Paul John Lyon is the author of THE BENNINGTON BOY and FLOWERS OF THE MOON, amongst others. He lives in the north of England.

Find more of his stories atpauljohnlyon.com

The Girl Who Dreamed a War

Paul John Lyon

The Girl Who Dreamed a War
Copyright © 2018 by Paul John Lyon. All Rights Reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To old dreams

If only the wind would turn before I go home, said the woman rowing against the wind.

— Icelandic proverb

1

Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue.

The lyrics of the ‘Rainbow Song’ ran through Elena Hayes’ mind as she stared at the colourful picture her daughter had drawn. It was a drawing of an orange house with a triangle roof. A circular yellow sun with stick rays shined above. Below, the green grass grew, each blade shown as a repeat of the letter ‘w’. At the centre of the house stood a stick figure girl surrounded by a fiery orange and red swirl. Where the girl should have had eyes, two holes were ripped through the paper.

Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue.

Red and yellow and pink and…

“Mrs Hayes?”

The head teacher at St. Margaret’s, Mr Foster, was a fat man with red cheeks and a grey beard. He reminded Elena of a buttoned-down Father Christmas. Most of the time he was jovial, but that morning his demeanour was cold and serious.

“Are you feeling okay, Mrs Hayes?”

Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue.

Elena tried not to let the shock come through in her voice. The picture was disturbing, unlike anything Millie had drawn before.

“I’m fine.”

“Good good. I’m sorry we couldn’t address this issue over the phone, Mrs Hayes. I do tend to think it best if delicate matters are discussed face to face. I hope you understand.”

“Millie is all right, isn’t she? Where is she?”

“She’s fine. Back in class now. She was a little shaken, but nothing that concerns us immediately. If you do have any ongoing issues, we have a trained therapist we refer to parents and caregivers.”

“Delicate matters? What matters exactly, Mr Foster? All I’m seeing is a picture. Has something else happened you’re not telling me about?”

Mr Foster cleared his throat. “Grief is hard on a child, especially a sensitive child. Their reactions can often be, shall we say, heightened?”

“Grief?”

“The death of a friend is traumatic. I’m informed Millicent and Chloe were close, yes?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your daughter was close to the girl who died, Chloe?”

Coldness spread over Elena’s arms. She stared at the picture, focusing on the little stick girl with eyes torn out of the paper. Chloe? Could it be Chloe in the orange and red crayon fire?

“Chloe Cavendish?” she asked.

“Yes. You didn’t know?” Mr Foster said, his voice rising with confusion.

“It’s the first I’ve heard of it. My God, Chloe died? Is that what upset Millie? Is that why she drew this?” Elena held the drawing in front of her, concentrating on the stick figure girl again. What pain must Millie have been going through to draw such a scene? she thought.

“Well, yes, of course that’s the reason, but…” Confusion wrinkled up Mr Foster’s soft features.

“But what?”

“Mrs Hayes, are you sure you didn’t know about Chloe’s passing? You didn’t happen to hear the news earlier this morning and talk about it with Millicent, perhaps?”

Millie, Elena thought. Only her father calls her Millicent. At least he would if he was around enough lately to call her anything at all.

“Of course not.”

“The thing is, Mrs Hayes, well…” He leaned over and nodded as if to ask for the drawing.

Elena handed the paper back without hesitation. She didn’t want the thing anywhere near her, or to admit that her bright little girl was the artist of such a disturbed image.

Mr Foster held the drawing by the sides and nodded. “You’ll notice that your daughter drew a little girl in the picture, Mrs Hayes,” he said, and pointed to the stick figure in amongst all the chaotic lines on the paper.

“It’s Chloe, isn’t it?”

“As far as we could make out from your daughter once she’d calmed down. And this, these colours, red and orange, would you say they represent fire? You are an illustrator by profession, that’s correct, isn’t it?”

“I am. It looks like fire, yes.”

He nodded at the picture. “We thought as much, although Millicent wouldn’t tell us directly. The thing is Mrs Hayes, your daughter drew Chloe in a fire, and that was how the poor girl passed away late last night. In a house fire, just as Millicent drew it here on the paper.”

“I’m not seeing a problem here. My daughter was upset. She drew what was upsetting her. Is that such a terrible thing?”

“It’s not a problem as such. We’re concerned a little over how Millicent discovered the news of her friend’s passing. Is there anybody at home who might have informed your daughter of the incident before she arrived at school?”

“Of course not. I drive Millie here every morning and my husband, Charles, leaves for work before we’re even awake. It was probably one of the other children who told her, don’t you think?”

“Yes, yes,” Mr Foster said. “That’s the conclusion I’ve drawn myself. What concerns me is Millicent insists she saw this terrible event happen to Chloe.”

“She said she saw it happen?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“You’re sure?”

“I was informed as such by Miss Wells, her form teacher. When I talked to Millicent she repeated the claim, I’m afraid.”

Millie. It’s Millie, not Millicent.

“That’s not possible, Mr Foster. It's not possible at all.”

“Of course. I believe your daughter is in shock. As you said, the drawing is her way of dealing with the loss of her friend. As it stands now, it is only a minor concern, something we’d be remiss not to mention to you, Mrs Hayes. If it persists, then it may become a problem in the future.”

“If it persists? Seems to me this is a one-off reaction to a friend dying, nothing more. Do you have a reason to think it will go any further?”

“No, not at this stage. We’re not clairvoyant here at St Margaret's, but her behaviour could indicate some problems ahead if left unchecked.”

“Thank you for your concern, Mr Foster, but I’m sure Millie will be fine.”

“Of course, of course. Best to err on the side of caution, especially when it comes to the development of a child’s mind, I do believe.”

As do I, Elena thought. That’s why I wanted to send my daughter to a non-denominational school instead of this private Catholic worry factory. But Charles insisted this school fed into all the better schools later on, and Charles must have his way.

Anger bubbled up in her at how she’d let Charles win yet again.

“I do too, Mr Foster. I’ll speak to my daughter and if there's any trouble I’ll deal with it.” Elena stood and adjusted her blouse. “I’d like to take Millie home now.”

“Good good.” He stood, adjusting the wrinkles in his waistcoat, and offered Elena a hand. “Thank you for meeting with me at such short notice, Mrs Hayes. I’ll call ahead and have Millicent brought to reception.”

“It’s Millie,” Elena said.

Mr Foster slowly lowered his hand to his side.

“I’m sorry?”

“My daughter, we… I call her Millie, not Millicent.”

“Oh, I do apologise,” Mr Foster said, a big generous smile returning to his face. “Would you like me to make a note for her name to be changed on the register?”

What am I doing? Elena thought. They’ve called her Millicent at school for the last year. I'm going to make them change it now just because I'm angry with Charles over a decision I let him make six years ago? I can't punish Millie for my mistakes.

“No, it’s fine. I’m a little rattled, that’s all. No need to change it.”

“Good, good. Would you like to take this with you, or should we keep it here for the time being?” Mr Foster tapped at Millie’s drawing on the desk.

She didn’t want the thing anywhere near her, but she knew she'd need it when she talked to Millie about Chloe. “Best if I have it,” she said.

“Good, good.”

Elena fixed on the drawing as she waited for Millie at reception. The chaos of swirls and angry colours around the little girl were disturbing, but the eyes were worse. Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue. Those two holes punched into the paper by an angry hand were not the work of her daughter. They were the work of a child she hadn’t met and never wanted to meet.

2

From the kitchen door, Elena watched her daughter. Millie sat at the patio table, hunched in concentration over a drawing. The last of the afternoon sun trapped her in an oblong of light that reminded Elena of the Edward Hopper painting ‘A Woman in the Sun’.

Six weeks had passed since Millie had drawn her friend in the fire. Despite a few tears and one sleepless night it was as if the event had never taken place. Elena wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or not, but Millie was doing okay and that was all that mattered. No need for any of Mr Foster’s therapists, it seemed.

Elena walked out through the reaching shadows into what was left of the sunlight. “Treats time,” she said, placing a tray with chocolate biscuits and glasses of strawberry milkshake on the table.

“Not done yet. Just a little bit longer, mummy.”

“Okay, Millie Moo. Must be a really important drawing if you’re turning down treats.”

“It is. Really important.”

“Yes?”

“Oh yes, mummy, very important. It’s daddy. It’s for daddy.”

Elena sat and peeked at the paper. There were a few splashes of blue and red, but nothing she could make out.

“You’re drawing daddy?” she said, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice.

It’s a miracle she even remembers what he looks like, Elena thought. He’s gone before she wakes in the morning. Most nights he returns after she’s in bed.

“Yes, nearly finished. Just another minute, I promise,” Millie said.

“Don’t concentrate too hard, Millie Moo. You’ll hurt your eyes.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

Elena sipped at a milkshake and leaned back in the chair. The sun stretched her lips into a smile. The city was a whispered rumour beyond the birdsong and the scratch-scratch of Millie's pencil. Everything was right with the world.

The Edward Hopper painting returned to Elena’s mind. A woman naked and alone in a green bedroom with an unlit cigarette in her hand. An oblong of yellow light from the window trapping her in its glow. She was lost, joyless.

There’d been a time when Elena felt an affinity for the woman. Despite the large house and the opportunities London offered, she’d found herself feeling trapped, doubtful questions in her mind. Do I love Charles? How can I love a man who I see so infrequently? How can I love a man who keeps so much hidden about himself?

Those thoughts had thankfully died down when Millie arrived.

“Done!” Millie shouted, holding up her drawing.

Elena leaned forward, adjusting her sight away from the sun and onto the paper. A blue pencilled skyscraper dominated the centre of the page, its floors exposed in cross-section. Each floor was furnished with scratchy oversized drawings of desks and chairs. A clock on the wall showed the time was midday or midnight. It was an office, Charles’ office from the colour of it, Elena thought. But there was something off in the picture. Where there should have been stick figure workers behind their desks, instead they lay on the ground, sleeping.

Sleeping people in an office? Elena thought. Why would Millie draw the people in the building asleep?

Elena looked closer. The stick figure sleepers had Xs instead of dot eyes, but there were no Zs floating out above their heads to indicate sleep.

Were they dead? Why would Millie draw all the people in Charles' office as dead?

Elena counted them, floor by floor. Thirteen dead or sleeping people before she reached the top of the blue pencilled skyscraper.

Her sun-warmed smile faded.

There were two inhabitants on the top floor. A dead sleeper on the ground, his eyes closed with Xs, and next to him a stick figure man with an angry black smudge for a head. He held a stick figure gun in his hand, bullets like Morse code dashes shooting from its tip into the man on the floor.

Elena held a breath.

Charles? Was that Charles on the floor? He worked at the top of the office building, but would Millie remember that from her one and only visit the year earlier? Elena thought.

“Millie?” Elena said, trying not to let fear creep into her voice.

No good. Millie sensed the fear immediately.

“Are you okay, mummy?” she said.

“I’m fine. I just want to know why you drew this picture.”

Millie stared at the drawing in confusion. “Why?”

“Yes, why did you draw it?”

“I saw it.”

“You saw this?”

Millie shrugged, then nodded nervously. “Yes, mummy.”

“You mean you saw it in your mind? You imagined it, like pretending?”

“No.”

She couldn’t have seen it, Elena thought. Like she couldn’t have seen Chloe die in the fire when nobody had told her? Like that? Like how she insisted over and over again she’d seen it all happen, but I let it slide and hoped it was shock and nothing more? Like that?

“What is it you saw, exactly, Millie?”

“I saw daddy and the man. The man fired the gun and daddy fell down. Like the boys do in the playground.”

“Where did you see this, Millie?”

“Mummy?”

“Where did you see this happen?”

“I—I—”

“Come on now, Millie. Don’t lie to your mummy. Please tell me where you saw this.”

She didn’t see it, Elena thought. She can’t have seen this, because it’s a drawing, that’s all. She imagined it, just as any other child would imagine it.

Or someone told her. But who? Who would—Charles?

“Did daddy tell you to draw this, Millie? Did daddy tell you a story and you drew it?”

Millie jammed both her hands beneath her legs and wagged her head hard to the left and right in a ‘no’.

“Are you sure now, Millie? Are you sure daddy didn’t tell you a scary story and that’s what this is all about?”

If he did, I’ll make him sleep on the couch for a month, the fool! No. He can sleep in the greenhouse, that’ll teach him, Elena thought.

“I saw it,” Millie said.

“Now, Millie, we’ve already discussed this, haven’t we? Do you remember what we talked about after Chloe?”

“Yes,” Millie said, her voice a hush.

“You remember what we said about how you shouldn’t lie? About how there’s a difference between what’s real and what’s pretend?”

Millie nodded, but there was defiance in the movement. It was as if she’d been told she had to go to bed, but didn’t want to.

“So…this drawing, it’s not real, is it? It’s just something…just play pretend, isn't it?” Elena said.

“No.”

Elena felt her annoyance rising. “Millie, don’t play silly beggars with me now.”

“I’m not, mummy. I saw the man shoot daddy and then daddy fell down.”

“No, no you didn't.”

“I did.”

“Millie, please.”

“I saw it.”

“Millicent Hayes!” Elena shouted, but it wasn’t her voice. It was Charles’ bark.

Millicent, only Charles ever used that name with her. Only he would shout at her in such a way.

Millie’s lip began to wobble. Tears weren’t too far away. “I… II…just saw it, that’s…that’s…all,” she said, the words a sob.

Look at what I've done now. It's what my mother did to me, only she did it with silence.

Elena pulled Millie into a hug. “Oh, I’m sorry, Millie Moo. Mummy was just worried, that’s all. Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she said, kissing her daughter’s head. “I won’t ever do that again. I promise.”

“You’re not mad at me?”

Elena pulled back and saw the tears silvering Millie’s eyes. “No, no, I’m not mad. Your mummy is a big Silly Billy, that’s all it is. As long as you’re all right, that’s all that matters. You are okay aren’t you, Millie Moo?”

Millie nodded and buried her head deep into Elena’s shoulder.

“Everything’s going to be fine. Don’t you worry,” Elena said.

Millie’s drawing sat on the table, the corner turned up, a separate drawing revealed on the rear. Elena reached out and flipped the paper over to reveal the sketch beneath.

It was smaller, simpler, yet more terrifying. A stick figure man and woman stood at the top of what looked like a ladder. The stick figure man held a knife in his hand above the stick figure woman’s head. Beneath the two were the words ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’.

3

Elena stared at Millie’s drawings for far too long. A stick figure shooting another stick figure. Mummy and daddy stick figures with daddy holding a knife. All the product of a child’s imagination, yet….

By late evening Elena sat at her drawing table in the small studio at the rear of the house. Her phone lay on her lap, Charles’ contact details opened on the screen. His picture looked back at her with stern blue eyes. Even in a still image it was as if he were judging her, watching for any mistakes she might be making.

Like calling him? she thought. That’s a big mistake, isn’t it? What am I going to say? 'Hello Charles! Oh, you’re alive? You see, it’s like this, our bright little daughter drew you being shot and holding a knife over my head. I just wanted to check if you’re still breathing or if you’re planning to kill me any time soon.'

Elena hit the green call button and instantly thumbed the red bar to disconnect.

I can’t just call him. I can’t just come out and say all that crazy stuff. I need some kind of excuse if he’s there. That’s if he even answers. If he even can answer.

She felt a heavy drop in her stomach. A wave of fear followed that stole a breath.

Millie drew Chloe dying in a fire and Chloe died in a fire. Maybe if Millie draws Charles being shot then he’ll be—

Call! Tell him to pick up some milk on his way home. Just make up an excuse to check on him.

The thought made her giggle nervously. When have I ever asked him to pick up milk? I can’t just act like we have a normal Mr and Mrs relationship now after all these years. I should just go with the truth; we need to talk about Millie.

She hit the green connect button. The phone rang twice, three times, four times, five.

Millie’s drawing flashed before her eyes again; the stick figure man shooting his Morse code dash bullets into…into…

Elena pushed the phone in closer to her ear. The panicked thud of blood in her ears thumped against the protective glass. Oh Christ! It’s true. He’s been shot. How is it possible?

“Elena?”

“You’re alive.” The words came out in a rush of breath before she could stop them.

“I’d very much hope so. What’s going on?”

She opened up the side door of the studio and stepped out into the early evening, her face hot with embarrassment. The last of the sun had given way to a purple twilight. A moon as thin and grey as tracing paper sat in the sky. It was a beautiful evening, one to be savoured not wasted on words with Charles, especially crazy ones.

“Nothing, Charles. Nothing you’d be interested in anyway.”

“So you phoned to tell me I wouldn’t be interested? That’s a strange reason to call, let me tell you.”

Elena turned to the rear of the house and spied Millie’s bedroom window above. The blinds were closed, but an astronomical night light cast a twinkling star field across the ceiling. She slept there, beneath the false stars, amongst her collection of dolls and teddy bears, innocent to the worries of the adult world below. Elena wished she could keep her that way forever.

“Your daughter misses you,” she said.

“She does?”

Elena thought she sensed hope mixed in with Charles’ question. Not much hope, but more than she’d heard from him in a long time when it came to Millie. “Of course she does. She’s your daughter, Charles. Why wouldn’t she miss you?”

“Did she say so?”

“She doesn’t have to.”

“Then how do you know? Last time she bothered to talk to me was when she wanted an ice cream. Then she ran off again to your side. She’s mummy’s little girl.”

“That’s not fair.”

“It’s the truth, though, as you well know it. I may as well be a walking piggy bank for all the love that girl shows me.”

There was no real anger in his voice, Elena thought. It was as if he was reading from one of his quarterly investment reports.

“’That girl’?” she said.

Charles fell silent. A door opened in his office. A voice bubbled up as if spoken underwater.

“Charles, are you still there?” Elena said.

“Of course I am. Where else would I be?”

“How about home? How about you come home and be a father to your daughter?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means fathers are usually at home more than a few hours a week, and when they’re home they spend more than ten minutes with their children, Charles.”

“Do you know how hard it is right now? The markets are in panic. We’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth here.”

It was the first she’d heard of troubles at the office, but that was no surprise to Elena. Charles didn’t speak of his work. It was another hidden part of him.

“Our daughter is suffering.”

“Is Millie hurt or not?”

“Not physically, no.”

“Then how, Elena? Tell me how she’s suffering.”

