Children of the Volcano

window into a giant web of shattered glass. It has been like this since we arrived in London five weeks ago, and every day there are more lozenges of glass on the pavement. There’s a guy now, sunk inside a damp hoodie, fretting at a shard with a fingernail. Izzy watches him, entranced. His cuticles are picked raw. The lozenge falls, and she bobs down and picks it up. She’s been collecting bus shelter safety glass, like she used to collect shells and sea glass on Good Harbor beach in Massachusetts. The glass isn’t sharp, so I suppose the activity to be harmless. But as usual, there is an interfering old lady to disapprove.

‘No, dear, it’s dirty.’

Izzy glowers, holding the shard up to show Juno the tinge of sea green along its broken edge. ‘Look, Juno, another diamond. We are rich!’

Nothing could be further from the truth. I have a royalty cheque from the Rough Guide to Italy due next week and that is it. Here in London, it will be gone in three months. Of course, I could ask the children’s father but the break-up is so new, wounds still raw, that grey areas feel dangerous. Leeds? Where Mum and Dad are? The royalties would last longer up north but, much as I love my parents, much as they would love to have their grandchildren close by, I know that in Leeds I would disintegrate.

But I am in danger of dissolving here in London too. My mind feels like a bolus in a lava lamp, forming one shape then splitting, splitting again, morphing, disintegrating, reforming, then cutting loose and drifting out through ears and eyes and hair follicles, carrying us up as in a hot-air balloon, slowly, above the cars, above the traffic lights, up, past the floors of a tower block until our heads are dots, until London becomes like the map at the beginning of Eastenders and we are invisible. I’ve had bad times before, fragile times, but nothing quite like this. At least, not since I became a mother. But then, I say to myself, you’ve just made yourself a single mum.

‘Mummy, look!’ And we and the hooded man watch another lozenge of glass fall. Izzy picks it up. ‘So beautiful!’ The man is young but his eyes are bloodshot. He shakes his head and smiles.

The 52 to Kensal Rise pulls in, along its side a huge advert for Sunny Delight, a heavily advertised orangeade with which Izzy has become obsessed. With most of their toys still in storage, her TV watching has gone through the roof, especially as the only child-