The Book of Tides

Ash has come to visit. Unfortunately, Ash has not come alone. She’s brought all seven of her sons with her. Yup. All seven. Within seconds of arriving, they pour into my house like a small invading army fuelled entirely by sugar, chaos, and a complete disregard for plant life. The younger boys immediately begin using my STOCKSUND three-seater sofa in Cucuma as a bouncy castle, while the older ones have somehow produced a football and are now treating my living room as though it is the FA Cup Final. A lamp narrowly survives decapitation. My lucky Buddha wasn’t so lucky. Meanwhile, Ash stands serenely in the middle of the unfolding chaos, brimming with pre-reveal excitement. Every few seconds her eyes dart towards the bag beside her. She’s practically vibrating. “I’ve got something to show you.” “I gathered.” “No, seriously.” “I know.” “No, seriously.” “Ash, show me the thing before one of your children discovers arson.” She laughs and reaches into her bag. Out comes a book. Not a published book, but a handmade one; its cover worn smooth by years of handling, its edges softened by time, its pages thick with sketches and handwritten poems. It reminds me of secondary school. Back when Ash used to write poems about other students. Absolutely savage poems. Tiny masterpieces of adolescent cruelty, each one honed to a blade’s edge, pressed in like a knife, and then twisted once for good measure. Every poem accompanied by a caricature somehow even more offensive than the words themselves. For a while it was our little secret. Until, one day Ash made the unfortunate decision to share her work with the very people she’d written about. The fallout was spectacular. Tears. Tantrums. Almost a punch-up outside the science lab. The sort of incident that leaves teachers staring into the middle distance, quietly wondering whether education was ever worth the effort in the first place. Oddly enough, I still have every one of those poems. Boxed away in the darkest corner of my wardrobe like evidence. Or family secrets. The book in front of me, however, is completely different. The poems are beautiful. Genuinely beautiful. Tender. Reflective. Melancholy in that quiet, honest way that only the best writing ever seems to manage. But it’s the illustrations that capture my attention. Every page features the same woman. Kylie. Standing beside the sea. Sitting on a harbour wall. Walking barefoot through wet sand while the tide laps lazily around her ankles. Windswept curls drift across a face that lingers at the edges of thought long after the page is turned. There’s something haunting about her expression. Eyes carrying a sadness so old it appears to have settled permanently beneath the surface; a tide with no memory of the shore. I turn another page. Then another. Every image feels strangely alive. Everything changes around her, but Kylie remains. Always waiting. Always looking beyond the page towards something I can’t see. “These are incredible, Ash.” “I know.” “But why Kylie?” Ash looks up from her coffee and raises a single eyebrow, as though I’ve been asked a question whose answer should be painfully obvious. “You tell me.” I laugh awkwardly, waiting for elaboration. She simply shrugs and takes a sip of coffee. No explanation follows. My attention drifts back to the mayhem currently unfolding around us. One child is hanging upside down from an armchair like a small, feral bat. Another appears to be wearing a lampshade. Ash cradles her youngest child in her arms. I notice he’s dressed entirely in pink. Every now and then Ash refers to him as “her,” then quickly corrects herself. I clock it immediately, but decide some questions can wait for another day. Besides, there are more pressing concerns. Like the fact that several of my beloved houseplants are now lying horizontally across the carpet because the boys have apparently decided they make excellent goalposts. I kneel beside one of them. Rick, my monstera. The poor bastard looks as though he’s been caught in an agricultural bombing raid. One leaf hangs limply over the side of his pot in what I choose to interpret as a cry for help. “RIP, Rick,” I whisper solemnly. “You were my favourite.” I glance around the room, lowering my voice. “But don’t tell the others.” Ash and I spend what feels like hours talking over coffee while the chaos gradually burns itself out. Then suddenly she checks the time. “Oh God. I need to go.” The speed of her departure is genuinely impressive. One minute she’s sitting opposite me, the next she’s halfway out the front door. The boys tumble after her in a disorderly line like little ducklings raised by wolves. I barely have time to say goodbye before they’re gone. And then comes the silence. Beautiful, glorious silence. For a moment I simply stand there and enjoy it. Then I notice something. Shoes. Everywhere. Tiny trainers. Mud-covered trainers. One apparently abandoned by a child possessing only a single foot. “Ash!” I shout after her. Too late. She’s gone. I begin gathering them up. That’s when I notice the carpet. Wet. Absolutely soaking-sodding-wet. The carpet squelches beneath my feet. A cold prickle crawls up the back of my neck. The entire downstairs has flooded. Water glistens beneath furniture, pools in corners, and spreads with the quiet confidence of something that knows its own place now. Rainwater drips steadily through the ceiling. “Oh fuck.” I rub my face. “That’s going to cost me.” The words barely leave my mouth before the dream shifts gears. Because that’s when things become strange. Dream strange. I turn around and discover my ex, Paul, lying comfortably across the soaking sofa as