“What if…what if heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you’re dying of thirst, or when someone’s nice to you for no reason, or […] S’pose heaven’s not like a painting that’s just hanging there forever, but more like…like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you’re alive, from passing cars, or…upstairs windows when you’re lost.”

Holly speculates that heaven is ephemeral, rather than the permanent afterlife that religions conventionally propose. Her perspective aligns with the larger concerns of the novel, which considers the impermanence and frailty of humankind in the grand scope of the secret war between the Atemporals.

“I tapped on the glass and said, ‘Hi, Jacko, I’m your big sister,’ and his fingers waggled, just a tiny, tiny bit, like he was waving. The God’s honest truth, that; nobody else saw but I felt a tickle in my heart and I felt willing and able to kill to protect him, if I had to. I still feel it, when some twat talks ’bout the ‘weirdo’ or the ‘freak’ or the ‘premature one.’ People can be so crap. Why’s it okay to draw spaceships if you’re seven, but not okay to draw diabolical mazes? Who decides that spending money on Space Invaders is fine, but if you buy a calculator with loads of symbols you’re asking to be picked on? Why’s it okay to listen to the Top 40 on Radio 1 but not okay to listen to stations in other languages? Mam and Dad sometimes decide Jacko needs to read less and play footy more, and for a bit he’ll act more like a normal seven-year-old kid, but it’s only acting, and we all know it. Just now and then who he really is smiles out at me through the blacks of Jacko’s eyes, like someone watching you from a train zipping past. At those times, I almost want to wave, even though he’s just across the table, or we’re passing on the stairs.”

Holly expresses her love for Jacko as an acceptance of his personality, including the qualities that many, including his parents, consider quirky. When it is later revealed that Jacko was actually the host for the Atemporal known as Xi Lo, Holly accepts that Xi Lo and her brother were always one and the same. This passage foreshadows Holly’s allegiance to Xi Lo in the Atemporal war.

“‘An invisible war’s going on,’ says Heidi, which confuses me till I realize she doesn’t mean the slow traffic, ‘all through history—the class war. Owners versus slaves, nobles versus serfs, the bloated bosses versus workers, the haves versus the have-nots. The working classes are kept in a state of repression by a mixture of force and lies.’”

Heidi, who is a Socialist, makes this statement about the class war between the masses and those in power. However, this statement also resonates with the conflict between the Atemporals and its effect on mortals. Mitchell thus establishes the overarching tensions of the novel as an allegory for sociopolitical conflicts and their impact on the lives of ordinary citizens.