Nicola Barker - Reversed Forecast

‘If she was a man, you wouldn’t mind her.’

‘I don’t like aggressive men either.’

He turned over, on to his side, making room for her in the bed. She hadn’t yet decided whether she wanted to join him when the doorbell rang. He sat up. ‘We’re rehearsing this morning.’

‘But what about Sarah?’

He frowned. ‘What about her?’

‘She’s been awake half the night. You can’t practise now.’

He smiled. ‘Can’t I?’

‘Bastard.’

He stood up. Unexpectedly, the sight of his thin, naked body aroused her. She put out her hand and touched his back. He turned, smiled, moved closer. She whispered, ‘Let’s have sex.’

Outside she could hear Sarah answering the door, sounds in the living-room, male voices.

He stroked her hair. ‘No rubbers. You wouldn’t want me to reuse one.’

He bent over to pick up some shorts. She hit him across his rump with a tambourine and said tartly, ‘You don’t need a condom to give head.’

As she reached consciousness, Brera rolled over and focused dozily on her alarm clock. Nine-thirty. It was Monday. She signed on every Monday. Every Monday at nine. She sat up. She was late. Something was wrong. Something was missing. Suddenly she knew. Sylvia! Sylvia always wakes me!

She sprang out of bed, then froze, barely breathing, listening intently. At first she could hear nothing. Then she heard a noise, the faintest of sounds: a desperate, rattling, guttural wheezing.

She sprinted into the hallway. Sylvia’s bedroom door was closed. She didn’t knock, she flew in. Sylvia was on the floor, clutching her throat, in her own stranglehold, tossing and turning.

The room was full of birds. When Brera ran in they left their perches and filled the air — there must have been sixty of them — aiming upwards, towards the ceiling, in a feathery whirlwind. She found them terrifying, but she kept her wits, fell to her knees and grabbed hold of Sylvia, whose face was a whitey-purple colour, her lips flecked with foam. She took hold of her shoulders, slid her hands firmly under her armpits and dragged her out.

She lay her down flat, in the hallway, and dashed back into the bedroom. She searched around on the floor for a few seconds, then looked on the bed and finally found what she was hunting for on top of Sylvia’s grey trunk: her inhaler. She snatched hold of it, kept her head low (the birds were still flying, calling, panicking) and ran out, slamming the door behind her.

Sylvia had begun to jerk and convulse. Brera pushed the inhaler between her lips. ‘Exhale and then breathe this in. Exhale!’

Sylvia turned her face away. Brera jammed Sylvia’s head between her knees and forced the inhaler into her mouth again, even deeper this time. She pressed it, and it pumped its fumes into her.

‘Breathe it in! Breathe it in, you stupid thing!’

The inhaler had little or no effect. Brera began to panic.

‘Sam? Where is she?’

She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to think what Sam would do, then pulled Sylvia along the hallway and into the living-room. This was an airy room. She dragged her towards the door that led out on to the roof, wrenched the door open. ‘It’s fresh air. Breathe it in. Go on!’

Sylvia’s body was shuddering and gyrating. Brera hauled her on to the roof, out into the open air. She felt the cold tarmac on her bare feet and knees. She opened Sylvia’s lips, inhaled deeply herself and then attempted mouth to mouth, placing her hands on Sylvia’s ribs to see whether they expanded with the air she was providing. Nothing happened. Her convulsions had lessened, but this wasn’t necessarily a good sign. Brera noticed that Sylvia’s face was wet and thought, Why is she sweating so much? then realized that she had soaked Sylvia’s face with her own tears.

‘The inhaler!’

She ran back into the house, through the living-room and into the hall. It was still on the floor. She picked it up and headed outside again. As she passed through the door on to the roof she shrieked.

Sylvia’s body was seething and twitching. Twenty or thirty birds were sitting on her, covering her, smothering her. Brera threw herself at them, shouting, crying, and they ascended, together, like a funeral shroud, a brown feather blanket.

Sylvia’s face was marked with large, red blotches. Brera took hold of her head and rammed the inhaler between her lips, but her teeth were clenched together now and grinding. She tried to prise her jaw open but she wasn’t strong enough. Instead she gathered her up in her arms, lifted her and, staggering, carried her through to the living-room. She dumped her on the couch, picked up the phone, dialled 999 and waited.

‘Ambulance. Emergency. Jubilee Road, Hackney. Flat 9. Asthma. Please, quickly.’

She slammed down the receiver. What if they took too long? She had to get Sam.

She scrabbled among the pieces of paper next to the phone, hoping Sam had written Connor’s number down. She saw a number written in Sam’s hand and dialled it.

‘Hello?’

It was Steven’s number.

‘Hi. Steven here.’

She thought her head was about to explode. She couldn’t stop crying.

‘Have you got a car? Where are you?’

‘Who is this?’

‘Brera. Please! Where are you?’

‘I’m …’

‘Are you near here? Are you near Hackney?’

‘I … not far away. I’m at Liverpool Street. This is my mobile phone.’

Brera could hardly speak. ‘Please come here. My daughter … I’ve phoned an ambulance but it might take too long. Please come.’

She dropped the receiver and ran back over to Sylvia. Sylvia was now limp, her eyes were closed and her head was lolling to one side. Brera lifted up her T-shirt and started to rub her chest. Sylvia’s eyes opened slightly. She whispered, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

Brera felt as if a firework had gone off inside her mouth. ‘You can bloody talk! You can bloody talk you little vixen and that’s all you can say! You can talk and that’s all you can say! Christ! Say something. No. Don’t say anything. Just breathe!’

She stopped rubbing, ran out on to the roof, picked up the inhaler and sprinted back inside with it. She rammed it between Sylvia’s lips and pressed it three or four times. Most of the gas escaped through the sides of her mouth. Her head lolled. Brera tried it several more times and then, once again, attempted mouth to mouth.

It seemed like an age before she heard the buzzer sound. She ran to the entry-phone and pressed the button next to it, shoved the front door wide open to ease access and then ran to get Sylvia. She pulled down her T-shirt and tried to pick her up.

There was no ambulance, only Steven. He jogged up the stairs, through the flat, into the living-room. He was breathless and frightened, not so much by the possibility of facing something horrible (like a bloody injury, for example, a broken limb) as by the fear that he might not prove up to coping with it. He was prepared to see Sam, cut, bruised, maimed, electrocuted, but instead all he saw as he ran in was Brera, her face red, her hair red, wearing only a blue and white striped night-shirt, trying to pick up the prostrate body of a girl he had never seen before.

Brera glanced over her shoulder and saw, with horror, that it was only Steven. ‘Oh God! I thought you were an ambulance. What good can you do? It’s been at least fifteen minutes since I phoned.’

Steven moved swiftly over to Brera’s side and helped her to lift the girl. He picked her up easily and held her in his arms. ‘Shall I carry her downstairs? I can take you to casualty in my car, but you’ll have to tell me where it is.’

The girl he held was trembling and wheezing. Her face was purple. He felt a wave of dizzyness at the prospect of carrying this sick creature, this sick thing, in his arms. She felt so light.