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:

Children living in poverty

Parentification of a child

Violence against a sex worker, with descriptions of her injuries, and vague allusions to what happened, but no description of the actual abuse

Mentions of blood, bruises, and cuts

Descriptions of life in an active war-zone, including loss of civilian life, descriptions of destroyed homes and buildings, and bomb craters

Bereavement

Descriptions of children living in extreme neglect

Death of children

Transcript

AN ODD, WHISPERING HUSH

SIR
Ah. There you are.

APPRENTICE
Sorry. Wandering off again, wasn’t I?

SIR
You are in the habit.

APPRENTICE
Hmm.

SIR
Indeed.

APPRENTICE
How are they sorted?

SIR
The remnants?

APPRENTICE
Yes the fucking remnants. There’s nothing else here, is there?

SIR
No. There is not.

APPRENTICE
Except the dust.

SIR
The dust, too. I do not know how to explain it.

APPRENTICE
The sorting system?

SIR
What else would I be referring to?

APPRENTICE
Nice job. That was almost a joke.

SIR
Thank you. I appreciate that.

APPRENTICE
You’re serious though? You don’t know how to explain it?

SIR
For you to understand, I think it is best to say it is like sorting by colour.

APPRENTICE
I… so this red truck and this green bead necklace, they’re the same colour, to you?

SIR
Not literally. Perhaps flavour is a more apt analogy.

APPRENTICE
Hmm.

SIR
How do they look to you?

APPRENTICE
Just like stuff, I guess. Like this is the world’s weirdest flea market.

SIR
Flea market?

APPRENTICE
Yeah it’s… huh. I don’t know. But this is what it’s like.

SIR
How curious.

APPRENTICE
Could you find one again, if you wanted to?

SIR
A remnant? I suppose.

APPRENTICE
How?

SIR
How do you find any of them?

APPRENTICE
Well I don’t, do I? So far, you’ve just give them to me.

SIR
Ah. Yes. We ought to rectify that.

APPRENTICE
Okay.

SIR
So. What will you choose?

APPRENTICE
Um. I don’t know? Maybe this little metal… thing? Kiss? No. Thimble. It’s a thimble. It’s a nice weight in my hand. Heavier than I thought it’d be. There’s a word for what this is, it goes on your finger. Kiss? No. A thimble. That’s it. A thimble. And this one is made of steel, I think. It’s for sewing, somehow, and– ah!

WHOOSH

Sally’s sister, Annie, shows her the stitch again. The needle carefully picks its way around the edges of the hole in Sally’s stocking. Backwards and forwards across the hole, weaving in and out. ‘And then you pull it closed,’ says Annie, and it all comes together. ‘You see how we have not just fixed the hole, but reinforced the fabric around it?’

Sally nods. ‘Thank you!’ she says, as she pulls the stocking back over her foot and up past her knee. Annie smiles. She’s pretty. Their mother says they are like chalk and cheese. Annie is little and slender, paler skinned than their mother but with the same almond eyes. Her hair is auburn and wavy and she likes to wear it in braids that she rolls up into a bun. Sally’s hair is thick and densely curled and she likes to wear it in two puffy pigtails behind her ears.

‘Mama will be impressed when she see’s you’ve fixed your own stocking, Sal!’ says Annie.

Sally beams proudly at her work. ‘Is there anything else I can fix?’

Annie laughs. ‘I’m not sure, let’s see!’

WHOOSH

Mama has not been back for three days now. It’s happened before where she’s been gone for a night or two with work, but usually she finds a way to come back home and see Annie and Sally before she goes, or at least leave a note, but this time there’s nothing. Annie is doing her best to stay calm and collected but Sally can tell she’s scared. Sally is scared too.

It’s nearly the end of the week and on Mondays Mr Jones from downstairs will be banging on the door asking for their rent money. There’s only a few pennies in the sock mama keeps stuffed in their mattress. They’re not sure what they’re going to do.

