Garden of Heaven and Earth

The “closed” sign dangled precariously on the edge of the small nail wedged into the door. Feyi pressed her forehead against the window surface. Inside, she could see the various surfaces collecting dust, and a RENT notice graced the table she used to sit at on Saturdays, watching the world go by while she waited for her teacher to arrive.

Those Saturday mornings felt like a lifetime ago.

 She walked out of the small cul-de-sac and back onto the main road, taking her place amidst pedestrian life. She tried to look welcoming and warm, though her teeth chattered, and her skin itched in revolt against the strained smile she donned.

She looked into the distance at the monstrous Old Street station, the various exits accumulating around the main structure like tentacles on a large and ugly fish. She grimaced at the sight of it. She had never cared much for East London.

The tips of her fingers had lost all sensation. She warmed them against her legs and reached for the sheets of A5 paper in her pockets, thankful that she had remembered to grab them as she left home.

A woman approached. She marched purposefully, her braided ponytail trailing her like a cape in the wind, but her expression was calm, her lips nestled gently into a smile.

“Hey! I love your boots.” Feyi yelled out, her voice clipped and careful, but confident.

“Thank you!” the woman said, smiling back graciously.

“Where did you get them from?” Feyi asked, attempting to continue the conversation. The woman’s lengthy stride had already taken her into the distance, but she came back.

“Hmm.” She considered. “You know, I can’t remember! I think they were given to me as a gift. But!” she said, triumphantly, her soft smile broadening into a full-fledged toothy grin - “But, I can check.”

She stood on one leg, wobbling, while she picked up the other foot in her hand, contorting herself as she tried to get a closer look at the sole of her shoe.

“Oh gosh, you don’t have to do that!” Feyi said, laughing.

“No, no. Look…they’re from Clarks! Wow, all that for a pair of boots from Clarks.”

Now, the two women laughed. Warmly, like old friends. This was her chance.

“I’m Feyi, by the way.”

“Hey! I’m Denise.” She said, stretching her gloved fingers out across the windy gulf, to meet Feyi’s. The two women now stood, close enough to one another to see the puffs of air forming from their breaths.

“Hey, by any chance are you a Christian?”

“Oh, yes, I am! Why?”

“Oh, wonderful.” She said, handing her a leaflet. “Basically, I am out here today telling people about a faith-based self-development course, run by a mentor of mine. She’s great, and she’ll be hosting a meeting next Saturday not too far from here. Would you be interested in something like this?”

                                                            …

Feyi walked back up the street towards Old Street Station and stopped at another coffee shop. The heat of the chai latte warmed her palms, and the milky sweetness tingled in her mouth. She flicked through the little A5 leaflets, staring at the little words in the comic sans font that had changed her own life. “WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR FAITH?”

                                                                       …

The congregation stood up as the chords of the piano ushered them into a familiar tune. Feyi cleared her throat, belting out the melody, the notes scratching up against her windpipe. The strain pushed her from a song into a cough, taking over her whole body. She pressed her lips together, willing the tickle in her throat to abate, to leave room for the song, but it would not. She coughed, loudly enough that others stared. Eventually, she picked up the bottle of water by her feet, and walked outside the room.

He emerged, his eyes open and earnest, replicating the same eagerness with each person who walked up to him. He placed his hands against his chest in a gesture of supplication, of servitude, as he spoke. Feyi waited, watching the people walk by and intermittently taking sips of water from her bottle as she stood.

Finally, he turned to her, his arms opened wide. “Ah. Feyi, you’re here. Did I see you leave the service?”

Feyi cleared her throat again. “Yes, um – yes – I have a cough. So, you know. Didn’t want to be a nuisance.”

Liam observed her as she took another gulp of water.

“I see. The Devil and his distractions, eh? Well, thank you for waiting. Shall we have some privacy?”

Feyi followed him as he led her through one wider corridor, into a slightly narrower corridor, which in turn led to a small room. He pulled the key out of his pocket, gathering up the cloth of his white robe as he did so. The gathered material fell back onto the floor with a thud, and she watched it, mesmerised by the layers of cloth and lace – she had never noticed the lace before - ahead of her as it trailed behind him, past the pulsating bookshelf, past the utilitarian wooden chair opposite the desk and finally, he gathered it between his legs as he sat down on the cushioned swivel chair.