Us! You and I, Charles, she thought. It doesn’t take one of Mr Foster’s trained therapists to make a diagnosis here. I’ve got a bright, sensitive little girl who knows my relationship with you is dying. Just as I knew with my mother and father when their marriage fell apart. I drew faeries in the forest. Millie is drawing fire, gunshots and knives.

There was no relief in the realisation. Elena felt a cold more chilling than the night air across her body.

“It’s us Charles. You and me. The way we are with each other. She’s picking up on all of it. We’re hurting her and I think she’s acting out.”

“How so?”

Oh, just drawing you being shot to death and holding a knife over my head, that’s all. “The drawing, Charles. Have you forgotten the drawing of Chloe, her friend?”

“Oh, come on now. Drawing a picture isn’t a big deal.”

“I think it is.”

“Why?”

“It isn’t just the one drawing. There are more.”

“So? One drawing or a dozen. She doesn’t seem so different in my eyes.”

“You’re not around here enough to see any differences, Charles.”

She could hear his fingers drum angrily on his desk.

“Fine! I haven’t been around. I’ll admit as much. Through no fault of my own with all that’s going on. So what do you think we should do about this problem, if it even is a problem, Elena?”

“We need to talk. We need to sit down and figure this thing out as parents. That means you at home, Charles. It means us having a civil conversation with each other for more than five minutes.”

“When?”

“Oh, I don’t know, now, maybe. Weeks ago, probably,” Elena said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

His fingers drummed the desk, then stopped abruptly. “Ten o’clock,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ll be home at ten.”

“You will?”

“Do you want to talk or not?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then ten it is, but I have one condition.”

Considering it was their daughter’s well-being on the line, Charles sounded like he was making arrangements for a lunch meeting with a colleague.

“Condition?” Elena asked.

“Millicent. I don’t want her there when we talk. I don’t want her in the house overhearing us. It has to be you and me. Alone.”

“And where exactly is she supposed to go at that time of night?”

“Take her to that babysitter we hired last year. Carol. She was good. Millicent liked her.”

Millie, Elena mouthed quietly through gritted teeth. “And what do I tell Millie?”

“Tell her what you tell the babysitter; you’re doing some last-minute work, and you need to be alone for a few hours.”

“If she misses you here, Charles, she’ll be upset.”

“I doubt it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If you’re correct about me being such a terrible father she won’t care if I’m there or not, will she?”

“That’s unfair.”

“No. No it isn’t. What’s unfair is you using our daughter to guilt me into coming home. That’s what’s unfair.”

Elena opened her mouth to speak, but embarrassment stole her voice. When she spoke all she could manage was a weak refusal. “Rubbish.”

“Come on now, Elena. It’s you that wants me there, and I’m guessing it isn’t to kiss and make up. We’re far beyond that point now. We have been for a long time.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Charles.”

She did. She wondered if Millie knew the same or had at least sensed it.

“Us, Elena. It’s about us. I know that. You know that. Why don’t you drop the act?”

“It’s not an act, Charles. We do need to talk, but it’s Millie I’m most concerned about.”

“Fine, then make sure she’s out of the house when I come home. Alone we can talk. If she’s there…”

We won’t be able to have a stand-up, shouting row? Is that it? she thought. If Millie is here you won’t be able to scream at me? You won’t be able to stab me like in the picture?

I have to stop this, she told herself. I’ll go crazy thinking this way. He’s never screamed at me in his life. He’s barked a few times, but he’s not like that at all. He’s certainly not going to stab me, no matter what Millie drew. I have to calm down.

“Okay. I’ll take Millie to Carol’s. You’ll be here at ten?”

“I will.”

“We’ll talk?”

“We will.”

“Fine.”

She put the phone down, then whispered to herself, “Love you too”.

4

A familiar silence shrouded the house. It was the silence of her parents’ tiny red house in Iceland. It was the same quiet left behind after her parent’s marriage fell apart.

Elena sat at the dining room table with a glass of wine poured and ignored, and Millie’s drawings laid out face down before her. A single word dominated her mind, frightening in its finality: divorce.

That word had flitted through her mind on occasion, but never with any seriousness. Now it was a solid, immovable object. Their marriage had come to an end. It was over and only the battle lay ahead.

It’s not going to be easy, Elena thought. Charles won’t make it easy. And how easy will it be for Millie? Christ! It’s probably our fault she is the way she is right now. It’s not going to get any better if we divorce.

Is it our fault, though? Are we to blame for Millie’s behaviour or is it something else? What else could it be?

Her rational mind refused an answer, but that part of her that could create whole worlds from pencil and paper was more forthcoming.

Millie isn’t playing pretend. She’s actually seeing what she draws, Elena thought.

It was a silly notion. There was no evidence, only a vague dread she felt every time she looked at the drawings. Charles would dismiss the idea, of course, but there was still a part of Elena that believed in the fairy tales she’d heard growing up in Iceland. A deep part of her being where the witches lived in their gingerbread houses and the huldufólk danced in the shadows.

Forget these silly notions, she thought. This isn’t the time for faeries and huldufólk. It’s time to face up to what’s going on in my relationship. I've got to ask for a divorce.

She took a sip of wine. It warmed her stomach, but couldn’t take away her fear.

Charles will fight me every step of the way. He’ll treat me like he treats his damned financial markets, and make sure he wins, no matter the cost on Millie.

The thought chilled her.

Will Millie have to suffer the same as I did when my parents divorced? she thought.

A picture of her father came to mind for the first time in years. She couldn't recall his face. Over the years she’d reduced his memory to that of beard and knitted pullover, the smell of cherry tobacco and a silver-grey cloud of pipe smoke.

After the divorce he’d rented a small house in Kópavogu. She’d visited him once a year until she left Iceland for studies in London. Then it was every few years and then not at all. It was always a fleeting visit if she did see him and always the same experience. He would sit in his high-backed chair, a book in hand, and a pipe in his mouth. He would say ‘Halló’ and ask her how her mother was before losing himself in the pages once again. Those weekends would tick by as slowly as the hands on the clock she watched now in her own dining room.

He’d died in his sleep the year before Millie was born. As silent in death as he had become in life. She still couldn’t place his face in her mind, but remembered vividly his body at rest. His hands were crossed over each other in the coffin, small and soft like a child's. A weathered tobacco pouch and pipe was laid out on his chest with the same reverence given to a crucifix or rosary beads. Even with all the freshly cut flowers in the chapel, the smell of cherry tobacco lingered in the air as pungent as incense.

I grew up in silences, she thought. The silence of a mother who kept me at an arm’s length, and the silence of a father who had retreated so deep into himself he never returned. I won’t let it be the same with Millie. I can’t let it be that way if I divorce Charles.

Elena’s gaze drifted to the ceiling. Just above was Millie's bedroom.

Her room was decorated in pinks and purples, frills and bows, sugar and spice and all things nice. It was everything a little girl wanted and everything she wanted her little girl to have.

Elena felt a pang of fear at the thought of her daughter's innocence being disturbed, or worse, ruined by a divorce.

It'll be fine, she reassured herself, reaching for the wine. We'll discuss the details tonight. We'll hash out a plan that will make sure Millie doesn't have to suffer. A couple of months from now everything will be forgotten and this will all just be a memory. If Charles fights me then—

Elena gulped half the glass of wine down in one go. The pep talk in her head wasn’t working. The doubts remained about Millie and Charles.

She focused on the drawings; her gaze fixed on the stick figure man as he fired his stick figure gun at a stick figure Charles. A boy drawing a backyard war might have produced this, but not a little girl, not her little girl.

What are little boys made of?

Slugs and snails and puppy-dogs' tails.

And what are little girls made of?

I wish I knew, Elena thought in answer to the rhyme. Maybe this would be easier if Millie was a boy. Would a son drawing fire and bullets raise the same concern with teachers? Would I have expected all of that as part of a normal boy’s young life, just as I expected my little girl to play with dolls and teddy bears?

She slid the drawing of Chloe toward herself. The little girl was marked in angry blacks, her eyes torn in the paper taking on the mahogany colour of the dining table beneath.

A spike of fear ran through her. She flipped the drawing over and pushed it away.

She was still no closer to how Millie had known her friend had died. There was no clue as to who had told her, or if she’d even been told. All Millie would say was, “I saw it, mummy.”

There was no fear attached, only sadness when Millie was reminded of Chloe.

“I saw it, mummy.”

Impossible. No matter what I feel, I have to look at this logically. Look at it how Charles would—

She didn’t get to finish the thought, as a key turned in the door.

5

Elena snatched up the glass of wine from the table and gulped the last of it down in one go.

A moment later Charles walked through the living room and stood at the threshold to the dining room. He stared at Elena like she was an uninvited guest.

“I didn’t realise I was attending an interview,” he said as he pulled out a chair and sat at the opposite end of the dining table. He lay his briefcase out on the surface, but didn’t open it. “I would have brought along a CV with me.”

“I'm sure you would have, Charles. Always prepared.”

“It pays to be prepared.”

He lay his gloved hands on top of the briefcase. He wore the expensive pair she’d bought him as a Christmas present three years earlier. They were usually stored in a corner of the walk-in wardrobe where he kept all his ignored gifts. She called it the ‘Museum of Abandoned Affections’.

Is he trying to win favour by wearing those gloves? Elena thought. “Let's both try our best for Millie, shall we?” she said.

He nodded distractedly as though Elena had just asked him to pass over the financial section from the paper. “Go on,” he said.

Look at you, Charles. What did you become? Were you always this way and I just didn’t want to know? You’re a stock-photograph of a businessman sat there in your tailored suit and blue silk tie. This isn't a husband and wife affair. This is another business meeting for you.

A feeling of disgust bubbled up in Elena.

“Well, Elena. I’m here. Now what?” Charles said.

Elena blinked out of her stare. “What?” she said.

“This problem you think is so important you'd have me come home in the middle of one of the worst financial crises in history?” Charles said.

“Us, Charles. That's the problem. I don't know how much simpler I can put it.”

“And Millicent?”

“Millie,” she said.

“Still insisting on that name, are you? Her name is Millicent on the birth certificate, so that’s what I’ll call her.”

“You won’t budge, will you? Not even a little?”

“Why should I?”

“Because Millicent is not a name for a six-year-old girl, that’s why. Because Millie fits her better. Because she likes it. How about that, Charles? Our daughter likes Millie more than Millicent.”

“Our daughter is not the best judge of what is good for her. That’s something we get to decide as parents.”

“Something you decided, don’t you mean?”

“We decided. I didn’t force your hand. It says Millicent on the birth certificate, so Millicent it is. It’s you, Elena, who is being stubborn here.”

She knew this back-and-forth could go on all night and still get them nowhere. “Forget it, Charles, just forget it. We need to talk about what we’re doing, about how we’re affecting her.”

“We are, are we? You’re sure of that?”

“You in particular, but I'm just as much to blame.”

“So it's my fault, is that right?”

“No, I didn't say that, but our daughter is acting out. I think she's scared, and she's even more scared when you're around.”

His head snapped up. She saw fire in his eyes. Not the small spark she noticed when they’d argued in the past, or when he’d chastised Millie about some trivial matter, but a deep flame.

“Millie is not scared of me,” Charles said.

“Maybe scared is the wrong word, but you must have noticed how quiet she gets when you're at home.” When you actually gift us with your presence, she thought.

“I don't believe it for a second,” Charles said. “You’ve filled the girl’s head with all kinds of nonsense, that’s the problem. You mollycoddle her.”

“If you were here more than five minutes a week, you'd see that our daughter is sensitive, Charles.”

Charles wagged his head and sighed as though he was dealing with an irritation. “You wrap her up in cotton wool. You treat her as though nothing should ever upset her.”

“Good. She's six years old. She's still a baby. She gets to be pampered for a few more years before she has to have the weight of the world dropped on her shoulders.”

Charles made a snorting sound like he was trying to clear his sinuses. “Pampered? It wouldn't be so bad if that's all it was, Elena, but the way you treat her is not pampering.”

“And how is it I treat my daughter, exactly?”

“Our daughter,” he said.

“Our daughter.”

“Just forget it, Elena.”

“No, I won't forget it.”

“You won't listen, anyway. You never listen to anybody but yourself.”

“Oh, is that right?”

He sighed. “I won’t get bogged down in this nonsense. Not now.”

“Feel free, Charles. Please tell me how much of a selfish person I happen to be.”

“I'm not going to do that, Elena. Not now. If you want to fight, we'll do it another day. I came here to talk, just like you asked. So let’s talk.”

Wine and anger flushed her cheeks. “You'll schedule me in for the fight, will you? Got something free a month from now, or is that a little too early?”

“I'm not rising to this. If you want to have an adult conversation, then I'm here, just as you asked.”

There it was, the matter-of-fact tone in his voice. Any fire she'd seen in his eyes was gone. Here sat Charles, the stock photograph businessman to the very end, even if it happened to be the end of their marriage.

“Okay, fine. An adult conversation, just like you asked.”

Beat him at his own game, Elena thought. If he wants this to go down like an interview with a bank manager, then let it be that way. Let's just see how calm he is ten minutes from now when I drop the bomb and tell him I want a divorce.

“I think Millie is suffering. I think she's been suffering this last year, maybe longer, because our marriage isn't working, and I think Millie is picking up on all the bad feelings between us.”

He nodded, but it wasn't an indication of agreement. He sat and stared at Elena long enough for a heavy silence to settle between them.

“Well?” Elena said, breaking it.

“I agree,” he said.

“You do?”

“In part, yes. The marriage isn't working, you're right, but I don't think it's upsetting Millicent. Not at all.”

“You don't?”

“I've seen no evidence of that, Elena. None at all. You’re upset, that's obvious. Millie is fine.”

“How would you know?”

“I know my daughter, Elena. Believe it or not, I know you too.”

The matter-of-fact tone had turned quickly to condescension. It was the voice of someone talking down to their lesser.

“You do?” she said.

He nodded. “It's easy enough to figure out. You want a divorce. You couldn't just come out and say that a few years ago when these feelings probably began for you. You needed some kind of excuse. It's always been that way with you. You’ve always couched your decisions in some drama or another.”

Elena’s hands became fists. “You're right, I do want a divorce. The rest though? The rest you're dead wrong about. Millie is suffering.”

“Millie is fine. She'll be fine once all this is over with too,” Charles said.

“She is not fine. This is not our daughter being fine, Charles.”

Elena pushed the drawings across the dining room table.

Charles turned them over and looked at them with disinterest. “There's nothing here to be concerned about,” he said.

“It's not fine for our daughter to draw you being shot and killed, is it?”

He moved the drawings about before him. “This is me is it, on the floor?”

“Yes, Charles.”

“Nonsense,” he said.

“It’s not nonsense.”

Charles tapped the front of the drawing. “This proves absolutely nothing, except maybe your overreaction.”

Elena gritted her teeth. “Our daughter is drawing pictures of girls burning alive in fires and her father being shot to death. That's not an overreaction, Charles. That's what Millie is seeing.”

“Seeing? What do you mean, seeing?”

She hadn't seen. Millie couldn't have seen any of these things, yet Elena couldn't shake the feeling there was something more than the feelings of a sensitive six-year-old pouring out onto the paper.

“Seeing, you know, in her imagination. She's seeing these things and then drawing them. That's not fine, Charles.”

“They seem to be a little on the darker side, yes,” Charles said, as he looked the drawings over once again. “But I've seen some of your drawings from when you were a child. They weren’t exactly sunshine and roses either.”

“Exactly, Charles. Exactly.”

“Exactly what?”

“You don't remember, do you?”

“Remember what?”

“I told you about my parents’ divorce? How I spent all my time alone, drawing?”

“Yes, yes. Of course, I remember,” Charles said.

“Well then, you'll remember how I dealt with it all through my drawings. I was older, but it's the same situation, the same reaction Millie is having now.”

Charles glanced at the drawings before him. “Okay, Elena. Let's say I believe what you're telling me. Let’s say Millie has some problems because of us. What is it you think we should do?”

“A divorce, Charles. Didn't I already say as much?”

“That's it, a divorce? That's the solution, you think? Nothing more? No therapy, no doctors? We just split up and Millie will be fine?”

“Perhaps some therapy would be a good idea. First, let's get the divorce settled and decide on visitation and…” She didn't finish.

The look on Charles' face was one of victory. His thin lips turned up a little at the edges, approaching a smile. She'd seen that face before when he'd managed to browbeat her into accepting his ideas above her own.

“What is it?” Elena said.

“Nothing, just…”

“Just what?”

“I thought it would be harder, that’s all.”

“What would be harder?”

“This.” Charles waved a gloved hand as though pointing out the whole room. “Tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was convinced I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. Now I’m here, now I’ve heard what you have to say, I’m fine with it.”

“The divorce?”

Charles nodded slowly, purposefully. “Do you have papers? Have you been to a solicitor yet?” he said.

“No… I… I didn’t… I mean…”

Is this a tactic? Is he trying to put me off? Elena wondered. What could he possibly gain?

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll put you in contact with our firm. I'll charge it to the company account of course. You won't have to pay.”

“Are you kidding me? Is this some kind of cruel joke you’re playing?”

“Why would I do that?”

“You’re not going to contest the divorce?”

“Why?”

Because you love me, and you can’t live without me, the romantic part of her brain suggested. Because I’ve been wrong all along and there’s some part of you that needs to be with me, and us as a family.

“I don’t know. I just…you don’t seem upset at all.”

“It’s not working, so why prolong the inevitable? If you file the papers on Monday, you’ll have the Decree Nisi within two weeks. The Decree Complete will come four weeks after that. Eight to twelve weeks all in all, give or take.”

“You’ve already looked into all this?”

“You haven’t?”

Elena was struck dumb. She’d expected the fight to be harder, longer. She’d been prepared for a battle, not this capitulation.

“Eight to twelve weeks?” she said, numbly repeating the words as a question.

“About that. It’s not an overnight thing. Speaking of such, I’d like to pack an overnight case with some clothes and other items, if that’s okay with you?”

“For what?”

“I’ve rented a flat nearer to the City, so I’ll need my shaving kit and some clothes. Best get them tonight while I’m here. The rest you can box up and I’ll have them collected.”

It was happening. For all the thoughts in her head, the reality was a lot colder and harsher.