Anne pulls the sock out again.

‘What are you doing?’ asks Sally.

‘We need something to eat,’ says Annie.

Sally chews her lip. ‘Mama will be angry.’

‘Not as angry as if she finds out I didn’t even try to feed you,’ says Annie.

Sally fidgets on the spot.

‘I’ll go to the market, get us some bread. You stay here in case she comes back,’ says Annie.

Sally’s lip wobbles. ‘Don’t leave me by myself.’

Annie clucks her tongue. ‘Don’t be daft, Sally! You’re here on your own all the time. What if she comes back and there’s nobody waiting?’

Sally shuffles awkwardly. ‘How long are you going to be?’

Annie looks at the little clock hung on the wall over the bed. ‘When the big hand gets to the top and the little hand points at the bottom in a big line, that’s when I’ll be back.’

Sally stares at the clock. ‘Is that very long?’

‘It’s three hours,’ says Annie. ‘But it’s only because I’m going to go to the market and on my way back I’ll go to mama’s work and see if anybody knows where she is.’

Sally sniffles. ‘Why can’t I come with you?’

‘You know mama doesn’t like you at her work.’

‘She doesn’t like you there, either,’ says Sally.

‘No, but I’m older, and she never said where she was,’ says Annie. ‘Please, Sal. Just wait her, won’t you?’

Sally considers a moment. She sniffles. She sits down on the bed. ‘Okay,’ she says.

Annie smiles. ‘Great. Whilst I’m gone, maybe you could be a help and mend my wool stockings for me?’ she says. Annie pulls them out of the laundry hamper.

Sally takes them. ‘Okay,’ she says.

Annie pats Sally on the head. ‘When the big hand’s at the top and the little one is at the bottom, in one big line. That’s when I’ll be back,’ says Annie.

Sally nods. ‘Okay.’

Annie leaves. Sally mends her socks. She stares at the clock. The big hand goes round and round, the little hand gets closer and closer to the bottom.

The door opens and Sally jumps.

‘Annie?’ she says.

‘Help!’ says Annie.

Sally hops off the bed. Annie has mama with her arm over her shoulder. Her long, dark hair is stuck together. She smells like blood. One of her eyes is swollen shut. She lays down on the bed with a groan.

‘Go down to the little shop and ask for bandages and ointment to clean cuts,’ says Annie. She puts a pound coin in Sally’s palm. ‘Hurry!’ says Annie.

Sally nods, and runs.

WHOOSH

Mama is sick for two weeks after Annie brings her home. The ointment smells strange; it stings Sally’s nose. Mama hisses like it hurts her whenever Annie puts it on the cuts over her nose and under her eye.

Sally runs their clothes to Mrs Patel over the road, who helps her clean them for a few pennies. She sends Sally home with soup and naan bread. Annie spoons the soup into mama’s mouth.

By the end of the first week, mama can sit up and talk a little, and she can open her eye again. The skin around it is bruised black and red around the cuts. The rest of her usually gleaming bronze complexion is sweaty, clammy and cool. There is dried blood in her hair still, despite Annie trying her best to soak it out.

‘What happened?’ Sally asks.

‘Don’t, Sally,’ says Annie. She looks like she’s going to cry. Sally slips against Annie’s side, clutching one of her hands between both of her own and squeezing tight.

‘Sweet girls,’ says mama. ‘What is it?’

Annie’s chest stutters. She looks away.

‘You were gone,’ says Sally. ‘Now you’re so hurt.’

Mama smiles the best she can with her swollen face. ‘It’s okay, sweet girl,’ she says. She strokes one of Annie’s plaits. ‘I love you, love you, love you,’ says mama. ‘I’m so sorry I scared you so much.’

‘Though you were going to die,’ says Annie. Sally doesn’t understand it, but she sounds angry.

‘I’m so sorry,’ says mama.

