Nicola Barker - The Yips

In person she is an entirely different creature from the crabbed and sullen individual Valentine had previously envisioned — she’s light as a feather; a little, modern sylph; a wide-eyed, coffee-skinned Edie Sedgwick.

While Valentine digests this jumble of sense-impressions, Milah is carefully pulling the abaya over her head, and before she knows it she has been engulfed — devoured, consumed — by its heavy, sepulchral folds. Her initial sensation is one of weight and heat, then of airlessness (a sudden spasm of panic, then one of equally sudden — and unexpected — calm). She briefly revels in the scent of the thing — it smells of the road, the street, the town, of dust and detergent, of spice and otherness. Her scrabbling hands eventually locate the armholes and her head the neck hole. As soon as her head pops out Milah is pulling on the niqab which is slightly elasticated around the forehead and made of a silkier, lighter fabric. Milah expertly adjusts the thin, divided grille over her eyes, centring it on her nose, then steps back — this newly hatched praying-mantis of a girl — gazing at her, concerned (like a kindly warden checking up on the mental well-being of a favoured inmate).

‘How is it?’

‘I don’t know. Fine. Airless. Stuffy.’

As Valentine speaks, the light fabric of the niqab gets drawn into her mouth. She blows it out.

‘Walk around a bit.’

Valentine starts to walk. It’s difficult, especially in the shoes she’s wearing.

‘It’s like a coffin,’ she puffs, kicking off the shoes.

‘A shroud.’ Milah nods (apparently not remotely offended by the notion).

‘That doesn’t worry you?’

‘Nope.’

She grins. ‘Just imagine’ — she chuckles — ‘if you went outside now and walked up and down the street, nobody would have the slightest clue who you were. In fact they’d think you were me.’

‘Sorry?’ Valentine stiffens.

‘Nobody would know it was you.’

‘Outside? On my own?’ Valentine’s throat contracts.

‘You’d be anonymous — completely free. Imagine!’

‘You reckon?’ Valentine slowly turns towards the door, tantalized.

‘Be quick, though,’ Milah urges her, grabbing the crocheted blanket from the arm of the sofa and lightly draping it over her head and shoulders. ‘I’ll wait here.’

She sits down and reaches for her mug of tea.

‘Okay, then … Sure. Why not?’ Valentine readjusts the grille over her eyes and nose, then heads, unsteadily, towards the door. Her heart starts to beat faster as she walks down the hallway. Every footstep feels weighted and momentous. Her body is unusually clumsy and lumpen — yet humming with an unexpected sense of significance.

It’s difficult to negotiate space. Her hip bumps into the phone table. She steadies herself, straightens the phone, grazes the aspidistra with her sleeve, and reaches for the door latch. Her hand is clammy and shaking a little.

As she twists the lock, her mind turns — inexorably — to the previous night: the cold metal of the latch between her finger and thumb; the touch of Gene’s ear against her cheek; the push of her breasts against his back; that feeling of carelessness — of insolence — of … of ease … a sensation she hasn’t felt since Mischa left … and — she grimaces, plainly pained by the thought — since Dad died.

She shudders, twisting the little handle still harder and yanking the door wide, tensing up, involuntarily, as if waiting for the whole world to fall in on her — like an overstuffed suitcase tumbling down, without warning, from the top of a cupboard; its contents a petrifying jumble of light, air and sound.

She waits to stall, to freeze, inhaling sharply in preparation (as if, at some level, she thinks she deserves such a bombardment:

Adulterer!

Coward!

Parasite! ).

But nothing.

Instead she finds herself neatly one-step-removed, preserved like a pickle, or a quail’s egg in aspic, peeking out, tentatively, at the world through her grille. She feels like an inquisitive projectionist gazing into the cinema. The film plays on in the auditorium (the sound a muffled echo) but she isn’t really watching it or following the plot. Her involvement is just mechanical. The reel spins, unassisted. The pressure is lifted.

Valentine is overwhelmed by an intense feeling of gratitude and relief. She almost laughs out loud as she steps down into the front garden.

I am Aamilah, she thinks, another girl with a different life, a better girl. She glances down the road with the eyes of a stranger. She is free of herself.

Passing through the gate, her robe briefly catches on the intricate ironwork. She pauses to free the fabric (does so without much effort) and is about to step out on to the pavement when she sees someone walking towards her — a woman with a pram. She steps back and lowers her eyes, her cheeks flushing, humiliated (like a child caught with its fingers in the biscuit barrel). The woman walks by without a second glance.

I am the dead Valentine, she thinks, a sweet darkness stirring within her, a strange ghost of Valentine haunting my former life …

She goes to inspect Karim’s car. Karim’s car is framed in black — like an invite to a funeral. The dead Valentine marvels at the shine of the chrome-work. The dead Valentine runs her hand along the side panels. But she is dead and feels only the vaguest notion of solidity. Everything is something but nothing in particular; just stuff, just a series of random atoms held momentarily in position — for the briefest of interludes — by a complex concatenation of time and space and human willpower. Everything is whole. Everything is unstrung.

Dead Valentine gazes up the road. She is no longer fearful, she is blank as an unaddressed letter. She is dead. She is empty. She is un .

Without fear there is no gravitational pull from the world around her. Without fear there is no climax, no shattering dénouement , no live wire, no earth wire, just a calm, cool, blue neutral.

She suddenly frowns, quickly glances down, and focuses in, closely, on her feet. Her frown deepens. She gingerly lifts her right foot from the pavement … Fine . She gingerly lifts the left …

Urgh! Urgh! Chewing gum! Melted into a vile, satanic glue on the warm concrete slab!

You clumsy idiot! A large bead of sweat runs down her cheek. It hangs, precariously, on her jawbone …

Hot. Hot. Hot!

She curses under her breath, turns, and hobbles back to the house, flops down on the front step, lifts the robe, and commences picking the sticky mess from her heel.

‘Bloody typical!’ she huffs, as it sticks to her picking fingers. ‘Disgusting!’

In the sitting room, several minutes later, Milah helps her to remove the niqab and abaya .

‘How was it?’ she asks.

‘Sticky,’ Valentine murmurs, catching hold of the abaya with her hand and inspecting the hem. ‘I stood on a pile of chewing gum. It was all over my foot.’

Her face is glowing with perspiration. She feels drained and exhausted.

Milah isn’t entirely satisfied by this response.

‘Okay — I felt …’ Valentine tries to think, to analyse. ‘I felt like a little girl playing hide and seek … but there was nobody — nothing — coming to find me …’

Milah nods.

‘I felt free. Then I felt kind of … well … embarrassed — fake. Then I felt …’

She can’t find adequate words to describe her brief experience (even to herself). She frowns, finally settling for, ‘Incredibly bloody hot.’

Milah grins. She pulls on the abaya , then rapidly adds the niqab , adjusting it down over her shoulders until she once again resembles a dowdy, portable, Victorian bathing hut.