An Episode of Remnants.

Episode Content Warnings

Please bear in mind that this work has content some listeners may find distressing, including themes of war, violence, and grief. This episode contains:

Mentions of a child in extreme pain from undiagnosed illness

Direct discussion of antisemitism as experienced by visibly and non-visibly Jewish children in late 1920s to early 1930s Germany, including allusions to is escalation

Implications of homophobia Allusions to depression Mention of the murder of a teenager in a homophobically-motivated hate-crime (no details are given about the violence, just that it happened, and the boy involved has died)

Potentially insensitive characterisation of a person in a vegetative state

Teenage pregnancy

Descriptions of fear of childbirth

Death of complications related to childbirth – specifics are not given

A mother having to confront the imminent death of a child and accepting this with grief but an extreme amount of grace and compassion

Psuedo-sucidical ideation – a character expressing desire for non-exisitence

A character in emotional distress

Complex discussions on the nature of death and grief

Transcript

DUST SHIFTS.

THE APPRENTICE STARTS AWAKE

APPRENTICE
Sir?

SCUTTLING. THE APPRENTICE GASPS.

APPRENTICE
Oh. It’s you.

APPRENTICE
I drifted off, I suppose. You’re always listening, aren’t you? Whatever you are.

SILENCE, BUT FOR THE RUSH OF WIND

APPRENTICE
You’re the dust, right? The dust that’s all over everything.

APPRENTICE
(hopeful)
Sir?

STILL NOTHING. THE APPRENTICE SIGHS.

APPRENTICE
This is not where I fell asleep. I don’t. Huh. Do I recognise this place?

MOVEMENT AS HE STANDS UP. HE TAKES A FEW HESITANT STEPS

APPRENTICE
These shelves. I.

A FEW STEPS FORWARD.

APPRENTICE
Ah! My head.

THE WIND HOWLS LOUDER. DUST SHIFTS. THE APPRENTICE TAKES A FEW STEPS.

APPRENTICE
A hole.

A CLATTER.

APPRENTICE
It’s a stone, cut into the shape of a heart and–

A CRACKING SOUND.

APPRENTICE
Oh, oh no, it’s broken and. Oh, god, is that blood? It’s coming from the—

THE WIND ABRUPTLY STOPS. LEAVING BEHIND ONLY DRIPPING.

DUST SHIFTS.

APPRENTICE
Where did the hole go?

TWO HESITANT, FRIGHTENED FOOTSTEPS

=SOMETHING IS DRIPPING; BLOOD FROM THE STONE? THE DRIPPING IS BECOMING MORE ECHOIC

APPRENTICE
This is– I. I walk the path.

FOOTSTEPS

APPRENTICE
(whispering)
I know the way.

SIR
(booming, furious)
No you do not.

DRIPPING STOPS, REPLACED BY A STRANGE, LOW HOWLING WIND.

APPRENTICE
What do you– what are you–

SIR
That is not the path you are meant to walk.

APPRENTICE
So why does it feel like that?!

SIR
You’re lying.

APPRENTICE
No, I– \

SIR
It hurts you. Don’t pretend it doesn’t.

APPRENTICE
It’s just– I know that I–

SIR
If it hurts you. It can’t be right.

APPRENTICE
What happens if I follow the path.

SIR
More pain.

APPRENTICE
That’s not what I mean. It’s not just pain, is it, what else?

SIR
I did not mean to do it.

APPRENTICE
What?

SIR
It was never all you are. It was only remnants. It’s all only remnants.

APPRENTICE
Sir. What are you talking about?

SIR
You want to understand what you are, here?

MUSIC BOX CRANKS, AND BEGINS TO PLAY.

APPRENTICE
The music box.

SIR
Yes.

APPRENTICE
You didn’t want me to see it before.

SIR
No.

APPRENTICE
So why can I see it now?

SIR
Don’t you want to look?

APPRENTICE
I do, of course I do, but–

SIR
Then look.

APPRENTICE MAKES A SMALL GASP, THE MUSIC BOX CRANKS.

APPRENTICE

Freida’s mother brushes her out of her face. The sun is setting in the gap between the curtains, the sky is the colour of fire.

