Matt Haig - The Humans

You see, before coming to Earth I had never wanted or needed to be cared for, but I hungered now to have that feeling of being looked after, of belonging, of being loved.

Maybe I was expecting too much. Maybe it was more than I deserved to be allowed to stay in the same house, even if I had to sleep on that hideous purple sofa.

The only reason this was granted, I imagined, was Gulliver. Gulliver wanted me to stay. I had saved his life. I had helped him stand up to bullies. But his forgiveness still came as a surprise.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t Cinema Paradiso , but he seemed to accept me as an extraterrestrial life form far more easily than he had accepted me as a father.

‘Where are you from?’ he asked me, one Saturday morning, at five minutes to seven, before his mother was awake.

‘Far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far away.’

‘How far is far?’

‘It’s very hard to explain,’ I said. ‘I mean, you think France is far away.’

‘Just try,’ he said.

I noticed the fruit bowl. Only the day before, I had been to the supermarket buying healthy food the doctor had recommended for Isobel. Bananas, oranges, grapes, a grapefruit.

‘Okay,’ I said, grabbing the large grapefruit. ‘ This is the sun.’

I placed the grapefruit on the coffee table. I then looked for the smallest grape I could find. I placed it at the other end of the table.

‘ That is Earth, so small you can hardly see it.’

Newton stepped closer to the table, clearly attempting to annihilate Earth in his jaws. ‘No, Newton,’ I said. ‘Let me finish.’

Newton retreated, tail between his legs.

Gulliver was frowning as he studied the grapefruit and the fragile little grape. He looked around. ‘So where is your planet?’

I think he honestly expected me to place the orange I was holding somewhere else in the room. By the television or on one of the bookshelves. Or maybe, at a pinch, upstairs.

‘To be accurate, this orange should be placed on a coffee table in New Zealand.’

He was silent for a moment, trying to understand the level of far-ness I was talking about. Still in a trance he asked, ‘Can I go there?’

‘No. It’s impossible.’

‘Why? There must have been a spaceship.’

I shook my head. ‘No. I didn’t travel. I may have arrived, but I didn’t travel .’

He was confused, so I explained, but then he was even more confused.

‘Anyway, the point is, there is no more chance of me crossing the universe now than any other human. This is who I am now, and this is where I have to stay.’

‘You gave up the universe for a life on the sofa?’

‘I didn’t realise that at the time.’

Isobel came downstairs. She was wearing her white dressing gown and her pyjamas. She was pale, but she was always pale in the morning. She looked at me and Gulliver talking, and for a moment, she seemed to greet the scene with a rarely seen fondness. But the expression faded as she remembered everything.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Gulliver.

‘What is the fruit doing?’ she asked, traces of sleep still evident in her quiet voice.

‘I was explaining to Gulliver where I came from. How far away.’

‘You came from a grapefruit?’

‘No. The grapefruit is the sun. Your sun. Our sun. I lived on the orange. Which should be in New Zealand. Earth is now in Newton’s stomach.’

I smiled at her. I thought she might find this funny, but she just stared at me the way she had been staring at me for weeks. As if I were light years away from her.

She left the room.

‘Gulliver,’ I said, ‘I think it would be best if I left. I shouldn’t have stayed, really. You see, this isn’t just about all this stuff. You know that argument me and your mother had? The one you never found out about?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, I was unfaithful. I had sex with a woman called Maggie. One of my – your father’s – students. I didn’t enjoy it, but that was beside the point. I didn’t realise it would hurt your mother, but it did. I didn’t know the exact rules of fidelity but that isn’t really an excuse, or not one I can use, when I was deliberately lying about so many other things. When I was endangering her life, and yours.’ I sighed. ‘I think, I think I’m going to leave.’

‘Why?’

That question tugged at me. It reached into my stomach, and pulled.

‘I just think it will be for the best, right now.’

‘Where are you going to go?’

‘I don’t know. Not yet. But don’t worry, I’ll tell you when I get there.’

His mother was back in the doorway.

‘I’m going to leave,’ I told her.

She closed her eyes. She inhaled. ‘Yes,’ she said, with the mouth I had once kissed. ‘Yes. Maybe it is for the best.’ Her whole face crumpled, as if her skin were the emotion she wanted to screw up and throw away.

My eyes felt a warm, gentle strain. My vision blurred. Then something ran down my cheek, all the way to my lips. A liquid. Like rain, but warmer. Saline.

I had shed a tear.

Before I left I went upstairs to the attic. It was dark in there, except for the glow of the computer. Gulliver was lying on his bed, staring out of the window.

‘I’m not your dad, Gulliver. I don’t have a right to be here.’

‘No. I know.’ Gulliver chewed on his wristband. Hostility glistened in his eyes like broken glass.

‘You’re not my dad. But you’re just like him. You don’t give a shit. And you shagged someone behind Mum’s back. He did that too, you know.’

‘Listen, Gulliver, I’m not trying to leave you, I’m trying to bring back your mother, okay? She’s a bit lost right now and my presence here isn’t helping.’

‘It’s just so fucked up. I feel totally alone.’

Sun suddenly shone through the window, oblivious to our mood.

‘Loneliness, Gulliver, is a fact as universal as hydrogen.’

He sighed a sigh that should really have belonged to an older human. ‘I just don’t feel cut out sometimes. You know, cut out for life. I mean, people at school, loads of their parents are divorced but they seem to have an okay relationship with their dads. And everyone’s always thought, with me, what excuse did I have to go off the rails? What was wrong with my life? Living in a nice house with rich non-divorced parents. What the fuck could possibly be wrong there?

‘But it was all bullshit. Mum and Dad never loved each other, not since I can remember anyway. Mum seemed to change after he had his breakdown – I mean, after you came – but that was just her delusion. I mean, you weren’t even who she thought you were. It’s come to something when you relate to ET more than your own dad. He was crap. Seriously, I can’t think of one piece of advice he gave me. Except I shouldn’t become an architect because architecture takes a hundred years to be appreciated.’

‘Listen, you don’t need guidance, Gulliver. Everything you need is inside your own head. You have more knowledge about the universe than anyone on your own planet.’ I pointed at the window. ‘You’ve seen what’s out there. And also, I should say, you’ve shown yourself to be really strong.’

He stared out of the window again. ‘What’s it like up there?’

‘Very different. Everything is different.’

‘But how?’

‘Well, just existing is different. No one dies. There’s no pain. Everything is beautiful. The only religion is mathematics. There are no families. There are the hosts – they give instructions – and there is everyone else. The advancement of mathematics and the security of the universe are the two concerns. There is no hatred. There are no fathers and sons. There is no clear line between biology and technology. And everything is violet.’