Peter reacted to his mother’s new career the usual way—not at all. He was occupied for the next few weeks trying to understand what had happened that night on the mattress. He couldn’t figure it out. So he erased the memory of the incident. And filled the gap in his mind by thinking up the solutions to unusual problems. Time and again he developed approaches that could save the world by for instance promulgating bicycles capable of flying. Such ideas were the sort of thing one had during the night. Only most people woke up the next day and realized they’d dreamed up nonsense while half asleep. Peter never woke up. He grew. He’d gotten at least twenty centimeters taller during the months in Rochdale. Thanks to his savant syndrome he could already read and understand English perfectly, though his speech suffered from the fact that he barely spoke, even in the school where he now had to go every day, where he sat alone in the last row. The extra twenty centimeters protected him from the bodily attacks he would have normally been subjected to as a freak.

Otherwise the life of the little immigrant family progressed brilliantly.

With the advance for her first role—a Polish cleaning woman being made redundant by robots—the two were able to move to a new little apartment which had its own bathroom and kitchen and a window onto the street, where Peter could sit after school. He stared at the street, at the goddamn Poles sauntering to their construction sites and back again from their construction sites, and he waited for his mother. Who came home later and later.

Like on this day.

When Peter awoke, he saw her packing her suitcase. That’s how you said it. Nobody had suitcases anymore, but whatever the it was she was packing it, quietly, as if not to wake Peter. The thoughtful

MOTHER

INTELLIGENCE: okay

SEXUALITY: asexual

HOBBIES: Danielle Steel audio books

MARKET UTILITY: below average

FITNESS LEVEL: poor, encapsulated TB

Didn’t take much with her, there’d be all new things, bought by her new boyfriend, a rich Russian something or other she’d met a week ago, at exactly the right moment. The jobs weren’t coming anymore, the entertainment industry had already had enough of her in a short amount of time, a pretty profile alone wasn’t enough to carry the load, her poor English made speaking roles impossible, the offers for Polish performers were limited almost exclusively to porn films, and now she was packing because her new boyfriend wanted her to move into his apartment in London, but unfortunately without

PETER.