Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

The boyfriend who stayed the longest was Stephen. Stephen was one of those men who never stopped looking like a teenager. His facial hair still grew in patches, he was tall and thin and almost imperceptibly out of proportion. Everything he did was ironic, like the way he wore Reebok jumpers and dungarees. He was an artist, apparently. Poppy caught a glimpse of his art one afternoon when they were driving home in his shabby Ford and the wheels juddered as if they’d hit a speed bump. Poppy’s mother took in a sharp breath.

‘What?’ Poppy asked. They’d stopped.

‘I think you’ve run something over, Steve,’ her mother said, her face pale. Poppy imagined a tiny person curled up under their car.

‘Probably just a fox,’ he said.

‘Go have a look.’

‘What do you want me to do, bury the thing?’

‘Steve…’

He climbed out of the car.

Poppy scrambled after him, slamming the door shut behind her. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

It was only a dead bird. She saw it when she walked around to the front. Stephen had crushed its little bones under the wheel of the car and he stood staring at the carcass with wide, curious eyes, as if he could see colours in it that she couldn’t.

‘It looks like fireworks,’ he said quietly. Poppy tried to pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about: the way the blood sprayed the dusty tarmac, bits of feather, flesh and indistinguishable strands of sinew bloomed on the road.

‘It’s the same colour as your hair,’ he said, then knelt down and pressed a thumb into the blood before touching her forehead, as if it was Ash Wednesday. Poppy felt something grow in her stomach. She felt proud and special.

‘Adieu pour toujours,’ she said. She’d been reading Bonjour Tristesse in the car.

Stephen pulled a camera out of his pocket to take a picture.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked, the spell suddenly broken.

He looked at her and spoke slowly. ‘You’re right, of course, a picture won’t do it. I need to take it with me. I need the real thing, right?’

‘For what?’

‘For art,’ he said.

Which began their life on the road. Stephen was so captivated by his new idea – driving up and down high roads in search of roadkill – that Poppy’s mother didn’t attempt to stop him. Instead, they all came along. They made a family outing of it, every Saturday waking up early to pile into the increasingly foul-smelling car and drive up and down the roads until the sun slipped off the horizon. Poppy downloaded language podcasts, and mouthed the words silently at the window – Il mio nome è Poppy, Come ti chiami? Mi annoio. Annoiato. Annoiato – looking at the open fields, the power lines and houses with the adolescent certainty that something immensely fun was happening elsewhere.

She could hear Stephen and her mother arguing some nights, through the wall beside her bed. She’d bury her face into her pillow and fight to sleep.

One night she opened her eyes and saw a small flickering light in the darkness. ‘No, don’t move,’ said the shadow at the end of her bed. He was holding up a video camera.

‘What are you doing?’ Poppy asked, her voice still thick with sleep.

‘It’s got to be natural.’

He’d come most nights after that. Poppy didn’t always know because it was always after she was asleep, although sometimes she would wake from a dream and see the flashing light of the camera at the foot of her bed. The most he would ever do was raise a finger to his lips to shh her, and in the morning he would be gone.

When she was older and she thought about it an uneasy feeling would settle in the pit of her stomach. She could never figure out why she’d never simply locked her door.

THE ARGUMENTS ESCALATED, AND when the house wasn’t filled with her mother’s stony silence, she and Stephen were screaming at each other across the kitchen table, smashing glasses no one swept up, so they would all have to tiptoe around the debris for a week. Poppy had become an expert at using tweezers to pull sharp little splinters from the balls of her feet.

One day, from the living room, Poppy heard her mother call him ‘a shit artist’ and the shouting stopped.

She listened out for a little while but then she heard the door click open and the sound of a car horn outside. Another few moments of stillness before she pressed mute on the remote and listened for the growl of the engine revving up.

‘Poppy,’ a voice called, and she stiffened. ‘Poppy!’

‘I’m coming.’

It was Stephen’s shout from the open door of the purring car. Poppy was still in her pyjamas but she slipped into a pair of old slippers and ran outside.

Stephen and her mother were sitting in the front, her mother’s face wet with tears. ‘Get in,’ he said. Poppy bit her lip in hesitation, but Stephen was starting up the car and the wheels were already beginning to push off the tarmac when Poppy jumped in and slammed the door behind her.