Nicola Barker - The Yips

As she passes the electricity meter her eyes flick, distractedly, towards it. She walks on, then pauses, then walks back again, nudging the tip of her nose with the back of her free hand before pulling the door open and peering inside. She squints up at the dial, then scowls and withdraws, noticing, as she does so, a fleck of the avocado face-mask smudged on to her hand. She licks it off and heads upstairs.

Two minutes later and she is back again, sans milk, but with her tiny, green torch clutched expertly between her fingers. She peers into the little cupboard, stands on her tippy-toes and directs the light from the torch towards the dial. On it she sees a clean and unapologetically homogenous line of zeros.

She blinks and looks again. Still the zeros. She frowns. She gently pats the meter with her spare hand (in much the same way a hard-pressed Victorian husband might gently pat the cheek of a swooning wife following a monumental loss at the racetrack).

The zeros doggedly persist, but the meter itself shifts under her touch. Valentine takes a quick step back as a small quantity of red brick dust cascades down on to her bare toes. She scratches her head, confused, then shakes the dust from her feet, leans down and peers underneath the body of the meter, shining her torch up into what appears to be a small crevice below it.

‘ Valentine! ’

A call from upstairs.

Valentine jumps, startled, then quickly composes herself. ‘Just a minute, Mum …’

She continues her inspection, eventually spotting a folded-up piece of paper which she carefully removes and then drops (without much thought), on to the tiles below. Next she kneels down and shines her torch into the small gap between the meter and the wall. After a brief, speculative hiatus she shoves in a couple of exploratory fingers.

‘ Valentine! ’

This time Valentine ignores her mother’s call.

Beyond the gap she feels a deep crevice of approximately seven or so inches wide by (at the very least) three or more inches deep, which has — to all intents and purposes — been gouged out, by hand.

Valentine’s confidence — and sense of intrigue — grows, exponentially. She gently starts to lift up the body of the meter and is easily able (with the billowing extrusion of a little extra dust) to lift the bottom section of it several inches clear of the wall, revealing, hidden behind it, a neatly made storage space, a secret shelf; a small safe, of sorts.

Neatly piled inside this compact area are approximately twenty small boxes of varying dimensions — the kind you might store rare coins in — some are plastic, some are wooden, some are tin, some are sheathed in worn, plush velvet. Each is wrapped in clear polythene with a white, sticky label attached to the top.

In one corner of the shelf is a small file for storing papers. Just above it is something (approximately the size of a sandwich) wrapped up in tissue. To the side of it, another object, also wrapped in tissue, the size of a large wand.

Valentine quietly inspects the contents of the shelf, initially with a look of complete bewilderment, then, with an overwhelming sense of dismay. Her mind turns to Gene and his earlier meter reading.

‘VALENTINE!’

She drops the meter (like she’s been delivered a sharp shock) and it clanks back — somewhat wonkily — into its original position. She rubs her eye with her free hand, appalled, then withdraws the hand, with a gasp, revolted by the slimy layer of goo on her cheek.

The stupid face-mask …

‘VALENTINE! VALENTINE! MERDE! ’

‘IN A MINUTE, MUM!’ she yells, frustrated, bending down to retrieve the dropped wad of paper and starting to unfold it (perhaps half-intending to wipe her avocado-besmirched fingers on it).

‘ VALENTIIIIINE!!!! ’

She curses under her breath, quickly re-folds the thing and shoves it back under the meter, grimacing.

‘Damn you, Noel,’ she hisses, clenching her fists, incensed. ‘Damn you, damn you, damn you!’

Then she slams the door shut, her eyes prickling with angry tears, her expression defiant, her fingers leaving an incriminating, greasy, brown-green slick on the paintwork.

‘I’d be very happy to pay you,’ Toby Whittaker insists, ‘I mean whatever rate you normally charge. We could book an appointment …’

‘I don’t think you quite understand,’ Gene repeats, exasperated, feeling in his pocket for his car keys. ‘I’ve not read palms professionally since I was a kid. It just isn’t something I feel comfortable with …’

They are standing together in the car park. It’s almost dark.

‘I thought you drove a Hummer,’ Toby murmurs, inspecting Sheila’s beat-up old Renault Megane with an air of vague disappointment.

‘I do drive a Hummer,’ Gene maintains, squinting down at his watch. ‘I mean I own a Hummer, but filling the tank these days costs something like the annual average income of a third world state …’

‘Is there a special line for the career?’ Toby persists, holding out his hand. ‘It’s all very hush-hush’ — he lowers his voice, conspiratorially — ‘but I’ve recently been made an offer by this crazy, Chilean entrepreneur.’

‘Uh … there’s a Line of Head and a Line of Life.’ Gene takes the proffered hand and gives the palm a cursory inspection. ‘I suppose both could be interpreted as having some basic relevance in career matters.’

He peers down at Toby’s palm in the semi-darkness. It’s virtually impossible for him to delineate one line from another in such poor light.

‘Although the plain truth is’ — he drops the hand — ‘some idiot reading your palm isn’t going to have the slightest impact on how your career pans out. To succeed at work — or in any field of endeavour: your health, your relationships — all that’s really required is plenty of stamina, a level head, a thick skin, the occasional burst of inspiration and, if all else fails, a ridiculously — even stupidly — positive outlook.’

‘You think it’s all just mumbo-jumbo, then?’ Toby grimaces, gazing down at his own palm, deflated.

‘I think people are the masters of their own destiny,’ Gene responds, then falters, loathing how trite this sounds. ‘I mean we’re all constrained by the hands we’re dealt,’ he continues, ‘by the straitjackets of biology and gender and geography — but above and beyond that …’

He shrugs.

‘You beat the cancer, though,’ Toby interjects, hopefully. ‘No lifeline, the cards completely stacked against you, but you beat the bloody cancer.’

‘I’m not …’ Gene scowls, confused, his train of thought momentarily disrupted by the sudden appearance of a heavily pregnant West Indian woman, wearing only a shower cap and a bathrobe. She’s kicking up the gravel as she strides towards them in a pair of oversized moccasins.

‘I simply made the best of it.’ He focuses in on Toby again (almost rueful at what he perceives as his own signal lack of insight). ‘That’s pretty much the most any of us can do, surely? Just go to bed at night thinking, I screwed stuff up, but I tried. Things may’ve gone haywire, but I did the best I possibly could.’

He locates the car key on his ring and pushes it, clumsily, into the lock. The bathrobed woman is now shouting distance away from them.

‘Me want sleep, but some pesky badger diggin’ around in an overturn bin out back!’ she yells over. ‘Had a word with Security and the man jus’ shrug at me: “Screw you!” basically. So I say, “Ain’t them thing full of TB?” He just shrug another time. So I go, “You speak English? Eng-lish? ” An’ he say, “Sure, I speak English.” The man a Pole — some big, ugly, flat-face Pole. Head like a damn steam-iron! I say, “You even know what a badger is?” “Sure I do,” he say. Nasty look in his eye! “Well tell me then,” I say. An’ he jus’ shrug again, like I some nasty smell under his nose. Make as if to turn away. Me go, “They got no badger in Poland or something?” He just flap his hand and start to walk. I swear I hear him say: “I know what we don’t got in Poland …’