I believe in Bruce Springshaw. I believe in the Investigative Bureau for the Location of the Soul (IBLS). I can’t lose it. Meant both ways. I believe in Bruce. I’ve been brought here by a new friend. I definitely don’t know him well enough to cry at an art exhibition. The IBLS existed. Bruce existed. Stella existed. I spoke to her. I wasn’t going to leave without first being introduced to her so I chased Conrad Shawcross, a British artist, around the room until he introduced us. If you find it difficult to talk about, please tell me. If this is too personal.... She was remarkably calm and answered my tentative questions with what I would almost call a smile. “No, I don’t mind at all, really, Conrad and I, as you can imagine talk about this all the time.” Shawcross is an archivist. These particular archives have me biting my lip, struggling to maintain my composure.

If I cry now, it’s for other reasons. I want to join Bruce. I search for him in dreams. And I found him once, a few days after the exhibition, in the middle of a deserted road on the Soul Catcher, urging me to design my own “super-structure.” He was sitting on the metal seat on top of this Capri car, his favourite place on this earth.

Please excuse my sense of urgency, but this is a vital campaign. Not just for Bruce but for all the IBLS members, and other people working in the same field. As well as all the snugsters, unicorns, turquoise antelopes, mermaids and mermen who are robbed of a voice. It is imperative that we help Bruce heal the gaping wound that he bore to me in my dream. The pink dragons are restless so I must press on — perhaps it will be easier if I explain their presence.

They were given flight by the Soul Catcher, which they saw at the Slade graduate show in London in a Vauxhall warehouse. Bruce designed the Soul Catcher for the Bureau, revolutionising the agency with his claims that the soul can be found outside our physical bodies, in the clouds even. He set out in 1984 (yes, the date has been noted) on a long, arduous journey across Europe to find the soul. He never returned.

When the Soul Catcher features in exhibitions, it is accompanied by archives, the most poignant component of the story compiled by Shawcross. Included in these cabinets are some of the possessions found with the car when it was discovered, abandoned in Vorkuta, a remote village in Russia. The archives are filled with fascinating, tangible remnants of a life dedicated to the unveiling of the world’s most mysterious mystery: the location and constitution of the soul. Traces of Bruce’s blood are found in the oilcan. His signed copy of Moby Dick was found in a second-hand bookshop in Krakow. Left over custom-made cans of food and a user’s manual for the Capri remind us of the larger framework of the IBLS, whose valuable contributions to the history of soul-searching are now almost forgotten. But it was the letter to Stella that did it.

The woman (yes, that same woman, so ardently loved by Bruce) was in the very room for God’s sake. I had to find her in the crowd. Somehow I had to convey the strength of feeling that their story had evoked in me. So I approached her. If I had known then that her grief was/is a farce, I would instead have conjured up a roar — not just any roar, but the unimaginably threatening roar of a livid lioness whose cubs have just been snatched away. Stella was smiling. Smirking, in fact. The rest of the room followed. Smirk smirk. Soon, the whole of London was smirking. Smurfs. Yes, where are you friendly smurfs when I need you?

I turned to my friend as we walked out of the exhibition and asked him whether he could set up a meeting for me with Shawcross. “You can’t be serious.... No, not about the meeting... about Bruce. Conrad uses him. You can’t be telling me that you believed him. Oh, come on Chiara, give me a break... I think you might need help.” Damn right I need help. Help to unravel the extremely tight knot in my gut. This is all happening so quickly. Where’s Bruce now?

The initial embarrassment subsided, and instead I felt a renewed need to talk to Shawcross. I realised that, though I may be alone in having believed the story, mine was not the only imagination to have been stirred. That car and its story had released the pink dragons from their cage and they wanted to thank the artist personally and explain the significance of their freedom. As they, and I, saw it, Shawcross was managing to blend an amazing curiosity about the world with an outstanding draughtsmanship. He had spent time building and playing, laughing and contemplating. With the invention of Bruce and his car, he was giving us the opportunity to travel mentally.

So I interviewed him. I needed reassurance that the magical car, kite, and neighbouring archives, were all testament to a special world — one full of secrets, fun, giggles, memories, friendships — one that adults are underexposed to and categorically less aware of.

I didn’t find it. Shawcross clipped the wings. The more we spoke, the more disappointed I became. There was a strong possibility that this person is in fact completely blind to the potential for magic in his work. He negated the dragons. I’d go so far as to say that he mocked them. Mocked me for wanting to let them roam. I had had the same reaction from my friends. Well, you’re all gravely mistaken. I resent you. We could be spreading and weaving the golden thread of the imagination through doorways and windows all over London, then to the rest of England, and then out to neighbouring nations, all engaging in a story in which we are all equals. But you’re all cowards. Not just because you’re so adverse to the infinite joy the dragons offer us, but because you confine it, fight it, torment it, distort it, ignore it.

Conrad, you must have understood this once. You recognised Bruce’s valiant, commendable endeavours as worth sharing. But you turned your back. You launched your attack on the dragons that you yourself set free, perhaps without knowing it. That may have been my oversight. I have yet to figure that out. What I can say with certainty, is that I feel cheated of a wonderful story. Wonderful as in full of wonder. Maybe you’re not affected by the wondrous. Hard to imagine, but plausible. In this case, definitely plausible, knowing what you did to Bruce, what you tried to do to my pink dragons.