Nicola Barker - The Yips

‘How can you say that?!’ Valentine drops her hands, tortured. ‘I’ve done so many terrible things — despicable things. Thought things — wished things …’ She gazes at Sheila, her pretty face crumpling. ‘Oh God,’ she groans, ‘you’ve no idea.’

She turns on her heel, the letter clutched to her chest, and charges upstairs with it.

Sheila is left standing, alone, with the meter in her hand. She stares at the collection of tiny packages. She adjusts the meter and a fresh cascade of brick dust descends from above. She curses, then senses a slight movement behind her. She glances over her shoulder. It is Nessa, the child.

‘What an awful mess!’ she exclaims, with a forced joviality. ‘I think we probably need a dustpan and brush, don’t you?’

Nessa nods.

‘D’you know where Valentine keeps them? In the kitchen, perhaps?’

The child nods, then promptly trots over, squats down and reaches her fingers into the dust.

‘Although a Hoover might be better,’ Sheila muses, half to herself, idly noticing that a thin layer of brick dust has settled on to a couple of the — formerly pristine — boxes. She instinctively leans forward to blow it off, and the next instant the meter comes away from the wall completely, crashing down, scarcely supported now, its wires ripping loose as it descends.

Sheila’s first priority is to shield the crouching child from its impact, so she doesn’t jump back — as is her initial instinct — but interposes her body between them, taking the bulk of the meter’s weight on the front of her shin, then somehow conniving to catch it again before it smashes into the floor tiles below. Several tiny packages and boxes also cascade down in the ensuing chaos and scatter on to the floor around them.

The pain in her leg is quick and sharp. She squeezes her eyes tight shut, places the meter on to the tiles and remains, bent double, gasping, applying a steady pressure to the painful area with the palms of both hands.

Her head starts to swim.

‘Balls, balls, balls ,’ she mutters. ‘Balls, balls, balls, balls, balls !’

She sits down, heavily, in the dust.

‘That really hurt,’ she says. ‘ Balls ,’ she adds. She continues to apply pressure to the throbbing area.

‘Maybe I’ve chipped my shin,’ she muses, tiny fireworks exploding in the black at the back of her eyes. Her mouth suddenly feels dry. She wants to pull up her trouser to inspect the area but is fearful of what she might find. Blood? A jutting shard of bone? A lump the size of a duck egg? She commences to rock back and forth, muttering ow, ow, ow under her breath.

Behind her the child is playing with the fallen boxes. Inside one she has found a signet ring, inside another, a medal. She picks up a third, slightly larger package wrapped in a layer of brown paper and a layer of greaseproof. She pulls them off, squeaking excitedly, like she’s unwrapping a birthday present.

Sheila turns — still clutching at her leg — and opens her eyes just in time to see the child producing a plain but well-made pigskin wallet from the greaseproof layer.

‘ Nessa! Drop that! ’

Sheila starts. It’s Valentine, who has returned — sans letter — and stands apprehending the chaotic scene before her in a state of advanced agitation. She leans forward and snatches the wallet from the child’s grasp, then exclaims, in disgust, and lets it fall to the floor again. It lands in a thin layer of brick dust.

‘ Screw it! ’ she exclaims, then promptly bursts into tears, grabs the stray sheet of greaseproof and picks it up again, clumsily — fastidiously — like it’s the corpse of a poisoned mouse or a dog turd.

Sheila watches on, confused, her eyes returning to the child’s other booty which she immediately notices is decorated with Nazi regalia.

‘Bloody hell — is this stuff real?’ she wonders (her voice — to her own ears — sounding like its original source is the distant aspidistra).

‘Are you hurt?’ Valentine sniffs, through a startling Rorschach test of cascading mascara.

‘My shin got a bit of a bash, but I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ the aspidistra responds, calmly. Sheila is impressed by how serene and dispassionate the aspidistra seems.

‘Should I take a look?’

Valentine is promptly on her knees beside her. She is still holding the wallet, gingerly, in her palm, where it sits — blonde and innocuous — in its little square of greaseproof as a child’s portion of chips at a country fair.

Sheila inspects it, quizzically, as Valentine carefully places it down on to the tiles again — well clear of the brick dust. She then rolls up Sheila’s trouser leg to inspect the dented shin. Sheila gingerly un-peels her hands from the painful area. She can’t bring herself to look.

‘Is it bad?’ she wonders.

A short pause follows.

‘Perhaps I should take a quick look at the other one, for comparison …’

Sheila’s eyes widen.

Valentine rolls up Sheila’s other trouser leg and compares the two shins in close conjunction.

Then: ‘It’s pretty nasty. There’s a lump, a kind of graze standing up all bluey-white, and this big, black blood blister all the way along …’

‘Any bone?’

‘Nope.’ Valentine shakes her head. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘Like hell. It throbs; sharp throbs — like I’m being repeatedly stabbed by a little dagger.’

‘We need some antiseptic and a packet of peas to bring down the swelling. Wait here.’

Valentine springs up and charges off down the hallway.

Nessa, meanwhile — in the wake of Valentine’s sudden absence — takes the opportunity to shunt herself across the tiles to take another look at the wallet. She prods it with her finger.

‘Soft,’ she says, then tries to pick it up.

‘No, no — I don’t think you should touch that, Nessa,’ Sheila cautions her, ‘we don’t want it to get all dusty from your hands, do we? It’s very precious …’

The child ignores her. She continues to grapple with it.

‘Here’ — Sheila reaches out and takes the wallet from her — ‘let me have a look …’

She also grabs the greaseproof paper. ‘Valentine keeps it all wrapped up, like this, see?’

She starts folding the greaseproof around it, the child standing at her shoulder, watching on, fascinated.

‘There’s some dust on it already …’

Sheila blows on the wallet to try and shift some of the dust, then lightly polishes it with her shirtsleeve. She blows on it again. As she blows for the second time — front and back — her eye catches a slight imperfection in the hide. She scowls down at it, worriedly, then prods at it with her index finger, grimaces, draws it in still closer to her face, and is surprised to be able to delineate several digits of a number.

‘Leave it! Give it here!’

Valentine — who has just arrived back with the requisite bundle of medical provisions — swoops down and snatches the wallet from her.

‘It’s dirty!’ she pants. ‘You mustn’t …’

‘It’s just a bit of dust,’ Sheila explains, mildly defensive.

‘No, no , I mean it’s a dirty thing — a filthy thing … Part of my dad’s collection of war memorabilia.’

Sheila’s still none the wiser.

‘It’s made from human skin.’

Three-second pause.

‘Bloody hell!’ Sheila flinches, startled. Her face creases up with disgust.

‘I thought Gene had …’ Valentine’s confused. ‘When you said earlier …’

‘Gene definitely didn’t mention this.’

Sheila’s shaken. Her voice is shaking. She feels extraordinarily distressed by the mere fact of this object — the sheer, moral offence of its physical existence; by its dangerous proximity; its spiritual toxicity …