“Just like that?” she said.

“I’d rather we not prolong this. We’ll both feel better if we do this quickly and without any fuss.”

“Fine. Whatever you want.”

“It’s what you want as well, Elena,” he said, standing.

“It is,” she said, but the words came out with a hollow ring. “What about Millie?”

“What about her?”

“What are your thoughts on custody? We haven’t discussed any of the details about what happens next. We can’t just leave it like this.”

He shrugged. “Whatever you want. I won’t fight it. Millie, the house, whatever.”

“You won’t?”

“Unless you’re completely unreasonable. I don’t think you’re that, are you, Elena?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Then fine. Let’s make this as painless as possible. Agreed?”

She nodded.

It wasn’t painless though. Not for her. Charles wasn’t angry, he wasn’t argumentative, he wasn’t how Charles should have been and that cut deeper.

He left the room without another word and Elena alone in silence.

6

The ticking of the clock was Elena's only company. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen, by the time twenty minutes came around, she started to worry.

What is he doing up there? she thought. He said an overnight case, didn’t he? It can’t take more than ten minutes to pick some clothes from the wardrobe and fill a case.

She walked over to the door that led out into the hall and took a step out from one silence into another.

The hallway was dark. Spilled light from the dining room stained the carpet yellow at her feet. A set of stairs were hidden in the blackness. The only way to know they existed was her memory of them.

For a moment she wasn’t in a house in London, but a cave in Iceland where all the monsters and beasts of her childhood nightmares waited.

Elena shivered. There were no monsters in the darkness, just a man she no longer loved.

Guided by memories, Elena walked out through the darkness to the foot of the stairs.

“Charles? Charles?” she whispered up into the darkness.

Nothing. Their bedroom sat at the end of a long landing, but not so far away Charles couldn’t hear her from the bottom of the stairs, even at a whisper.

“Charles? Do you need any help up there?”

Elena folded her arms, and waited for his voice.

Nothing.

“Charles? Do you hear me? Charles?”

A crazy thought that Charles might have killed himself flitted through Elena’s mind. She’d bought him an expensive shaving kit the Christmas before, with a badger brush and cut-throat razor. It had sat in the bathroom cabinet for a year, as unused as anything in the ‘Museum of Abandoned Affections’.

Unused until now, her fearful mind suggested.

No. Charles isn't the type to slit his wrists, she thought. Why would he do such a thing anyway? Over a divorce he seemed affable in granting?

Still, Elena couldn’t shake her irrational fear. She forgot the darkness and bounded up the stairs. She hit the bathroom door at a run. It swung wide with a loud, hollow clunk as it connected with the ceramic wall tiles. The outline of the bathtub came into view like a faint ghost. There was no stain on it. No dark shadows where a man or his spilled blood might be.

If there was blood, I’d smell it, Elena thought.

She sniffed. The citrus sting of Charles’ Creed Pure White aftershave lingered in the air. It reminded her of fruit gone out of date. There was no scent of blood, spilled or otherwise.

She trudged out from the bathroom and towards the bedroom as if carrying a new weight.

What if he’s in there? What if he’s sprawled out on the bed with both of his wrists cut and his blood all over the sheets?

Elena lost a breath as she reached for the bedroom door. She pulled on the handle and stopped halfway.

I can’t do this, she thought. I can’t go in there and see him dead. For all he is, for all the love we’ve lost, I still love him on some level, don't I? I still don't want to see him come to harm.

“Charles?” she whispered, hoping for a response from the other side. “Charles? What are you doing in there? Are you okay?”

The silence seemed thicker after her words. Elena sucked in a breath, jammed the door handle down and flung the door wide.

A snowdrift of white street lamp light spilled in through the bedroom window. Under the drift everything was calm and undisturbed. The bed was made, all corners tucked in. The doors to the walk-in wardrobe were closed shut. No Charles. No blood.

What the Hell is going on? she thought.

“Charles? Charles, where are you? What are you doing?” she said as she walked back to the top of the stairs and glared into the deep well of darkness below. “Charles? Are you down there? Answer me.”

He must have gone downstairs when I was in the bathroom, Elena told herself. Somehow, I didn't hear him and he didn't hear me.

No, he wasn't below, he was behind. The stinging scent of his aftershave crowded in around her like a heavy cloud about to break. His breath as it ran across the back of her neck was the rumble of thunder. A thought struck like lightning—he’s going to kill me!

The picture Millie had drawn of ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’ standing at the top of the ladder came to Elena’s mind. It wasn’t a ladder, it was stairs, she realised.

Elena’s heart thudded loudly enough to drown out the silence.

He’s going to kill me. That’s why he didn’t answer. It’s why he’s not saying anything right now. He didn't come here to end a marriage. He came here to end me!

She felt the static crackle of Charles’ nearness, as strong a charge as if she were standing next to a street lamp or pylon.

He’s going to kill me! I’ll never see Millie again. I have to do something. I have to fight, she thought, but she couldn't move.

“Mummy? Is that you? Mummy, I’m scared.”

The door to Millie’s room crept open. The false stars and constellations leaked out onto the landing as Millie left the room.

Please don’t let her see him do this to me. Please don't let him do anything to her!

“It’s okay, Millie,” Charles said from behind Elena, his voice shaking. “It’s just your daddy and mummy, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.”

His voice sounded broken and scared, like a child who’d been caught stealing money from his mother’s purse.

Elena broke the lock on her limbs. She ran out across the landing and swept Millie up into her arms. Millie safely in her grip, Elena stared at Charles. The fake stars from Millie’s room weren’t enough to make out his face, just his shadow at the top of the stairs.

“Go,” Elena said.

“I—”

“Go now.”

“Elena don’t do—”

“Go, Charles. Go now!”

There was a force in her voice she didn’t recognise. A ferocity born from instinct. She would protect her daughter with her life and take any life that got in the way, Charles included.

“You said she wasn’t going to be here,” Charles said. “You agreed to take her to Carol’s.”

“Carol wasn’t there. You’d better go. Right now, Charles. Right now!”

He took a step toward them.

Elena hugged Millie tight against her chest. “I won’t say it again, Charles. Go!”

“Mummy?” Millie murmured into Elena’s shoulder.

“It’s okay. Your daddy is leaving now. Aren’t you, Charles? You’re going to leave us both alone now, aren’t you?”

The silence was a lifetime between them.

Eventually Charles’ shadow shifted. He walked silently into the deeper darkness at the bottom of the stairs without a word. The front door slammed shut, leaving a darker silence behind.

7

Two weeks passed with thoughts of Charles plaguing her. Thoughts Elena couldn’t take any longer. She had to get away, and there was only one place she knew might be safe.

With Millie tucked into bed, Elena retreated to the drawing desk in her studio to make a call she knew had to be made. She stared at the contacts list on her phone. It had been a long time since she’d been anywhere near ‘I’ on that list. Now she clicked it.

I for Ida. Not M for mother, or mum as most people would have it. I for Ida. I for Iceland too.

Five times she brought up her mother’s number and five times she swiped the number away. After a half hour of pacing she left the studio behind and walked the house instead.

She won’t want me there, that’s for sure, Elena thought. The last time was five years ago and that went about as badly as could be. It was like staying at a guest house.

Elena walked to Charles’ study door and hesitated as she always did. He’d made a fuss in the past about her entering without knocking. Can’t be fussy if he’s not here, Elena thought as she strode into the study.

It was as sterile a place as an Ikea showroom. The smell of plastic permeated the air as if the room was fresh out of the packaging. A matt black desk occupied a space beneath the window. A black leather swivel chair sat before it. There were no pictures on Charles' desk of her or Millie.

Elena approached the 60’ TV fixed to the wall and saw herself trapped in the mirror of its surface. She saw a version of her mother looking back, cold and harsh.

Charles’ fault, she thought, a sudden anger rising in her. He turned me this way. Too many years of his silences, of his absences, of his stupid rules.

“You wouldn't walk into any other office without knocking, would you? Why is it any different here at home?” he’d asked her when she dared enter the room uninvited.

I'm in your bloody office now, Charles, look! She twirled around as though he might be able to see her transgression. What do you think now, Charles? How does this sit with you?

The thought of him angry over the small invasion of his privacy made her briefly happy. Happier still when she saw the remote control. She yanked it off the desk and gripped it in her hand like a hammer.

It wouldn’t take much to crack the TV screen. Charles had been careful to explain to her how fragile it happened to be. He’d explained it to her as if she was a child prone to clumsiness.

Let’s see, Charles. Let’s see if you were right. She pulled her arm back, her fingers mashing the buttons on the remote.

The TV came to life. It roared out the intro to a BBC NEWS24 program, all loud drums and shrieking strings. Elena stabbed at the volume button until it was down to a less child-waking level.

The news was all Charles watched on his precious TV. Not that any of it had reached him, she supposed. He wasn't concerned about dead migrants, or suffering. All that mattered was how the events influenced his precious markets.

Bastard.

She gripped the remote hard, feeling the anger boil in her again. I’m going to smash his bloody TV. His computer too. I should go upstairs and cut all of his expensive, tailored suits to bits. I should pack the shreds into an overnight case and burn the whole bloody lot in the garden.

Elena’s teeth ground against each other. Can’t do it yet, I have to call Ida. I have to find out if she’ll pick us up from the airport. I have to do that before I do anything else.

She took a step back from the TV and let go of her iron grip on the remote. At Charles' desk, she brought up her mother’s number on her phone.

You've reduced me to this, you bastard. I told myself I’d never call her again. I didn’t need her in my life, or Millie’s life. One day I’m going to make you pay for this, Charles. I swear it.

Ida looked back at her from the contact photo on the phone. No smile, just the cold eyes and silver grey hair of a woman who’d never truly been a mother to her. Elena jabbed at the face, her anger spilling over.

The phone rang at the other end, and rang.

Where's your voicemail, Ida? If you're not going to answer your bloody phone, why don't you have your voicemail set up like every other person does? You had it the last time I called you, I’m sure. How long ago was that? Two years ago?

Elena felt guilty at her thoughts. What if Ida has died and nobody told me? What if she was alone and there was nobody there at her bedside? What kind of daughter am I who only phones every two years?

The kind who only places a call when she needs something, that’s who, Elena thought. A selfish daughter.

The phone continued to ring without an answer. Elena’s panic grew.

If she’s dead, then where else can I go? Who else do I have to turn to? I can’t go to the police with no concrete evidence against Charles. They’re not likely to believe a drawing a child did either. I could get a restraining order, but what if he gets to me before I can get one? It has to be Iceland. It has to be Ida.

The phone rang on and on.

Where are you, Ida?

It rang and rang, and then the ringing stopped, but it was Elena who stopped it. She hit the red disconnect bar as she walked numbly towards the TV.

Impossible, but it was happening. A line of text crawled across the bottom of the screen — 13 DEAD IN THE CITY OF LONDON OFFICES OF TRIUMPH AND ROYCE.

8

Elena watched the TV in a trance.

Dead. Charles was dead, shot by Morse code dashes, just like in the picture Millie had drawn. But in real life those dashes would be bullets.

Good, he deserves it, she thought. He was going to kill me. He came here to kill me just a few weeks ago. I shouldn’t feel sorry for him now. Not ever.

Despite her cold thoughts, she felt sorry for him. Nobody deserved to die at the hands of a lunatic with a gun, not even Charles.

But he was going to kill me, she reminded herself. I’m sure he was going to kill me. If he is dead, then it’s karma. He deserves everything he gets.

And all the other innocent people dead in that building, is it karma for them too? she thought.

No, she didn’t believe that. She wouldn’t allow herself to believe such a thing. This wasn’t karma. It was the unpredictable chaos of the world.

Not so unpredictable though, is it? she thought. Millie drew this madness happening. She drew thirteen stick figures lying on the ground with Xs for eyes. Now there are thirteen confirmed dead by the news. I can’t deny it now.

She wanted to deny it. She wanted it to be the by-product of an overly active imagination, but she knew it wasn’t. Millie’s drawings weren’t just expressions of some deeper rooted psychological problem. Whatever her daughter had seen, however she’d seen it, it had become true.

What else would Millie draw? What else was to come?

She watched the TV on the wall with the sound muted, fearing she might not hear the ringing of her mobile phone if the police called.

Do I really want to hear the phone ring? I know they’ll only call to tell me he’s dead. I already know the end to this story. Millie drew the end, just as she drew Chloe in the fire and Charles with the knife in his hand. She’s seen all this happen somehow. My little girl has seen the future unfold.

And yet none of it has touched Millie, Elena thought. There were no tears about her daddy dying under a hail of bullets, or fear about him standing at the top of the stairs with a knife in his hand. Millie wasn’t connecting her fantasies with the realities they predicted.

Elena glanced to the ceiling, picturing her daughter’s room above. Millie slept soundly, wrapped up in a pink and blue duvet with Pru, her one-eyed teddy bear cradled in her arms. The room was filled with dolls, teddy bears and drawings. Not all of Millie’s drawings were in the room. The strange, prescient drawings Elena kept in her studio. They were in a locked top drawer, the one where she kept the craft knives and scissors away from a little girl’s inquisitive hands. It was an instinctive move to put the drawings in there with other dangerous objects. They were dangerous in ways Elena hadn’t figured out yet, both to herself and Millie.

Elena switched her gaze to her phone. When would the call come? How long until they moved into the building and killed the crazy gunman inside? How long until they started identifying the bodies and contacted the next of kin?

He might not be dead. He might have survived this, she thought.

And if Millie’s drawing is true?

No more need for a divorce. No more need to walk around the house jumping at shadows. No need to run away to Iceland.

Stop it, Elena told herself. Millie won’t feel so good, will she, with her father dead? Think about her, not about yourself.

Elena took her own advice. She trudged up the stairs to check on Millie, only to freeze on the top stair.

I didn't leave her bedroom door open, did I? Elena thought.

Millie’s bedroom door was wide open, a false constellation covering the landing ceiling. No, I shut the door, Elena thought. I made sure it was shut.

Elena approached the bedroom under the wash of false stars. She opened the door.

Millie was gone.

9

“Millie?” Elena said, her voice as numb as her steps as she entered her daughter’s room.

An empty bed waited, the sheets tossed aside. The room was submerged in the blue and white sparkling starlight cast from the lamp beside Millie’s bed.

“Millie, where are you?” It’s a trick, Elena thought. Millie is hiding from me. She ran her hand across the bed, and it was still warm to the touch. If the bed was warm, then Millie had to have been in it recently. She couldn’t have gone too far. “Millie? Stop this now. Come on, where are you?”

Elena flung the doors open on Millie’s wardrobe, hoping to see her daughter’s mischievous face staring out at her from within a crowd of stuffed toys.

No Millie. Elena pushed the stuffed toys aside searching for a little girl hiding in amongst them, but Millie was nowhere to be found.

The lines of ‘Old Mother Hubbard’ came to mind as Elena continued her search through the upstairs of the house — And when she came there, the cupboard was bare. It was the same in the bathroom and the master bedroom, the guest rooms and the attic too. The cupboard was bare, there was no sign of Millie.

Elena bounded down the stairs and into the dining room. Light from the street lamps frosted the dining table. Dark shadows puddled beneath, large enough for a young child to hide.

Elena dropped to her knees. “Millie, Millie are you there?” she whispered as she reached into the shadows.

And when she came there, the cupboard was bare.

Elena scrambled back onto her feet. “Millie? Millie Moo?” she said, cooing the name as she moved through the house towards her studio.

No answer.

Oh come on, Millie, where are you?

The answer lay on the ground in the studio. Elena’s watercolour pencils were strewn across the floor in a disorganised rainbow. Where the rainbow ended, there was a drawing. Please don't let it be another of those horrible drawings, Elena thought.

She approached the page like it was a spider ready to jump. Slowly, she pinched it at the corner, terrified to look. She brought it out to her desk, and under the soft light of a lamp, another future was revealed.

A jet flew through the white paper sky, its nose sharpened to the Ivory Black colour from the watercolour set. Beneath it, a rain of Crimson Lake red pencil engulfed a crowd of stick figure people.

Elena felt fear grip her again as he stared at the drawing. Millie had drawn Chloe in the fire, Charles being shot, Charles with the knife, and now?

Elena’s eye caught a white blink of paper in the garden beyond the studio door. Another drawing. Another future.

The second picture was clearer. It was the London Eye touched by the smudged flames of a Crimson Lake watercolour pencil.

Elena stared off into the darkness at a trail of white scrap paper leading towards the greenhouse. She followed, picking up possible futures along the way. Big Ben engulfed in Ivory Black pencil smoke. Buckingham Palace ablaze in Orange Cadmium flames. The Houses of Parliament smothered in a May Green poisonous smog. A Crimson Lake coloured bus lay on its back like a turtle, stick figure men and woman pouring out of its sides.

Elena followed the possible futures along the garden path. Next came the Thames stained Deep Vermilion, fishes dead on the surface, eyes X’d out. Then, a row of beefeaters with skin turned Prussian Blue.

Elena stopped. She held in her hands a deck of hand-drawn Tarot that predicted a bleak and violent future. What would come next? How many more futures had Millie drawn?

Her gaze fixed on the greenhouse. A row of weakened solar lamps cast their sickly light onto the glass. The building was an x-ray under the glow, the dying vines of ignored tomato plants doubling as ribs, dead flowers mimicking organs. And there, a dark shadow on the lung: Millie.

10

Elena swallowed a breath as she pushed open the door to the greenhouse. The air was thick with the sweet stench of flowers and plants gone to mulch. Millie sat on the hard concrete floor in her pyjamas, drawings strewn out before her.

Elena crouched beside her daughter. “Millie? Millie Moo?” she whispered. “It’s okay. You’re having a bad dream. Just a nasty nightmare. Don’t be scared. I’m going to pick you up, okay? It’s your mummy. Don’t be scared.”

Millie’s arm shot up in the air. She held a pencil tight in a white-knuckled hand. She drove it down hard onto the paper in front of her. Chunk-chunk-chunk.

Elena scrambled forward and wrapped her arms around Millie, pulling her close enough to trap the arm with the pencil.

“Millie! Wake up! Wake up, Millie!” Elena screamed as she hung on.

Millie’s fist pumped up and down.

“Millie! Stop this now! Millie!”

