Nicola Barker - Darkmans

Kelly’s eyes widened. ‘ No way! ’

Garry maintained his aggrieved air for a couple of seconds longer, then chortled, delightedly, at her shocked expression.

‘Oh come on . That’s hardly my style, Kell!’ he snorted.

‘You runty bastard ,’ she punched him on the shoulder.

Her phone suddenly bleeped.

‘Text,’ she said, grabbing hold of it. She accessed her menu, delighted. ‘This weren’t even workin’ five minutes ago…’

Garry rubbed his arm where she’d hit him. ‘You pack a mean punch,’ he said, ‘for such a skinny scrap.’

‘It’s from Kane,’ Kelly mused, still inspecting her phone, ‘an’ it says…’ she frowned, ‘it says 2 Corinthians 12.9. ’

She glanced up, confused. ‘So what the hell’s that s’posed ta mean?’ Garry glanced over at her phone. ‘I dunno. It’s a Biblical quote, I guess…’

‘Where’s my Bible, Gaz?’ Kelly demanded.

‘It’s in the glove compartment…’

Garry pointed. Kelly leaned forward, with difficulty, to try and pull it open, but the lock was jammed, and she couldn’t get sufficient purchase to wrench it loose.

‘It won’t…’

Garry leaned across Kelly’s lap and yanked it open himself, but as he leaned, the pencil behind his ear slipped out and fell down between her knees.

‘Your pencil, Gaz,’ she muttered.

‘Oh.’ Garry straightened up, gazing down at her bare thighs, startled. ‘Ouch ,’ Kelly squeaked, wriggling. ‘It’s fallen in between…’

She tried to retrieve it.

‘Ouch ,’ she repeated, ‘it’s pokin’ into my…’

She placed her hands either side of her legs and lifted her bottom into the air. The pencil dropped down on to the seat below.

‘Would you mind just…?’ Kelly asked.

Garry tentatively slipped his hand underneath her and grabbed for the pencil, but before he could remove it, Kelly had sat back down again.

‘ Hmmn . Lovely warm knuckles,’ she mused.

Garry rapidly yanked his hand out, horrified.

‘Well I bet that’s about as much excitement as your pencil’s seen in a while,’ she sniggered.

Garry didn’t respond, he just leaned over and grabbed her Bible from the glove compartment.

‘There you go…’

He handed it to her with an abrupt nod.

She took the Bible from him and quickly flipped it open. The pages automatically parted at the place where she’d stored her AIDS orphans article from Maire Claire .

‘Bloody hell ,’ she suddenly gasped.

‘What?’

‘Just take a look at that …’

She held up the book to him.

Garry frowned.

‘I tore this article from a magazine, right?’ she explained. ‘An’ I just shoved it into the Bible to keep it safe, yeah? Then Kane texts me with this quote — God only knows why — and guess where it turns out I’d stuck the article?’

‘Where?’ Garry asked (already guessing the answer).

‘Pushed between the very page…’

‘Uh…The very next page,’ Garry corrected her, inspecting it.

‘The very next page…’ Kelly echoed (still equally impressed). She removed the article and silently entrusted it to Garry’s care, then slowly ran her finger down the verses.

‘Here it is,’ she said, finally, ‘2 Corinthians, Chapter twelve, Verse nine…’

She cleared her throat: ‘ And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. ’

She frowned, then read it out again, ‘ And he said unto me …’

Garry held the article loosely in his hand as he listened to her. His eye rested on it, idly, as she read. But it wasn’t actually the AIDS orphans article he was staring at. It was the article on the flipside of the page, an article about a charity dedicated to bringing solar power to Africa.

Most poor, African households (the article said) were dependent on Calor Gas for their day-to-day power needs, and this was not only ruinously expensive (thereby increasing the cycle of poverty) but environmentally unsound. The only rational way to approach energy provision in the third world (the article continued) was to exploit their greatest natural resource: the sun. By fitting solar panels to people’s homes, not only could all their energy needs be fulfilled (and virtually free of charge), but the environmental impact would be all but negligible…

‘A bit complicated, huh ?’ Kelly scowled.

‘I think what it means,’ Garry reasoned, ‘is that you don’t necessarily have to be some kind of a saint to be a good Christian. It’s sayin’ that you can sometimes learn more when you’re weak — or when you fail — because the experience of failin’ at somethin’ is what makes you into a better person…’

‘ Wow .’

Kelly gazed over at him, full of admiration. ‘You always did have an amazin’ way of puttin’ things…’ she murmured.

Garry shrugged. Kelly continued to stare at him, her cheeks slightly flushed. ‘An’ I’m really sorry about before,’ she added.

‘About what?’

‘About sittin’ on your hand back then. An’ about punchin’ your arm. An’ about callin’ you a runt. I was just— you know — havin’ a bit of fun.’

Garry cleared his throat, nervously. ‘Don’t stress yourself out about it.’

Kelly continued to stare at him. ‘I’ll tell you somethin’ for nothin’, Gaz,’ she said, finally.

‘What?’ he peered at her, long-ways.

‘If it turns out that all this crazy stuff that’s been happenin’ to me lately was just so much pie in the sky, yeah? — just a shower of shit — then I won’t actually care. Because at the end of the day I’ll just be really chuffed — really stoked —that I’ve bumped into you again.’

‘But I never went anywhere, Kell,’ Garry maintained.

‘I know that,’ Kelly smiled.

Garry looked down at the article, but he didn’t focus in on it.

‘I’m thirty-two years old,’ he eventually murmured.

‘So what?’ Kelly scoffed. ‘I don’t give a flyin’ fig what age you are.’ Garry folded the article in half and tried to pass it back to her.

‘An’ I certainly hope,’ she observed, haughtily lifting her small chin, ‘that you’ll afford me the same courtesy.’

‘Yeah, well…’

Garry didn’t sound too sure on this point.

Kelly finally took the article from him, placed it back into her Bible and slapped the Bible shut.

‘Pals?’ she asked, offering him her outstretched palm.

‘So d’you reckon that heating’s workin’ yet?’ Garry suddenly enquired, leaning over to peer — with an almost bewildering intensity — into the nearest air vent.

After sitting — completely stationary — for fifteen or so minutes, Kane had been unable to resist snatching up the set of photocopied sheets again. He was especially taken by the anecdote about the fleas (‘You should have taken every flea by the neck, and then they would gape, and then you should have cast a little of the powder into every flea’s mouth, and lo you would have killed them’). It was the same anecdote — he was certain — that the young boy Fleet had told him. But where the boy might’ve actually heard it (when the document in his hands was almost 400 years old and only readily avaliable from the British Library) was anybody’s guess.

There was other stuff, too. Stuff he’d come across himself, stuff he’d experienced first hand — the chapter in which John Scogin was banished — for persistently tormenting the queen — and strictly commanded never to set foot on British soil again (and he’d promptly responded — with typical hubris — by journeying to France, filling his shoes with French soil, then returning, in triumph, and smartly informing the enraged king that he wasn’t actually contravening the rules of his exile — the soil that he stood on was French after all).