‘My wild girl,’ says Freida’s mother.

‘I’m not wild,’ says Freida.

‘No?’

‘Wolves are wild,’ says Freida.

‘Little girls can be wild like wolves.’

‘I don’t feel like a wolf.’

‘What do you feel like?’

‘A bird,’ says Freida.

‘What kind of bird?’ asks her mother.

Freida frowns. She thinks about her dad’s big book of birds. He takes her out of the city some weekends out to the countryside and they lay in the long grass and he looks through his big funny binoculars. It’s mostly really boring, but when he spots a bird he gets all excited and makes hoots like the monkeys at the zoo, and he hands the binoculars to Freida and she tries to look through them but she can never see what he’s spotted. She pretends she can anyway, because it makes him smile.

‘I don’t know what kind of bird,’ says Freida.

‘Hmm,’ says Freida’s mother. ‘I think you’re like a dove.’

‘Like in the Ark story?’ asks Freida.

‘Just like that. How about we read about Noach and the Ark to send you off to sleep?’

Frieda nods, settling down under the covers. Frieda’s mother goes to the shelf and plucks out Freida’s very favourite book. It’s all stories from the Torah, and there are lines in pretty Hebrew which she can’t read, but lines to trace with her fingertips. Under the Hebrew are the same words in German, which she also can’t properly read yet but she’s learning all the shapes and the sounds of.

Across from all the words are beautiful paintings in water colour of the stories, hand painted by Frieda’s grandmother’s grandmother. The pages are thick and wobbly, and they are stitched in by hand and in places you can see the thread. It mostly looks kind of boring beige but sometimes Freida takes the book off the shelf when she’s alone in her room even though she’s not supposed to and if you stick your fingernail between where the threads overlap, you can see pretty lilac. It feels like a secret she’s keeping with herself, and her grandmother’s grandmother who stitched the whole thing together for Freida’s mother’s grandmother when she was a little girl, which is funny to think about because Freida can’t imagine her great grandmother being anything but a million years old and as wrinkly as a walnut.

Freida’s mother gets to the end of the story. ‘Are you asleep yet?’

Freida giggles, shaking her head. Her mother tickles her.

‘So, what do you think? Are you wild like the dove is wild? Wild but happy to come and help?’

Frieda considers for a moment. ‘I think I could be wild like a bird. Not a dove though. Maybe a swan.’

Freida’s mother laughs. ‘Okay. You’re wild like a swan.’

WHOOSH

‘Again,’ says Freida’s mother, clapping her hands.

Freida rolls her eyes and returns to the first position of her routine. Her mother starts the record again.

‘Dance, then!’ says Freida’s mother.

Freida makes it through the first few steps of her solo, then stumbles. Her toes hurt. Her fingers are tingling from holding them so high over her head. She’s tired and her stupid shoes are pinching and there’s no point in carrying on because there’s no way she’s making it to the expert class anyway.

‘What are you doing?’ says her mother.

‘Mutti, I have been trying for an hour, I am not going to get it!’

‘The recital is tomorrow, you need to get it, or you won’t progress to the next stage of your training!’

‘I don’t want to go to the recital!’ Freida shouts.

Freida is breathing hard and fast. The whole of the last hour, dancing this little solo, her first ever solo. And it should be easy, it should be straightforward, she should be able to get it right but she just can’t. She should have been practicing after school every day like her father said but he’s out at the shop every day, later and later, and she can’t practice there, he says, playing the same record over and over puts off the customers.

And she can’t practice at home because when she gets in from school, mother is always asleep on the sofa with Erwin sleeping in her lap, and when they wake up it’s dinner and Freida has to help and Erwin needs his medicines and to do his exercises and have his bath, which he hates, so he screams and cries until he’s so exhausted he falls asleep. And then Freida can’t put her record on because she can’t wake him, and practicing without the music means that when she tries to dance and the music is on, she messes up again, just like she’s doing right now.

Freida bursts into tears.