“Sit down, Feyi. Please make yourself comfortable”, he said, gesturing towards the rickety frame of the seat in front of her. Feyi balanced on it gingerly, eager that the legs should not cave in under her weight.

“So, I presume you have been able to do some thinking, and some praying?”, he said, his smile as broad as his eyes were wide. Feyi struggled to meet his gaze with the same intensity, and instead focused on looking at the small lines engrained into his forehead.

“Yes,” she said. “I think so. I know what God is calling me to do.”

“Great. Then it’s settled. You will start as an assistant with a new class in April!”

Feyi felt a familiar ache in the pit of her stomach. She suppressed another cough, leaning forward in the chair, gripping it as it creaked.

“Thank you, Liam. Truly, thank you for the opportunity. But there’s one thing I want to talk to you about.”

“Of course,” he said. Liam fell silent. His eyes remained wide and earnest, but his expression was frozen.

Feyi felt another cough lingering in the back of her throat, but she gently cleared it and continued to speak.

“I’m just…not sure if I’m ready. I mean, I know I am ready. But sometimes, it still feels like I’m that girl on the street five years ago. As though I don’t really know anything at all.”

Liam’s expression softened.

“And yet, here you are. You are one that God has entrusted with his secrets. Feyi, you are one that he has chosen. When you are chosen, you have a responsibility, and it is your choice whether you take it up, or not.”

                                                                   ----

                                           5 Years Earlier – February 2019

Feyi leaned against the dressing room door. A woman stood half-dressed in the main lounge area. An attendant stood in front of her, wielding two luminescent garments on hangers, while two children sat spread out on the four-seater sofa, noisily clunking toy cars together in mock collisions and explosions.

 She could hear Simone’s frustrated murmurings from the other side of the dressing room door, increasingly loud and agitated until finally Feyi felt the pressure of the door pushing against her head. Simone had had enough.

“I’m leaving. I hate this dress and I hate this place. No one gets it.”

Usually, Simone’s impatience wore on Feyi, rendering her more and more irritable until invariably, she would herself snap – but this was wedding dress day. Feyi had been entrusted with a delicate duty of care.

“What’s wrong?” she said, modulating her tone, speaking barely above a whisper.

Her face crumpled into an expression nearing grief, and for a moment she looked like the childhood Simone, the child Feyi had once known.

“Nothing fits.”  She swallowed hard, her heavy breathing the dam holding back a flood of tears.

Feyi sighed. “Ok. I didn’t want to say too much at first but let me handle it. I’ll choose some things, just wait here.”

Simone’s head tilted back towards the ceiling, exasperated, as she gathered the voluminous train and turned back, once again locking herself in the dressing room.

Feyi fluttered around the store piling dresses into the open arms of an assistant, whose stature lent her the air of a young woman, but whose face and the wrinkles that adorned it, revealed many years fielding the whims of unhappy brides.

                                                                  ----

“Ok. What do you think?”

Simone tried to hide her joy, but it exuded from her presence, without restraint. She ran her hands over the cinched in waist and fussed with the sleeves that hung gracefully off her shoulders.

“Ok. I like this. I really like this.”

Feyi breathed a sigh of relief. “Amazing. I picked up two others in the same style.”  She gestured impotently to the attendant, who now had returned her attention to the half-dressed woman in the main lounge.

Simone rolled her eyes. “Honestly. They told me it would just be me here today!”

“Ah well.” Feyi said. “Things can’t always be perfect.”

Simone picked up the note of agitation in Feyi’s voice, and for a moment, her knitted brow portended an argument. But her gaze returned to her arresting reflection in the mirror.

“I think this might be the one. I think this is it!”

                                                                      ----

Feyi and Liam sat amidst the now empty coffee cups. Her notebook lay closed in front of her, a pen placed neatly in the space between the two pages.

“So.” He absently picked up the receipt placed on the table between them and rolled it up between his fingers.

“After what we’ve talked about today. Tell me. Do you still think helping your friend choose a wedding dress was worth missing last week’s class for?”

Feyi considered this for a moment.

“Well…I thought so at the time, yes. I was being a good friend.”

Liam paused, as though he were thinking. But Feyi already knew what he was going to say.

“Why is it so important to you to feel like you are a good friend?”

