Nicola Barker - The Yips

‘Where are you?’ she asks, also at a whisper.

‘In your house,’ he says. ‘The sitting room. I’m with your mother. She’s dancing.’

‘ Shit …’

He hears the gentle creak of bed springs. ‘You got here sooner than I thought. I’m upstairs with Nessa. She had a stomach-ache. She couldn’t sleep. Just hold on a second …’

She hangs up.

Valentine’s mother stops dancing, slightly out of breath, then squats down on the carpet and prepares to urinate.

‘Your mother’s urinating on the rugs,’ Gene mutters (still into his phone — although he knows she won’t hear him). ‘What should I do?’

As he speaks he hears the sound of footsteps clattering down the stairs. He stands up (wincing, half-indicating, almost apologetic) as Valentine staggers into the room, yanking on a pair of red, tracksuit bottoms. She grinds to a sudden halt on apprehending her crouching parent, then draws a deep breath, pushes back her shoulders and sets her expression.

‘Gene!’ she announces, breezily, walking towards him, smiling, holding out her hand. ‘How good of you to come!’

Gene takes her hand — her small, soft hand with its inexplicably bruised finger pads — and politely shakes it. He immediately notices that her face is clean of make-up. It’s plain and flushed. There are freckles on her nose. Her brows are thin and pale red in colour. Her eyes are pink-rimmed. She looks beautiful — natural as a rabbit — but entirely different.

‘Your mother was good enough to let me in,’ he murmurs, doing his best to play along. She doesn’t automatically release his hand. He feels a tickling sensation in his chest, like his lungs are a fledgling sparrow which she’s gently compressing in her grip.

‘I’ve been working on the design for your tattoo,’ she continues, brightly, as though reading from a bad script. ‘I do hope you’ll be pleased with the work I’ve done.’

‘Great!’

Gene nods, bemused. ‘Fantastic!’

‘So if you’ll just head through to the studio for me …’

Valentine indicates the way and finally releases him.

‘Absolutely …’

He totters towards the door, strangely light-headed (when did he last eat?), anxious — in this sudden explosion of liberty — that he might lose his bearings completely and fly into a window pane.

Valentine turns to her mother, now.

‘Time for bed, I think,’ she murmurs, bending down to retrieve the abandoned nappy.

Her mother stands up.

‘I couldn’t go,’ she mutters, piqued. ‘I pushed and pushed, but nothing! Pas une goutte d’urine! ’

‘You already went, remember? Ten minutes ago? Upstairs. In the bathroom.’

Gene hears their conversation as he walks down the corridor. He reaches the door of the studio and tries the handle. It doesn’t give. The door is locked. He tries it again. It remains locked.

‘I was dancing!’

Valentine’s mother performs a small pirouette.

‘That’s lovely.’ Valentine nods. ‘I see you’ve got your dressing gown on back to front …’

‘Have I?’

Her mother peers down at herself.

‘Yes. Shall we take it off and then head up to bed?’

Her mother neglects to answer. She’s just caught her own, distorted reflection in one of the room’s several, antique, fish-eye-lens mirrors.

‘Your father collected those.’ She points, grimacing. ‘ Si vilains! I always hated the damn things. So unflattering!’

Valentine’s tired, bare face breaks into an unexpected smile.

‘The mirrors!’ she coos. ‘Well done! We should write that down in your book …’ She grabs her mother’s arm and pats it, delighted. ‘First thing in the morning, just as soon as you wake up, we’ll write it down together.’

‘What?’

Her mother frowns, snatching her arm away, confused.

‘Dad’s mirrors,’ Valentine persists. ‘He collected round mirrors. You never liked them — you thought they were unflattering. We should write it down in your Memory book.’

Her mother says nothing for a few seconds, just gazes at her, aghast, and then, ‘Poor creature!’ she murmurs. ‘You poor, deluded, foolish creature with your … your Memory books and your ugly mirrors and your hairy cats and your remote controls!’

She shakes her head, appalled. ‘Always living in the past! Si tendue! C’est une plaisanterie! Always harking back! This terrible prison of … of regret .’

She throws up her hands, despairing. ‘How long must I live in this place? Eh? Gnawing on the hollow husk of this other woman’s life? Stuck in her shabby home with her ignorant family, wearing her ugly, stupid, shapeless clothes?’

She plucks, irritably, at her dressing gown. ‘Constantly guarded and spied on! Never free or happy or at ease! C’est tellement cruelle! It’s all so pointless! I despise you! No! Worse! I pity you!’

She grabs the nappy, hurls it to the floor, then turns on her heel and storms upstairs.

After a five-second pause, Gene reappears in the doorway. Valentine doesn’t look up. She’s staring down at the carpet.

‘The door was locked,’ he murmurs.

Her lips are moving.

‘I hate her!’ she’s whispering. ‘I hate her! I hate her! I hate her so much — so much — and then I hate myself for hating her. Oh God, she’s right! It is a terrible life! I hate it, too: the house — the drudgery — the cat hair — the filth! She’s right. She’s right ! It is a prison. It is ugly! It is stupid! These rugs. The sofa …’

Long pause.

Valentine focuses in on her legs. She grimaces at the red, tracksuit bottoms.

‘This terrible tracksuit,’ she mutters.

Short pause.

Gene soberly inspects the tracksuit bottoms.

‘It’s a little baggy on the knee,’ he concedes.

She looks up, surprised, then looks down, then looks up again, irritably.

‘Just a little baggy,’ he repeats, with a gentle, teasing smile, ‘around the knee area.’

She looks down again. She looks up again.

‘They’re Noel’s.’ She scowls, embarrassed. ‘I yanked them on in the dark. You got here sooner than I expected.’

‘I ran.’ He shrugs.

‘Really?’ She’s momentarily diverted, even flattered.

‘How far?’

‘Not far. Less than a mile.’

Valentine inspects the tracksuit bottoms again, forlornly.

‘A bold match with the green kimono,’ Gene volunteers.

‘Screw you!’

She starts to smile, in spite of herself, then shakes her head and scowls.

‘I hate this!’ she groans. ‘I miss my mum. I miss her so much! I’d do anything to get her back.’

She shakes her head, appalled. ‘All those things that irritated me before … The cats, the Catholicism … everything too close, too stifling, too familiar. She drove me mad! We weren’t even especially close — I just took her for granted. Yet here I am, trying everything I can to scrape her back together again. Gathering up all these stupid, tiny little fragments … She’s right ! I am a hypocrite. It is sad. It is deluded.’

‘It was always bound to take a period of adjustment.’ He struggles to defend her.

‘Oh God . I can’t breathe. I’m short of breath.’ She covers her face with her hands. ‘She does it every time. She takes my breath away. Everything’s fine. Everything’s okay, and then suddenly …’

She tries to fill her chest with air, but just gulps.

‘Whenever my daughter gets really stressed,’ Gene confides, stepping forward, ‘there’s always one, completely foolproof way of snapping her out of it.’