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Back Things that Fall from the Sky Save as PDF
Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. A Walled-In Girl
  4. 1
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  6. 3
  7. 4
  8. 5
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  10. 7
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  24. 21
  25. 22
  26. 23
  27. 24
  28. 25
  29. 26
  30. The Five Lightning Strikes of Hamish Mackay
  31. The Five Lightning Strikes of Hamish Mackay
  32. A Mermaid Splashing
  33. 1
  34. 2
  35. 3
  36. 4
  37. 5
  38. 6
  39. 7
  40. 8
  41. 9
  42. And That was The End of That
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  55. 13

And she told me she had got stuck. There were no answers. The questions just kept going round in her head, for ages, even after two more bombs had exploded and the right-wing extremist who had planted them had been imprisoned, and the premiere of a play that had been written about him had been performed.

Annu

Dear Mrs Heiskanen,

I’m writing to let you know that my husband Hamish MacKay died on 23 October. In the end it was fate that won this strange, stupid game.

That stubborn, headstrong man would never put on a life jacket, for all they campaigned here to make us do it. He knew full well how it would end. What he was trying to prove and to whom, God only knows.

I know Hamish liked getting your letters. He was a literary man. I don’t know where he got that spark, given his parents were what they were. I suppose that’s why he agreed to do the BBC programme – he got to know people who were a bit different. He liked associating with those grand types. I saw it all right.

I wish you luck in your life. Not too much luck, mind.

Hamish was buried in Crossbost churchyard.

Regards,
Mary MacKay

A Mermaid Splashing

A MERMAID SPLASHING

1

1

The screaming wakes me up. What’s the matter with that girl? Why’s she making that noise? She’s quite normal in the day, but it’s like she’s possessed at night.

Luckily, Pekka gets up. The bed grows cold when he goes upstairs, though.

If I were here by myself, I wouldn’t go and see her, no way. I’d stay safe inside in my own bed and wait for it to end. It would have to end at some point. What a racket.

The stairwell’s so cold at night. You’re best off not moving until the heat pump comes on again. At night it’s like the whole house belongs to someone else: definitely not me, anyway.

There are too many outside doors in this house: one to the front garden and one to the back garden. The cellar and the woodshed have their own doors, too. And you can get in and out through all of them. I want my own way out, a hidey-hole just for me.

It’s hard to get a grip on the place. The walls and doors have different tenses – something was there, something isn’t there any more, something could be installed there. I hadn’t got the hang of those four outside doors until I was awake one night and I started imagining a fire again.