She squats down close to the ground, sobbing open mouthed, tears running off the end of her nose. She cries and cries until she can’t get it out anymore. Her breath stutters. She looks down at her blue silk skirt. The fabric is darker where her tears have fallen.

‘Freida,’ says her mother.

Freida looks up. Her mother is handing her a handkerchief. Freida takes it. She wipes her cheeks.

‘Blow your nose,’ says her mother.

Frieda blows her nose, as instructed.

‘Do you want to be a ballerina?’

Freida nods miserably.

‘And to be a ballerina, you must dance en pointe, and to dance en pointe, you have to pass this class.’

Freida sniffles. She blows her nose again.

‘And to pass this class, you must dance well in your recital.’

Frieda sighs, angrily.

‘So, Freida, my wild swan girl, do you want to be a ballerina?’

Freida screws her eyes up tight. She squeezes her whole body as tight as she can. ‘Yes,’ she admits, like she’s ashamed.

‘Look at me.’

Freida does. Her mother’s expression is stern, unwavering, but not angry.

‘You can cry and scream all you like, as long as you get up.’

Freida blinks at her. ‘What?’

‘Cry, scream, shout, all you like. You let it out. It’s not good to keep it in. Let it out. You be wild. And then you get back up and you try again.’

Freida’s lip wobbles, ‘but—’

Freida’s mother shakes her head. ‘No.’ She hands.

Freida hesitates a moment, then she takes it. Her mother nods and pulls her to her feet.

Frieda takes a breath. She stands herself in the proper position. Her mother nods, and drops the needle back down on the record. The finale of Swan Lake swells from the trumpet-shaped speaker. She dances and dances, and she feels all that frustration in her toes, in her bones, in her fingertips, in her chest. She feels it, wild, wild like her mother says she is, and she’s dancing, and it’s possible, she can feel it all, shining out of her skin and she gets to the end, breathless. It feels like magic.

She turns to smile at her mother, but she’s gone. The record ends a moment after Freida finishes. She stands, panting in the quiet that follows.

Erwin is crying in the next room.

Freida looks down at the tear stains on her skirt. She stomps her foot, once, twice, three times. She starts the record over again.

WHOOSH

Anselm tugs on Freida’s plait again. She turns around to scowl at him, but he hasn’t let go of her hair, so when she tries, he pulls again, and her books fall from her arms.

‘Amoretz!’ Freida barks. Her cheeks are burning and her skull is throbbing. She squats down to gather her books all back together, heart hammering. Her scalp pulses in time.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Get lost, shlump,’ Freida spits. She’s trying to pick her things u p faster, but not fast enough that the boy is helping her too. She knows it’s Falk without even looking up.

Falk is a couple of years older than Freida. He’s very handsome. All the girls in Freida’s class think he’s very beautiful. Freida supposes that he is. He has honey blonde hair and pretty hazel eyes and a kind voice. And he dances. The only boy in the whole school that goes to ballet class. The other boys are missing a trick, Freida thinks; they think ballet’s for sissies but all the girls swoon over Falk just for doing it.

‘You shouldn’t antagonise them,’ says Falk, quietly, handing Freida the rest of her books. He’s much taller than she is. She hates how she has to crane her neck to look up at him.

‘I was just walking by,’ says Freida.

Falk shakes his head. His gaze flickers to the star of David around Freida’s throat. It’s silver. A hand-me-down, from her grandmother, from her grandmother. Like the picture book. Freida touches it.

‘They don’t like to see Jews with such pretty jewellery.’

Freida scoffs. ‘It’s just silver.’

Falk shrugs. ‘People are losing their homes. They can’t get jobs.’

Freida clutches her books tighter to her chest. ‘My mother is tutoring piano. Her sister wants us to move to England. It’s not so bad there, apparently. Except that it’s England.’

Falk laughs. ‘You’re lucky, Freida. But they don’t see it that way.’

Freida sighs. ‘Oh, no, you’re not into all that nonsense, are you?’

Falk sighs. ‘If you keep yelling at them in yiddish you’re going to make it worse for yourself.’

Fury bristles down Freida’s spine. ‘You want me to flat-iron my hair and bleach it gold? File down my nose? Hmm?’ Frieda snaps. ‘If I say it or not they’d know I’m Jewish. It’s not my fault if they have a problem with that.’