His gaze found hers, while her eyes scrambled for a focal point.

“Because…I don’t know who I am, if I’m not a good friend.”

Liam nodded slowly in acknowledgement.

“You know, Feyi, the Devil is great at distraction. That’s what he does. He can use anything in your life. Your parents, your loved ones, your desire to be a good friend, particularly to demanding people. You need to be able to discern.”

Feyi nodded, her head suddenly a phantasmic spectral, taking on a life of its own.

 “Is this the most important thing in your life right now, what you are learning here?” He pointed at her notebook, playfully reaching over the table and flicking it open again.

“Yes. Yes, it is. Please. I don’t want to stop learning.”

“Then,” he said, “it’s up to you. No distractions.”

Present Day - April 2024

Feyi leaned forward, studying Denise. Denise sat, stony-faced and inscrutable as Feyi talked her through the next steps of her progression.

“You will join a bigger class, starting at the end of the month…and…”, Feyi said, smiling. “It’s been confirmed - it looks like I’ll be one of the teachers!”

Feyi knew now, from the silence that lay thick between them, that something was wrong. Denise’s face did not so much as twitch in acknowledgement. Not an eyebrow raised, not an upturned lip, her body deflated as though enmeshed with her seat.

Finally, she spoke. “I came here today to tell you I won’t be attending these classes anymore.”

Feyi slowly reached her hand over the table, but Denise’s slithered away from her like a wounded creature.

“Don’t.”

Her purse lay across her body, couched in her lap. She reached into the bag and pulled out a sheet of paper.

Feyi recoiled, returning her outstretched hand into her lap. She sat up straight, her back stiffened and she felt her toes clench against the inner surface of her trainers.

Denise placed the sheet of paper on the table between them.

“It’s person after person, talking about you guys. Talking about what you really do here, about how you lie to people.”

Feyi softened her expression, as she had seen Liam do many times before. She knew he must have seen many people like this.

“What did we talk about a few lessons ago? Remember, about guarding your mouth, and guarding your heart…”

“Isn’t that just the way you stop people from finding out the truth about you? And gullible me, I believed you.”

Feyi knew now there was nothing she could say. Her eye caught the sheet of paper Denise brandished, but she quickly averted her gaze.

Denise picked up the sheet of paper and began to read.

“This submission is from a year ago: ‘Stay away from this group. They are called Garden of Heaven. They lie about who they are. They prey on people who want to understand more about their Christian faith and totally twist the word of God to their own benefit. If you come across them RUN. This is a cult. They will ruin your life.”

Feyi began to pack up her things.

“Garden of Heaven. That’s the name of the group, isn’t it? The name of the cult? But when I asked you, you lied to me.”

“Look, Denise. I’m going to go, but we can talk when you’re ready to have a more productive conversation.”

“Oh, you’re going to leave? You don’t want to hear what someone had to say about you?”

Feyi stopped.

“Someone mentioned you specifically, by name.” Denise’s face contorted in an expression of disgust. “You are ruining people’s lives.”

Feyi pushed the door open and went back out into the street, but not before Denise could levy a final indictment.

“You should be ashamed of yourself. You are not a good person.”

---

The familiar piano chords rang out, and Feyi stood up, puffed up her chest, engaged her stomach muscles, just like her music teacher at school had taught her. She sang, loudly, buoying up the lacklustre of the remainder of her row. Two young women and three young men processed down the centre, towards the small table where Liam sat expectantly. He too, sang - his Adam’s apple jolted up and down with every word that emanated from his breath.

The first young man walked slightly ahead and out of step with the group. He was unusually tall; his head nearly grazed against the light hanging from the ceiling. He crouched slightly, his walk a delicate balancing act. The others followed slightly behind him, boy, girl, boy, girl, hands positioned one on top of the other, a mismatched bridal train.

The final verse came to a dwindling close as they reached the table. The large book lay, just as it always did, on the table in front of them.

The tall boy walked too far forward, his knee slamming into the right-hand corner of the table. It dismantled, folding into itself, taking the book with it.

Feyi heard gasps disperse amidst the room. Two men seated at the front of the congregation dutifully stood up and picked the table up off the floor. They stabilised it, re-setting its legs, then Liam picked up the book and gently put it back in its rightful place.

