Maud leans in. “What’s a changeling exactly?”
Oliver explains. “They’re children placed in human homes by demons. They’re strange. They don’t fit in. They scare the ordinary humans with their otherness. But the thing about changelings is that they’re always alone in a human home. No one’s ever considered what might happen in a home full of changelings. A world of nothing but otherness.” Oliver pauses. Looks at me with what I think is gratitude. “A happy world.”
Lily pulls him close. “Changeling.” The cat purrs. “I think she likes the name. It suits her. Look at her eyes.” Lily turns to me and Oliver. “Now there are three members of the family who are part feline.”
She places Changeling down. Lets her slowly explore her new home. The cat paws at the furniture. The framed photos of us haphazardly placed around the living area. The record player. Lily joins Changeling by the turntable. She puts a new record on. The just-released new album from Siouxsie and the Banshees.
I think of all the times I’ve seen Siouxsie at the Blitz. Now she’s changing the way the word sounds. Looks. Feels. The new record is calledKaleidoscope. A word that sounds a lot like my life. So manyways for it to reflected. So many patterns that there’s no pattern at all. But all that matters is what it looks like now. Bright.
The first song comes on. “Happy House.” When Lily plays DJ, she always picks the right song. We start to dance again. We sing along at the top of our lungs.We’re happy here in the happy house.Oliver rushes to our room and emerges with his synthesizer. He adds some live instrumentation. He hits the keys with his eyes fixed on me. I dance with mine fixed on him.
Changeling seems to dance too. She wants to join the party.
Oliver smiles. “She likes music!” He picks her up. Places her in his lap as he creates sonic magic. Changeling’s eyes glow. She’s happy here. In the happy house.
Oliver. London. September. 1980.
After three days of thunderstorms and five days of drizzle, the sun peeks through our bedroom window on a Sunday morning. Changeling purrs in delight. She sleeps in our bed every night. I love nothing more than waking up and realizing she’s curled up between us. Neither of us has to work today. Bram never tutors on Sundays. I have no sessions booked.
I pull Bram out of bed and into the sunlight. We scour the city for Oreo cookies, but they don’t seem to exist in the United Kingdom. We rush through the aisles of Tesco and land on Spooks biscuits. They’re made from colored dough, and each one has a ridiculous monster name. Red Devil. Yellow Peril. Green Gremlin. We eat the biscuits as we walk the streets of a new city. Stroll through Brixton, up to the river. We gaze at the National, where Lily now works. We make the city ours. Even in Mayfair, where the rules of the old world still apply, we hold hands. We ignore the glares of clenched women and vicious men. When a teenage boy pretends to sneeze so he can croak out the wordscreamersfor the amusement of his friends, we walk on.
Bram stops outside Claridge’s. An unnerved look in his eyes, like he’s seen a ghost. “That’s where it happened,” he says.
“What?” I ask stupidly.
“Where my father burned the book. Well, some of it at least. Where I became... like this.” His hand tenses in mine. For perhaps the first time since I’ve known him, he seems genuinely terrified. Like he’s his father’s son again, existing in a time before I was born. A time before Mother had met Father, when she might have chosen some other path. Perhaps a happier one.
“Let’s go in,” I say.
Bram shudders. The hairs on his arm stand up.
“You’re scared,” I say. “But you shouldn’t be. This is our time, remember?”
I have to be the brave one today. I lead him inside the majestic building. Into the decadent art deco lobby. Everything inside screams money. The grit ofourLondon doesn’t exist in this shiny land of marble and gold, of checkered clothes and glass chandeliers.
“It’s changed,” he says. “There used to be a carriage drive.”
“There used to be carriages,” I say. And then, “Everything changes.”
“Except us,” he says wistfully.
“We have definitely changed,” I say. “We used to eat Oreos. Now we eat Spooks.”
He laughs. “A monumental transformation.”
“We used to be apart. Now we’re together. How’s that for monumental?”
The fear exits his gaze. He steels himself with a long inhale. “Let’s have afternoon tea.”
The hostess looks us up and down when we ask for a table. She’s not the only one. Every gentleman and lady seated in the art deco foyer seem to be hissing at us with their eyes. Some leer at us directly. Others stare at our reflection covertly in the many mirrorsthat line the walls, reflecting opulence back at itself. The cost of the flowers in this one room alone could probably feed a whole neighborhood.
I see us through their eyes. Bram’s platform boots. His long hair, now with streaks of hot pink. The jacket he loves to wear.The National Front Is an Affront. Me with my new waves of gelled hair. My tight Levi’s. My T-shirt with a decal of Donna Summer’s face on the front. I like us so much better than I like them.
“Are you guests of the hotel?” the hostess asks.
“No, but we can pay in cash,” I say.
I’m about to pull my wallet out to prove it when Bram stops me. “I’m guessing you would’ve seated us already if we were wearing Armani suits.”