‘I didn’t say it was your fault,’ said Falk. ‘I said you needed to be careful.’

‘Actually, you didn’t. You told me not to antagonise them and then criticised my jewellery and my language so you can mahk minhaz!’

‘I’m not going anywhere!’ says Falk.

Freida stops short. She frowns at Falk. He shrugs. ‘My grandmother. Dad’s side,’ he says.

Freida blinks at Falk rapidly. ‘So why do you want me to hide?’

Falk shakes his head. ‘I don’t, I just don’t want you to waste your energy being furious at idiot boys who don’t know anything.’

Freida sighs again. ‘Spend some more time with your grandmother. Idiot boys who don’t know anything end up in charge far too often.’

Falk grins. ‘You’re a wild one, Frauline Weiss.’

Freida shrugs. ‘Like a swan,’ she says.

Falk raises an eyebrow. ‘I wouldn’t say a swan is particularly wild.’

Freida scowls. ‘You can’t have met many swans then. They can break a grown man’s arm with their neck you know.’

‘I didn’t,’ he says. ‘But okay. You’re wild like a swan.’

Freida smiles.

WHOOSH

‘Freida!’ Falk calls.

Freida looks up from her bag. She’s stuffing her things into it so angrily, she can hardly see through her tears.

Standing in the doorway is Falk.

‘Go away,’ Freida snaps.

‘I got you something.’

‘I don’t want your stupid consolation prize, schnorrer!’

‘Amoretz!’ Falk retorts. ‘I got it for you because I was so certain you’d get the part. It’s madness that you didn’t. Actual madness, Freida.’

Freida shakes her head miserably. She sits down heavily on the changing room bench at the little theatre. She’s tired, her muscles are aching from rehearsing so hard. Not only is she not going to be the Sugar Plum Princess she isn’t even going to get a solo. She’s in the corps de ballet again. For the third time in a row. She’s going to graduate this school without even having a chance at dancing principal

‘When I say you’re the best dancer in the school would you believe me?’ says Falk.

‘It’s fine for you,’ says Freida. ‘You’re the Prince.’

‘Because I’m the only boy old enough to lift anyone,’ Falk scoffs. ‘Do you want your gift or not?’

He hands Freida a small, card box. Inside is a wooden music box. Freida flips open the lid. A tiny ballerina pops up, , positioned in a perfect, miniature arabesque, in front of a mirror.

‘She used to be in pink, but I painted her. Like a swan, right?’

Freida’s eyes well up with tears. Blurry, thoughtless, she kisses Falk abruptly on the lips.

‘Oh, Freida—’ Falk shimmies down the bench.

Freida feels her cheeks turning pink. ‘Sorry,’ she says, fast. ‘I don’t know why I did that.’

Falk laughs awkwardly. ‘No, it’s okay. I just. I have a. A boyfirend.’

Freida feels herself gape. She knows she shouldn’t.

Falk gapes too. ‘I shouldn’t have– I shouldn’t—’

‘It’s okay, Falk,’ says Freida, softly. ‘It’s okay.’

Falk shakes his head.

‘Let it out,’ says Freida, nodding. ‘Let it out. Then get up and keep going.’

‘Right,’ says Falk, softly.

‘Right,’ says Freida.

The music box stops half-way through its tune. They glance at each other and laugh.

WHOOSH

England is every bit as dull and miserable as Freida thought it would be. In fact, it might actually be worse, crammed into her aunt’s house with their young children.

Freida is sharing a room with Erwin. It’s nice because they can speak German and Yiddish to each other in the quiet without Aunt Miriam’s children asking what they’re saying.

Aunt Miriam’s hardly seem Jewish at all, to Freida. It makes no sense to her. Nobody even cares if you’re Jewish, here. Nobody even blinks.

Freida writes to Falk, and he replies. In the short months since they left, things have got a lot worse. The Nazi party now has full control of the government even though it makes no sense.

Although Freida is angry that she’s in England, she can’t help but feel glad they left.

