Chapter One

  In the garden of the house there was a tree, three storeys tall with branches that spread shade over most of the garden.

  It was a hot afternoon in the late spring of 1989, and Tristan Kulik was laid on the patio. The concrete slabs were warm, and the heat seeped through the back of his t-shirt, making his flesh feel soft and pliable like the pirog dough his grandmother was kneading in the kitchen. Grandma Kulik didn’t speak a word of English, and the strange notes of the song she was singing wafted out into the garden on the air, rich and thick as honey, and were carried away on the breeze to intermingle with the distant buzz of the city beyond.

  Tristan’s dog Baxter had been running around the garden all morning chasing butterflies, and was now collapsed with exhaustion, panting onto Tristan’s stomach.

  Tristan observed the clouds as they meandered lazily across the sky. He saw charging Roman armies on foam-mouthed stallions within the whipped-cream mounds of cumulus, and every wisp of cirrus was transformed into another ghost. His eyes wandered from the troposphere across the garden until they came to settle on the tree. It was gnarled and scarred with age, each knot and crevice a perfect little foothold, just right for climbing. At only six years old, his father had forbidden him from doing so lest he fell and hurt himself. But his father was out on “business”, and Grandma Kulik was engrossed in her baking. The tree was tempting him with those footholds, begging him to explore it.

  Just a little way up. It won’t do any harm. I won’t let you fall.

  Slowly he rose to his feet and, wiping Baxter’s drool from where it had been pooling on his stomach, made his way across the garden towards the tree. Sneaking a glance back to the kitchen window to make sure the coast was clear, he placed one foot in a fissure near the roots. Slowly, he grabbed hold of two bark ledges and hauled himself up a little. It held firm. Gradually he scaled the wood, increasing in speed and confidence with every step. His feet in their grubby trainers sought out nooks in the surface almost as if it were second nature, and before long he had reached the level of the lower branches. Carefully he edged along a little until he had a firm grip on a large bough, and then pulled himself up until a skinny leg was dangling to either side of it. Taking a deep breath, he looked around.

  He could see his whole street from here, and further too, all the rooftops thatched together until they resembled terracotta fields, stick people driving around in tin-box cars, and, further still, the city, sprawling and endless with that strange brown haze hanging above it. Tristan whooped and laughed with excitement. He thought that to the left, out of the corner of his eye, he could even see Big Ben. He strained to look, but the leaves on the tree’s outer branches were obscuring his view. Gingerly he shuffled forward a little, the lichen staining the crotch of his shorts mossy-green. He was almost certain that was it now, and he craned forward to look.

  Behind him, a bird cried and took flight. Tristan jumped, and in his panic looked down. The garden beneath him seemed miles away and he screamed, swivelling around to get back to the ground.

  The last thing he heard was a crack of wood, the whistling of the wind past his ears and then, nothing.

 

  There were the clouds again, swimming across his field of vision, but this time they were so blurry that clouds were all they were, nothing more. The sky swam and rippled, making his head hurt.

  Everything hurt.

  “Tristan? Oh my God, Tristan!” An old woman’s voice. Where was he? “Oh Tristan, my baby, what have you done, what have you done?”

  The woman bent over Tristan and he could feel her tears splashing on his cheeks. His focus shifted a little, and he saw the woman’s face clearly.

  “Grandma?”

  Her wrinkled face froze. “Yes?”

  “Get up Tristan, get up, come on, please!” It was a boy shouting this time, but Tristan didn’t recognise the voice. He felt something cold and wet against his side. He slowly lifted his aching neck, sending jolts of pain searing through it. He looked up to see Baxter nudging him with his snout.

  Tristan’s eyes widened and Baxter looked him dead in the face. “Are you alright?”

  He slumped backwards again, and everything faded to black.