Millie stopped dead. She let go of the pencil, stretched out both her arms and yawned. All Elena could do was stare. Millie stretched again, the yawn held for longer this time. Her eyes fluttered open. “Mummy?” she said, more confused than scared.

“I’m here, Millie Moo. No need to be afraid. Mummy’s here.”

“I’m tired,” Millie said, then stretched out another yawn.

“You’re a sleepy-head, Millie Moo,” Elena said, her voice quivering.

Millie smiled a sleepy smile. Her eyes fluttered shut and she drooped forward. Her head was a dead weight on Elena’s shoulder.

Elena sat motionless, trying to regain her calm as her daughter’s chest rose and fell against her own. A bad dream, that’s all it was. Just a bad dream.

She rose to her feet and stood over the drawings on the floor. One in particular caught her eye. It was confusing at first, but it became all too frighteningly clear as she stared at it.

Fishes? Why was Millie drawing fishes?

No, these weren’t fishes and they weren't swimming, they were falling.

Elena felt a new fear rise in her as she realised what she was looking at.

Bombs. Millie had drawn bombs falling from the sky. And where they fell, a black shape was torn into the page. A simple, yet terrifying image: a mushroom.

11

With Millie back in bed, Elena gathered the drawings and sat in Charles’ office. On the TV a live feed of the hostage situation continued. There was no news to report, but that hadn’t stopped the pundits from wondering what had happened and what could happen, all of it bad.

Elena didn’t wonder. Charles was dead, she was sure of it. The future Millie had drawn had already come to pass. Before the end of the night the police would arrive to give her the bad news, she was sure.

Will I cry when they tell me? Will I be able to pretend I’m surprised? she thought. No. I’m not crying now, and I won’t cry later. He wanted me dead. He came here to kill me a few weeks ago. I don’t have tears to spare for that bastard.

It didn’t happen. He didn’t kill me. Millie’s drawing didn’t become a reality, she thought.

Only because Millie was here. If she hadn’t come out of her room then it could have happened. It would have happened.

Elena cast the thought aside and fixed on her daughter’s drawing of the mushroom. It wasn’t a fungus that grew wild in the woods. This was the iconic image of a mushroom cloud created by a nuclear explosion.

Fear took over every time she looked at the drawing. Was it possible that Millie had seen this future happen? Elena wondered. How could she have she seen it? How was that even possible?

The answer wasn't too far away as Elena remembered how she'd found Millie in the greenhouse. Millie had seen it in a dream. She was dreaming out there in the glasshouse. She wasn’t aware of what she was doing, like a sleepwalker.

A female reporter’s voice on the TV drew Elena’s attention. “We’re receiving unconfirmed reports…”

This was it. They would announce Charles' death at any moment.

“…that a hostage has survived tonight’s attack in the City of London.”

A woman reporter appeared across the right half of the screen. A bright light lit her tired, thin face. To the left of her, a male newscaster, looking refreshed and alert under studio lights, started to speak.

“Is there any news on the other hostages? Do we have any official word on the number of causalities?”

“Thirteen are now confirmed dead. We have no news as yet on any other hostages inside the building,” she said.

“We’ve heard reports of involvement by the SAS. An echo of the famous Iranian Embassy siege of 1980. How likely is it that we might see a repeat tonight?”

The female reporter nodded after a few seconds delay. “Security experts believe they will be deployed as part of an ongoing terrorist alertness program put in place after the attacks in Manchester last year.”

“We’ve also heard—” the in-studio newscaster began, but never finished. “We’re receiving live footage of soldiers exiting the front of the Triumph and Royce office building. We’ll go live there now.”

A front view of Charles’ office building dominated the screen. Four heavily armed soldiers clad in black exited the front doors of the tall blue building. Sandwiched between them was a terrified man with ice blond hair and blue eyes.

Charles?

Fearful and yet relieved at the same time, Elena stared at the screen as though it was part of a dream.

How can Millie’s drawings be true if Charles is alive? she thought.

She watched in a dumb state as they bundled Charles into the back of a waiting police van. The cameras tried to follow, but a line of officers in yellow jackets formed a barrier around him.

Elena pushed aside the pictures on the desk until she found the one of the stick man with his stick gun. Charles was dead in the picture. Where does that leave me now? she thought. What do I do now?

12

“Halló, Ida,” Elena said, the Icelandic words strange on her lips after so long without use. A familiar silence stretched out at the other end of the call in response. “Halló?” Elena repeated.

“Elena.” Her mother’s voice was monotone.

Elena had known it would be hard to talk again. It had always been hard to talk with her mother. What to say next? How would she even broach the subject of returning after so long?

She didn’t have to.

“I suppose you’re calling because you wish to visit, yes?” Ida said.

Elena’s own silence was filled with shock.

“Well?” Ida asked.

“Yes, yes I need somewhere to stay. How did you know?”

“Do you have another reason to call?”

“I suppose not.”

“Then you've called because you want to come here, yes?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“When?”

“Yes, Elena, when will you arrive? At what time?” The words were as formal as those of a receptionist at a hotel, but without any of the rehearsed friendliness.

“Next weekend, is that okay with you? Friday, possibly?”

“Yes. Please let me know the time. Are you coming alone or with your daughter?”

There was no mention of Charles. No interest from her mother about his surviving the attack on the office building. No interest in anything at all, it seemed.

“What about Charles? You didn’t ask if Charles will be with us.” Elena said.

“Will he?” There was a note of hesitation in Ida’s voice that Elena couldn’t quite figure out. It wasn’t distaste, she didn’t know Charles enough to have formed an opinion on him, or so Elena thought.

“No. No mother, he won’t. Just Millie and I.”

“You’ll take your old room, yes?”

“We will, yes.”

“I’ll see you both on Friday.”

The Icelandic for ‘goodbye mother’, ‘bless móðir’, came to Elena’s mind. She hesitated, but there was comfort in speaking those words again. “Bless, móðir,” she said.

The silence stretched out long enough for Elena to wonder if her mother would answer at all. “Bless,” Ida said, eventually.

13

Elena ran.

She hit a door and another door, identical slabs of polished wood with silver handles. Each door opened out onto another carbon copy corridor, onto another strip of grey carpet leading to another door, another strip of carpet.

She ran and dared not look behind for she knew what followed.

Death.

Death would drag her down into a darkness she couldn't escape. Down to where she would never see her daughter again.

Millie’s face flashed into her mind. She had the soft inquisitive eyes and the dimpled smile of an innocent child.

I’ll never see that smile again, or look into her eyes, Elena thought.

She ran on through the long, silent corridors of Triumph and Royce. Through the frozen wastes of an office building trapped under the ice of street lamp light. Through one door and the next, along one identical strip of grey carpet and another. She dared look behind her only once and wished she hadn't.

Death wore a black balaclava. Death cradled a machine gun in his arms like a child.

Elena ran until she hit a door that would not open.

Pleasepleasepleaseplease!

She leaned into the door and pushed on the handle with all her weight.

Pleasepleasepleasepleaseple—

A shadow fell on her. She turned, not wanting to see, but unable to look away.

Death stood before her, his bony finger curled around the trigger of the machine gun.

Elena screamed her last wish, her last word.

MILLIE!

Bang! Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!

14

Elena jumped up in bed, her heart beating in tandem with the knocking at the front door.

Bang! Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!

“Elena! Please, just let me in! I need to talk to you. We need to talk,” Charles’ slurred voice called from the street.

Elena snatched her phone from the bedside table. The time on the front read 01:10. Only an hour had passed since she'd fallen asleep. The first night in a week she’d managed to sleep before three in the morning.

“Please, for Christ’s sake! Give me a bloody break, will you?” Charles shouted.

Bang! Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!

Elena slid out of her bed and crept over to the window. Through a pinch in the blinds she watched Charles pace the street outside.

He didn’t look like the hero of what they’d named ‘The Heart of London Massacre’, or the potential murderer from Millie’s drawing and that night at the top of the stairs. He looked like any other drunken city boy out on the weekend, his suit rumpled as if he’d slept in it, his tie hanging around his neck like a loose piece of wire.

“I know you’re in there, Elena! Come on!”

She let the blind fall back in place. She’d done well ignoring him and the reporters in the week after the incident at Triumph & Royce. She’d thought she’d make it to Iceland clean and clear, but now here Charles was, his presence threatening to ruin all her plans.

Ignore him. He’ll leave.

And if he doesn’t?

The cab for the airport is booked for five, she thought. Charles can’t possibly stay outside for the next four hours, can he?

She wasn’t about to risk it.

Elena reached through the blinds and undid the latch on the window. She pushed it open a crack. “Quiet,” she whispered.

“Finally!” he shouted.

“If you don’t keep your voice down, I won’t talk to you at all.”

“I wouldn’t need to keep it down if you’d let me into my own damned house.”

“Not a chance, Charles.”

“So we have to do this like Romeo and Juliet, do we?” He giggled to himself and placed a hand on his chest, his other stretched out towards her. “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?”

She stared at him, refusing to respond.

Charles dropped his hand down to the side and lost any laughter he’d had. “It’s about that night, isn’t it? That’s why you’re not letting me in? It was nothing. I’d had a bad day, that’s all. Things were weird at work. You and I were having troubles. You just read it the wrong way, that’s all.”

“I don’t care what you think. If you don't leave, I’ll call the police.”

“It’s my house, Elena. You can’t call the police on me for wanting to get inside my own bloody house.”

“Let's ask them about that.”

“You’d really call the police on me? After all this time? After all these years we’ve been married?”

“We’ll see.”

Charles shook his head in disbelief. When he focused on her again, he looked defeated. “How about you just listen. I won’t come in, but you’ve got to hear me out.”

“All I want to hear from you, Charles, is goodbye.”

“You’re being unreasonable.”

“I want you gone. I don’t want you anywhere near me or my daughter.”

“You can have both, if you’ll just listen.”

She leaned in closer to the window, confused by his words. “What is that supposed to mean?”

He shook his head in frustration. “A deal, Elena. Full divorce, you get it all. I’ll give you whatever you want in return. Whatever you want.”

A dizzying sense of De Ja Vu came over her. She saw herself in the recent past sitting on one side of the dining room table, Charles on the other. He’d offered the world then too.

“And what do you want, Charles? You’re not doing this out of the kindness of your heart.”

“No, no I’m not.” He paced out from the light of the street lamp, his face lost in the shadows. “Six months.”

“Excuse me?”

“Six months. That’s what I’m asking. You give me six months.”

“Six months of what?”

“Being my wife, or at least pretending to be. Six months and then you’ll get it all.”

“Why?”

He stumbled back into the white spot of the street lamp. “Do you care? All you’ve got to do is do what you’re doing now, nothing more. Then you’ll get it all.”

“I want to know why, Charles. Why would you give everything up just like that?”

“It’s business. I can’t…” He searched left and right as though someone might be close, but the TV camera crews were long since gone and not even a cat was out for company. “Come to the door. I don’t want to have this conversation out on the street. You can give me that at least, can’t you?”

She could give him less, but if this would get rid of him, he could have his way.

At the front door Elena double-checked the chains and locks before pushing open the letterbox flap with her fingers. “Speak, Charles,” she said.

Charles crouched down before the door. “Like this? Are you joking?”

Elena let the letterbox flap fall as an answer.

“Okay, okay,” Charles said from the other side of the door. “Have it your way. Just talk to me, for God’s sake.”

Elena pushed at the letterbox flap again. “Go on, but keep your voice down. Millie is sleeping,” she said.

“This is crazy, really crazy,” he said.

No more than anything else going on in my life, Elena thought. “Speak your piece, Charles.”

“Is Millie okay?” he asked.

“Do you care?”

“Of course I care. Why wouldn't I care? She's my daughter too.”

She didn't believe his concern. It sounded like a drunk's sincerity to her. “Forget it, Charles. Just say your piece and be on your way.”

He stumbled forward and steadied himself against the door with a hand.

“Okay, okay,” he said, blinking to gain focus. “Did you happen to see me on the TV being interviewed, Elena? I was on This Morning and a few others.”

“I did.”

She’d watched one television interview with him in the aftermath of the terrorist attack. Two dull morning hosts with fake tans and bright teeth gushed over his bravery. Charles had seemed right at home with the adoration and not a little camera shy.

“Our CEO saw it too,” Charles said. “He thinks I’m just the kind of man to head up our American operations. He wants me to take up a lead position in New York. Wall Street, Elena. Wall bloody Street.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“Oh nothing,” he said, his voice laced with sarcasm. “He just likes his employees married, not divorced. Not going through a divorce. He’s a stickler for traditional family values.”

Like trying to murder your spouse, that kind of traditional family value? she thought.

“He won’t be so impressed in six months when we divorce, will he? You did say six months, didn't you, Charles? I'd have to keep up your charade for six months?” she said.

“No, no he won’t, but it won’t matter. By then I’ll be entrenched. I’ll show him just how much he’d have to lose. You see how important this is to me? Without you I’ll lose this deal. I just know it.”

She wasn't going to honour any six month deal with him, but she knew she'd have to make him believe she would. It was a delicate line to walk, but Charles being drunk would make it a little easier. “I want it in writing,” she said.

“In writing?”

“Yes, in writing.”

“Of course, of course. Does that mean you agree?”

“In writing. I’m serious. And I don’t want to see you ever again. Not after tonight.”

“I’m not sure I can guarantee—”

“If I get one whiff of you near either of us in the next six months, I’ll file for divorce on the spot. I'll go the papers and the TV too. I'll do everything I can to screw this up for you, I promise you.”

“Don’t say that, Elena.”

“I am saying it. You want me to play pretend at being your wife, then you’ll stay the Hell away from me and Millie.”

She watched through the letterbox as he hung his head low in what was either defeat or a bout of nausea brought on by his drinking. When he lifted his head up again he looked almost sober.

“Okay, okay. I’ll stay away. If they ask about you though—”

“Tell them I’m ill. Tell them I’m busy with work. You can tell them I’ve run away to the Land of Nod, for all I care.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll tell them you went to your mother’s house in Iceland, if it comes up. How does that sound?”

Elena lost her breath. Does he know I’m flying to Ida’s in a few hours? she thought. Is this some kind of veiled threat? No, he can’t possibly know. How would he even find out? I booked the flights under my maiden name to make sure.

“Elena?” he said.

“What?”

“You went quiet all of a sudden. Are you okay?”

No, Charles, no. I’m hours from fleeing the bloody country because my gut tells me my child’s drawings are about to become reality, even though you’re still alive when Millie drew you dead. I’m running to a place I thought was safe, but maybe I’m wrong about it all, every last part. If I just had a week without you bothering me then….

“A week,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Next Friday. Find a solicitor and have whatever documents I need to sign by next Friday.”

“Next Friday?”

“Or I don't sign them at all and you won't see me ever again.”

“What are you going to do? Run off to your mother in Iceland?” His tone was joking, but Elena didn't take it that way.

She lost another breath. “I haven’t spoken to my mother in years. Why would I go there now?”

“Where else would you go? Where else could you go? It’s not like you’ve got any close friends in the city.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.”

“You don’t know shit, Charles.”

“I know what you told me when we met. I know that much. You loved that house, you said.”

“My mother’s house?” Elena was genuinely confused. Love was the last feeling she’d pair to the little red house. Sadness and anger were better emotional fits, but love wasn't even on the list.

“The house. Iceland. The colours in the sky were magical, the Northern Lights, you said. You wanted to take Millicent there to see them.”

Millie! Her name is Millie, you bastard! And I will take her, Charles. I’ll take her there sooner than you could ever imagine.

“I don't remember any of that, Charles.”

“You said it.”

“I'm not going to Iceland. I don't even know why you would think such a thing.”

He waved a shaky hand before the door as though wiping the idea away. “Sorry. I've had a little to drink, and it just came to my mind that's all. Doesn't matter anyway. You're not going anywhere, like you said. And now we have our agreement. We do have an agreement, don’t we, Elena? You weren't stringing me along, were you?”

“Yes, Charles.”

He squinted in confusion. “Yes you were stringing me along? Or yes we have an agreement?” he asked.

“You need to sober up, Charles.”

He nodded heavily. “Yes. Okay. I’ll email you with the details.”

“Okay.”

A big, drunken smile stretched his lips. He slapped his hands together as though finished with a job well done. “You get what you want. I get what I want. Everybody’s happy.”

“We’ll see,” Elena said.

15

The plane rumbled like a hungry dragon on the runway. Elena felt it mix with the churning of fear in her stomach. She reached over the armrest and squeezed Millie’s hand.

“It’s okay, mummy,” Millie said, squeezing Elena’s hand in return. “You don’t have to be scared. It’s okay.”

Out of the mouths of babes, Elena thought. She tried to smile, but it felt weak on her lips. “I’m not scared. I’m just….just….” Yes, yes I am scared, she thought. But not about the plane or the flight. It’s what you've drawn that scares me. It's the awful feeling of certainty in me I find most terrifying of all. “Mummy just gets a little tummy ache when she’s on a plane,” Elena said.

Millie leaned over the armrest and pressed the side of her face against Elena’s stomach. “I’ll make it all better,” she said.

Forcing back tears, Elena stroked Millie’s hair. “Better already,” she said. “I’m such a Silly Billy, Millie Moo. But I’m feeling a lot better now. Tip top.”

“That’s good, mummy,” Millie said, pulling back across the armrest.

Elena stared out of the side window. In an hour Gatwick would be a memory, London too. If Millie's drawings became a reality the bombs would fall and soon enough London would be gone for good.

But the bombs might not come, she thought. Charles survived the attack on his building. He didn’t kill me. All the futures involving him didn’t become realities.

The endings might have changed, but the beginnings Millie had drawn were true enough, Elena thought. Chloe's house was on fire. There was an attack on Charles' offices. He was at the top of the stairs waiting for me. Elena crossed her fingers for more ruined endings.

But if the bombs do fall, Charles will be dead, turned to dust with the rest of the city, she thought. He can’t follow me then. He wouldn’t be able to follow me if he’s dead.

She shivered at her own cruel thoughts.

The bombs won’t fall. Charles won’t follow. The bombs won’t fall. Charles won’t follow. The bombs won’t fall. Charles won’t—

Vzzzzzzz.

Elena jumped in her seat as her phone vibrated. She pulled it out and froze as Charles’ contact picture looked back at her.

Answer him. Don’t let him scare you. You’re better than that.

