I was eight. It was summer, two girls a little older than me were playing out in the courtyard by the very sandbox where an unexploded shell is now sticking out. They always took up both swings, synchronising their rocking for absolute ages. I was alone and desperate to make friends with them. Day after day I watched them swinging. They ignored me completely, swaying obliviously in their own invented world.

“I’m opening the door and going into the house. There’s lots of beautiful old furniture. Look, a vase on the table. You can have that.”

The other said: “I’m holding the vase . . . oops, it dropped. It’s broken.”

“Never mind,” said the first. “I’ll wave my hands and recite a spell and, there you go, the vase is back on the table. I’m going outside now. Our friends are there and they’re having a party. Come quick!”

It must be such an amazing feeling to believe you can close your eyes and imagine yourself in a different world. I was so jealous. I too wanted to see that realm of theirs. I finally plucked up the courage to ask if I could join. They said yes, but no matter how much I shut my eyes and imagined myself walking through the door that they described to me, their world never appeared. I had genuinely believed they could see it. I burst into tears. They just giggled.

At home in bed, I closed my eyes, but the dreams only dragged me further away like a current.

When I grew up, I realised how stupid and naive that all was. But now I wonder again if maybe there is another world. What do you think? A world where people live when seeking shelter from war and suffering. Like a bomb shelter where all your family are safe. Alive. And broken vases can be repaired with a simple spell.

I suddenly realised why he was writing on the walls. Because our life is not like a book with a beginning and an end. Life is not linear like a road, it is tangled like a cobweb: the past is changed by memory, the future by actions, our present is made by strangers. Connections stretched like arcing missiles between characters and life flowed through them as if coursing along an intravenous line and the strands vibrated with music. We are all, after all, connected, even if we have never met.

I wanted to add my own memories to the wall, something about you or maybe Dad’s funeral. Although maybe he had long before written all there was to write. I scoured the flat for a marker, but I couldn’t find one anywhere. Not hidden away in any corner, or on the windowsill, or in my room. Perhaps they had been buried along with Dad.