Sipsworth

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness and death.

Part 1 describes Helen Cartwright’s life since she moved back to her girlhood home, a small town in England, after 60 years in Australia. Her beloved husband and son, who are dead, haunt her memories, and she has turned away from the people around her for three years. Then, early one morning, “something happens.”

Very early on a Friday morning, Helen watches a neighbor take out his trash, including a large box. Curious, she slips outside and sees that the box is actually a fish tank filled with dirty boxes. On top is a child’s plastic figure of a deep-sea diver. Helen recalls buying the same figure as part of a fish tank set for her son’s 13th birthday gift. Wondering if she will find the rest of the set in the boxes, she brings the tank into her house. As she takes a bath, she thinks about how the toy is dragging her back into her past life. She even burned her photo books before moving back to England so she wouldn’t be haunted by memories of her son, David.

Helen thinks of how the town she lives in has changed since she was a girl; she muses that everything is “going on without her as if she’d never existed” (16).