UNBELONGING

In a scrubby extension of a park in Sunderland, there is a small set of allotments, dotted with ramshackle wooden sheds with peeling green paint, lopsided greenhouses that look as if they’d fall down in a strong wind, and others which just have tarpaulin for a roof. Some of the people who you will see there, raking soil or leaning on a spade, or just sitting on a rickety plastic chair, smoking a cigarette, are not really people.
Many years ago, when they were just a baby, the Folk crept into a few bedrooms in bungalows and modest terraced houses and took the babies that slept and gurgled there, and replaced them with their own.
The changelings do not know who or what they are, but they feel drawn to one another, and these allotments are where they have ended up, leaning on spades, smoking cigarettes, knowing that there is a bond between them, but not knowing quite what. And yearning, all the time yearning for something that feels a half-remembered dream just out of reach, like trying to catch fog in your hands.