She squeezes into Erwin’s beside him in the night. His bones hurt, is how he describes it. His bones hurt and he can’t make himself get up, like all the energy is gone from him at once. Freida feels bad. She’s been so busy with dancing, she’s hardly been home, she hardly knows him.

‘Freida,’ Erwin whispers from his bed in the middle of the night. ‘Tell me a story.’

So Freida tells him Swan Lake and the Nutcracker and Giselle and every ballet she knows, until he falls asleep or the pain in his bones gets to much and he needs to have more of his medicine.

The medicine is something new that Uncle Simeon’s doctor has given Erwin. It helps, but he sleeps so much now. So much. It worries Freida. She squeezes into bed next to him. She reads him Falk’s letters, even when he’s sleeping. Sometimes their mother comes in and sits on Freida’s bed. Freida skips over some parts of the letters, then, where Falk is eluding to his boyfriend, Erich, who is much older than he is and works in a bar.

It’s all a blur of helping care for the English children and holding Erwin’s hand and helping her mother organise to send letters to their father. And waiting for replies to those letters. She winds up her music box and watches her little dancer spin. She wished she’d brought her pointe shoes with her to England. They were nearly dead, when she left, but she doesn’t know where to find new ones her, doesn’t know how to ask.

She’s hardly had a chance to dance in almost a year. In Germany they barely let her go at all, before they left. Freida never mentioned it, never complained. Nor did her mother. So now, Freida doesn’t dance anymore.

Her cousins copy the little dancing ballerina in the music box.

WHOOSH

One day, Freida gets in from shopping with the youngest of Aunt Miriam’s children, and the adults are sitting around the table. Aunt Miriam tells the children to join the others in the front room, and invite Freida to sit with them at the kitchen table.

‘I don’t want to sit,’ says Freida. Her stomach is in knots.

‘I’ve had a letter from your father,’ says Freida’s mother. ‘It’s about Falk.’

Freida can’t hear them. Her ears are ringing. She’s lying on the floor, words worming their way into her head somehow even though she can’t hear them because of all the ringing. He probably lost consciousness fast. He wouldn’t have felt it long. He didn’t suffer.

She keeps thinking about Falk’s face. How he laughed.

Falk. Dead. It should not be the truth. But it is.

WHOOSH

George Peterson is very funny.

He speaks a few words of German – he was training to be an engineer, and the man he was apprenticed to, he spoke German; Dutch; Portuguese. Freida explains she speaks mostly German and Yiddish, and a little bit of Hebrew, and a little bit of French, for ballet.

‘Yiddish?’ says George, ‘what’s that?’

Freida thinks about Falk. She thinks about how he told her to be small. She thinks about how many times her mother has said that Falk and his boyfriend who Freida never even met did not suffer when they were beaten to death. So many times that she is sure her mother is lying.

Mother won’t let Freida read father’s letters anymore. She won’t play the radio. She says it’s because Erwin is too sick and it gives him migraines but it’s just because she doesn’t want to hear the news.

Sometimes Freida hears her mother sobbing at night, she sobs and sobs and then all at once she stops. Let it out, and get back on your feet. You can let it out as long as you keep going afterwards.

‘I’m Jewish,’ says Frieda, very quietly.

George frowns. ‘So you only believe in the first part of the bible?’

Freida laughs. There are tears in her eyes. ‘Something like that,’ she says.

WHOOSH

George always takes Freida to the houses he’s working at. ‘My house is small, ugly. No space for a pretty girl like you,’ he says.

‘I don’t care,’ says Freida with a sigh. ‘I share a bedroom with my brother. We’re all in my aunt’s home.’

George frowns and nods.

George is usually hired to refit staircases, repair windows. He always does this for people when they are on holidays, so they don’t have to put up with the work. Sometimes, after they make love, they go into other rooms of the houses, and if the people who own the house have a record player, George will put on music for Freida and she’ll dance, naked.

‘I wish I had brought my dancing shoes,’ she tells him.

‘I wish so too, I wish I could have seen you on the stage.’

