Janina Matthewson - Of Things Gone Astray

Robert walked back down the street in a daze. He wandered past buildings that had not disappeared, through crowds of people who would manage to arrive at their destinations. He didn’t stop until he reached the river. He sat on a bench and stared in front of him.

Slowly the foot traffic that passed him changed from harried business people into slowly meandering tourists. A young couple approached him and asked for directions.

‘I told you,’ the girl said, elbowing the boy in the ribs. ‘You should always listen to me.’

‘OK, OK,’ the boy said. ‘I mean, I’m sure you’re right about that, maybe, but I’m probably not going to.’

Robert stared after them as they walked away. He got out his phone and stared at it, suddenly frightened. Derek had vanished from it, what if Mara had too? What if he’d go home to find his house had vanished as well, and Mara and Bonny with it? Robert once again scrolled through the contacts list on his phone. Mara. There she was. Mara. His torchbearer.

He called her but it went to voicemail. Of course it did, he thought, he ought to have known better; she hated being interrupted, she would have left her phone upstairs where it wouldn’t distract her.

Robert sat and stared at the Thames. He got up and walked along it and sat on another bench. He crossed over and walked back up the other side. He browsed the gift shops of the theatres and art galleries. He sat at a rickety table outside and drank a burnt coffee. He walked over to the river again and stared down into its muddy dullness. He wandered away.

It wasn’t until a few hours later that he came across a tube station and decided to go home.

THE DOOR OPENING STARTLED HIM. He had no idea how much time had passed.

‘Dad?’

She looked like her mother. Funny how a girl raised by two men can so closely resemble the mother she barely knew. Not that ‘mother’ was really the right word. But then, what was? Nothing. There was no right word.

‘Don’t you have a class?’

‘Jasper’s taking notes for me. I was worried.’

‘I don’t know what to do.’

She blinked at him and walked into the room. She crossed to the piano and opened the cover.

‘Oh my god.’

‘What?’

‘They’re really gone.’

He’d been hoping he was crazy.

‘What did you do with them?’ she asked.

‘Me? I didn’t touch them. Not since yesterday. Not since I was playing yesterday. They were fine.’

‘So, they just vanished?’

‘Yes. I came down this morning, I had my breakfast, I went to play. They were gone.’

She stared. She wrinkled her nose. No, she didn’t look like her mother. She looked like Albert. Thank god.

She hesitantly put out a hand as if to touch the keys that weren’t there, then abruptly shut the lid.

‘Let’s have a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘I went to Fortnum’s and got some new ones for us to try.’

She walked out of the room, giving Albert’s picture a casual pat as she passed it, and led the way into the kitchen.

‘I thought we could all have dinner tonight,’ she said, pulling down a tea pot. ‘I asked Jasper to come over and bring some food from the Iraqi place around the corner. That’s the place that we got the really good fish from that time, isn’t it? And you haven’t really spent any time with Jasper; haven’t you only met him the once? It’s my fault, of course. I should have brought him around here earlier.’

She stopped pottering around and sat at the table across from him.

‘What do I do?’

‘I don’t know, Dad. I suppose I’ll call a piano repair company. Do you think it’d cost a lot to replace them?’

The question unsettled him. It was his piano. He didn’t want someone else’s hands on his piano.

He suddenly didn’t like being still. He took his cup to the sink even though it wasn’t yet even half empty. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to empty it or keep drinking.

‘Dad?’

‘When’s he, when’s he coming? Your boy?’

‘It’s OK. I don’t have to ring someone now. We’ll just take some time. We won’t think about it for a while.’

His arm was itchy. Something had bitten him.

‘Dad?’

He turned back.

‘Right. Yes. Dinner will be lovely. We’ll have dinner.’

DELIA LAY IN BED THAT night, still embarrassed about how wildly she’d got lost. There weren’t all that many things she prided herself on these days, but her unerring sense of direction was one of them, and it was something she needed.

Most of her days were spent in the same way, in the same place. She’d grown to rely on being able to escape, to wander in any direction for as long as she needed to, being fully confident that she’d have no trouble finding her way back when she needed to. Admitting to this tiny failure was somehow more difficult than admitting to all the giant ones.

Although she wasn’t yet aware of it, and would never fully figure it out, a very specific thing was happening to Delia, and had been happening for years. The morning’s unwanted adventure was nothing more than the latest in a slow decline that had been precipitated by a small van full of tea and biscuits running a red light when Delia was 147 words away from finishing her dissertation.

Those 147 words had never been written.

‘YOUR WHAT’S BEEN STOLEN?’ said the brisk voice on the phone. It was several notes higher in tone than it had been thirty seconds previously. The bored indifference was almost entirely gone.

‘My wall,’ replied Mrs Featherby, patiently and efficiently. ‘The front wall of my house.’

‘Bloody hell, how did that happen?’

‘I don’t know how. I’ve reported it to the police. I’m sure they’ll have some kind of answer shortly.’ Mrs Featherby was not at all convinced that the police were going to come up with any kind of solution, but it would not do to express doubt to the insurance agent. Insurance agents pounce on doubt like rabid terriers. They could probably smell it, the way dogs can smell fear.

‘To be honest, Mrs, I’m not sure about this. I’m not sure about it at all.’

‘My home and contents insurance covers me against theft, does it not?’

‘Well, yeah, sure, but that’s theft of, well, the contents. Not theft of the house.’

‘The house has not been stolen. Only part of it has.’

‘Yeah, I know, but—’

‘If an unruly university student uplifted my mail box or my rose bush or my door knocker, which is an antique in the shape of an elephant, would that be covered?’

‘I suppose—’

‘Well, this is precisely the same situation. Someone has stolen from me; they’ve stolen a part of my house, including, I might add, my front door and, by extension, my rather lovely door knocker.’

The insurance agent changed tack: ‘Yeah, well, we can’t even know for sure that it’s theft, can we? Your wall disappearing. Can’t be that common, wall thieves. And you’re not covered for acts of God, so—’

‘Acts of God?’ said Mrs Featherby, audibly raising her eyebrow. ‘Are you actually suggesting that our Lord and Saviour, in His infinite wisdom, has used His omnipotent power to cause my front wall to dissolve away? Balaam had his donkey, Joan had her magic voices and I have a disappearing house? Is that, in your mind, the most logical explanation?’

‘Look, there’s no need—’

‘Perhaps you would be so good as to allow me to put in a claim, and if in the processing of that claim it is decided that the theft of my wall was, in fact, not theft but the divine intervention of the Almighty, you can take the moral high ground.’