The phone rang again.

Elena stood and slid out of her seat. “I’ll just be a few minutes. I’m going to the toilet, Millie Moo,” she said. “You see that door there? If you need me you just come and get me there, okay?” Elena said, pointing to the end of the aisle.

“Okay, mummy.”

“Good girl.”

The tiny bathroom was awash in blue LED light. Elena stared at herself in the plastic mirror above a sink barely bigger than her hands. A woman she didn’t know stared back at her. A tortured woman, old with worry.

The phone rang and rang again, a sting in her palm.

Look at me, Elena thought. How did I get here? I’m stuck between one terrible future and a past I never realised was so bad. This is not what my life was supposed to be.

The phone rang and rang again. Five minutes passed with the insistent buzzing, but Elena could do nothing but look at the contact picture of Charles on the front of her phone, immobilised with a prickling fear.

You were supposed to leave me alone until next Friday, she thought. That was the deal, Charles. Yet here you are calling me? What could make you break the promise you made only a few hours ago?

I’ll never know if I don’t answer the call, she thought. Or maybe I should just ignore him until the plane takes off. He won’t be able to call me once we’re in the air. The flight’s already been delayed an hour. How much longer until we take off?

Too long to leave Millie out there on her own, Elena thought. She took a deep breath and hit the green connect button.

“Elena? Where the bloody Hell are you?”

“Why?” she replied.

“Are you okay?”

“Why are you calling me?”

“Why? Why! Have you seen what's happening in the city?”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It’s beginning, she thought. It’s happening. The bombs will fall soon. The bombs will fall.

“Are you going to tell me you're worried about me, is that it?” Elena said.

“Of course I'm worried about you.”

“And Millie?”

“I meant Millicent too. You know I did. Where are you?”

“Safe. We're safe, Charles.”

“You're not at home. I've just been there.”

“No.”

“Where are you, for Christ’s sake?” he said.

“Does it matter?”

“The city is in turmoil. The trains and buses aren't running. You can't get a cab for love nor money. You need to find somewhere safe until this blows over.”

“You think it’s all just going to blow over, do you?” she said.

“The city’s been attacked before. We always come through. I don't know how you could have forgotten, but I had my brush with these sick bastards not so long ago.”

Elena stared at her reflection in the plastic mirror. The woman there knew the future. She’d seen it drawn out on paper, snatched from an innocent child’s dreams.

“It's going to get worse, Charles.”

“You’re letting your imagination run away with you.”

“No, it's going to get worse, Charles. I know.”

“Oh, you know, do you?”

Elena saw her daughter’s pictures dance before her eyes; a terrifying carousel of colours, ending with that dark, Ivory Black mushroom.

“The city is going to be bombed, Charles.”

“What did you say?”

“A nuclear bomb. You should leave while you can. I owe you a warning at least.”

He chuckled. “You're not serious, are you? It’s all in your mind. You’ve always been a victim of your own imagination.”

“It’s real.”

“Talk some sense will you. How could you possibly know such a thing?”

“I know.”

“That's it? You know?”

“I'm not giving you an explanation. I'm not giving you a reason. I'm just telling you to leave the city while you still can.”

“You’re talking crazy. There are no bombs. The situation is calming down now. Haven’t you seen the news?”

“Please, Charles. Just leave while you can.”

“Elena,” he said. The words sounded as if they were spoken through gritted teeth.

“You don't have to believe me, Charles, but you can believe this; Millie and I aren't coming back. Not now, not ever.”

“Where the bloody Hell are you?”

“Safe,” she said, although it didn’t feel like it would be true for much longer.

“All this over a stupid fantasy about a nuclear bomb?”

“I don't expect you to believe me, Charles, but it's the truth. She drew it. Millie drew it, like she drew all those other things.”

“What did you just say?”

“She drew the attack on your offices. She drew other things.”

“This is a joke, isn't it? You're joking with me, aren't you?”

“It isn't a joke.”

“You're telling me our daughter drew a picture and you think that picture is going to come true? You do realise what you're saying, don't you?”

“She drew the attack on your offices. She drew the dead people there. She drew you being shot.”

“I wasn’t shot. I’m fine.”

“There were other drawings, Charles. The London Eye on fire, the Houses of Parliament covered in a green smog. That’s what’s happening now, isn’t it? Tell me it isn’t.”

His silence answered the question.

“Leave, Charles. It’s the last time I’ll warn you. Leave why you still have the chance.”

“Wait! Don't do this. Please, don't do this. What can I say to make you stop this foolishness?”

“Goodbye.”

Charles made a low grunting noise at the other end of the phone. His voice came in at her ear like a thunderclap. “There is no bomb, nothing, you stupid deluded bitch! Don't you dare ruin my chances with the company! Don't you fucking dare! I swear, if you don’t tell me where you are I’m going to—”

Elena hit the red disconnect button.

16

Elena walked the aisle towards her seat. She noticed her carry-on bag opened up on a fold-down seat tray. A drawing pad and a scattering of coloured pencils from her watercolour set lay on top of it.

Elena moved like a clockwork soldier, legs as stiff as tin.

It’s nothing, she told herself. Nothing at all. Millie got bored. She took out my pad to doodle.

A few more tin steps and Elena spied Millie curled up and asleep in a foetal position in her seat.

She didn’t even get a chance to draw. Too tired for it. No need to worry.

Millie moaned and turned over, pressing her face against the back cushion.

Elena reached down for the pad and held the cover at the corner, but dared not flip it open.

Just take a look at it. There wasn’t enough time for her to dream anything, let alone draw it. I was gone ten minutes at the most, not enough time to—

Draw? Dream? How much time did a little girl need to see the future?

Elena’s hand shook as she peeled the cover of the pad back like a plaster on an unhealed cut.

Nothing, it’ll be nothing at all, she thought.

Inch by inch the future was revealed. Purple. Green. Pink. The colours dripped down the page, merging into each other. A familiar watercolour sky marked the paper.

Elena held her breath.

“Apologies for the slight delay, ladies and gentlemen. We've now been cleared to take off. If you would please fasten your seatbelts and….” A pilot announced, but Elena wasn't listening. Her whole being was focused on the colourful drawing.

Millie had drawn norðurljós—The Northern Lights. And below those lights was a new future. A sparkling house sat atop a scratchy black island. Grey, choppy waters surrounded it. And in that house a mummy and her daughter lived. There were no bombs. There was no daddy. Only the strange coloured skies kept the two of them company.

Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue.

17

Silence shrouded Keflavik airport. Fresh disasters unfolded on muted TV sets hanging from the high honeycombed roof of the main terminal. Dead soldiers were scattered all over London like the discarded play toys of a disgruntled and ungrateful child. The words efnafræðilegur and sprengja repeated in the text scroll at the bottom of the news reports.

Chemical. Bomb.

A flash of colour on the screens caught Elena’s attention. Blue. Prussian Blue was the colour of the dead soldiers’ faces in Millie’s drawing.

She hurried Millie away from the screens and out of the airport.

A familiar green Volvo waited outside, its engine idling. Her mother sat behind the wheel, no emotion on her face as Elena and Millie approached.

Has she heard of the disasters yet? Elena thought. If she has, how can she be so calm?

“Elena, Millie,” Ida said as they clambered into the back of the Volvo.

“Ida,” Elena said. She turned to Millie and whispered, “You remember what to call your grandmother, don't you, Millie?”

Millie nodded, but she stared like a frightened deer at the back of Ida’s silver-haired head.

“What's the matter, Millie Moo?” Elena asked.

Millie shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Go ahead, then. Don't be impolite. Say hello.”

“Hello…hello, am-ma.”

“Hello,” Ida said calmly and without any delight.

They rode in near silence for the next half hour. If they spoke, it was in short bursts of Icelandic. There were no questions of Charles or why he wasn’t with them. No pleasure taken in a granddaughter’s progress, no reason to ask of it. Elena’s mother talked of the clown politician who had become a leader. She talked about imprisoned bankers. She discussed the likelihood of another volcanic eruption at Eyjafjallajökull. She was a tour-guide, not a parent or grandparent.

Millie would interrupt with a polite whisper, not wanting to be left out. “What is she saying, mummy?”

“Your grandmother is telling me what’s been happening since I was last here. Lots to catch up on.”

“When was that?”

Elena bopped her daughter on the nose. “Forever ago, Millie Moo.”

“That's a long time.” Millie giggled again. It was a giggle that could sustain Elena through the journey and all the flat talk. It just might sustain her through to the end of the world.

“Home,” Ida said as she pulled the Volvo to a stop outside the tiny red house where Elena had spent her childhood.

The house had the look of one of Millie’s drawings. The roof was a sharp upturned ‘V’, the wooden frame was painted bright red. Grey curls of smoke corkscrewed out of the chimney.

Elena stopped at the door and looked back at the town where she’d spent her childhood.

Vogar was a still life painted in muted greens and yellows, pale blues and yellowing whites. A few lonely boats lolled in the green water at the town harbour. Above, black, muscular clouds flexed, threatening rain. It had the palette of a dream to it. It had the speed of one too, everything in slow motion as if it time stood still.

“Elena?” Ida said.

She faced her mother. The dream continued.

On Ida’s face was a look Elena didn’t recognise immediately. A foreign emotion to her mother. Fear.

In all the days of her childhood she couldn't remember Ida showing such emotion. Ida was never afraid or scared. There was no need for fear, only solutions, only instructions to solve the problem at hand. What had changed? What had happened to bring about this emotion? It wasn’t anything Elena could remember saying or doing. Whatever it was, the fear couldn't be denied or ignored.

“Móðir?” Elena said, her voice shaking.

In that single word was every question, every doubt and fear, every unsaid thing that needed at last to be said.

Elena’s mother gave the only answer that mattered. “Dóttir,” she said, and held out her arms.

18

Elena lost herself in her mother's embrace. Tears at first a trickle became a flood, but the hug was over as quickly as it began.

Ida pulled away and turned to the door of the house without speaking a word. Any fear she’d had, or love that followed, was gone by the time she ushered them both into the house.

Elena stepped inside, tears drying on her cheeks, wondering if she hadn’t dreamed the hug on the way from the airport.

The house felt like a dream too. A dream in which she walked through a museum, not of forgotten things, like that corner of the wardrobe where Charles left his untouched and unwanted gifts. This was a museum of things never forgotten. A museum where everything was remembered. Nothing had changed since Elena's childhood. A record player panelled in a bright orange plastic sat on a dresser, a small collection of LPs beneath: Simon & Garfunkel, Óðmenn, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan. The same books crowded the shelves on one wall — Steinbeck next to Laxness. Proust and Jónas comfortable in proximity. Christie unashamed next to Kristný. A blue portable radio sat on a table next to a reading chair.

A fire soon flickered in the hearth. The radio tuned to RÚV Rás 1 provided a buffer against the silence as the DJs talked in happy tones and played happy songs. At the wooden dining table Elena, Millie and Ida ate Skyr from the tub with wooden spoons and when they were settled, played card games. Ida won with no apparent glee.

The hours passed slowly, the hands on the wall clock struggling toward each new minute. Time was lost at the front door of the little red house, but not Elena’s worry.

The phone in her purse hadn’t barked for attention since they’d landed. She was grateful for its silence, for Charles’ silence, but it couldn’t be guaranteed. Before the night ended, Elena slid the phone onto a high kitchen shelf behind a plate with a painted blue fish on its front. By morning the sealed battery would lose its charge and Charles any chance of barking at her again. The phone would become another part of the dream, another exhibit in the museum, as impractical as the decorative plates it shared the shelf with. A reminder of her history, not her future.

The future was here, for now.

Elena allowed herself to fantasise about that future. She would rent a tiny house and stock the shelves haphazardly with books just as her mother and father had. There would be a radio on a table by a chair, a record player, and a fire in a hearth. A good future.

Until the bombs started to fall. Until the bombs started to fall.

Would they fall on Iceland? Elena thought. Even if they didn’t, what followed would find them eventually, wherever they went. What came after the bombs was a nuclear winter, cold and black, with no spring or summer to follow. It didn't matter where they went. Greenland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, all the same. Wherever they ran, the blackest of winters would follow in time, it seemed.

Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. The song came to mind, unceasingly happy as it played inside her head. But she felt no cheer. Why run at all? she thought. Why come here or go any place if what will be, will be?

She knew the answer. It was there in her daughter’s bright, inquisitive eyes. The answer was Millie. If it was one more day, one more hour or one more second, she’d do whatever it took to gain them for her daughter.

The future isn't here yet, Elena thought as the day came to its end. There's still time for that future to be avoided, changed even. The drawings aren't all truth. Only what might be, what could be.

That bleak future wasn't here yet. It might never arrive.

She could only hope.

19

There was no ceremony to the wrapping up of the day. Ida folded her glasses, lay her book down on the table beside her, and walked over to the stairs. There she stopped. “Sofðu vel,” Ida said, telling Elena to 'sleep well'.

“I will,” Elena said.

Millie was already soundly asleep in Elena’s childhood bed. There’d been no need for a bedtime story this night, or false stars projected on the ceiling to watch over her.

Ida didn’t move from the bottom of the stairs. Concern flashed across her face.

“Is there something wrong?” Elena asked.

Ida took a long time to respond. She stared towards the top of the stairs, seeing something that wasn’t there.

“I was thinking of norðurljós. Has Millie seen them?”

Elena felt a stab of panic. Millie hadn’t seen them, but she’d drawn them. The colourful skies above a sparkling house where a mummy and her daughter lived. It couldn’t be a coincidence for Ida to mention them now, could it? It didn’t feel that way.

“The Northern Lights?” Elena asked.

“Yes. Have you talked to her about them? Did you show her any pictures before you came here?”

“No, no. Why do you ask?”

Ida shook the question away. “It’s nothing. Of no concern, really. I just wondered. Sofðu vel.”

It was a concern. Elena could feel fear in the air as dark and foreboding as the clouds above Vogar.

Elena met her mother at the bottom of the stairs. “What is it? What's the matter, Ida?”

She shook her head, her eyes focusing on anything but Elena.

“Ida, what’s going on?” Elena said.

“No, no it’s nothing…it’s…”

“It’s something, Ida. What’s happening? You're scared. I can feel that you're scared.”

Ida let out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry, Elena. I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, I truly did.”

“What are you talking about?”

Ida stood taller; her eyes fixed on Elena. “I’m not scared, Elena. I can’t be any longer. I realise it’s too late to be scared now.”

“Wha—what do you mean?”

“It’s a long story, one I hoped I’d never have to tell, but tell it I must. I see that now. I saw it always,” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

Ida held out her hands, palms up, gesturing for Elena to take them. They shook slightly. “It’s time. There is no better time than now. There is no other time than now. I fooled myself for far too many years, but I won’t be a fool any longer,” she said.

“Mother, what are you saying, you’re not making sense.”

Ida stepped down on the stairs. “I know why you’re here. I’ve known for a long time about Millie too and what she sees,” she said.

Fear grabbed Elena tightly around the throat. “I don't know what you're—”

“You got it from me. Millie got it from you. It’s passed on. My mother too, I suspect, and her mother before her.”

“Passed what on? What are you saying?”

“She sees what shouldn’t be seen, what is impossible to see. You did too.”

“See what?” Elena said, the answer already in her mind.

“You already know,” Ida said. “You know and that is why you came here. It is the only reason why you would come here now.”

“What is it I already know? Tell me.”

“The future,” Ida said.

20

The same look of concern flashed across Ida’s features as Elena witnessed at the bottom of the stairs.

“Did it hurt you, Elena?” Ida asked. They sat at the kitchen table with two mugs of coffee ignored before them.

“Did what hurt me?”

“The dreams? What you saw as a child?”

Elena had no answer.

“You don't remember?” Ida said.

“No.”

A pained look of understanding creased Ida's features. “You were the same as Millie and I, even if you can't remember fully. You never complained. I couldn't see any pain in you, but I was never sure if you were hurting.”

Elena felt the world pulling at her from every side. “No, that's impossible,” she said.

“You don't remember the drawings? You don't remember the dreams you had at all?”

“No, of course not. This can't be true.”

Ida nodded slowly. There was as little triumph on her face as when she'd won the game of cards earlier that night. “Excuse me for a moment,” she said as she stood and smoothed down her thick woollen jumper.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll be a moment. You have a moment, don’t you?” Ida walked out to the living room and returned a few minutes later with a large scrapbook in hand. She lay it down on the kitchen table as carefully as if it were an archaeological find and opened it up.

“My father was a fisherman. My mother a seamstress. We lived in Höfn, in a house not unlike this house.”

“I know this, Ida. You've told me the story before.”

“Not all of the story, no. I always kept one part from you.” Ida tapped at the opened book.

Two childlike drawings were fixed to the centre of the black card. In the first image a mummy, a daddy and a little girl stood outside a red house. A yellow spider of a sun crawled across the sky above. It was all as it should be, until the eye travelled over to the second drawing. Below the waves of a blue choppy sea, a white boat sat on the sea bed. Eight stick-figure men lay beside, their eyes crossed out with the letter x. Ida tapped at one of them. “My father,” she said.

Elena leaned in over the picture. “Wait. Grandfather died of pneumonia, didn't he? I'm sure you told me that. He died just before I was born.”

“He did.”

“Then what's this?”

“A future that never came to be. A future I stopped.”

“You stopped him from dying?” There was hope in Elena's voice. “How?”

Ida nodded. “At first my mother and father thought nothing of what I'd drawn. It was little more than a child’s imagination run wild. Later, my father called in a priest to bless me with holy water and wash away my sins.” Ida covered her mouth as a chuckle tried to escape.

It was the first time Elena could remember seeing her mother laugh.

“Wash away your sins?” Elena said.

“My father was a superstitious man, although I can't fault him for that. Many fishermen were and are to this day. So many rites and rituals to guarantee a good haul, calm seas, and safe journeys.”

“They really believed a priest would help?”

“My father did.”

“And grandmother?”

“Too afraid of what she herself knew, I suspect. Too afraid of what she was to argue with him. My father, for his part, was convinced an evil had possessed my soul and could not be argued with on the matter.”

“Truly?”

“It was a different time. I don't blame him for his superstition, but I do blame him for this.” Ida parted her hair on the right side to reveal a deep red lightning bolt scar, still angry despite the passage of the years.