Freida blushes. This is a white lie. He doesn’t need to know she’s never danced professionally. It’s likely now she never will. George doesn’t know she’s only sixteen. It makes sense that she’d be a professional ballet dancer if she was older. Everything in Germany is going kaput, so what does it matter if she lies? It’s the past, it could be anything. What else should she tell him? She was skilled in school, that she was a good dancer but nobody would let her dance the main role because she’s a Jew?

George is tentative about the Jewishness. He’s trying his best to learn about it. He’s from a small town on the border of England and Wales, not London, originally. He didn’t meet a lot of people when he was growing up, had no chance to meet anyone who wasn’t Christian. But he listens to Freida when she teaches him Yiddish. Repeats words after her. Tells her how precious it is to know where she comes from, who she belongs to.

Freida laughs. ‘I don’t belong to anyone,’ she says. ‘I’m not just a Jew, I’m a ballerina, and I’m German, and I’m a wild girl, like a swan.’

George grins. ‘I love you, wild girl.’

Freida stops, mid-naked pirouette. ‘You love me?’ she asks, in a whisper.

George is blushing. ‘I think I do.’

WHOOSH

Freida is not stupid, she knew what it meant when her period didn’t come. She’d been telling herself and telling herself it was just late. That’s all. It was just late. But she knew in some quiet part of her mind what it was that was happening.

Still, it does not feel real until her Uncle Simeon is sitting on the floor beside her bed, holding her hand, telling her he was in love with a man.

It hits her at once, then, the force of what she’s done.

Cavorting with George was so much fun, a reprieve from the horrors of everything else. But he’s a man, in his mid-twenties, at least. She could keep her age a secret before but not now. Not now.

There is a seed growing inside of Freida. A seed which will become a real human baby, and at some point she’s going to have to push it out of herself. Grown from a seed inside of her. It will grow into a whole human person!

The next days, weeks are numb. They take her to see a doctor. They measure her, weigh her. They give her some pills and send her home. At night, Erwin moans in agony in his bed across from Freida’s until their mother comes in and gives him his injections. His whole body is limp. He’s so asleep he does not notice with Freida climbs in beside him.

In Freida’s arms, day by day, it feels like Erwin’s body is shrinking. The bump on her stomach is getting noticeable. Madly, she knows, but she wonders if the baby inside her is somehow stealing Erwin’s life-force. She hates herself for thinking it. It’s a baby. A baby she made, with George. George who she is still yet to tell.

‘Does he love you?’ asks Erwin, in the middle of the night.

‘He says he does, but I don’t know.’

‘Why would he say it if he didn’t mean it?’

Freida sighs. ‘People say all sorts,’ she says.

‘Yes,’ Erwin agrees. ‘Like mutti says I’ll play tennis when I grow up.’

Freida chuckles. ‘You don’t think you’ll play tennis?’

‘I don’t think I’ll grow up,’ says Erwin.

Freida frowns. She wants to argue but she doesn’t know how. She just holds Erwin instead. Then, she feels something. A flutter inside of her, a tiny press. She gasps.

‘Is something wrong?’ asks Erwin.

‘No,’ Freida whispers. ‘It’s the baby.’

Freida grabs Erwin’s hand and presses it to her stomach. ‘Say something else.’

‘Like what?’

The baby kicks again, and this time Erwin feels it. A grin spreads over his face, only just visible in the streetlight coming through their window.

WHOOSH

Freida isn’t handling the pregnancy well.

Freida says. It’s winter, and chilly, but it hasn’t snowed yet. Uncle Simeon says some years it doesn’t snow in London at all, not once, all winter. It sounds spooky, but then, it’s probably good for the baby. He’ll be born some time in February. If she can keep him in her that long. He’s big, the people at the hospital say.

George comes by two days a week. He drops off things for the baby, things his wife had bought for their own prospective children. Freida stings whens he thinks about George’s poor wife, laying on that bed in his flat. He’s not studying to be an engineer for a long time, all the odd jobs fixing things for people because he needs the money. He needs the money to care for his wife. His poor wife.