One by one, Liam handed them a pen, and one by one, each of them took the pen, and etched their name into the book of life.

                                                                      ----

Love_life1989 – 3 mo. ago

“Feyi – she’s one of the worst ones, because you think she’s so nice. She pretended to share my interests to gain my trust. I later learned this is one of their tactics. They are trained to gain your trust.”

---

Feyi closed the tab, her fingers grasping urgently for another internet search, to cleanse herself, to rid herself. The ache in the pit of her stomach, again.

Anything to numb the feeling. Instagram. She scrolled, her mind taking in image after image. She navigated to a page she knew well - there was a new photo. A happy couple, a smiling baby. She hovered over the photo, poised to double tap, a feeble bid for connection, but she stopped herself. She kept scrolling.

She scrolled down further, and further still, to 2019. Simone had looked radiant, engulfed in love; the dress Feyi had chosen was tailored to perfection, complimenting every inch of her.  Feyi held back tears at the thought of Simone on that day, walking down the aisle without her sister, her best friend. But that was how it had to be.

The door opened, letting in a gust of wind. A young man walked in; his afro hair cropped close to the scalp; his quarter zip jumper zipped right up to the top.

She quickly wiped her eyes and closed the tab.

“Hey! Good to see you again,” she said, cheerfully.

The pain was a distraction, she knew it was.

The Devil and his distractions.

“Right.” She pulled out a notebook, and a pen. “Shall we get started?”

The Trouble

The hallways of the girls’ house were heavily laden with the miscellany of girlhood: handheld hair dryers with light clumps of fallen tresses twisted around their handles, make-up bags irrevocably stained with foundations and skin primers long past their expiry date. Ire had never seen so many things.

Her parents encouraged her to be a neat and tidy young lady, which to their mind, equated to having very little, and storing whatever you happened to acquire very carefully. Her mother’s ever constant refrain was an echoing reminder to “put things back where you found them.” It was always a grating remark, arriving at the most inopportune moment, invariably disgruntling Ire, her father and anyone else against whom it was deployed. But it was one that had become indelible as permanent ink on the whiteboard of her mind, a part of her DNA.

So then, when Ms Burrows asked her to confirm, one more time, please Ire, that she had in fact returned Miranda Humphries’s iPad, it was difficult not to react with incredulity.

“Yes, Ms Burrows”,

Ire sat opposite her in the cold box room at the top of the stairs. She wondered how Ms Burrows could sit in the office all day, barely moving other than to occasionally stand by the door, telling girls to roll their skirts down. Now, she sat with a milky cup of tea forming a watery ring on the oak desk and a multi-coloured scarf flung haphazardly across her broad shoulders.

Ms Burrows tucked the jagged edge of her clearly home-made fringe behind her right ear and continued to look upon her notes, her back hunched and her knees were pressed together keeping the rectangular clip board balanced.

“Right. It’s just…well, Ire. Where could It have got to?”

“I don’t know, Miss. But I do know I put it back on her bedside table, where she always puts it.”

Ms Burrows looked on momentarily, as though expecting more, but Ire let the silence settle between them.

“Alright.” She said, resignedly, gesturing for Ire to see herself out. She looked up through the office window at the disapproving face of Miranda Humphries.

Ire sat in the second row, repositioning herself on her seat, teetering on one leg of the four-legged high stool so she could get a better look at the screen ahead. The projector lights flickered as the scenes passed across the vinyl surface, while the teacher fiddled with the volume and the subtitle settings.

Ire watched as the rest of the girls traipsed in, and in a file, girl by girl, they piled up onto the rows behind her.

The sniggering in her periphery loudened as though managed by its own insufferable volume control, becoming more pitched and frantic as she tried to ignore it. She could barely decipher the words, but some managed to peel through the clamour.

“Her.”

“Yes, her.”

“Thief”.

That was the first time she felt it. A soft buzz under her skin, a light blaze at the crown of her head, and a heat, gentle, but steady, gripping her all over.

Many weeks of torturous science classes followed.  Ire would sit by herself, and the girls would file in, one by one, taking turns taunting her with their joy and camaraderie. She had been excommunicated in a way only women knew how to achieve. The were young, de facto women-in-training, sharpening the knife so they would know exactly which artery would bleed out fastest.