Elena felt a deep sadness in her. “What did he do to you?” she said.

Ida let her hair fall naturally to cover up the old scar. “He tried to drown me.”

“Oh, Ida. I’m so sorry.”

Ida turned the page in the scrapbook. Two more drawings were revealed. A before and after. On the left stood a stick man under a buttery yellow sun, his smile so big the oval of his face couldn't contain it. On the right three stick-figure dogs barked and bit at him. Now his smile was replaced by criss-cross stitching, his eyes two red letter Xs.

Ida tapped at the man with the red X eyes. “Bjartmar Arnórsson, a local farmer. He was a man well-liked by my father and others in their church. After Bjartmar’s wife passed, he started to take in stray dogs and cats. He became known all over the village for his kindness when it came to animals. A week after I drew this picture, he rescued three dogs from the cruel hands of a drunkard. A month later they found Bjartmar dead and the dogs in their starvation had all but—you can imagine the rest.”

“I’m not sure I want to.” Elena ran her fingers across the pictures. Before and after. Present and future. “You knew it was going to happen?” she said.

“No,” Ida said.

“But you drew it. It’s right there on the paper. You must have known.”

“A dream, Elena. I drew what I saw in my dreams. Only as real to me as any other childhood fantasy. Bjartmar Arnórsson being eaten by those dogs, the huldufólk living out in the rocks, one and the same to my mind at the time. My father, for all his devotion to his faith, would indulge me all the day in talk of the huldufólk. But when my drawings became more than fantasies it all changed. When I drew him.”

“Him? Grandfather, you mean? The picture of grandfather drowning?”

Ida wagged a 'no'. She turned the page. The drawings were darker now. They were scratched deeply into the page as though created with a heavier hand.

On the left a tall man stood looking out across the snow-white expanse of paper. He wore a drab grey coat and his hair was the darkest spot on the page. Before him three children played around a mirror placed on the floor. The children were all blues and reds, oranges and greens, their smiles as wide as Bjartmar Arnórsson’s before his death. The sun was a yellow dandelion in bloom above them.

Ida tapped at the grey man. “Oddur,” she said.

21

Ida tapped the drawing again as she spoke. “Oddur Mollinsson came to town a week after the tragedy with Bjartmar and the dogs. He’d travelled from Reykjavik for a weekend break and rented a small house not far from the village.”

Elena scanned the pages. On the right was a picture of the grey man, Oddur Mollinsson. On the left of the page were the three children, their eyes X’d out. “Who are they?” she said.

“Hanna, Lísabet and Arthúr were their names,” Ida said, her eyes fixing fleetingly on the drawing of the three children. “They went out to play one afternoon and never returned. A few days later their bodies were discovered in the cellar of the farmhouse Oddur had rented.”

“How did they die?” Elena asked.

Ida tapped the picture of the grey man. She nodded, her head heavy with memories. “Oddur killed them, but at first it was assumed they had drowned. If a child went missing back then, a good guess was the water had taken them. Drowning is a sadness that touches all sooner or later if they live close to the tides. Child and adult alike.”

“What changed their minds?”

“My father,” Ida said. “My drawings were becoming realities, one by one. I drew Hannes Einarsson, a local carpenter, chopping off his little finger with an axe. In another I drew Svava Grímsdóttir, the school teacher, with her hair falling out like needles off a pine tree. And of course, Bjartmar and the dogs. All that I put on paper, eventually came to be. My father didn’t want to believe that any of it could be true, of course. If it was true then the future I’d drawn for him at the bottom of the sea would be true also. Those children would be the victims of murder, not some terrible accident of drowning if he was to believe me. He stalled for some time before he finally took action.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wouldn’t admit to any villager what I’d done, or what I’d seen in my dreams, so he found another way. He blamed a harbour cat.”

“A cat?”

“My father told everyone in the village a harbour cat had coughed up a small toy cannon belonging to Arthúr. He told them he’d followed the cat to the cellar of the farm where Oddur Mollinsson lived, and where the children were buried.”

“Why did Oddur kill them?”

“Panic. Oddur Mollinsson wasn’t here to kill children. Murder was on his mind, yes, but he meant only to kill his mistress who came here from Reykjavik only a day or two after, under cover of night. He confessed all later. He’d planned to drown her off the coast and make it look like an accident. Unfortunately those children found Oddur with the body at the shore and he panicked. He drowned them too and buried them along with his mistress in the cellar.”

Elena’s eyes drifted back to the picture. A deep sadness came over her as she realised the future Ida had drawn could have been averted.

“My father was a local celebrity for a time,” Ida said, breaking Elena away from her stare. “A celebrity he came to resent, along with me too for causing it.”

“When did he—” Elena nodded at her mother’s hair that hid the scar.

Ida turned the page. “My last drawing before he—before he did this to me,” Ida rubbed at her hair hiding the scar.

The picture on the page to the left was a simple childhood drawing of church.

Before—

The church windows were crude arches. A crucifix, like a lower case t, was fixed to the roof. A congregation of stick-figure people gathered inside like matchsticks in a box.

After—

The church was a red crayon smudge of fire. The lowercase t was stuck into the ground like a tombstone. The congregation were scattered like struck matches.

“A fire?” Elena said.

“Yes. The priest was a known drunk, but my father and the congregation didn’t care as long as he granted them their absolution. That priest couldn't forgive himself though for all his sins. One night he barricaded himself inside the church, emptied the communal wine over the pews and lit a match, but not before he paid a visit to me.”

“He was the priest who splashed holy water on you?”

Ida nodded. “I’ll never forget the smell of him. Stale whiskey, cigarettes, and piss.” Ida's face scrunched as though the stench was fresh. “I was glad when the blessing came, because I knew he would be gone soon after. He sprinkled me with holy water and told my father God was within me. He told my father the drawings were nothing but flights of fancy. Only God could see the future, he said. It was His future to see after all.” A faraway look came into Ida's eyes as she stared out of the kitchen window. “That priest saw the future too in my drawing. It was a future he could have prevented, but he didn't want to stop it. He wanted that fire to burn and himself along with it.”

“That’s horrible.”

“When my father returned from the sea and saw the devastation of the fire, he finally snapped. He took me from the house and down to a small rowing boat in the harbour.” Ida closed her eyes. “He didn’t speak, not a word, no matter how much I pleaded with him to tell me where we were going. I remember the sound of the oars as they slapped against the water. I remember the sea birds squawking above us. I remember my own terrified sobs, but my father remained silent.”

“Where was he taking you?”

“Not that far up the coast, to a natural pool we’d swim in during the summer. The water there was a mirror that trapped the sky. I remember looking down and wondering if I could step into the clouds and far away from my father and his silence, but it wasn’t to be. He marched me down to the edge and pushed me under.”

Ida ran her hand through the silver white of her hair, pausing for a moment at the spot where the scar was hidden.

“As he pushed me under my head hit a rock. The blood from the wound stained the whole pool red. I think the sight of it broke him from his madness. He picked me up, rowed back to town and took me to the doctor.”

“How did he explain what had happened?”

“He told the doctor and my mother I’d fallen. From that moment on he retreated into himself. A few weeks later the trawler he worked on sank just as I’d drawn. All the men aboard died.”

“He wasn’t on the boat?”

Ida nodded. “He changed in that moment out there at the pool. He believed my gift was real, I think, although I never had the courage to ask him directly. He never spoke of it again to me.”

Ida turned the page.

The drawings were not those of a child. These were the drawings of an adult who'd had instruction. An adult who could faithfully reproduce the world with accuracy and precision. Perfectly rendered drawings of revellers atop the Berlin Wall covered one page. Nelson Mandela walking free from Victor Versa prison on another page. Ronald Reagan flinching from the strike of a gunman's bullet was revealed with a flip of the book.

“Who drew these?” Elena said.

“I did,” Ida said.

“You did?” Elena couldn’t hid her surprise. There’d never been a hint her mother had any interest in art, or could draw anything more complicated than a doodle.

“Yes.”

Ida turned the page to reveal more history captured in black pencil. Bhopal, India seen from street level as the chemical factory exploded. The Greenpeace ship 'Rainbow Warrior' sinking. The Challenger space shuttle exploding in mid-air.

“I continued to dream and I never stopped drawing. These you look at now, I drew in the 1970s, when you were a little girl.”

Elena’s knowledge of history was weak, but she could place the decades of the events drawn on the page – 1980s and 1990s.

“You drew all this before it happened?” she said.

“Yes.”

“You didn't tell anyone? You didn't warn them?”

“Who would have believed me?”

Elena ran the question through her mind. Who could I have told about Millie? I didn’t believe it myself at first and there are still some doubts in my mind even now.

“Nobody,” Elena said.

“I kept them to prove to myself I wasn't going mad. When you started drawing as a child I hoped our fates wouldn’t be shared. I was wrong.”

“I don't remember any of it. I drew faeries and unicorns. I drew the huldufólk, but not—”

“Later, thankfully. You grew out of it as you got older.”

“Later?”

“In your early teens you drew those fantasies of yours, but as a child you were just like me. You drew your dreams and those dreams were as prophetic as any I had.”

“What did I draw?”

“Your father leaving, for one.”

“I did? I can’t remember any of it.”

Elena ran her numb hand across the open pages of the scrap book. She felt dislodged. Reality seemed as distant as the childhood drawings she couldn't recall.

“It's okay,” Ida said, her voice coming from far away. She closed her hand over Elena's and squeezed.

“It doesn't feel that way,” Elena said.

“I know. It's hard. It may get harder soon. You have to be prepared.”

“For what?” Elena said, but she already had an idea.

Ida turned the page.

22

On the left was a drawing of Millie at her school desk. On the right, Elena sat in the office at Millie's school with Mr Foster. They were the same level of realism Ida had achieved in her drawings of Mandela and the collapse of the Berlin wall.

“When did you draw these?” Elena said, disbelief in her voice.

“It was some time after you'd stopped your own drawings. You were seven or eight at the time, I believe.”

Elena ran her fingers across the pictures. “You knew what was going to happen to me?”

“I knew what could happen.”

“Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you warn me?”

“I did try to warn you. Not that I came right out and told you. You wouldn't have believed me if I had, but I tried my best to steer you clear of the worst of it all.”

“When? I don't remember any of this.”

“Charles. Do you remember when you first met Charles?”

“Charles?”

Did she see a bad future with Charles? Elena thought. A similar fate to the one Millie drew of him at the top of the stairs holding a knife to my throat?

“Do you remember what I told you then?” Ida said. “You phoned me and told me you'd met this man named Charles. At that time I didn't know he was the one I’d drawn, but I asked you then to describe him over the phone.”

Had Ida seen the monster at the top of the stairs holding a knife too? Was that the future she’d tried to stall? Elena thought. Or was that a future only Millie could see?

“What’s wrong with Charles?”

Silent, Ida looked down to the page.

“Ida? You saw something wrong in Charles. What was it?”

“Nothing.”

“It's not nothing.”

“It doesn't matter now, believe me. That future will never happen. I promise you.”

“That's not an answer.”

“The past is the past and the future is—” Ida fixed on the scrapbook.

“What? The future is what? Tell me,” Elena said.

“I don't know, not for sure,” Ida said.

“You drew it. You must know.”

Elena reached out for the page.

Ida gently placed a hand over her daughter's. “If you must look, look, but remember this is only what could be, just like my father. He didn’t drown despite what I dreamed and what I drew. Remember that Elena.”

What possible future had her mother drawn? Could there be any possible future worse than the ones Millie had illustrated?

The future was the turn of a page.

Elena turned it.

23

A drawing of water spanned both pages, with a rowing boat at the centre. A woman in outline sat within the boat, no shadow or form to her figure, except for her face.

Elena’s face.

She took in a sharp breath at the sight of her image on the page. “When did you draw this?” she said.

Ida reached out and ran a finger across the picture. “Not long after your father left.”

“It’s impossible,” Elena said.

“It never stops feeling that way, I know. But it’s real, you must believe me,” Ida said.

“How? How can it be?”

“I’ve asked myself that question too many times to count, Elena, but I still don’t have the answer.”

“I should have—”

“How could you have known? I’d hoped my silence over the years would keep you from this place and the future I saw. I should have known it was futile.”

“What did you see, Ida?”

Ida reached for Elena’s hand and squeezed. “Turn the page,” she said.

With a shaking hand, Elena reached for the scrapbook. She turned the page. The rowing boat in the water was shown from the front. Elena now sat with Millie at her feet in the boat. A cross-hatch shawl covered her daughter’s face up to the chin. She looked as if she was sleeping or…dead.

Is this the future? Elena thought. Is Millie going to die?

Ida squeezed Elena’s hand. “No,” she said, as if she’d heard Elena’s thoughts.

“She’s not—”

“She’s asleep. That is what I dreamed. That is what I drew.”

Elena sagged in the chair with relief, but it was short-lived. “Where is this, Ida? Where are we? Where are you?”

“A little way up the coast from here. A half hour drive at most.”

“You didn’t answer me. Where are you in this future, Ida?”

“I never dream my future as clearly as that of others. If I’m there at all, I’m only a shadow most of the time. The photographer rarely appears in their own picture, if you will.”

“Do you know where we’re going?”

Ida nodded. She turned the page. The rowing boat headed towards land. A small black island rose from the water like spilled ink. A tiny sketched house sat atop the black.

Elena felt the cold touch of fear. This was Millie’s drawing from the plane rendered realistically. The same black island, the same house. The only difference was the blank sky above, no hint of the colourful norðurljós.

Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue.

“Millie,” Elena mouthed, the word barely a whisper.

“She drew the same picture, didn't she? The same island and the same house. The only difference is that I had no colours to paint the sky as Millie did,” Ida said. “It’s why I asked if she’d ever seen norðurljós. I held out a little hope she hadn’t followed in her mother and grandmother’s footsteps when it came to dreaming up the future. A false hope, I know.”

“She’s never seen the lights before.”

“I thought as much, but I had to be certain.”

“What about the lights? What is it about this house and this island? What happens to us?”

“What could happen,” Ida said.

“Well, what could happen?”

Ida turned the page. Only one side had a picture. The other was littered with flecks of white where a page had been torn away from the backing. The picture that remained was of a familiar man stood upon the black ink-spilled shore of the island. His face was a black smudge of madness. He held a rifle up against one shoulder pointed out towards the approaching boat. He had a name too.

“Charles? Is that Charles?” Elena said, shocked.

Ida nodded.

“Can’t be,” Elena said. “He’s still in London. Besides where would he even get a gun from? Where would he—”

“It’s my rifle, Elena.”

“You own a rifle?”

“I did.”

“Is the rifle still here? If it is then all we have to do is throw it away. The future you saw won’t happen if we just—”

“It’s not here, don’t worry. When I drew this picture of him all those years ago, I made sure to dispose of the rifle soon after. Just like you said, if there is no rifle then this future can't exist.”

Elena nodded at the drawing of Charles on the island. “This can’t happen? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I’ve done everything I can to prevent it. So, yes, I believe so.”

Elena’s gaze travelled from the drawing of Charles on the island to the opposite side of the black card backing. There’d been two drawings in the scrapbook, two futures. Why had one been removed?

“What was here? What else did you draw?”

Ida’s eyes fixed on the empty space. “It won’t happen,” she said.

“What was it?”

“It doesn’t matter now. That future won’t come to pass.”

“I think it does matter. Be honest with me. Tell me what was on the paper.”

“You don’t need to know.”

Elena stared at where the drawing should have been. She couldn’t see the future, but she could imagine the past and the drawing.

“You saw us in the boat together, Millie and I. Charles fired the gun, didn’t he? What did you see, Ida?”

The drawing took shape in Elena’s mind as if she had a pencil in hand. Lines formed in the negative space of her imagination. She saw Millie alone in the boat, pencilled tears in her eyes. She saw her own lifeless body prone on the deck of the small rowing boat.

“Stop it. Stop it now,” Ida said, catching the fear in her daughter’s eyes.

“It’s Millie, isn’t it?” Elena said. “The drawing you did was of Millie. Tell me! Was it her? Did she…die?”

“I threw that rifle into the sea a long time ago. Charles doesn’t have it, so he cannot make this future happen. The island is safe, believe me.”

“He could buy another rifle.”

“Yes. Yes he could.”

“Then how can you be so sure this isn’t the future?” Elena’s eyes fixed on the scrapbook. “What happens next? Did you draw that too?” she said.

“No.”

Elena spied the white paper sticking out underneath the next page in the scrapbook. “There’s another drawing, I can see it. Why are you lying to me?”

Ida flipped the page. “See? No drawing,” she said.

A piece of white, untouched paper was stuck to the black backing card of the scrapbook.

“It’s blank,” Elena said. “Why is it even in here?”

“It’s the last future I dreamed.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I saw white. Nothing else.”

“When was this?”

“I dreamed it last night.”

“All you saw was white?”

“Like snow, only brighter.”

“What does it mean? What kind of future is that?”

“I don’t know for sure. One that hasn’t been written, perhaps. One that is yet to be seen, maybe. One I’m not sure I can even imagine.”

Elena could imagine what the white future might be. The inevitable future once a nuclear war began. This was the blinding white that would follow moments after the bombs were dropped.

The world shrunk a little more around her. “I wish we could leave now,” she said.

“We can if you’d like. The house on the island is stocked with supplies. It’s ours whenever we want it to be.”

“Charles won’t be there? You’re sure?”

“I’ve made sure of it.”

Elena glanced up toward the low ceiling of the kitchen. Millie slept peacefully a few feet above in Elena’s childhood bed. The bombs might drop soon and this could be the last night of peace her young daughter had.

“No,” Elena said. “Let her sleep. We’ll go first thing in the morning.”

“We’ll be safe, don’t fret.” Ida reached out and squeezed her daughter’s hand.

24

The first bombs fell on Auckland, New Zealand as Millie slept peacefully in her mother’s childhood bed. A private Cessna jet with stolen Russian warheads buzzed the skies above the city for an hour before unleashing its deadly cargo. There was no message broadcast beforehand. There was no declaration of war or proclamations of ‘God is great’ in Arabic.

By the time Elena and Millie woke, a second attack was under way. Sydney, Australia, already on high alert, saw two separate detonations within the space of five minutes. Smaller devices were used this time. Suitcase bombs they would be described as by news services across the world. Thousands would die by the end of the day.