But he loves Freida. He loves his wife, too, of course he does, but she will never be well again. There was an accident, a car accident, just a few weeks after they were married. It’s a miracle she’s alive at all. But all she does is lie there. She breathes on her own and swallows when you put food in her mouth, but that’s about it.

It breaks Freida’s heart. She wonders what Ruby understands of her situation. If she knows how much George loves her. She hopes she does.

‘Once I’ve had the baby, I can help George look after her,’ says Freida.

‘Bigamy,’ Freida’s mother scoffs.

‘You’re ridiculous,’ says Freida.

‘Me?!’ Freida’s mother barks. ‘I knew you were wild, girl, but this is something else.’

WHOOSH

Freida’s arms are shaking when they hold the baby up to show her. Her vision is blurry. She can’t see his face. ‘Look at the size of him,’ says Freida’s mother. ‘No wonder you’ve been so exhausted. He’s a giant.’

‘A boy,’ says Freida. She feels fuzzy around the edges. ‘How wonderful.’

Freida wakes up. She’s still in her mother’s bed. Though someone has changed the sheets so they’re no longer covered in blood.

‘Woah, steady,’ says Uncle Simeon, softly.

‘The baby,’ says Freida.

‘Miriam has him. He’s got a bottle. He’s going to be okay. You just rest up. You’ve had a lot of stitches and a blood transfusion, so you’re going to be a bit sleepy.’

‘I don’t remember,’ says Freida, vaguely.

‘Sister,’ Erwin whispers. He’s pressed into bed with her. He has her music box. The ballerina is spinning as the music plays.

Freida feels so cold. She’s sticky with sweat.

‘Erwin,’ Freida whispers back. ‘Erwin, I’m afraid.’

‘You’re safe,’ Erwin says. ‘It’s okay.’

‘It’s not, Erwin,’ says Freida. Her eyes flutter closed.

She dreams about Falk. About Erwin. About dancing. She dreams she is flying over and over the sea, but there’s no sign of land, none, Exhausted she flies back to her little boat again.

‘Where is he?’ Freida asks, grasping into the dark.

The bed beside her is empty, soaked in sweat. ‘Erwin?’ says Freida.

‘Is that his name?’ asks George. ‘Edwin?

‘George,’ says Freida.

‘The baby is with his aunt,’ says George. ‘M-my sister? Gloria? She’s taken him to my flat, just so you can get some rest. Gloria just had a little girl, not six months ago. She’s feeding ours, for us, too. He’s going to be okay. He’s going to be fine. So are you, wild girl.’

Freida sighs. She leans into George’s hand, against her cheek.

‘How’s your wife?’ she asks.

George laughs. ‘The same as always. It’s hard to tell.’

‘Won’t the baby disturb her?’ asks Freida.

‘I don’t think so,’ says George.

George is stroking her cheek. ‘Freida. Your face, Freida—’

Everything is very far away, all at once, as though Freida has sunk deep, deep into the mattress. How strange. How soft, though. And cosy. Funny that she’s still so cold, so swaddled up in there.

Frieda’s mother pulls the covers up to her chin. ‘Hello, wild girl,’ she says.

Freida means to reply but words have left her.

‘You listen now, and you listen good. I trust you. I never wanted to send you out ahead of me, like Noah’s dove, my wild girl, but you’re so brave for going ahead, flying off to find a safe place to rest those powerful wings of yours. And I trust you that when you find that safe place you’ll stay there and wait for me. Like the dove, only you’re no pretty rock bird. You’re fierce, big, beautiful. My wild girl. My swan princess.’

Freida wants to nod. She feels her mother sobbing beside her. Arms wrapped around her. Her mother’s body is warm and shaking.

Through the gap in the curtains, the sky is the colour of fire, and Freida is drifting off to sleep.

WHOOSH

A DEEP. CATCHING BREATH

APPRENTICE
She didn’t deserve to die.

SIR
Who does?

APPRENTICE
Oh NOW you’re suddenly all calm?! I hate you. I HATE YOU. I hate this place. I’m stuck here and so is she and she didn’t deserve to DIE.

SIR
Death is not a punishment. It simply is.