‘It’s not fair!’ says Annie. ‘That horrible place. Those horrible men! They call it making love but they must hate you, the way they treat you! Well, I hate them! I hope they all die!’

‘Annie!’ says mama, harshly. ‘Annie. It’s okay. I promise you it’s going to be okay. It’s just—’ mama stops talking. She looks at Sally for a moment before continuing. ‘There’s one man who likes things a certain way, he pays a lot of money for it. He’s usually very good at holding back but he had an accident and went a little too far, that’s all.’

‘You could have lost your eye, you know,’ says Annie.

Mama sighs. She strokes Annie’s braid again. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry this is all I can do. I’m sorry this is all we have.’

Annie shakes her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. She folds herself against mama’s side. Mama beckons, and Sally joins the cuddle, too.

‘I’m back now,’ says mama. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’

WHOOSH

Annie bursts through the door at lightning speed. A strand of her auburn hair has escaped the little white cap on her head. She’s beaming, her cheeks flushed.

‘Annie!’ says mama, with a laugh. ‘You’ll want to curb that enthusiasm before Mr Jones spots it, or he’ll double our rent.’

Annie laughs. ‘I got a job!’ she says, with a little bounce. Since Annie finished school in July, she’s been working cleaning jobs all over the East End, trying to get enough experience to sign up with an agency for more regular work. Sally feels like she’s barely seen her, but now she’s finally managed to get what she wanted, there’s a warm little feeling in her chest, like a flower blooming.

Mama sets the clothes she’s been mending down and leaps up to give Annie a hug. ‘That’s wonderful news, sweet girl!’

‘I start next week. I’ll need to get the train out of London on Saturday. They’re paying my fare and everything!’

‘Such good news!’ says Annie.

Sally frowns. ‘Out of London?’ she says.

Annie bites her lip. She smoothes Sally’s hair. She nods. ‘I’ll be able to visit every couple of months.’

‘Months?’ says Sally, horrified. She looks at the clock, imagines how many times around and around the hands will turn between times she sees her sister. It feels like her stomach has dropped into her knees. She gets to her feet and runs out of their room, thundering down the stairs, and out onto the crowded little backstreet their building is on.

It’s a busy day, people milling about on street corners, the market set up just one street over, but Sally has been running the streets of London’s East End since she could stand on two legs. Her neighbours call her name as she flies past them, but she barely hears them at all. She runs and runs until she’s in the park, and she only stops when she has crossed the little wooden bridge and has tucked herself in behind the bushes.

Sally sits there with her knees against her chest, her face squished into her hands, and cries and cries for what feels like forever.

Finally, she feels a warm hand on her shoulder.

‘Do you want the rest of my apple?’ asks Annie.

Sally sniffles. Annie’s hand is all she can see, holding out a shiny apple with a single bite taken out of the side. Sally takes it. She sinks her teeth into the sweet, crisp flesh.

‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ says Annie.

‘Don’t go,’ Sally squeaks.

‘I have to, Sal. You know I do.’

‘At least take me with you! I’m only three years behind you at school, I’m dead good at sowing. I could be helpful!’

‘I’ll write all the time,’ says Annie, trying not to cry herself. ‘Besides, if you come with me, who will look after mama?’

Sally’s lip is wobbling. She flings her arms around her sister. ‘I love you,’ she says.

Annie laughs, but she’s crying too. ‘I love you too, little Sal. I love you so, so much.’

WHOOSH

Sally is mending her school dress, listening to the radio. It’s not normally something she likes to do but in her last letter from Annie she was going on and on about the war and so is everyone everywhere all the time and so for the last three days all Sally has done is listen to the radio and talk to the other kids on the street about what she hears.

‘You think they’re gonna shut the school?’ says one of them.

‘My ma reckons we’re all getting shipped out to the countryside.’

Sally scoffs. ‘Don’t be stupid, Martin, we can’t be shipped to the countryside, we’d be going by road or rail. Don’t be absurd.’