The third attack occurred in Moscow. A bomb detonated in Red Square reduced both the Kazan Cathedral and the Kremlin to rubble. The fourth attack hit New York. The Statue of Liberty fell in seconds after a tugboat loaded with explosives ran into Ellis Island. The fifth attack hit Paris, reducing the Eiffel Tower to a pile of twisted metal. The sixth in Beijing at the Forbidden City.

The seventh...

They ate cereal at the table when the news came over the blue radio in the living room. A million dead. A million more would die by the end of the day. Millions more would follow, the terrified radio announcer said. Nobody was taking responsibility for the acts, but everybody had somebody to blame. By the end of the report, retaliation was the word on all lips.

The global game of noughts-and-crosses had begun. An obituary list of cities was read out with increasing panic by the radio announcer. And then there was nothing. The radio hissed with static.

The voices came now from outside as Ida opened up the front door.

“What of my sister?” a woman sobbed.

“I was on the phone to my nephew and then nothing at all. Now I can’t reach him. None of the phone numbers are working,” a woman with a puzzled tone said.

“The TV doesn’t work either. There aren’t even any standby messages,” a man with a throaty voice informed the people gathered there. “It was a bomb, I tell you. A big bomb in Reykjavik. Either that or they attacked the power plants at Hellisheiði and Nesjavellir.”

“The lights are still on in the houses. How could they have blown up the power plants if the lights are still on?” a young man trying to be brave asked. “My computer turns on, so there must be power from some place.”

“I think it might be Vatnsfell you’re thinking of, friend. Or Lagarfosstöð,” the puzzled woman said.

“Could be one, and it could be all. They go for soft targets,” the throaty-voiced man said.

“Who are they?” the sobbing woman asked.

“The same bastards who are doing it all over the world. Who do you think?”

“To what end? Why attack us here?”

“As if there needs to be a reason with them. They don't have any reasons. We’re under attack. Didn’t you hear the radio? What makes you think we would be excluded?” the throaty-voiced man said.

“I don’t think you can jump to conclusions just yet. None of us has a clue what might be happening,” the brave young man said.

“But my sister...I...my sister is there in Reykjavik,” the sobbing woman said.

“Come,” Ida said. “We go now.” There was an urgency in her voice bordering on panic as she hurried outside, yanking Elena’s luggage from near the door.

“Are you leaving, Ida? Now?” the man with the throaty voice asked.

“I am,” Ida replied.

“Where are you going to?”

“As far from here as I can, Mikkel. You should do the same. All of you should.”

“Why? Do you know something? Have you heard something?”

“Yes, Ida. What have you heard exactly?” the sobbing woman asked.

“I have heard what all of you have heard, nothing more.”

“Then why go? We're safe here, aren't we?” Mikkel asked.

“Because I don’t want to be here if anything does happen, Mikkel, that’s why. Now, if you’d stop asking stupid questions, I can be on my way.”

“It’s not a stupid question. Are you not safe here? Are we not safe here? Do you know something we don't?”

Elena heard the voices from outside as she buttoned up Millie’s coat. “One button, two button, three button, four,” she sang, trying to drown out the worried voices from outside.

“Come, come,” Ida said, slamming the boot shut on the car. She waved for Elena.

Elena snaked her hands in beneath Millie’s body and lifted her up from the floor. Millie nestled into Elena’s chest like a rabbit in its burrow and a pang of jealousy struck Elena. She wished she could be as peaceful and innocent. She wished she didn’t know the world was burning.

Why bother running away? she thought. What’s the point of escaping with no future to escape to? What kind of life will Millie have?

A life I don’t want her to live.

So we stay here? Is that what we do? I let the world end here?

“Come, Elena, hurry yourself. What’s the matter?” Ida shouted from outside.

Everything, Elena thought. Everything is the matter.

She glanced at Millie.

Except her, the thought quickly followed.

If there was a chance at a future it was nestled into Elena’s chest at that moment. A small chance, but one she knew had to be taken.

“Elena? What’s the—” Ida began to say.

“I’m coming.”

25

Flat grey skies threatened rain as they travelled away from Vogar. Sat in the passenger seat, Elena pressed her face against the cold glass of the window and watched the still life of the island pass by. Out there it looked as if everything was right with the world, but she knew it was only an illusion.

When would the bombs fall? she thought. Hadn't they already fallen on Reykjavík, Hellisheiði and Nesjavellir? What of Vatnsfell and Lagarfosstöð?

The power stations were still active. They had to be if the TVs were still turning on in houses as the people had said outside her mother’s house. It was the phones that weren’t working. Something had happened to disrupt communications, but what could it have been if it wasn’t the falling of bombs?

An image came to mind, plucked from the days and months before dreams and childish drawings had become reality. It was a stock photograph of a terrorist clad in black, only his troubled dark brown eyes visible through a small slit in the hood he wore. Strapped to his chest was a vest heavy with square, grey bricks of explosives. A confusion of coloured wires led into the bricks and back up to a red detonation trigger in his hand.

Coloured wires. Red and yellow and pink and green.

There were no pink wires in the image that flashed into Elena’s mind, but she couldn’t get the song out of her head. It was the same song she’d sung to Millie when they’d learned the colours of the rainbow together. The song that had come to mind on that first visit to the school over Millie's drawings.

Red and yellow and pink and green.

She daydreamed the man in the black hood to life. He ran towards a radio tower at the centre of an impossibly green field. She saw him, hands in the air to a welcoming God moments before—

The explosion was a sparkling firework display in her mind. Red and yellow and pink and green.

How does the rest of the song go? she thought. It can’t have been so long ago since we last sang it together.

Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue. I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too.

What came next? She was sure there was another verse, but couldn’t put it together in her mind.

Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue. I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too.

Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue. I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too.

Red and yellow and pink and green—

Why it bothered her so much, she couldn’t explain. There was no need to sing a song now, extra verses or not. Millie slept peacefully on the back seat and Ida had found a comfortable old silence to fall into.

Elena stared out of the window at the unchanging landscape. It was as if time stood still and would never start up again. The thought was a brief comfort. If they could just stay in this moment forever with no concern about the past and no inkling of the future, then it would suit her fine. The static hiss of the radio broke the thought.

Ida turned the dial on the Volvo’s old radio, moving as slowly as a safecracker. There was no voice, but there was a hidden message, one Elena could feel, if not hear.

You are alone. All that came before is gone. All that you knew will soon be gone.

It was a message Elena didn’t want to hear. She reached across and turned the knob on the old radio until it clicked and the silence returned. She stared at her mother looking for a response.

Ida kept her eyes focused on the road.

“What is it, Ida? Why are you so quiet?”

“Nothing.”

“There’s something wrong. You haven’t said a word since we left the house.”

“I’m concentrating on driving.”

Elena glanced at the road. There were no cars in front or behind. There had to be panic in the villages and towns, but none had seeped out and caused traffic.

“You’re lying. What are you keeping from me?” Elena said.

“Nothing.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Everything is going to be fine. You must trust me.”

“I do,” Elena said, but the words didn’t mirror her feelings. She’s hiding again, Elena thought. Retreating back into her silence. She’s afraid. She knows something and doesn’t want to tell me.

“We’ll be there soon enough. Then you’ll see I was right,” Ida said.

“Let’s hope.”

“No need for hope, just trust me. For now, relax. Try to take a nap if you can.”

“A nap, at this time?”

“You used to as a child. All the time. Car journeys were a lullaby to you, don’t you remember?”

A childhood memory returned of blowing her breath against the car window. The resulting fog against the glass created a temporary canvas she would draw on with the tip of her finger. Soon, the breathy canvas would be filled with cats and dogs, mummies and daddies, only to be erased by her face as she leaned against the window and let the motion of the car and the growl of the engine sing a lullaby to her.

“I’m not a child,” Elena said.

Ida turned, her face softer, the cold gone from her eyes. “You will always be my child.”

Elena felt the tug of tears at the back of her eyes. Whenever she looked into Millie’s eyes, she knew Millie would always be her child too. She would always want to protect her and make the world safe for her. She’d never thought Ida had those feelings. It was hard to imagine the possibility after so many years of silence, but hard to deny.

Elena lay her hand upon her mother’s hand. “Ég elska þig,” she said, her voice at the edge of breaking.

A silence flooded the space between them. Fear grabbed hold of Elena. Am I wrong? Is what I feel false? Am I lying to myself?

“I love you too,” Ida said, taking one hand off the wheel to squeeze Elena’s. “I always will, whatever might happen, you know that?”

“I do.”

“Whatever I did, if I was ever cold to you, I did it out of love, Elena. You must understand.”

“I do. I do.”

A cold trickle of tears marked Elena’s cheeks. Ida wiped them away with the edge of her hand. “No tears now. You must try to sleep, at least for a little while. I’ll wake you when we arrive.”

“I can’t stop,” Elena said.

“You must try. And you must sleep now. You’re going to need all your energy for that little girl back there. Understand me?”

Elena glanced at Millie. Her daughter was curled up beneath the oversized seatbelt, happy in her dreams, oblivious to the world and its chaos. Elena swallowed hard. She ran her sleeve across her face, soaking up all but a few stubborn tears.

“Yes, yes, I’ll try,” she said.

“Good,” Ida said, and stroked Elena’s hair. “Try to sleep. I’ll wake you when we get there.”

“Okay, I’ll try.”

Elena pressed her face up against the window. The glass was wet with cold and felt comforting. The memory of lullabies returned. Her eyes closed as the hum of the car engine sang its soft lullaby. Soon, she drifted into a world neither dream nor reality.

She saw her recent life in collage. The days and weeks were stitched together haphazardly out of order. In that space between dreams and waking, the bombs hadn’t dropped and Millie’s drawings were just drawings. They were cute colourful creations of what could never be and would never be. Charles was Charles and not the monster that waited with a rifle in his hand.

Charles was Charles.

Millie was Millie.

The past was the past, and the future was—

The future was—

The future—

The—

26

What sounded like the crack of gunfire pulled Elena from sleep. She jolted forward, eyes wide to find Ida missing from the driver’s seat.

It isn’t a gun, Elena thought. It’s a bomb. The bombs are falling. They dropped a nuclear bomb. They dropped a—

Another explosion sounded out beyond the car. A flash of white filled the world, but was gone just as quickly.

Lightning? Is it thunder and lightning? Elena thought.

As if in answer, the sky lit up again and a crack of thunder followed.

Elena searched the night beyond the car. The world throbbed in the wake of the lightning, but it was flat and empty with no edges.

Where are we? Where is Ida? Why did she bring us here and then leave? She wouldn’t leave me, would she? For what reason? Is it Charles? Is Charles here after all? Did Charles get to her? What about Millie?

Millie!

Elena flicked the dome light on above her head and in a panic, she turned to search for Millie.

A mixture of relief and dread filled Elena as she saw Millie asleep on the back seat, a shawl tucked up under her chin. Millie was safe, but where was Ida? Why had she left them alone?

Lightning flashed in answer. The deep bass of thunder rumbled beneath Elena’s feet. The yellow light from the dome flickered above her and died. Darkness flooded the interior of the car.

Elena flicked the switch next to the dome light, but nothing happened. She turned to the Volvo's dashboard and the bank of switches. She leaned across, finger at the ready to turn on the headlamps, but her elbow dropped onto the driver’s seat and a piece of paper.

What the Hell? she thought, grabbing at the page. She turned it over in her hand, but there wasn’t enough light to see anything.

Elena jabbed at the headlamp switch and winced a little as they turned on and the world beyond the car was finally revealed. The darkness retreated and moved under the lights, changing, pushing forward then retreating back where the land now met water.

Water? Are we near the island? Is that where we are? Where is Ida?

The answer was in her hands. She unfolded the paper. Under the backwash of light a familiar drawing of a boat dominated the centre of the page. In the centre of the boat sat Ida. Her mother was rendered well, not a shadow as she'd claimed she saw herself in her dreams. She held a rifle in her hand pointed towards a page that was left behind in a scrapbook in a little red house far away. A page where Charles stood on the black island, another rifle in hand.

Elena shook as she looked from the drawing out to the world illuminated under the light from the car’s headlamps. A world where the edges shifted in and out, retreating only to advance. A world of tides coming and going.

27

The rain was silver arrows.

Elena climbed from the car and ignoring the downpour pressed on towards the edge of the water.

Where are you Ida? Is Charles dead? Did you kill him with a rifle you said you didn’t have? Is that why you brought us here and didn’t tell us, so that you could kill him before he got to us? How could you have been certain we would sleep, the both of us? Why did you leave the drawing for me to find? Was it to warn me of what you were doing just in case you weren’t successful? Why didn’t you tell me all this before you drove out to this place? Why come out here at all?

Because she saw it, that’s the answer. She knew all of this would happen years before Millie started to dream her dreams, or I met the monster at the top of the stairs. She knew her part in all of this too. That’s why she left behind the page. She couldn’t tell you with words, because you’d have tried to stop her.

It made some sense to Elena’s mind, but it didn’t explain how Charles could have found them. It seemed impossible.

Yet here I am, she thought. Here we are. Dreams and reality so close together they barely need different names.

Elena walked towards the water. Lightning turned black into white and white into black. Thunder shook the earth. The waters churned, shot with rain.

Are you out there Ida? Did you stop the future? Did you shoot Charles before he had a chance to shoot you? Are we safe here?

A new form took shape under the light from the car. A frail wooden jetty stitched together with frayed rope lay in the water a few feet away from Elena. It swayed, pulled and pushed as if it might unravel and float away at any moment.

This is where the boat must have been. This is where she left to stop the future.

Where are you Ida? Why didn’t you wake me up and tell me what you were doing?

The thunder roared. Lightning followed.

Elena staggered forward. “Ida? Can you hear me?” she shouted into the dark. This is stupid, she thought. She could be a mile away be now. She’s not going to hear me. “Ida! Are you out there? Can you hear me?”

A crack of thunder shook her bones. The light that followed washed over the world long enough for Elena to see the boat. A single figure sat inside.

Ida?

“Elena?” The voice was a hopeful whisper lost in the sound of the falling rain.

Elena rushed towards the end of the jetty, ignoring the sway beneath her. “Ida!” she shouted.

The lightning flashed. The thunder roared. “Elena! Elena!” Ida shouted.

“I’m here. I’m here. Just follow my voice.”

“Keep talking,” Ida shouted.

“Here, here. Just follow my voice.”

“I see the car. I can see the lights.”

“I’m here.”

The lightning flashed. The thunder roared.

The boat sat under the flash of light, with Ida stood in the centre. She held a rifle above her head and waved it like flag.

“He wasn’t there, Elena! Charles wasn’t there on the island. Do you hear me?”

The boat rocked left to right, perilously close to tipping over.

“Sit down. Please for the love of—”

“He wasn’t there. I searched the whole place. He wasn’t there. He never made it to the island. Don’t you see? The future can change. It can all change.”

“Please sit down before you fall. Please!”

“The future can be—”

The lightning flashed. The thunder roared.

The world slowed to a slow heartbeat. The boat lurched to the left and seemed to hold there for an impossibly long time before it tipped over and took Ida with it into the black waters. The light from the lightning was gone in a blink. Only darkness and the burned memory of the boat remained.

“Móðir!” Elena screamed.

A frantic splash of water was the only answer the darkness had to give.

Elena stared into the black waters. Jump in! she thought. I have to jump in and save her. But I’ll drown and Millie will be all alone. She’ll be alone.

“Ida! Answer me!”

Jump in. Jump in. Jump in!

“Ida! Answer me!”

Elena stood at the edge of the jetty, not sure what was night and what was water before her.

Jump in. Jump in. Jump in!

“Ida!”

A long black silence stretched out before Elena.

“Móðir,” Elena moaned. “Móðir.”

Lightning turned the world white. Under that bright flash, the boat returned, spat to the surface. It was close enough for Elena to reach out and grab its edge. Impossibly close.

If I just dive in, I’ll be able to grab her and—

Millie. What about Millie?

I can’t risk it. I can’t just—

Elena’s legs gave out beneath her. She collapsed onto the jetty and buried her head into her hands. “Móðir,” she whimpered, as if the name would part the waves and bring Ida back from the silent depths.

The waters churned. Lightning flashed. Thunder roared.

The rain fell like silver arrows.

28

The empty rowing boat bumped the edge of the jetty like a faithful dog returned from play. Elena stared out across the black waters, trying to make sense of what had happened.

Why did you stand up, Ida? Why did you do something so stupid? Why Ida? Why?

It doesn’t matter now. It’s too late. I should have jumped in after her. Now she’s dead. Now she’s—

Elena’s gaze swept the black from left to right, searching for a sign of life. The waters breathed in and out. Her mother was a lost breath in amongst the rest.

Why did you go out there? Why did you leave us behind, Ida? Why did you lie to me?

To protect us, that’s why. She lied to me back there in the house. She could see her own future, at least some of it. She was never a shadow at the edge of her own visions. She came here to kill Charles and stop the future.

A future that didn’t happen, Elena thought. Charles isn’t here, that’s what she’d said. The future can change.

The future can change.

Elena stared at the rowing boat. She saw Ida’s earlier drawing in her mind; a picture of Millie wrapped in a shawl at her feet as the boat travelled out across the waters.

Charles isn’t on the island, is he? she thought. We’ll be safe there, won’t we?

The future can change.

Will we be safe from the bombs? Safe from the future? How safe could anybody be in a world gone crazy?

She didn’t know the answers to her questions, but she did have a direction now. It was somewhere out there in the black where a small house waited for her and Millie.

29

Elena had never felt more alone in her life as she rowed out into the darkness. There, where the waters breathed deep and slow, it was as if the world didn’t exist, as if it couldn’t exist.

Millie slept, cocooned in her shawl, the breath of the water matching the slow rise and fall of her chest. As Elena listened, she imagined they were trapped in the belly of a whale, paddling through the impossible lake of its stomach. It would make a good children’s book, she thought. She could picture the illustrations in her mind; scratchy and cartoonish with a muted palette. Briefly, she lost herself in the fantasy.

The evening’s chill stole the distraction from her. She shivered. It would turn colder soon enough, and Millie’s shawl would be useless. The coat Elena had brought wouldn’t provide much protection either. They would freeze out on the black waters if they didn’t get to the house on the island soon.

