Nicola Barker - Reversed Forecast

Sam propped herself up on her elbows. Brera’s hair was tied back into a scruffy pony-tail. She untied it and then massaged her scalp with the tips of her fingers. As she did this she said, ‘You’ve been distracted lately.’

Sam was surprised that they were suddenly discussing her and not Sylvia.

‘So?’

Had Brera noticed anything? Her heart felt like a sparrow — small, light, fluttering.

‘You’re uptight because you think I’m going to back out of the tour at the last minute.’

Sam relaxed, was relieved at her mother’s lack of insightfulness. She said calmly, ‘Things have a way of sorting themselves out.’

Brera stopped fiddling with her hair and started to speak again, but Sam’s mind was elsewhere: I’m missing something. It’s true. I’m missing something but I don’t know what. Something’s wrong. I’m incomplete.

She was miserable.

Brera was saying, ‘There comes a time when you have to let a person take responsibility for their own life. Otherwise it’s like a kind of cruelty.’

Sam listened to this string of words as though they were being spoken on the surface of a pool, above water, and she was floating, just underneath, submerged, her ears full of liquid.

Am I different? I want to be the same, but now I feel … separate.

This was Sarah’s fault. Were men the same as women after all? Was she being like a man? Was that how she felt?

Brera was saying, ‘I won’t have her dying in my house. She can go and die somewhere else. She’s old enough to. She’s got to start being courteous.’

Sam rubbed her face. Small dots of sleep were encrusted in the corners of each eye, like tiny scraps of wheat. She picked them out and then said, ‘So go and tell her.’

She felt amoral. Removed. She didn’t care what happened.

Brera stood up. ‘I’ll get packed first.’

‘Go now.’

‘You’re right.’

When Brera had gone, Sam lay down in bed again. She thought, I am different.

And what could be worse than that?

Sarah wasn’t yet dressed. Her long legs stuck out from her dressing-gown. To Connor they looked thin and ungainly, like the limbs of a deer, but white.

‘Sam’s like a tiny goddess,’ she said, provoking him. ‘I don’t believe she ever invests in anything emotionally. She’s invulnerable, which means that she wants to understand things but not to feel them. She’s incapable of genuine involvement.’

Connor was trying to eat his cereal. He ignored Sarah. She loved it when he ignored her. It meant that she could say anything, that she had beaten him, defeated him, had won, was winning or would win.

He picked up a cup of scalding hot coffee, holding the cup itself, not the handle. It was burning him. He continued to ignore her. She was only a parrot, chattering. How strange it is, he thought, when things that are extremes come together. He used all his energy to convince himself that what his fingers felt was a freezing sensation instead of a burning one.

Sam was perched on the edge of her bed playing the guitar. The noise she made drowned out the sound of raised voices from elsewhere in the flat. Above the guitar she could only hear a vague squawking sound, a frantic bickering, like the call of a starling.

She wore a loose pair of brown dungarees, the straps of which nestled in the crook of each arm. The front bib had tipped down too, revealing her left breast in its entirety. She knew how beautiful she must look, like this. But it gave her no joy and no comfort.

She continued to play, remembering as she strummed something that Sylvia had said about birdsong. She’d said, ‘If you listen to a thrush sing, you can hear how birds use a musical scale which contains far more intervals within the octave than our scale. Our system is a kind of compromise. We cancel out all those extra tones so that we’re left with a practical scale of twelve. Birds have a completely different musical language. We can listen to it, but we can’t understand it. And it’s only because of the way that we’ve chosen to transcribe music. We made it incomprehensible, on purpose. We decided.’

The doorbell rang. She stopped strumming and listened to the sudden silence in the flat. She put down her guitar.

Brera welcomed Ruby inside and pointed her towards an armchair in the living-room. To Ruby the flat seemed different: lighter. Doors and curtains were open. She dumped her suitcase and sat down, holding on firmly to the dog by her collar. She sensed an atmosphere. Brera wore no make-up but her cheeks were red. Sylvia seemed, if anything, even smaller than during their last encounter — anaemic, a pale yellow, her every feature like so many tucks and pleats in a piece of pastry.

Sylvia spoke: ‘That dog stinks of dog.’

Sam appeared in the doorway. ‘That’s a tautology. Well, nearly.’

Sylvia’s eyes flickered over towards her and then away.

Sam smiled at Ruby. ‘Hi.’

Ruby smiled back and said, ‘Are you all packed yet? Has Steven called?’

‘No, but I should think he’ll be here soon.’

Brera was staring out of the window, watching a small congregation of sparrows who had assembled under the eaves of the roof outside.

Sam said gently, ‘We’d better get a move on.’

Brera snapped to attention. ‘I’ll get changed. Then I’ll pack.’ She turned to Ruby. ‘I’ve scribbled down a few instructions. I left them in the kitchen on the table.’

Ruby nodded, hoping that things would be organized before nine-thirty. She couldn’t afford to be late for work again.

Sam and Brera disappeared. Sylvia sat cross-legged on the sofa. As soon as Brera was out of earshot she said, ‘I won’t be any trouble.’

‘I’m sure we’ll be fine.’

Ruby felt uneasy.

‘Maybe you should give the dog some water?’

Ruby stood up. ‘Good idea.’ She pulled the dog along the corridor, past Sylvia’s room — the smell was as bad, if not worse, than on her last visit — and into the kitchen. Sam was here, making tea. She put three cups on a tray and passed a fourth one over to Ruby. Ruby took it and sat down.

When Sam had gone, she tried to convince herself that her life was a broad expanse, a large space, like a field, which Vincent only fitted into in a very small way — on the horizon, a figure on a distant hill, a scarecrow, a small, insubstantial dot.

Sam took Sylvia a cup of tea. Sylvia motioned her to put it down a distance away, on the floor.

Sam did as she was instructed and then said, ‘How many days has it been since your last asthma attack? Four? Listen to your breathing. The difference is amazing.’

Sylvia’s nostrils twitched as she smelled the steam rising from the cup of tea, which stank of curdled milk, sour milk mixed up with a sharp scent of tannin. It disgusted her.

She stared up at Sam. ‘The thing is,’ she said, calculatedly mournful, ‘I’m not happy.’

Sam couldn’t help chuckling. ‘Are you serious? You? Not happy? You’re never happy.’

Sylvia’s eyes began to water, entirely of their own accord. Everything overwhelmed her. Usually things overwhelmed her and she was passive. She chose to be. But this was different. She felt helpless and impotent. When she tried to speak, her voice emerged as a tiny, timorous squeak. ‘No matter what I say or do, it makes no difference. No wonder I feel angry. No wonder I want to hurt myself.’

‘Shut up!’ Sam moved towards her and placed a hand across her mouth, gagging her, feeling the damp warmth of her lips and saliva against her palm.

Sam’s voice had sounded ferocious, but she didn’t feel at all angry. Instead she felt frightened; mainly for Brera, but for herself too. Sylvia’s eyes widened but she didn’t move. Sam kept her hand where it was and said quietly, ‘Don’t ruin everything just because you know you can. Consider us. Imagine how we feel.’