Martin pouts. ‘Since when have you got all smart?’

Sally rolls her eyes. ‘If you just paid a bit more attention your life would go a lot easier you know?’

Now she’s come back inside and she’s mending her school dress and in a little while mama will come in from work and they’ll have breakfast together before mama goes to bed and Sally goes to school. Maybe when she gets home this evening there will be a letter from Annie. Maybe she will say more about the war. The people whose house she cleans for seem to know an awful lot about what’s happening and it makes Sally feel less hopeless to know things.

She gets out a bit of paper stolen from school and starts to write her reply to Annie in advance. ‘I am so glad not to be hopeless,’ she writes.

WHOOSH

The train station is cacophonous. The clocks bear down over them, with the whistling trains and the plumes upon plumes of stream belching out of them.

‘It won’t be long and I’ll be able to come and visit,’ says mama.

The conductor on the platform barks instructions. Around them, dozens of children are squeezed into tight embraces or have the little tags on their coat buttons smoothed by their parents’ hands. Sally dodges mama’s embrace.

‘Sally?’ she says.

Sally shakes her head. She turns on her heel and bolts out of the station, swerving around the guards. She stops on the steps outside, panting.

‘Sally!’ mama is calling behind her. ‘The train is about to leave without you!’

‘Good!’ Sally shouts.

Mama shakes her head. ‘Sally. You were ready to go, you’re all packed! What are we going to do?!’

‘I don’t want to go,’ says Sally.

‘But, Sal! You can’t stay in London. They’re bombing the city! You could be hurt. You could be killed!’

Sally scowls. ‘So could you!’

Mama runs a hand over her face. ‘Sally. You are twelve years old. Please. Please listen to me. You need to get on the next train and stay in the countryside and finish your school and then when the war is done, you can come back then, alright?’

Sally screws up her face. She shakes her head. ‘No.’

Mama sighs. ‘Why? Why not?’

‘Annie told me I had to look after you.’

Mama sighs. ‘Sally. I’m a grown up. I can take care of myself.’

‘I won’t go and live in the countryside and leave you here all alone!’ says Sally. ‘

Sally remembers the day Annie near dragged mama home, black-eyed and barely able to speak. She thinks about all the times since she’s come home with scraps and bruises. How sometimes when she moves she winces in pain.

Who will mend your socks?!’

‘Don’t worry about me, Sally,’ says mama. ‘I’ll be okay.’

Sally shakes her head. ‘You won’t. And Annie, and what if—’

‘Don’t you worry about Annie. She’s safe at her big house.’ There’s a nasty edge to mama’s tone that Sally doesn’t like. ‘She wants you to be evacuated, too.’

‘Well, tough,’ says Sally. She folds her arms. ‘I live here. I’m staying here. I’m not going unless you come too.’

Mama sighs. She pulls Sally into another hug. ‘You’re so stubborn. You and Annie are so alike. Chalk and cheese to look at but so alike in your little souls.’

WHOOSH

The bombs fall. It begins bloody, with brick dust and blood. Their little corner of the East End is hit bad. Half the neighbourhoods Sally used to walk are brought to the ground. People flee to the local school, but that’s hit by a bomb just three days after the first ones fell. Half a thousand were burned or crushed inside, they say.

After a few weeks, it starts to feel normal. The sirens sound, loud and persistent, piercing the dark of the blacked-out city streets. Some people shuffle down into the air-raid shelters. Mostly Sally and mama stay home. Plenty of other people stay home too; the government said Sally’s school was safe to shelter in and so many people died because of that. So they stay home instead.

On the street, people crowd into each others’ homes, like congregation alone is enough to stave of bombings. Kids play cards or tin soldiers or read to each other. The mothers with very little kids and tiny babies pass them around between willing adults so they can take turns trying to sleep. Sally mends clothes for anyone who asks. People give her extra ration coupons to put in her pocket to take home.