though he’s been part of the furniture all along. “Come and sit,” he says, patting a wet patch beside him. Now, in reality, I can’t bear to breathe the same air as this man. Dream Me, however, appears to have developed a sudden and alarming case of temporary amnesia. Before I can react, he yanks down his trousers and underpants, revealing… a package somehow even smaller than I remember. Which is impressive, because I distinctly remember there not being much to remember. “Give him a stroke,” he says, with a wink. “He missed you.” I physically gag. Across the room, I suddenly become aware of a random couple enthusiastically going at it as though my flooded living room has become some kind of budget brothel. “Right,” I snap, turning to Paul. “You need to leave.” Then at the couple. “And you definitely need to leave.” The pair scramble for their clothes and flee. Paul lingers. “You need to loosen up a bit.” I open my mouth. Close it. Then open it again. Because irritatingly, I don’t entirely have a response. Perhaps I have become uptight. But my house is currently auditioning for the role of Atlantis, and now doesn’t feel like the ideal moment for personal growth. For reasons that make perfect sense within the dream and absolutely none outside it, I flag down a taxi. The driver looks approximately twelve years old. He’s driving with one hand while texting with the other. His eyes flick constantly between the road and his phone. Some dramatic relationship crisis appears to be unfolding. Young love. A beautiful thing. Until it kills pedestrians. “This has to be a dream,” I mutter. “My house isn’t really falling apart.” The driver grunts, eyes never leaving his phone. Reassuring. Absolutely nothing to worry about here. I pull out my own phone. A Nokia brick. Ancient. Normally indestructible. Today it looks as though it has spent six months at the bottom of the Atlantic. I find a missed voicemail. After wrestling with the soaked buttons, the message finally begins to play. Static. Crackling. Then a voice. “Hi love, it’s Barry from Barry’s Roofing Company…” My stomach tightens. “…got a quote for the damaged roof…” More crackling. “…it’s going to cost…” Silence. My heart nearly drops through the floor. This isn’t a dream. The roof is real. The flood is real. The consequences are real. My house truly has become an indoor swamp. “STOP THE TAXI!” The brakes slam. I lurch forward. The driver nearly exits through the windscreen. “I want to get out.” I hand him a damp fiver. He looks at me like I’ve offered to pay him in Werther’s Originals. I add another twenty. Bloody inflation. When I arrive home, nothing has changed. The floors remain flooded. The ceiling still leaks. Rick is still dead. The entire place resembles the aftermath of a failed ark project. For a moment I simply stand there, defeated. Water drips steadily somewhere in the distance. Drip. Drip. Drip. Then I see it. Ash’s book. Still sitting on the kitchen island. Perfectly dry. Untouched. Waiting. Everything else in the room looks battered by the flood. The book doesn’t. If anything, it looks more luminous. Something inside me already knows I shouldn’t open it. Naturally, I open it. The illustrations are exactly as I remember. The poems remain beautiful. Sad. Tender. Filled with a longing so profound it almost hurts to read. I turn another page. Then another. And another. The house seems strangely quiet now. Too quiet. Even the dripping water has stopped. The illustrations begin to change. Only slightly at first. A shift of posture. A turn of the head. Tiny differences that shouldn’t be there. I frown. Then flick backwards. Then forwards. Again. And suddenly I understand. It’s one of those old flick-books. The kind where a matchstick man appears to walk if you flick through the pages quickly enough. Only this isn’t a matchstick man. It’s Kylie. I flick faster. The sea begins to move. Waves roll across the page. Her hair lifts in the wind as though somebody has finally breathed life into paper itself. Page after page after page. Kylie walks slowly along the shoreline. Not looking at me. Not yet. I flick faster. The motion becomes smoother. Almost real. The sound of waves fills my ears. I can almost taste the salt in the air. Then Kylie stops walking. Halfway through the final section of the book. Then she turns. Slowly. Not all at once, but one page at a time. A fraction more with every flick. My heartbeat begins hammering. Page. Page. Page. She turns further until she’s facing directly out of the illustration. Directly at me. The room suddenly feels cold. The sort of cold that lives in abandoned churches and empty hospital corridors. I stop flicking. The book falls still. Yet Kylie remains staring. Straight at me. As though she’s finally found the person she’s been searching for. My fingers tremble as I turn the final page. The illustration is gone. In its place is a poem. A single poem. The handwriting isn’t Ash’s. It’s sharper. Older. Deliberate. And the words hit me like punches. Every insecurity. Every failure. Every regret. Every weakness. Laid bare with surgical precision. The sort of cruelty that only somebody who truly knows you could ever write. Line after line tears me apart. The poem knows things. Things I’ve barely admitted to myself. And the very last line hurts most of all. Because it isn’t angry. It’s disappointed. Beneath the poem sits a signature. One word. Written in black ink. Kylie. Then, from somewhere behind me, I hear the faint sound of a page turning. I look up. Because I know with absolute certainty that the book is still open in my hands. And yet somehow… There is now one page left. Blank. Waiting. For me.