more to the clockwork of the universe than that. When you have faith, you can see the unlikely as fragments of a larger plan: one that belongs to God, and is only ever revealed to you piecemeal, if at all.
So he is in a spiritual quandary. He wants to believe in God for the sake of Emmy. He wants to believe that on another plane of existence, a young woman of almost ephemeral beauty is existing, smiling. He wants to believe that God sees all images of her simultaneously, a flipbook of pictures of a little girl’s beautiful smile and an older girl’s delightful laugh, and that He took her to a better place where she is laughing and smiling still. Part of His plan. Smelling in heaven of the honey-flavoured perfume she always wore.
But if that is true, what of Levchenko?
Why has his life been allowed to continue?
If his survival is part of some unseen plan, it has never been revealed to him. He has achieved nothing special with the years since, beyond fanning soft, quiet happiness into the embers of his life with Jasmina after Emmy was taken from them. Surely God would not have kept him alive simply to endure the agony of living to see his daughter die?
No. There must be something more.
He rolls over, resting the side of his face on his forearm. Jasmina is snoring gently beside him—a comfortable, comforting lump beneath the covers.
It is foolish, of course, to think of these things. If God has a plan, then any revelation—or not—of its purpose is out of his hands. If there is anything he is meant to understand, he will do so at the right time.
Sleep gradually unravels upon him, pulling its misty blanket up to cover his restless thoughts, patting itself gently down over his mind.
His eyes flicker open briefly as he goes under.
The last things he sees before a dream is the nightstand. He sees the photograph of Emmy. And beside it he sees the old candle, its petals frail and dusty with age. It is purple and blue and red—but he knows there are tears and more besides mixed into its waxen randomness, for this is the candle he cast eight years ago, in the hollow hours after his daughter’s murder.
Part Two
I T WAS LATE. AFTER midnight, I think.
And so the boy begins his story.
He is in the bedroom he shares with his older brother. It would be cramped with just one of them; with two, the room is rendered impossibly tiny. It is the length of the bunk bed and only twice as wide. All their clothes are piled under the lower bunk. The only other furniture is a battered wooden bookcase filled with cheap paperbacks and a row of tatty comics, stuffed in so tight that the paper has bunched and torn. There is no window.
The door opens directly on to the dim corridor running along the centre of the small house. It is shut, but—suddenly—outlined with light. Their mother has been in bed for hours. This is their father arriving home.
The boy holds his breath in the dark. Lying on the bed above him, he knows his older brother is doing the same.
Together but separate, they wait.
The boy is used to judging the world, on occasions like this, by noises. When his father is whistling, there is a chance everything will be all right. When he is talking to himself under his breath, it means someone has annoyed him at the pub: someone larger than him with whom he cannot pick a proper argument, so that he now needs to find someone with whom he can.
The little boy knows that his father is a bully, just like the children at school. When he told him he was being bullied, his father tried to teach him how to box. He took him out front and kept yelling at him to keep his hands up as he slapped him.
There is a clatter from the hallway, a stumble, and a thud against the wall. Tonight, his father isn’t making any other sound at all, and the boy’s heart is like a frightened bird trapped in his chest. That is always the worst. It means his father is very drunk indeed, that the bitterness he carries inside him will be tight against the
So he is in a spiritual quandary. He wants to believe in God for the sake of Emmy. He wants to believe that on another plane of existence, a young woman of almost ephemeral beauty is existing, smiling. He wants to believe that God sees all images of her simultaneously, a flipbook of pictures of a little girl’s beautiful smile and an older girl’s delightful laugh, and that He took her to a better place where she is laughing and smiling still. Part of His plan. Smelling in heaven of the honey-flavoured perfume she always wore.
But if that is true, what of Levchenko?
Why has his life been allowed to continue?
If his survival is part of some unseen plan, it has never been revealed to him. He has achieved nothing special with the years since, beyond fanning soft, quiet happiness into the embers of his life with Jasmina after Emmy was taken from them. Surely God would not have kept him alive simply to endure the agony of living to see his daughter die?
No. There must be something more.
He rolls over, resting the side of his face on his forearm. Jasmina is snoring gently beside him—a comfortable, comforting lump beneath the covers.
It is foolish, of course, to think of these things. If God has a plan, then any revelation—or not—of its purpose is out of his hands. If there is anything he is meant to understand, he will do so at the right time.
Sleep gradually unravels upon him, pulling its misty blanket up to cover his restless thoughts, patting itself gently down over his mind.
His eyes flicker open briefly as he goes under.
The last things he sees before a dream is the nightstand. He sees the photograph of Emmy. And beside it he sees the old candle, its petals frail and dusty with age. It is purple and blue and red—but he knows there are tears and more besides mixed into its waxen randomness, for this is the candle he cast eight years ago, in the hollow hours after his daughter’s murder.
Part Two
I T WAS LATE. AFTER midnight, I think.
And so the boy begins his story.
He is in the bedroom he shares with his older brother. It would be cramped with just one of them; with two, the room is rendered impossibly tiny. It is the length of the bunk bed and only twice as wide. All their clothes are piled under the lower bunk. The only other furniture is a battered wooden bookcase filled with cheap paperbacks and a row of tatty comics, stuffed in so tight that the paper has bunched and torn. There is no window.
The door opens directly on to the dim corridor running along the centre of the small house. It is shut, but—suddenly—outlined with light. Their mother has been in bed for hours. This is their father arriving home.
The boy holds his breath in the dark. Lying on the bed above him, he knows his older brother is doing the same.
Together but separate, they wait.
The boy is used to judging the world, on occasions like this, by noises. When his father is whistling, there is a chance everything will be all right. When he is talking to himself under his breath, it means someone has annoyed him at the pub: someone larger than him with whom he cannot pick a proper argument, so that he now needs to find someone with whom he can.
The little boy knows that his father is a bully, just like the children at school. When he told him he was being bullied, his father tried to teach him how to box. He took him out front and kept yelling at him to keep his hands up as he slapped him.
There is a clatter from the hallway, a stumble, and a thud against the wall. Tonight, his father isn’t making any other sound at all, and the boy’s heart is like a frightened bird trapped in his chest. That is always the worst. It means his father is very drunk indeed, that the bitterness he carries inside him will be tight against the
Similar Books