She focussed on her work. That was all there was. There was no joy, no camaraderie for her, only work. In its own way, that itself was a joy, because she knew what the outcome would be.

She hadn’t, for instance, known that the outcome of borrowing Miranda’s iPad before she went out for hockey, would result in the rumour, and then the growing, baleful assumption that she was a thief.

Her mother was confused when Ms Burrows explained the trouble.

“Ire’s been having trouble with some of the girls, haven’t you love?”

Ms Burrow’s had never called Ire “Love” even once before. She looked up from her lap, meeting her faux concerned gaze.

“Trouble?”  her mother said, puffing out her chest, as though bracing for impact. “What kind of trouble do you mean?”

“I mean, social trouble. Fitting in, that kind of thing. There was an incident.”

Ms Burrows explained, while Ire sat, silent in her embarrassment, that her mother should know that all her exhortations had gone to waste. That after everything, Ire had come to England to be labelled a thief.

But her mother took in the information, her chest heaving with every angle of the revelation. At first, she looked like she could say anything. But then, the inevitable:

“But how are her grades?”

Ms Burrows was taken aback for a moment but regained her composure. She looked through her copious notes.

“Oh, excellent. Ire is a star student. But I would love to see her settle down a bit better with the other girls next term.”

 Ire willed that the day would end and she could bury herself amidst her books, where there were no unanswered questions, and no ailments without a cure.

Her mother talked without end for the rest of the afternoon they spent together.

“I have told you so many times. Put things back where you found them. But you don’t listen.”

They were at a small neighbourhood restaurant, waiting for their respective meals to arrive. Her mother’s, a tepid looking sea bass slapped on a plate alongside some reluctant looking vegetables, and Ire’s, a somewhat flattened lasagna with beef spilling unflatteringly out of its sides. An appealingly crunchy plate of fries was balanced on the table between them. Ire would pick at this for the rest of the dinner.

“You don’t listen!” her mother repeated, her arms flailing, her gold jewellery zig zagging through the cold air.

Ire had loved wearing her mother’s glamourous chunky accessories as a child but now found they made her look equally intimidating. Like weaponry, she could ball up a fist and crush your face without a moment’s notice.

Ire thought to retort but reconsidered. The best way to end the conversation, she knew, was to stay quiet and let the words wash over her. She did so, sitting vacantly through the main course while managing to appear as though she was listening.

The evening passed, while Ire offered one-word responses to her mother’s inane observations.

“Your teacher’s teeth are very yellow”,

“Won’t they turn the heating on this place?”

 “Have you lost weight?”

This last observation, or observation framed as a question, earned a shrug from Ire, whose jeans now sagged in all the wrong places, and bras left wide gaps where she had once filled out.

The blaze at the top of her head rose again, lighting her up from the inside out.

“I don’t like it here.”

Her mother shovelled pieces of the sad sea bass into her mouth, expertly crunching the bone until it was no more than mere powder. She picked up the white napkin folded neatly beside her and brought it to her lip sticked mouth, spitting as the crunchy pieces tumbled out.

“You mean the restaurant? I know, I wish we had gone for that steak place your housemistress recommended instead,”

“No, mum. I mean, I – I think I want to go home.”

She paused and surveyed her daughter’s expression for a moment. Sad eyes hidden behind those tortoise shell glasses could pass for intelligent eyes. But her mother knew sad eyes when she saw them.

“Why? Is it because of those stupid girls?”

“it’s everything. The cold, the way people talk. And yes, those stupid girls.”

Gently cajoling a straying leaf of spinach onto her fork, she steeled herself for one of those emotional moments of motherhood. But these children. They thought everything was easy.

“My darling. It’s only been one term”, she laughed, trying to lighten the mood. “Things will get better. You’ll see.”

She sat back, pleased with herself, convinced she had offered empathy.

“and, besides. People don’t come here to like it. They come here to study, and you’re doing well.”

Ire’s fork and knife lay undisturbed for the rest of the dinner, the lasagna intimidatingly large and turd-like on the plate.  Her mother eventually beckoned to a waiter, who showed them to another table, under a heater. After about fifteen minutes, Ire felt too warm, the blast of the heat too direct, her turtleneck causing a discomforting itch around her neck while she pushed around a fast-melting strawberry sorbet.

“Eat darling! Eat, please”, her mother called out from the other end of the table. She nodded in reply, but her mind was elsewhere.

