Nicola Barker - Love Your Enemies

She dragged her eyes from the couple sitting by the door and focused them dreamily on Sean’s face. ‘Does it?’

She paused and then before he could answer said, ‘Yes, I think it does. It’s still too curly. Bobs should be very straight ideally.’

He nodded in silence, pretending that he understood or cared. She reached out one of her hands and caught a droplet of wax that was dripping down the small white candle in the centre of the table on the side of her middle finger. It felt hot on her hand for a second and then solidified. She began to draw her hand back again but before she could properly do so Sean put out his hand and took hold of hers. Their arms were suspended uncomfortably in mid-air. She squeezed his hand fondly and then drew hers away.

The waiter brought the main course. As he dished up his portions Sean said, ‘What’s going to happen now, between us?’

In his car on his way around to her flat he had imagined this situation but the roles had been reversed. He had visualized Shelly, all tearful and cloying, biting her lip, begging him to come back to her. She’d change, she’d be less possessive, anything.

Shelly didn’t answer his question immediately. He repeated himself: ‘What’s going to happen now, Shelly?’

She frowned and eventually said, ‘I don’t know.’

She started eating. She had chicken chow mein with mixed vegetables in soy sauce. It tasted heavenly. Sean couldn’t eat. Everything seemed to be going wrong. He knew that Shelly needed him, needed someone. He put down his knife and fork and said, ‘Shelly, please tell me if there’s someone else.’

She didn’t reply. He began to feel jealous and angry, bitter. After a few minutes watching her eat he said, ‘I bet you’ll regret this meal tomorrow. It’ll take its toll on your figure.’

Shelly stopped chewing and looked into his eyes. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

He frowned. ‘How come?’

She finished her mouthful and curled some more chow mein on to her fork, ‘I don’t gain weight any more. It’s connected to something called symbiosis.’

He grimaced. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means that I don’t gain weight any more but I can eat what I like.’

The flame on the candle flickered for a moment as the door of the restaurant opened. His eyes focused on the flame for a second, then returned to her face. ‘How is that possible?’

She sighed and put down her knife and fork and then leaned forward on her elbows and whispered, ‘I’ve got a tapeworm.’

He wasn’t sure that he’d heard her correctly. ‘What?’

She smiled as though what she was telling him caused her infinite joy. ‘I’ve got a tapeworm, Sean, it’s symbiosis. We both depend on each other to carry on.’

Sean shook his head in disbelief. ‘What do you mean, Shelly? Is this a joke or something?’

Worms disgusted him. He had seen part of a nature programme on television a few weeks before which had featured something about worms that had made him almost physically sick. He had turned it over straight away.

Shelly returned to her meal, unperturbed. After a mouthful she said, ‘I got him by eating raw mincemeat. It took a while and obviously I had to specify certain parts of the animal, you know, stomach, offal. I actually told the butcher that I wanted meat minced for my dog. As I said though, it took several attempts.’

Sean’s lip curled in disgust. ‘You ate raw dog meat?’

She shook her head. ‘No, low quality meat, not from a can. Lots of animals get tapeworms. Obviously though there are many different varieties. It’s very complicated because I think they reproduce in lots of different ways. I went to great lengths to get mine.’

Sean still couldn’t be sure that Shelly wasn’t joking. He said, ‘What do you call it? Trevor?’

She laughed. It was the first time that she had laughed properly all evening. ‘I don’t have a formal name for him — I think he’s asexual. I haven’t read all that much about them.’

The waiter returned to the table to make sure that their meal was all right. Shelly answered, smiling, ‘It’s absolutely delicious, thank you.’ Sean just continued to stare at her face. Once the waiter had moved away he picked up his fork and tried to eat one of the lightly battered prawn balls on his plate. As he chewed Shelly said, ‘You see, the tapeworm consumes my undigested food so that it doesn’t have the chance to turn into fat. That’s my theory anyway. He then uses the food to grow and reproduce himself. He sort of develops another segment which divides away from his body after a certain period. This segment, I’m slightly confused on this point though, this segment then either stays in the stomach, hooking on to a prime place, or it’s flushed out with your body fluids.’

Sean said nothing. He was pushing prawn and batter around his mouth but he couldn’t swallow. Shelly took this silence as an indication of interest so she added, ‘I’m glad you’re not a biologist, Sean, because I’m explaining this very badly.’

Sean carried on chewing. On his forehead were slight beads of perspiration. He picked up his napkin and blotted them. Shelly took a sip of wine and said, ‘I have to be careful about alcohol. I sometimes think that it must be bad for him so I don’t drink very much any more. That’s something else good that he’s brought to my life.’

Sean pushed his mouthful of well-chewed food into his cheek and said, ‘What happens when it grows, Shelly?’

She shrugged and picked up her knife and fork again, ‘I’m not absolutely sure. In general I think they just get bigger and bigger until they fill up all your tubes. I think they can grow to an enormous size. They just grow bigger and bigger and reproduce.’

Sean shuddered. ‘And what happens then? I’m sure they’re harmful.’

Suddenly an image flashed into his mind, an image that he had seen accompanied by the voice of David Attenborough. There had been a snail on a leaf. As it ate the leaf it had consumed some sort of worm the size of a pin head. The worm lived and grew inside the snail, created a home for itself in this new snail-stomach world. After several weeks the maggot had grown rather large. It became visible inside one of the snail’s two feelers. It grew and grew until eventually it filled the feeler entirely. After a while it looked as though, instead of a feeler sticking out of the snail’s head, it had a large, independent, squirming maggot whose movements were curtailed only by a thin layer of the snail’s translucent skin. The maggot moved, squelched, writhed under the snail’s skin, eating, growing.

Several days later the snail’s other feeler began to fatten up, to grow pale, to move against its own will as another maggot appeared in this feeler. Sean hadn’t been able to tell whether this was the same maggot or a different one. They certainly looked like two fully formed and independent creatures. Eventually the snail had no feelers left, just two white maggots sticking out of the top of its head, living on its juices, eating it while it carried on moving and living and breathing. The maggots shuddered and vibrated inside the snail’s feelers, its eyes, prisoners in its skin, eating him.

Sean had yelped his horror and had snatched for the remote control to switch it off. He couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards though. He was sure that the snail must’ve died, but after how long? He felt like gagging.

Shelly had almost completed her meal. She was saying, ‘Sean, eat something. It’s such a waste.’

He spat out his masticated mouthful into a napkin. She said, ‘I haven’t been so happy in a long time, Sean. The only tiny way that I notice the worm is when I go to the toilet. Often when I go now a segment of the worm comes out in my urine.’