‘What an imagination’! Maria exasperates, shaking head to confirm this is not a good thing. ‘She lives in cloud cuckoo land’ Further emphasising the negative. ‘She will no doubt end up as some hippy or deluded volunteer. That’s your doing. It must have been from when you were smoking all that dope in College’. Suzy doesn’t hear one word of her mother’s broadside at her dad. She is preparing for the invasion. It’s coming and it will be her who stops the war. She needs to figure out a language that will allow her to speak to the aliens. To reason with them, put forward the case for humanities continued existence. It’s 10 years away so she has time, but they could be early, maybe they have a far more efficient public transport than ours. Suzy hated public transport. It always put her parents in a bad mood, exposing all the cracks in their tumultuous relationship. But living in London they relied on the underground it as sitting in the car was much worse, a slight gap in the traffic led to mum aggressively reflecting on how they could be on their way and dad arguing that he valued there life over punctuality. Suzy ran up to her bedroom trying to make the whole journey with her eyes tightly closed, she reached halfway up the stairs before giving into her fear of falling. Once in her room she dived into her den, just as she heard her father shouting about her mum not breast feeding as she didn’t want saggy breasts. Followed by her mum’s retort of her ruining the rest of her body to give them a child. Suzy landed softly in the cardboard den which was full of pillows on the floor and alien drawings on all the other surfaces. She had put it together herself. It was her HQ to speak to the aliens, and she spend a lot of time here where it was quiet. It was the largest box she could find in the garage. She seized the opportunity, after her dad had unpacked the newly bought giant gas BBQ. Summer brought out the best in her parents and lazy summer evenings full of meat and woozy with wine was then their candle was relit. Suzy wouldn’t think about Aliens on those days.