Zoe Cummins

You head for the kids and I'll follow in a couple of days after more recordings.

We hug goodbye and you get on the bus.

I lie alone in the B&B the first morning.

I make myself work and record my next phone interview with a scientist from Oxford who debunks the probability of recovering voices as Marconi imagined.

He talks to me of sounds from space, sound and decay, sound in the body, sound in the mind, sound and communication, sound conspiracies, sound as a cure.

We drift back into less scientific territory.

What about the electrical conductivity of the human body acting as an antenna?

I wonder what my sister would think of this.

The body as a pathway for energy.

Electricity or sounds just passing through.

My mother's bridge work never played Piaf songs or she may be alive today.

My sister loves her music.

I've read that in tests of those who hear imaginary voices, the same part of the brain lights up as when people actually hear real voices.

Even those produced long ago?

Bouncing off the halo?

Being recovered later through a worried mouth full of teeth gaping like piano keys?

The scientist finishes our call with an anecdote about the end of Morse code for use in distress signals at sea in 1997 with the last tapped-out message.

Old signals fade and disperse.

Beyond the reach of dials, static moments left.

Headaches scowl and pinch, the crackle of blistered tablet packets.