When the heat from the top of her head began again to reverberate around her body, she couldn’t tell if it was the temperature in the restaurant, or the inside heat, the new, increasingly intense flame that seemed to follow her day and night.

Don’t Let Go

These were her earliest memories:

Their mother held onto their hands tightly, as though worried they might blow away. Lydia felt the grip of her long nails squeeze uncomfortably into her palm and she wriggled under the pressure.

“Will you sit still!” Her mother grimaced, exasperated by the wind, the cold, how long it was taking the bus to come.

Lydia tried to abate the wriggling. She peered over her mother’s lap, to the other side of her, where her double, her sister Rita, sat. Silent, unmoving. 

It had been, by Lydia’s account, three nights, and two and a half days since they had arrived in this weird place. Already, things had gone wrong, as Rita seemed to have contracted some bug that had caused her to be sick almost from the moment the plane landed. Their mother saw it as a premonition. Between her constant hyper vigilance for the proximity of a toilet, and her heating and re-heating the same tea kettle until it squealed, their mother finally got down on her knees and prayed. That her daughter would not die in this new place. That the sickness would stop.

But the sickness did not stop. On day three, having spent the evening nestled in the crook of the sofa, phone book in hand, and a concerned furrow in her brow, she received some intel from a friend and resolved to take Rita to a doctor.

Lydia resented being dragged along. After all, she wasn’t the one who had contracted the illness. All the while Rita continued to spend the better part of the day in bed, asleep, or rushing to and from the toilet. She couldn’t keep anything down and when Lydia peered over her sleeping body in the morning, she could see the sweat on her forehead and the fullness starting to dissipate from her cheeks. She didn’t understand death then.

They waited for the bus for what seemed like a lifetime, with Lydia craning her head back and forwards to look at each car as it drove by. She played a game, counting each blue car she found, quelling the restlessness that seemed to have followed her from the plane to their new home.

She counted the cars, her head bobbling back and forth as each one drove by at speed. One, two, three. She tried to count them under her breath, trying to remember the numbers as her teacher had taught her. She knew them up to one hundred. Surely there hadn’t been one hundred cars that had gone by so far. She tried to count with her fingers, but only the ones on her left hand were free. Her mother held on tightly to the ones on her right hand, as she peered over the metal rim of her glasses at Rita’s waning figure.

Eleven, twelve, thirteen…twenty. There – she had gotten past twenty. Twenty blue cars. It was always easier to count once she got past that point. Then there were patterns, there were rules she could make sense of.  She gently pried her right hand free as she got into the fifties, keeping her fingers tapping lightly against her lap.

In between the blue cars, she noticed a little something, flapping its wings desperately in the midst of the traffic. She couldn’t make it out, but its wings flapped and flapped, as though it were looking for her attention and calling her closer. She squinted, hunching forward on the bench to try and get a better look at the creature, this thing that was calling her. But she needed to get closer still.

Red light. The cars stopped now for one, two, three, four… fifteen seconds, before they started to come flying past again, the speed casting leafy debris and dust into the air all around them.


She looked over at her mother who by now had both arms occupied, nursing and rocking Rita back and forth, the metal rims of her glasses now tipping dangerously off the edge of her nose.

She inched off the bench closer to the road and could now see that it was a bird, caught between the traffic. It had been hit by a passing car and was waiting for death on its tarmac coffin. She positioned herself strategically out of her mother’s eye line, next to an old man hunching over his walking stick, so that she wouldn’t see her when she eventually decided to strike.

Red light. Another fifteen seconds, then the cars again came racing past.

Look to your left, look to your right. That’s what their mother had kept on telling them about walking on the streets here. Make sure you look to your right, make sure you look to your left. Lydia squeezed her hand into a small fist. Another red light brought the next set of cars, of all the colours of the rainbow, to a halt.

She dashed into the road, moving quickly so her mother would not have time to stop her. She heard a blood curdling scream coming from behind her, but she couldn’t look back now. The road was still empty. She knelt down and she picked up the small bird, its neck so twisted its head faced the other direction. The bird squawked desperately, waiting for the pain to end. 10 seconds.

