the gray water like gooseflesh.

He stands as close to the edge of the sea as he dares.

The sight of it stretching out all the way to the horizon makes him feel small. But it’s odd. He spends most of his life feeling that way and hating it, but the sensation is different here. It’s not like when he’s lying in bed at night, staring at the damp on the thin wall and listening to the baby crying in the neighbor’s flat. Not like when he’s being bullied by the other kids, or ignored by the teachers. Here, it’s strangely comforting, as though the world is telling him that deep down it’s the same for everyone, and it’s just that most people don’t realize it.

He closes his eyes.

Breathes in deeply.

And then he hears something.

He opens his eyes and turns slowly, scanning the beach. The sound is delicate—barely distinguishable from the wind—but it sounds like someone whistling. Where is it coming from though? There’s nobody in sight. And he hasn’t seen another living soul the whole time they’ve been here.

He looks up at the ridge behind him.

It’s dark against the sky, the grass shivering at the edge.

Empty.

And yet the whistling sound is a little louder than before. It’s a tune of some kind. There’s something familiar about it, even though he doesn’t think he’s ever heard it before. How can that be possible? And suddenly, everything feels off-kilter. The empty beach; the ethereal music. It’s as though when he rounded those rocks and left his motherbehind him, he stepped out of the real world and into a different and more dangerous one.

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