She paddled on through the black oiled night, confusing nothing for everything, and everything for nothing at all.

I won't find it. We'll die out here in the cold, the both of us, before we even have a chance to flee the future.

The future can change.

A yellow light flickered in the dark.

It’s just an illusion, Elena thought. A cruel trick of my stressed out mind. There’s nothing out there in the dark that could create such a colour.

She leaned forward and narrowed her eyes.

The yellow light bloomed like a flower as they approached, revealing its source: an old-fashioned oil lamp. It was fixed to a post on the ink black shores of an island.

Elena’s hope grew along with her excitement. It’s real! We’ll be safe once we get to the island and—

No sooner had the hope appeared, than it was dashed. A shape appeared on the shore of the black island. It was a man in shape, but not in texture and detail. A man formed from shadows.

Is that Charles? Elena thought. Ida said he wasn’t here when she checked. She wouldn’t lie to me, would she?

She lied to me my whole life. Why would it be any different now? Why this lie though? What could she possibly have to gain?

She didn’t lie, that’s why. I’m just imagining things again.

Elena squinted at the shape on the shore, hoping to bring out details. If it was Charles, he wasn’t moving. He was as solid as stone.

What are you trying to do to me? What is this game you’re playing, Charles?

She felt the heat of anger spreading out across her arms and up her neck.

“Mummy?” Millie said, emerging from her sleep and the jail between Elena’s legs.

“Hush now, Millie Moo.”

“Are we there?”

“Soon,” Elena whispered.

“How soon? I’m hungry.”

What do I do? Elena thought. What will Charles do if we get to the shore? Is that really him standing there? Is he really the monster I think he is? Oh God! Is this how it all ends?

No. I won’t let him be that monster. I won’t let him scare me or Millie.

“Charles?” Elena shouted, her voice strong despite her fearful thoughts.

The shadow man remained motionless on the shore.

“Is daddy here?” Millie said.

Elena squeezed her eyelids to narrow slits. “Charles! Can you hear me? Do you hear me, for God’s sake? Charles!”

“Is daddy here? Is he here?” Millie said.

“Wait just a minute, okay.”

“I want to see!” Millie said.

“Just a minute.”

“Mummy! Let me out!” Millie shouted as she pushed at Elena’s legs. A moment later she was free and scrambling towards the edge of the boat. “Daddy! Daddy!” she shouted.

Elena fixed her gaze on the shadow man standing on the shore. He hadn’t moved in response to either of their voices. Relief washed over her as she realised what she was looking at. It wasn’t Charles out there. It was nothing but a shadow cast from the rock where the oil lamp was fixed. Ida had told the truth about the island being empty, after all.

“Daddy?” Millie shouted. “Daddy!”

“It's not him, Millie Moo. I made a mistake. It's just a shadow.”

Millie turned back to Elena. “He is coming though, mummy? He is coming here with us, isn't he?”

There was such expectation in her daughter’s voice, it would have been cruel to tell her no. As cruel as exposing Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny for the simple lies they were. She couldn’t do it.

“Soon, I think,” she said.

“How soon?”

Elena held up her finger. “One night’s sleep.”

“One sleep?”

“One sleep. I promise.” Elena crossed her heart.

“Okay,” Millie said. She scrambled back and wedged herself between Elena’s legs. “What about nan—amma? Where is amma, mummy?”

Elena couldn’t look back into the black waters that had swallowed Ida. She would never look back. It was too painful.

She tousled Millie’s hair. “You remembered how to say it. That’s very clever, Millie Moo.”

“It’s easy to remember.”

“We’ll be with her soon enough,” Elena lied.

“Goody. She never finished the story she was telling me. I want to hear how it ends.”

“What story was that, Millie?” Elena said, picking up the paddle and dipping its blade into the water.

“A story about the lights in the sky.”

Elena paddled towards the shores of the black island. “What lights in the sky, Millie?”

“The ones I drew. Amma said they were special lights. She said I was special because I could see them.”

“You are special, Millie Moo.”

“Amma said that the lights are from all the people who died. She said they come back each year to remind us.”

“Remind us of what?” Elena asked as she paddled the boat to the side of a small wooden jetty. She reached down for the rope that would tie the boat off.

“Remind us that we’re beautiful. That we always will be.”

“That’s lovely,” Elena said as she stood and tied the boat off around a post. “What was the rest of the story, Millie Moo?”

“She said there was a special little girl just like me who drew all the people in the sky. But because she drew all the colours there were no more colours left for anybody else.”

“That’s sad.”

“I know.”

“So what did the special little girl have to do then?”

Millie shrugged. “I don’t know. Amma never finished the story. She said I had to finish it.”

Elena stepped out of the boat and onto the jetty. She reached back and pulled Millie out. “How about we finish amma’s story together? How does that sound, Millie Moo?”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. We’ll draw the ending to the story together. Would you like that?”

“Oh yes!”

Elena pulled her daughter into a hug.

Millie pushed out of it after a few seconds, a puzzled look on her face. “What kind of ending will it be, mummy?” she said.

“The best kind.”

“What’s that?”

“A happy one,” Elena said.

30

The house sparkled from decades of salt thrown off the waters. It sat alone on the black sand of the island like a diamond in a satin bed. Elena ran her hand across the front door and brought away fingers covered in white crystals.

“It’s like glitter,” Millie said, squeezing Elena’s hand for attention.

“Yes. I suppose it is.”

“Why?”

Elena warmed at hearing the question. It was the question a child would ask in a world that wasn’t tearing itself apart.

“The wind picks up salt off the water and blows it all over the house,” she said.

“Oh. It looks nice anyway,” Millie said, a disappointed tone in her voice.

Her daughter had seen the house before, Elena knew. She’d plucked this place from a dream and set it down on paper. But the dream and the drawing were forgotten, it seemed. They were lost, like all childhood interests, in the moments between one excitement and the next.

Good, Elena thought. She doesn’t know and if she doesn’t know, she can’t be afraid of what might come next. Throughout all of this she’s been the only one unafraid and I have to keep it that way.

“Come on. Let’s get out of the cold, Millie Moo.”

The house was set for their arrival. The living room warmed by a crackling fire in the hearth. In the kitchen another fire flickered behind the black grate of an upright stove. The dining room table was laid out for three.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears came to Elena’s mind. Mummy Bear, Baby Bear and…Father bear? No. Charles was out of the picture now. He’d never been in the picture, except for Ida’s drawing.

And who’s been sleeping in my bed?

She shook the thought away. Charles wasn’t on the island. The shadow he’d cast across her life hadn’t reached out this far no matter what had been dreamed or drawn.

Elena focused on the table. Such a simple setting at any other time would mean nothing. Now it was a reminder of who wouldn’t sit with them this night, or ever again.

Millie scrambled into a seat. “Will amma come soon?” she said.

Elena pulled out a chair and stared at the empty place at the table that would never be filled. “Soon. Very soon,” she said.

“Where has she gone?”

“Don’t you worry about it, Millie Moo. We’ll be with her soon enough.”

Soon enough, Elena thought. How soon until the future reaches us?

Never, she wanted to say. Never.

“Mummy?”

How long she’d been staring at the empty chair by the table, she couldn’t be sure. “Sorry, Millie Moo. What is it?”

“Can we play some music?”

“Music?”

Millie pointed to the pine dresser behind Elena. The shelves were crowded with the same hand-painted blue plates and bric-a-brac as in Ida’s red house. But Millie wasn’t pointing at those. It was the wind-up radio that sat on the top that had caught her attention.

Elena reached for the radio. There would be no music left to hear, she knew. There might be nobody left out there left to broadcast. If there was someone, somewhere, she didn’t want Millie to hear what they had to say.

She shook the radio in her hand as though checking it for a weight it would never have. “I’ll have to find some batteries. They should be in the front room, okay, Millie Moo?”

Millie’s face crinkled with worry. Her eyes darted from Elena to the kitchen window and back again. “Don’t go, mummy,” she said.

“I’m not going anywhere. You’ll be able to see me all the time. You don’t have to be scared.”

“Please,” Millie said.

How many times did I tell her there were no monsters under the bed or in her cupboard? How many nightmares has she woken from that I said couldn’t hurt her? Back then it was the truth, but is it the truth now? Elena feared the answer to that question would be too much for the both of them.

“I tell you what, Millie Moo, let’s play a game. What do you say?”

Slowly, Millie’s eyes shrank from wide puppy dog to the narrowed suspicion of a cat. “Game?”

“Yes, a drawing game. What do you say?”

“What kind of a drawing game?”

“It’s a drawing guessing game.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I’m going to go in there and look for the batteries for this radio and you’re going to draw me a picture.” And while you’re distracted, I’m going to listen to the radio to hear if the world still exists.

“A picture of what?” Millie said.

“The story amma said you should finish. How about that?”

“Yes!” Millie said, any fear in her eyes vanished in an instant. She dug the pencils and the pad out of Elena's bag and spread them out on the table. She'd already marked the paper by the time Elena had reached the door.

“You're a quick starter,” Elena said.

“No peeking,” Millie warned.

Elena walked out to the living room, her back to the kitchen and her daughter. She unfolded the crank arm on the wind-up radio and turned it. It made a noise like the soft whir of a portable fan. She covered up the sound with a question.

“Let’s see now. Are you drawing a ship?”

“Noooo,” Millie said, a giggle in her voice.

Elena turned the crank. “Okay then. Is it a giraffe?”

“Silly. No.”

“Is it a carrot? A giant orange carrot?”

“Not even a little bit close, mummy. That’s not how the story ends.”

“This is going to be a tough one, isn’t it, Millie?”

“You’ll never guess in a million years.”

I’d settle for another month of guesses, Elena thought. I’d make do with another week, another hour, another...how much longer do we have left?

“Is it a car you’re drawing, Millie Moo?”

“No.”

Elena placed the radio on a sideboard table. She turned the dial on the top from ‘off’ to ‘on’. The radio crackled loudly.

“What’s that?” Millie shouted from the other room.

“Just me trying to fix this silly radio. I’ve still not finished my guesses yet.” Elena brushed her fingers over the volume dial and dropped the radio down to a crackling whisper. “Are you drawing a lion?”

“A lion?”

“Yes. A big ferocious lion that goes raaaawwrrr!”

Millie giggled. “That’s a rubbish lion, mummy.”

“Oh it is, is it? How is a lion supposed to sound?”

Elena held the radio to her ear. She found the rough edge of the tuning dial and carefully eased it to the right. A faint voice drowned in the static.

“Raaaawroooararara!” Millie growled.

“That’s a good lion, Millie Moo. I thought there was one in the room with us!”

“Raaaaawerorarraa.”

“Oh no! There are two lions now! You’d best not let them eat your drawing or I’ll never be able to guess, will I?”

“You won’t anyway, mummy. You’ll never guess.”

“We’ll see about that.” Elena rolled her finger over the dial. “Are you drawing an aeroplane?” she asked.

“No”

“How about a bird? A big giant bird!” Elena touched the dial and thought she heard a voice.

“No, silly. It’s not anything like that, mummy.”

Elena held a breath as she turned the dial. The roiling waves of static became a calmer sea and a voice bubbled up from the depths.

“Mummy?” Millie shouted from the kitchen.

“Just a minute, Millie. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

The voice at Elena’s ear spoke in Icelandic.

Once a clown, but this is no longer a time for laughter, my fellow Icelanders, my fellow human beings.

Elena’s stomach turned to hot ice.

I wish…I wish I could tell you it was all going to work out. I wish…I wish so many things for you, my friends, my family…

The voice dipped down, then resurfaced.

We have three minutes my brothers and sisters, you sons and daughters of Iceland, the sons and daughters of this world. We have three minutes—if you—those you love—find them—be with them—three minutes—be with them—too late—love—love—

Static drowned out the voice. Elena pushed the dial, her fingers a jittery mess. She pulled at the crank and wound it ferociously. It screamed as she did so.

“What’s the matter, mummy?” Millie shouted.

“It’s okay. It’s nothing. I think the radio is broken.”

A wave of nausea threatened to pull Elena down onto her knees.

Three minutes. 180 seconds. And then—

“Mummy? You still haven’t guessed! It’s in the sky, like an aeroplane. I drew it in the sky,” Millie said, annoyed.

180 seconds, less now. Less. What could be done in 180 seconds? What was worth doing?

Elena’s breath came in shallow bursts. She walked back into the kitchen as if walking through quicksand. There was no time left to do anything. No time left to make things right. No time but to—

She saw the drawing on the table before Millie. She had seen the drawing before, at least another version of it. It was an illustration of a mother and her daughter in a house that sat on a black island. The colourful lights of norðurljós lit the dark night above.

Elena felt the tears flow.

“Mummy, are you okay?” Millie said.

“I’m fine. I’m just a bit sad, that’s all. Just a bit—”

“About my drawing?” Millie asked. “Amma said everyone goes up there when they die. That’s where all the light comes from. It should make us happy. I drew a happy ending.”

There were only seconds left, Elena thought. Could the future be changed? Could there be a happy ending just as Millie had drawn?

Elena walked around the table. She pulled Millie in close and kissed her head.

“Everybody in the light is happy. Is that what amma told you?”

Millie nodded under the embrace. “They’re beautiful aren’t they, mummy?”

“Yes. Yes they are.”

“All the colours. Not all the colours of the rainbow, but nearly all.”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember the song, mummy? The ‘Rainbow Song’?”

“Yes, yes I do, Millie Moo. Do you want to sing it now?”

“Can we?”

“You go first. I’ll follow.”

Millie’s voice was a tender heat across Elena’s stomach. She thought of those months she’d carried Millie within. She thought of the nights alone singing nursery rhymes to her unborn daughter.

“Red and yellow and pink and green,” Millie sang.

Her voice cracking, Elena stared out into the darkness through the kitchen window. It wasn’t so dark now. Bright lights filled the sky in the far distance—Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue. She wanted it to be norðurljós. She hoped beyond hope that the colours belonged to the Northern Lights.

We might be safe, Elena thought. The future can change. The future can change.

She held Millie as close as she could, wanting to pull her back inside her body.

“Purple and orange and blue,” Elena sang, her voice barely registering.

“I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow,” Millie sang.

“Sing a rainbow too,” Elena sobbed.

Paint It White

{An Afterword}

Where do stories begin? Most of the time it’s hard to pinpoint, but in the case of my novel, The Girl Who Dreamed a War, I know exactly when the story began and how it would always have to end. It took me thirty years to get to one from the other.

It started with a recurring childhood dream.

In the dream I am ten years of age, a mirror to my own age at the time. I wear a flat cap, and my face is smudged with soot. I, along with dozens of other children, run through the cobbled alleys of a English industrial town that sits at the foot of an impossibly tall mountain. But the mountain is not the only impossibility within the dream. A queen sits at the top of the mountain on a shining chrome throne. Faceless, her head in the clouds, we look up to see her finger descend towards a large red button set into the arm of her throne. We know, without being told, that if she presses that button a nuclear war will begin, and the world will be destroyed.

With an unquestioned certainty only available in a dream, we hurry about collecting giant matchsticks in hopes we'll gather enough to give to the queen. The matchsticks are javelin sized. They appear on our shoulders, heavy, and as impossible as every other part of the dream. But we must carry on. We must deliver all the matches to the foot of the queen. We can stop this madness before it begins, if only the queen has enough matches.

Her finger falls in slow motion, and the red button pulses like a heartbeat beneath. The last match sits on my shoulder. My body aches and trembles under its weight. I reach the pile at the foot of the queen, and with the last of my strength I heave the match into the sky—

It tumbles through the air, moving impossibly slow. Slower than the finger of the queen. It is an unfair race between the two, one I know I cannot win even as I watch and hope. The match tumbles and tumbles, still tumbling as the queen’s finger presses the button. I look up. The world flashes a brilliant, blinding white, and I wake.

Of course, dreams always end too soon, pleasant or otherwise. The perfect kiss stolen by a noisy alarm, the killer’s axe that never quite strikes home, the mourned relative a fingertip away from touching. I would wake from the dream, terrified and shaking, unsure if dream and reality were one and the same. I would run to my bedroom window and push down the blinds to check if the world still existed. It did, always, but the dread would hang in the air like the smell of sulphur from a struck match.

My dream didn’t appear out of nowhere. I grew up in the 1980s when the shadow of nuclear annihilation loomed over a world still fully engaged in a Cold War. With the revelation and subsequent availability of the British government’s video and pamphlet series Protect and Survive, that shadow cast itself widely over the British public. The comic book and animated film of When the Wind Blows, Threads, and even The Young Ones, reflected the dread in our popular culture at the time.

In a segment of Protect and Survive, it is advised to: “Coat windows inside with diluted emulsion paint of a light colour so that they will reflect away much of the heat flash”. During the animated version of Where the Wind Blows, Jim Bloggs paints his windows white following those instructions, and in The Young Ones, Neil paints his body white in a comedic exaggeration of the same advice. Ludicrous in both situations and more ludicrous considering the advice was supposed to be taken in earnest. Comic or tragic, the message of these fictions carried a truth the government wouldn’t dare admit at the time: there is no way to protect and survive from a nuclear attack, and little point if you do manage to survive. The future after a nuclear war, we know now, is no future at all.

This is where the story began, in a time of nuclear threat, with a child’s recurring dream of nuclear destruction.

And here is where it ends, thirty years later, with another child's dreams, in a work, I hope, that will always remain a fiction.

I’ve not had those dreams of the queen since childhood, but the smell of sulphur is in the air once again. A new Cold War has begun with Russia. A strange, reality-TV celebrity has his finger on the nuclear button. Dread is thick in the air like the whole world was a struck match. That same dread permeates The Girl Who Dreamed a War. A story about a child who dreams the future and draws it on waking. A story about the lengths a mother will take to protect her daughter.

A story, in the end, about painting your windows white.

Paul John Lyon | January 1st 2018

About the Author

Paul John Lyon's passion for fiction began at the age of ten when his grandfather gave him a box of well-thumbed paperbacks. Between the yellowed pages of those books, he discovered tales of detectives and criminals, spies and lovers, grand victories and grander defeats. More importantly, in that box were the seeds of a love affair that has lasted a lifetime. A few years later he was gifted a typewriter and began writing. He hasn't stopped since.