Belinda Bauer - Rubbernecker

Tracy felt a giddy rush. Suddenly she couldn’t have stopped smiling if she’d tried.

They went to his bed after Newsnight and she did things to him she’d never done before. Not only because she thought she should, but because she wanted to.

Later – back at the house she still shared with less fortunate girls, she lay awake half the night with excitement. And when she went to work the next day, she was astonished to find that it did not seem quite so repulsive to wipe old Mr Cutler’s pooey bottom, or so arduous to tip cold soup between Mrs Aldridge’s drawstring lips.

Of course, she couldn’t wait to give it all up and never work another day in her life, but in the meantime, it felt almost rewarding .

When a buzzer sounded just as a few of them had sat down with a cup of tea, Tracy surprised herself by bouncing up and saying, ‘I’ll get it.’

Sally, who was the voice of the ward, said, ‘What’s with you today? You in love or something?’

Yes , thought Tracy with a thrill at the realization. Somehow, somewhere, she had fallen in love with Mr Deal, and in the blink of an eye, everything had changed.

She had changed – and it felt wonderful.

IT HAD TAKEN Sarah an hour to find the matches. She didn’t smoke and she didn’t have a gas cooker and she didn’t even know why she had matches, but she knew they were here somewhere , and got through most of the second bottle of Vladivar looking for them.

Now here she was, under the gibbous moon as frost formed on the roof of the Fiesta, trying to burn down the shed.

It was a lot harder than she’d expected it to be.

When she’d stumbled out into the frigid night air, she’d thought that a single match held close to the rotting timber would be enough to see the whole thing burst into flames.

Not so.

She’d gone through half the box, squatting beside the corner of the shed in her nightdress and wellingtons, turning slivers of pale wood into scorched twiglets. Once she’d dozed off, mid-arson, and burned her fingers.

She wove back to the house and got the letter, then came out and tried again, but striking the matches and holding the letter was close to impossible. Three things and only two hands. She swayed and cursed softly and dropped the box, then the letter, then the box again – before finally finding herself with the letter in one hand and a lighted match in the other, and bringing the two together.

The corner of the paper caught and for a moment Sarah could re-read it by an orange glow.

Dear Mrs Fort, I very much regret to inform you that I have had to ask Patrick to leave the School of Biosciences…

She squatted again and fed the paper under a splintered edge. The flame curled languidly around the wood, warming it slowly, as Professor Madoc’s words turned into black flakes that floated upwards as if by magic.

‘Come on. Come on ,’ she muttered and rested the side of her face against the rough planking. ‘Come on, shed, you can do it.’ She giggled and opened her eyes. ‘ Yes! ’

The orange tendrils were feeling their tentative way up first one panel, then the next.

She stood up and backed away. She shivered. She wasn’t even wearing a coat. Or socks. Inside the rubber boots, her feet were numb.

The fire had a grip now. It found the vulnerable corner and clawed its way upwards.

Sarah released a long, emptying sigh. Why hadn’t she done this years ago? All she’d needed was Dutch courage and half a box of matches.

The corner of the shed was properly alight. Crackling. It would not go out now. It started to throw out heat, and she enjoyed that until sparks spat at her and she took a wavering step backwards.

I very much regret…

Patrick would be coming home soon and they would have to start again. Almost from the beginning. All the progress halted. Maybe reversed. She was exhausted by it. Exhausted by him . She didn’t want it. She wasn’t sure what she did want, but she knew that forwards was better than backwards, even if the destination was unknown.

‘Out of the way!’

Something pushed her aside and she stumbled to one knee, her palms in the gravel; the gravel in her palms.

An animal hiss made her look up to see that the dancing flames had been transformed into ugly grey smoke and cinders, which billowed across the gravel and made her cough.

Weird Nick turned towards her, water still spurting from the garden hose in his hand. ‘I got here just in time,’ he said, and stood, flushed and panting, waiting for his plaudits.

‘Yes,’ she said dully, and wobbled to her feet.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh,’ he said.

He was Patrick’s age but looked older, slightly chubby, and wearing the kind of tinted spectacles she always imagined perverts did.

Sarah brushed the grit from her hands and was suddenly very cold. She noticed his gaze drop briefly to her breasts and folded her arms across them.

‘Well then,’ said Weird Nick, gesturing with the hose so that it made an arc of broken silver droplets in the air. ‘I’d better go and turn this off. We’re on a meter.’

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Any time.’

Any time my shed burns down . She only had two neighbours – Weird Nick and his mother; why did both of them have to be so bloody helpful?

‘Night, Mrs Fort.’

She waved a vague hand and watched him follow the hose back towards his mother’s house like a slim green umbilical cord.

She thought she might be sick. The smoke and the vodka and the disappointment.

Ollie was on the back step, barring her way so she couldn’t fail to pet him. She stepped over him into the kitchen, and retched over the sink. Nothing came up. She laid her forehead on the cold steel of the draining board and cried a little, then went to bed.

When she got up the next morning, she left behind a ghost of grey ashes on the sheets.

FROM THE CORNER of her eye, Meg watched Mrs Deal’s finger drub mechanically on the bedspread.

‘Can you stop that!’ Meg said sharply, then added, ‘ Please . It’s driving me mad.’

Immediately she felt a rush of guilt. Mrs Deal’s lashes did not flicker over her white crescent eyes. There was no forgiveness and no reproach. The finger paused – and then started again. Tap and stop, tap and stop.

Shit .

Meg closed the book.

‘We’ll go on next time, Mrs Deal. We’re almost at the end. After that my friend Patrick’s going to come and read a new book to you. I bet it will be nice for you to hear another voice. I don’t know what he’ll be reading, but I’ve told him no war and no sci-fi.’

She stood up and wound her scarf around her neck.

‘Anyway, I’ll bring him in and introduce you. And check on the book he’s chosen in case it’s crap. You know what men are like.’

She put the book back on the table and looked down at the thing that used to be Mrs Deal. She was only marginally better than dead. It was easy to imagine her as a cadaver in the dissection room. She would be more swollen, more orange, but essentially the same.

Apart from that finger.

Angie came in and smiled at Meg, then checked the drip on the young man in the next bed. His name was Robert and he was only twenty-five, but his hands were becoming claws, the wrists turning at weird angles and his short brown fingers pulling inwards, despite the efforts of the physiotherapist Meg had seen working on him. She never saw anyone else at his bedside, although there was a huge dusty leopard lying under it, so someone must have cared once.