Nicola Barker - Reversed Forecast

She squinted towards the window. Samantha, her back to the sun, glowed with an almost supernatural beauty.

‘Are you all OK?’ Sam asked, staring at the three of them. They seemed in a state of collapse, appeared limp and giggly.

Ruby pulled herself up straight. ‘I feel a bit dizzy.’

‘You’re always doing this,’ Sam said, directly to Sylvia, ‘using something good and getting the worst out of it.’

‘What does that mean?’ Vincent wondered out loud, speaking for the first time, his voice slow and his face groggy.

Sarah strolled in with the dog trailing behind her. Vincent slapped his thigh and Buttercup trotted over. Sarah smiled at him. ‘Is it yours?’

‘She,’ he said, with great deliberation, ‘is a bitch.’

Sam said, ‘If the light’s so good, then maybe we should do the pictures after all.’

She didn’t want to waste this opportunity. Ruby looked down, still dazed, and noticed that her dress was all rucked up. She tried to smooth it straight.

‘Are you a photographer?’ Sarah asked Vincent, focusing on the cut across his forehead.

‘I’m her assistant.’

‘What does an assistant do?’

‘Assist.’

‘Come with me,’ Sam said. ‘We can find Brera and see what she thinks.’

Ruby let go of Sylvia’s hand. Sylvia’s eyes filled with tears. Sam noticed. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘The light, that’s all.’

Sarah and Vincent were still talking. Sam closed the window and drew the curtains again.

In Sam’s bedroom, clothes were strewn across the bed. ‘Something plain is probably best,’ Ruby said.

Sam felt irritable, but she wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t clothes. Nothing cosmetic.

‘My sister really took a shine to you.’

‘She liked the tattoo on my hand. She wouldn’t let go of me after she’d seen it.’

Like something I saw in a dream, Ruby thought, that girl, this smell, this feeling.

She couldn’t stop staring at Sam. She was like an angel. ‘You’d look good in anything,’ she said. ‘A bin-bag with a piece of string as a belt.’

Sam smiled as she pulled on a plain white shirt and a black skirt.

‘Where have you come from?’

‘Soho.’

‘A studio?’

‘I live there.’

‘Sounds glamorous.’

Ruby laughed. ‘Hardly. I like it here better. It’s near to the track where I race my dog.’

Sam could hear Sarah laughing in the kitchen. She felt disgruntled, but she wasn’t sure why. She picked up some eye-liner and applied it carefully.

‘Well, the light’s still fantastic,’ Ruby said, trying to sound like she knew what this meant. Brera and Sam both held their guitars under their arms like machine guns. Ruby couldn’t be bothered with the tripod. She took out her camera and tried to focus it.

‘Sing something.’

They began to strum ‘Jesus Don’t Want Me for a Sunbeam’. Connor had taught them this tune on Sunday.

Ruby felt tipsy. Was the film in? Did she need a flash? The air, at least, was clearer out here. She inhaled deeply and then started to shoot.

She had no particular talent for photography. She worked on the premise that the more film she used, the more likely it would be that a clutch of snaps would turn out decently. Brera wore a long, grey, smock-like dress, her red hair loose. Ruby focused on her. It was easy. They did a song by Captain Beefheart.

Where was Vincent? She didn’t care. But where was he?

Sam said, ‘I’ve half a mind to call Sarah out. She mentioned earlier that she’d like to hear us.’

Brera began playing again. This time, a strange song, a song without a middle, an end, a chorus. Ruby was dazed by it. She was still frizzy. Her mouth — inside — felt gluey and sticky. The song started up, flew off and didn’t come back. Like modern art, she thought. She’d never been able to understand that either.

After they’d finished, Sam said, ‘Sylvia wrote it.’

Sarah popped her head out, around the door, and shaded her eyes against the sunlight. ‘I could hear you all the way through in the kitchen just then,’ she said. ‘I thought it was a cat fight.’

‘Things can still be interesting,’ Ruby interjected quickly, ‘even if you don’t understand them.’

Sam started playing something else. Sarah stepped outside and lounged against the brickwork.

Inside, Sylvia prepared a mental salad with all the voices in the flat. Sarah, she decided, was a radish. A small, round, purple thing; fibrous. She took out a sharp knife and sliced Sarah in half and then into quarters. She poked the knife into her again and again and again. Until, eventually, she was only pulp.

Back in the kitchen, Brera volunteered to make Ruby some coffee. Ruby sat at the table, putting film into containers, removing lenses and packing things away. The others were still outside. Vincent had been helping himself to the wine and had become, unexpectedly, positively garrulous.

‘You must have photographed lots of people,’ Brera said, smiling.

‘Some.’

‘It wasn’t too formal, which was great.’

The dog trotted in and sat down next to Ruby. Ruby stroked her. Brera leaned against the sink. ‘Sam said she’d never seen Sylvia so friendly with a stranger before. She’s not generally so tactile.’

‘She seems very weak.’

‘She’s ill.’

‘I like her.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘Sam asked me that. In Soho. In a flat. It’s much smaller than this.’

‘Is it nice?’

Ruby shrugged and continued stroking.

‘Does Steven pay you much for taking pictures?’

‘If he likes them. I hope he will. I need the money.’

‘Sam said you raced the dog.’

‘At Hackney Wick. Just down the road.’

‘Do you like this flat?’

Ruby frowned. ‘It’s nice.’

‘The dog likes it.’

Brera, Ruby decided, was barking mad.

‘You must think I’m mad,’ Brera said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. ‘I’m not mad, but I’ve just had a mad idea.’

That’s how it starts, though, Ruby thought. Mad ideas, doing mad things, being mad.

In the pub, facing an interviewer, a small tape recorder and a bottle of Newcastle Brown, Connor had felt the need to blow his nose. He put his hand in his pocket to pull out a handkerchief but instead, accidentally, pulled out Sam’s brassière.

Small, white, soft.

This, he thought, is a real rock cliché.

Afterwards, though, whenever he spoke, whatever he said, he could think only of Sam. His mind was full of her. Where she was going. What she was doing.

Brera’s idea was that Ruby should move into Jubilee Road with the dog for an initial period of two weeks while the Goldhawk Girls went on tour. Brera assured her that she would keep in constant contact and that Ruby would receive a percentage of their earnings for her services. Sam strolled in to get a clean glass and Brera filled her in. She was enthusiastic. She said, ‘We could give you twenty-five per cent. Sylvia would have to get her cut too. It should end up being a reasonable amount.’

Ruby agreed that the money would be useful. ‘But the problem is …’ She cleared her throat. ‘The real problem is that you don’t even know me and I don’t even know Sylvia.’

Brera shrugged. ‘I think we could trust you. Sylvia’s an adult. She doesn’t need constant attention.’

Ruby felt as though Sam and Brera presumed some kind of awareness on her part about Sylvia’s particular circumstances, but in fact she couldn’t make any sense at all of the situation. Her brain was swamped with images — her own inky, blue tattoo; a retchingly acrid smell that pervaded every corner of the flat; Sylvia herself, white, acerbic, wheezing; the dark rooms; the nebulizer.