Soft Play

We pushed through two tattered curtains of silk, her a step ahead. "My God," she said. Then she repeated it, but this time she whispered, as if scared by the stutter in her voice: "My God."1

I followed her eyes, and didn't understand. That did not surprise me. I'd known her a month, and all the time it was like this: her terrified or stunned with rapture at things that looked just normal to me. I didn't even know why she'd brought us here - hadn't asked; too happy just that she wanted me with her.2

We were standing in a tall room; or presumably it was a room, presumably somewhere there were walls and a ceiling. But we couldn't see them. We were surrounded on all sides by strips of coloured fabric, ladders for climbing, plastic multicoloured balls that rolled against our feet and stopped, tunnels, tubes, things that swung from red and yellow and pink walkways and hit against the sides of rubber corridors. There was dust everywhere; enough to make her splutter and choke when she tried to speak again.3

I took three steps forward very fast, and held her, hit her on the back, though I wasn't sure if that would help. I felt her ribcage pressing against her thin bluish skin, her melting dark hair streaming cold around my fingers. Then she moved back. "I'm fine," she said, and she turned away from me to survey the room.4

I wanted to ask why we were here, but I was scared. Any moment she might say, I want to be alone, or, it was a mistake to bring you anyway, and banish me. I didn't want to remind her I was here. I could just soak up the fact that I was, soak up the fact that a moment ago I had held her and touched her skin and her hair and her bare shoulders, that maybe I had even helped her a bit.5

"I used to come here when I was little," she said, and I was thrilled, because she was telling me, without me having had to ask at all. She went on, "It was...like a playroom, for kids, you know. You could climb and things. I was literally in love with it, I wanted to come here all the time."6

I looked around, and tried to imagine children playing here. The plastic was hard and stiff, and the foam was sagging with damp. There was dust all over the place, and grey-white stuffing poking out from dozens and dozens of holes. 7

She must have been watching my face, because she said, "I know it looks dismal now, but it was all bright and happy then. And really crowded."8

I saw her for a split second, tiny, dark hair winding over her arms as she slid, face split smiling, down a bright red tube. I looked over at the grown-up version, and I wanted to hold her blue wrists - I could reach all the way round them with my thumb and my middle finger - and make it so she would never ever be unhappy again.9

"You wouldn't care at all if I wasn't unhappy," she said, and I looked up. "I mean, you would care, but you wouldn't worry, you wouldn't be interested. I'm nothing without unhappiness, seriously. I'd be dead boring, happy all the time. Doesn't stop me wanting it, though."10

"No," I said, too hit by the accusation to say anything more eloquent. "I want you to be happy, it's all I want."11

"You wouldn't want it if you had it," she said. "Trust me." She ran her hand down a fat plastic tube and crushed her fingers round it, but it didn't buckle. "It's so tough, this place," she said. "I was scared of heights, but I could run along these walkways and not be scared they were going to crash. They'd never." She stopped, then started again. "Or maybe I'm misremembering. Maybe I did think they'd fall. Maybe that was the fun of it."12

I was afraid of the weird fabrics, spider-dusty, creepy on the skin. I was afraid that she would start crying. I was afraid of how much she might guess about me, and about why I was here. I didn't understand anything.13

"There was a drop-slide," she went on. "Scariest thing I've ever seen. You slid off the edge and it went straight down. Obviously, I never went on it."14

She looked round, then grabbed my hand, and dragged me along a green corridor. (And I tried to propel the warmth in my flaring fingers to her cold ones, tried to give her everything in that half minute before she let go again.) "Here," she said, and pointed. 15

There wasn't much of it left. You could see the dropping point, and bits and pieces of the slide. Cracked plastic full of holes.16

"It looks horrible, doesn't it?" she said. "It looks evil. Just because it's broken. Doesn't seem fair, somehow. Like how children are scared of skeletons. And they're right, they are scary, but it really doesn't seem fair. You die, and then people hate you. It isn't your fault that you've aged and rotted and crumbled into dust. But there it is."17

And I didn't understand her at all, but I wanted her to touch my hand again.18

We walked through more corridors and more. One was bendy and twisty and full of plastic mirrors so coated in dust you couldn't see. She scraped some dust off and said, "Yeah, look, see, they're trick mirrors. Make you look obese or mutated or whatever. That was funny, I guess."19

There were places where we had to duck, places too narrow for us to get through. "It really is meant for children, see," she said. "Our parents waited outside in the café with cups of coffee, couldn't get in. That was the best thing of all. Scary but safe, safe from all intruders, just for kids. We waged war against each other and built secret bases and buried each other in the ball pit. Parents said, time to go home, and if you didn't want to go you could stay in and they couldn't get you 'cause it was under 12s only. 'Course, eventually they'd come in anyway; say to the member of staff is it OK, my kid won't come out, I'm just getting her. You couldn't stay forever. But it was fun while it lasted."20

I thought the place was odd. Creepy-odd; funny-peculiar. I hated the way the textures of the surfaces snuck up on you and touched you from behind. You never knew what your hand would find next. She was like that too, in fact, just the same: you touched her and you didn't know if you'd find hard, determined resistance, or terrified taut skin falling away. I couldn't have explained why what I loved in her terrified me in an empty building. Except maybe it was because of the emptiness; maybe that was it; maybe it was because I knew under all that seethe and unpredictability there was stuff there, that she was full to the brim, whereas here I could crawl through all these tunnels and get nowhere at all.21

"Let's go," I said, and we were both astonished, because I'd never asked anything of her before, never made a suggestion, just done what she said. 22

"I took you here to shake you out of it," she said. "I thought if you saw what I was really like..." She stared at me. "I'm sorry," she said, finally. "I was just trying to help. I should have realised...it didn't work, did it? No. I should have realised. I'm sorry. You're right. Let's go."