NORTHWEST LONDON

I think I’m in trouble.

We only just moved here from Germany. We live in family quarters, a three-bed house with a garden, surrounded on all sides by similar houses and separated by tidy plain green lawns. It’s in London.

The back garden is long and narrow with raised beds made from railway sleepers on either side. It has a wooden gate at the far end so we can’t wander off, which is funny because there are big fences at the end of the street anyway. We wander around the garden with our plastic watering cans and shovels, making mud pies in the raised beds, and occasionally digging up worms and the like. Sometimes we find large ants, and sometimes Mum comes and boils them to death with water from the kettle. 

Dad is a Corporal. Mum says this is a very important job. He goes to work and comes back at the same time every day. Today when he finished Mum walked us up to meet him at the end of the street. We had just been watching some cartoons on the TV and were in the middle of pretending to be Batman and Robin. 

When we went outside, we stuck the big coats Mum had bought us for pre-school over our heads and started to run along the pavement and jumping onto the pristine lawn with Mum shouting at us from behind somewhere to slow down. 

We found Dad and after Mum caught up with us, we turned about to head back home. I told my brother to race me and we started careering down the pavement. I was slightly older so it was pretty easy to win. There was a small side road which lead to nowhere and I leapt down and then up the kerb to the other side, all the time fixated on our house ahead. 

I heard a thud behind me and I realised in that moment that my brother was no longer beside me. I screeched to a halt and whirled around, just in time to see my Dad lifting my brother up from the edge of the kerb, across which he was lying. As I rushed toward them I saw the front of my brother, his face covered in blood, which was pouring down his face and chest. He was pale and looked like a vampire. Mum appeared to be trying (and failing) to catch some of the blood with her hands, whilst also rooting around her person for a tissue to clean him up. By this time he was screaming and I could see that there was a hole where his two front teeth should have been. 

Dad, cradling my brother pushed past me and headed straight to the car. As he did so he pulled my coat off the top of my head. I stood there staring at the car as it landed in a crumpled heap on the floor, while Mum screamed at me, seemingly in the distance, to get into the car. We are now in the car. My hand is covered in blood.

WEST GERMANY

The floor was green, speckled with black and white flecks. It stretches out smooth and shiny before me, curling up the walls and ahead to a larger room with brown chairs. Mum and Dad each hold one of my hands and we walk towards and then through the large room. On the far side, I see a big, wide window and a room with bright white walls beyond. There is a lady inside wearing a small white hat. 

As we reach the window, my parents speak to each other. I can’t hear them. In front of me is a wall, covered in wooden planks. I look at the planks and study the scratches in the wood. I stare for a long time, then Dad picks me up, lifting me up level with the window so I can peer through. 

‘He will be ok’, he says. I look at my brother, in a big bed covered by green blankets. He is asleep and there are machines and bags around him. They gently explain that he is sick and will need to stay in hospital for a few days, but will be home soon.