Lydia ran back to the pavement, pushing past the old man on her way, like a doctor with a sick patient. All the while the scream behind her persisted, until it culminated in her mother’s arms around her, slapping the dead bird out of her hands. It landed on the pavement with a thud, its wings flapping furiously.

The gentleman with the walking stick was standing to their left, watching the scene unfold before him, knowing instinctively it was not a matter that concerned him.

“Why must you do this? What are you doing? Your sister is already sick, and now you are trying to kill me too, is that it?”

Her mother wailed, while Rita sat, eyes wide open and startled by the scene, but lacking the energy required to react. The bus careered around the corner, now approaching at speed. Lydia looked hopefully at the old man, willing him to do something, to save the bird since she knew there was nothing she could do.

Her mother grabbed her sleeve, avoiding the hand that had touched the abomination of a near-dead bird. She pulled her along into the bus, while she gently lifted Rita into onto the raised platform.

“Why would you do something like that?” she continued to ask. “Why? You don’t know where that thing has been. You don’t even know anything about this place.”

Lydia sat in silence and turned to look back as the bus started to take off. The old man had gone off, walking in the other direction, while the bird still lay on the floor, its twisted neck forming a spiral with its wings as it lay twitching on the ground. There was no saving it.

Their mother was now rummaging in her handbag, looking for something. She dug out a bag of tissues, and pulled Lydia’s fingers into her lap, in a way that felt almost like affection, but which Lydia knew from the flurry of her fingers, was anger. She sprayed it down with a sanitiser and then wiped Lydia’s fingers one by one, from joint to tip.

“Don’t ever do anything like that again.”

Her words rang in Lydia’s ears as the bus screeched to a halt on a main road that looked exactly like the main road they had just come from. That was one quality she had noticed to this place. Every last place looked the same as the next.

They walked a few feet further, while their mother peered over her glasses into the street ahead. She released their hands momentarily, nearly disappearing into her large purse as she rummaged for something. Her fingers landed on it, pulling it out, alongside it a number of personal effects Her sweet-smelling talcum powder, and her small afro comb, used to keep the halo of pitch-black curls perfectly coiffed.

Her mother, had flung the bag back upon her shoulder, picked Rita up and had already started walking ahead in the direction of a large door, pitch black with a knocker that looked too heavy to move.

She looked again at the little scrap of paper, with the numbers on it, struggling under the weight of everything she was carrying, everything she was trying to do at once.

“Lydia. Press the third button. Third from the top.”

She obediently stepped forward, straining in the effort to reach the buzzer. It was high up for her small stature, and she stretched up on her tip toes. Her fingers pressed against two buttons at the same time, and two answers, disjointed and spectral in their echoing resound, said, “hellooo? Helllooo.”

Lydia stepped back startled. The talcum powder nestled under her right arm, toppled in her sudden movement, and fell onto the ground, the lid came off and the ground was covered in a smattering of its white, almost luminescent dust.

Lydia’s eyes opened wide in fear.

“Yes, yes. My name is Franca. Mrs Franca Adebayo. Please, I have an appointment, for my daughter at 11am.”

 Lydia instinctively looked towards their mother, but she was too distracted, by the almighty buzzer and the authoritative voice that came from within.

“Yes, welcome Mrs Adebayo. Come up to the third floor.”

They walked up the stairs almost in a choral unison, their feet making the same, slow marching sound.

In the waiting room, they were greeted by a thin face with pursed lips shaped into a saccharine smile. The voice that emerged seemed to match that of the voice in the buzzer,  even if slightly less spectral. Their mother immediately tended to Rita, bringing her a small cup of water from the dispenser in the corner. Very soon, a pale faced man in white emerged from a door that Lydia had assumed was a cupboard and beckoned their mother and Rita through.

Next to the dispenser, Lydia’s eye was drawn to a body of water, larger, immense in its colours and louder in its character. It was a small aquarium. Lydia crossed her legs on the seat and tried to sit still and wait, as her mother had told her.

She looked over her shoulder and the lady with the pursed lips waved towards her. “You can have a look love. There’s someone in there!”

Lydia uncrossed her legs and walked tentatively towards the water box, as it gurgled and groaned, like it was alive. In there, something floated in place, as though tethered to the earth directly beneath. A fish floated in the balance its mouth open wide, it’s figure misshapen.

She turned away, frightened. To this day, sometimes she saw the blackfish in her nightmares.