When the sun comes up they peel the paper off the corner of the windows and peer around the streets. Thin columns of smoke and ash rising here and there between the buildings. Sometimes the damage is close, though. Half of the street next to Sally and mama’s is gone; a big hole blasted right through. The little chapel on the corner is so completely flattened it might have been anything at all.

Belongings are picked from the rubble. People stand weeping at the edge of bomb shelters, gravesides of their old lives, no idea what to do next, where to go, where to sleep. Sally feels dizzy when she tries to think about what would happen if it was her. She can’t imagine it. Trying to makes her feel like she’s spinning.

Mam still works some nights and Sally stays at home alone, or else crowds in Mr Jones downstairs or the Kumars over the street or the O’Neils on the corner. She plays cards and worries about mama and doesn’t sleep. Every time she comes home and finds mama sleeping in their little bed she weeps with relief.

One morning, though, mama’s not there when Sally gets home. Sally gets under the blankets, curls up, dozes off, and wakes again in the early evening. There is still no sign of mama.

Sally goes to her little job at the bathhouse. She mends holes in clothes, she helps wash things in big batches, she bathes herself and washes her hair, winding cotton around it like the lady who watches the big washing machines taught her, and she goes back home.

Mama is still not there. There isn’t even any sign she’s been home at all.

Sally sits around waiting. The air raid sirens go off again. Sally trails to the shelter. The next day, mama is not home. Nor the next day, nor the next.

On the fourth day, Sally walks the few streets over to where mama works. But the building is gone. In its place, a heap of rubble. It has been like that for days; Sally can tell because everyone else on the street is already walking past it as though it has always been that way

Sally goes home. She gets into bed. When the sirens ring, she ignores them.

WHOOSH

Sally finds the raid nights are easier if she finds something to do. Despite the loud booms and crashes and sirens and screams, there is something she’s growing fond of about the way the city looks with all the lights off at night. Everyone is keeping the same secret.

Sometimes, Sally goes out and climbs the fence into the park even though it closes at dusk. She lies out on the floor on the little bridge and she looks up at the sky and thinks about Annie doing the same wherever she is.

Sometimes, Sally thinks about going off into the countryside and trying to find the address she sends all her letters to Annie to, but then she’d have to tell her about the bomb at mama’s work. That mama has not come home since it fell.

Sally doesn’t want to tell Annie about any of that. She’d worry. Maybe she’d be angry that Sally didn’t look after mama better, the way Annie would have done.

There are other children living semi-feral across the East End. Some of them are around Sally’s age, on the cusp of adolescence, managing to scrape by and looking out for younger siblings. A few of them are proper kids, though, four and five, little lost lambs with no homes to go to.

Sally makes sure they get fed, that their socks are darned, that their faces are washed. She’s got no little siblings of her own and nothing better to do, so why not?

After a couple of months she has a small group of them that she looks for in the evenings. They roam the streets together like a pack of stray dogs.

In the day, she works at the bathhouse, until the bath house is hit by a bomb.She holes up in the flat where she used to live with her mother and her sister. She doesn’t write to Annie. Most nights she goes to bed hungry.

WHOOSH

The first time they break into a house it isn’t Sally’s idea. It’s Victor’s. He’s a year younger than Sally, growing fast despite their lack of food, bursting out of his clothes. His parents have been missing for three months, since the first bomb. He talks about them vocally as though they’re going to come back and Sally lets him because she likes him but in her heart she knows they won’t. She’s pretty sure Victor knows too.

‘The people up the road were making a roast the other day,’ he says, struck by scandal.

The little ones gasp.

‘It’s alright for some, isn’t it?’ says Sally.

‘There’s nobody looking out for us, Sal. Maybe we’ve got to look out for ourselves,’ says Victor.

So the next time the sirens sound, Sally corrals the little ones to the shelter, and she and Victor go together to the house where Victor smelled roast chicken. He picks the door with a hairpin.