APPRENTICE
It’s my FAULT. It’s my fucking fault. She died because of ME. I sucked all the life out of her, didn’t I? I’m the baby. I’m her stupid, pointless baby and she died for NOTHING.

SIR
You are not pointless.

APPRENTICE
What do you know about it? What do you know about ANYTHING?! You’re not a thing that knows you’re not a thing that understands, you’re not a thing that feels?! Well I AM. I know and I understand and I feel it and it’s wrong and she should not be DEAD.

SIR
Death is not a punishment.

APPRENTICE
Why am I here?! Why are you keeping me here?! I don’t deserve it, I should have no say! I have no right. I’m a– a liar and a fraud and people died because of me. Even my own fucking mother.

I lied that I was Edward Pocket. I lied that I was Theodore du Perier. I stole so much money. I ruined so many lives, I hurt so many people.

If I just. Didn’t exist. So many people would be saved from harm. And she’d be alive. She’d be okay.

SIR
What makes you think that you are so special that the simple act of your non-existence could change the course of so many lives?

APPRENTICE
Have you not been paying attention?! They were all connected to me, all of them. It’s my FAULT. All of it is my fault.

SIR
How profoundly narcissistic of you to say.

APPRENTICE
Wh– no! You don’t get it! None of these people deserve what happened to them, and maybe if I could just. Take myself out of the story, somehow. Even the people I never met, somehow, I’m tied up in their suffering. If I just never existed. They could have been okay.

SIR
I’m afraid they only lived the lives they lived. What is done is done. The past cannot be untangled.

APPRENTICE
It’s not– It’s not right! They all deserved so much more.

SIR
All of them?

APPRENTICE
Yes!

SIR
Even Stephen Grenville?

APPRENTICE
I– but I. I ruined his life.

SIR
Did you?

APPRENTICE
Yes! The money, in the will, I took it!

SIR
Did you?

APPRENTICE
I– I did, didn’t I?

SIR
Tell me what you saw.

APPRENTICE
I schmoozed Pearl Grenville, wooed her, convinced her not to leave her money to Stephen. He said I stole his life.

SIR
Do you think the Grenville fortune would have meant much to you, Lord du Perier? Married into the wealthy de Vallée family? Flitting across Europe with no concern for money whatsoever, staying in dozens of apartments, all of which you owned? What use would you have for the Grenville money?

APPRENTICE
I– I didn’t take it?

SIR
Did you take the money from George Peterson’s sister?

APPRENTICE
Not in Pauline’s memory, but maybe I went back for it.

SIR
Again – why would you?

APPRENTICE
I– I don’t know. I don’t know! How could I possibly know!?

SIR
Are you not yourself?

APPRENTICE
I can’t remember! I can’t remember who I am, and you won’t let me find it out.

SIR
You are what remains, now. That is all you are. This is what is left of you. Do you not understand?

APPRENTICE
I don’t– I don’t get it!

SIR
Consider the question.

APPRENTICE
Shelve or discard.

SIR
Precisely.

APPRENTICE
But you don’t– you don’t know what will happen. If I put her on a shelf and she gets picked up again, is that another chance at life? In what context, what if it’s just as bad as what happened to her here, what if it’s worse?!

SIR
It may well be.

APPRENTICE
So why– why would you shelve anyone?

SIR
You once asked me the same of why anyone ought to be discarded.

APPRENTICE
The remnants are. They’re pieces of a person. Moments which. Things which. Make them who they are. They define them, sculpt them. I– I think that’s what it is. I think that’s why these moments.

SIR
Interesting.

APPRENTICE
It’s so much about other people, you know? Even when they’re reflecting alone, it’s about someone else, something else. It’s about connections.

SIR
Perhaps.

APPRENTICE
You don’t know, do you?

SIR
No. No I do not.

THE APPRENTICE SIGHS

APPRENTICE
So. What about you? Freida? Shelve or discard?

SIR
Ah. Here I must confess. I’d shelve them all if I could, Apprentice. Every one. But. That is not how it works.

APPRENTICE
What?

SIR
That is enough for now, I think. Now, sleep.

THE APPRENTICE SIGHS

SIR
Rest for you will be good for both of us.

END

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