‘Where did you learn that?’ Sally asks.

Victor shrugs. ‘My brother taught me,’ he says.

It’s warm inside the house. The sudden shock of it colours Victor’s cheeks pink after the frigid chill of the November air outside.

The carpet is clean. There are framed pictures on the wall in the hallway, parents and three children. The oldest is a boy, he looks young, but in the most recent of the pictures, which stands out because of the style of the frame, he’s wearing a military uniform.

They stalk through the house. In the kitchen, Victor throws open a cupboard and gasps. It’s stocked full of tinned beans and vegetables. There is even a bag of apples. They gather what they can and run back to Sally’s place. They eat cold beans out of the tins, giggling.

They steal every time the sirens ring after that.

WHOOSH

Sally and Victor find a boy down an alleyway not long after Christmas. The sirens have gone off. and they’re making their way back to Sally’s place with their latest spoils to share amongst the other street kids.

It’s Victor who spots him. At first he seems apprehensive.

‘It’s alright,’ Sally promises. ‘Did you get lost on your way to the shelter?’

‘Shelter?’ says the boy. He’s not from the East End, you can tell by his accent. He’s from out of the city somewhere. His clothes are grubby, but the fabric is expensive; Sally can tell from the feel of it under her fingers.

Sally and Victor take the boy along with them. They give him tinned beans and he heats with a ferociousness which suggests it’s the first meal he’s had in weeks. He falls asleep in the corner, resembling a heap of clothes more than a boy.

The next day, when the other children arrive, he’s like a different child. He’s quick, charismatic, a joker. The other children eye him with a kind of starry admiration. They try to ask where he comes from but he finds incredible ways not to answer. He talks a lot, holds the others’ attention, but he hardly says a word about himself.

By the end of the first week, the only thing they know for sure about him is that his name is Ted. They’re not even sure how old he is. He’s tall in this half-grown cat kind of way, but his manner suggests he’s younger than he looks. Something about him holds Sally’s attention. He holds Victor’s attention, too. Within a fortnight she’s jokingly calling them Dodger and Oliver.

Ted thrives under Victor’s focus, learning fast to pick locks, and soon he’s integral to their thieving.

Sally’s not sure where he goes during the day. Sometimes, after the sirens go, he sleeps at Sally’s until mid-afternoon. On nights the sirens don’t go at all, he arrives at Victor’s heel, like a well-behaved dog.

One of those evenings, as Sally sits mending Victor’s clothes with Ted snoozing behind them, she asks him ‘where does Ted go in the day?’

Victor shrugs. ‘No idea.’

They look over at him, curled up on the corner of Sally’s bed.

Victor puts his hand on Sally’s. ‘You’re doing a good thing, you know,’ he says.

Sally’s face turns hot. ‘I need to finish mending this hole.’

Victor laughs. ‘Thanks,’ he says.

They look out of the little window together. Sally darns in the near-perfect dark.

WHOOSH

It’s a night like any other. It begins with deafening sirens, with herding and organising, and then setting out across town, the three of them as it always is now, Sally, Victor and Ted. They stalk through the night, the sirens cutting through the dark, their little lamps the only point of light for streets and streets more.

They catch sight of criminals, set on pilfering goods. Ted watches them intently.

Sally has noticed him taking more than he should. Whilst she and Victor rifle through kitchen cupboards, he’s upstairs in the house. He must be stuffing his pockets with jewellery and all sorts of business.

Sally doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t know where he came from or what his story is, and he’s so young to be so duplicitous, it feels wrong to press. Perhaps he would not have the words to explain himself, even if she did.

Besides, Victor likes him.

They creep along the next street. It’s one Sally knows well, part of Annie’s old laundry route, before the war.

‘What’s that?’ says Ted.

They’re at the gate to what used to be the Pockets’ house.

‘That’s the Pockets’ place. The husband was a lawyer. They were nice,’ says Sally. ‘They were the first people Annie went cleaning for. They died, Mr and Mrs Pocket and their little boy, the night first bombs fell on London.’

‘I saw the thieves in there last night,’ says Ted. ‘Were they rich?’

Sally scowls. ‘Ted. You can’t just say things like that.

‘Why not?’ says Ted.

Sally clucks her tongue. Ted runs under her arm, through the gate, and hops through one of the gaping front windows.

‘Hey!’ Sally shouts. She moves to follow him.

‘Let him be, Sal,’ says Victor.

On the other side of the wall, they hear shifting rubble. Sally gives Victor a pleading look. They both move forward and follow Ted.

Behind the still standing facade, Ted has clambered his way up the remains of the staircase.

‘Get down from there!’ says Sally.

‘Yeah, come on, Ted. Let’s go. There’s gonna nothing to eat here.’

Ted is ignoring them. He disappears through a doorway into the depths of the house.

Sally takes an uncertain step on the rubble.

‘Oi, where are you going?!’ says Victor.

‘I need to stop him before he hurts himself.’

‘Sally, he’ll be alright. He got here by hisself didn’t he? He can manage.’

Sally sighs. She steps back down, away from the stairs. ‘Yeah. Shall we go to the park?’

‘Aren’t you hungry?’ says Victor.

Sally shrugs. ‘Yeah, but we’ve all night.’

The distant guttering sound of engines is at once not so distant anymore. The plane is flying low, foolishly low. The whole thing will get broken up by the big chains tethering the balloons which hang over the whole city now.

They hear a whistle, the sound of a bomb being dropped.

It hits the ground close enough that the floor beneath them shakes. Sally turns her head, watches the plumes of fire rising a few streets away. Behind her, there’s an almighty crash. She and Victor turn; the plane has indeed struck one of the balloon chains and turned from a plane into a ball of fire. It’s still airborne, though, and the driver is turning, and he’s looping around.

The plane crashes one street over.

The ground shakes again. Ted appears at the top of the Pockets’ stairs. His eyes are wide, looking down at Sally and Victor, and he’s getting larger, larger. And Sally can’t make sense of it.

‘Sally!’ Victor shouts, and he grabs her hand, and they both fall, and Ted is getting closer.

There is no time to think except about Victor’s hand in hers and to hope they will be alright.

WHOOSH

APPRENTICE
Shelve.

SIR
I presume you will not tell me why.

APPRENTICE
No. But. She’s the sister. Annie’s necklace, from last time. This is her sister. I picked this at random, you saw me, but they’re connected.

SIR
Perhaps it only seems to be random, but in fact is not random at all.

APPRENTICE
You… how many of these remnants have you seen?

SIR
All of them.

APPRENTICE
And how many do you remember?

SIR
I am not a thing that remembers. Not the way that you do. Or, I suppose, in your case, you don’t.

APPRENTICE
What do you mean?

SIR
It is not of consequence.

APPRENTICE
Sir. That shelf has dozens of these things crammed onto them. I could have picked out any. But I didn’t.

SIR
You didn’t.

APPRENTICE
What’s going on, here? There’s more to this than I can see, isn’t there?

SIR
Infinitely.

APPRENTICE
What are you so afraid of?

SIR
What?

APPRENTICE
You won’t explain things. You won’t show me, either. You don’t seem to enjoy this, you can’t point to any real rhyme or reason in it, you hardly even seem to know what you’re doing yourself. But you keep doing it. Why? And I think. Well, you know. Maybe he’s afraid. But of what?

SIR
I am not a thing that fears, dear apprentice. Worry not.

APPRENTICE
You’re lying to me.

PAUSE

APPRENTICE
This isn’t just a job, is it?

SIR
Did you ever work out how you arrived here?

APPRENTICE
No.

SIR
Exactly.

APPRENTICE
Exactly.

SIR
Hmm. You know, I think you have worn yourself out. Perhaps you ought to rest.

END.

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