Nicola Barker - Behindlings

He was already holding the hardback Hondo Doc’d been inspecting. He reached down and picked up Hooch’s paperback too. With Utah Blaine that made three books altogether.

Jo gave the paperback up without argument. She yanked a blue, knitted hat out of her pocket (as if this was actually all that she’d been intending to do in the first place) and pulled it over her head. ‘You know what?’ she asked, adjusting it around her ears. Shoes simply grinned at her.

‘I’d love a peek at Hondo when you’ve finished with it.’

‘Of course you would,’ Shoes continued to grin, stupidly (was he stupid? He seemed stupid) as he carried the three books with him up to the counter.

Eileen was still busy with the boy and his form, but she turned, very obligingly, to help him with them.

‘It’s me again, remember?’ Shoes beamed, handing three brand new library cards over. Pushing the books towards her.

‘So that’s what he was doing first thing,’ Doc muttered, pulling on his jacket as he strode past, ‘the canny bugger.’

Eileen took the books and reached over to grab her stamp. Her back was turned for the briefest of instants, but that was all it took Patty, up on his toes, his arm swinging over the counter, his fingers feeling, blindly, then clutching, then… then…

He scrabbled.

Jesus. Eileen was obviously going to…

Jo kicked her chair. Very quickly. The small chair. Turned it over. Made a huge clattering racket. Attracted everyone’s attention. Pulled an agonised expression. Mimed sorry. Shrugged. Bent over. Righted the tiny chair again. Shoved it under the table with a firm, four-footed, rubber-padded squeak. Collected her six clues from the table-top, shoved them into her pocket, clamped her hands together. Strode towards the door; following Doc, following Hooch.

Just as she was pushing the door open, Patty jinked in speedily ahead of her, shooting through, chuckling, making her gasp at his guile, at his bare-faced…

She caught the door as it slammed back towards her, peered over her shoulder, saw Shoes following behind — the three books held securely — and paused, judiciously, still holding it there, until he too was out and through and charging off — full blast, bare-toed — up the well-shod, densely-populated High Street ahead of her.

The house was a mess — it was always so — but Katherine Turpin knew exactly the scope of it; the subtle calibrations of disorder, the various proportions of clutter. In this respect — as in many others — she verged — hell, she staggered — on the systematically sluttish (only her bedroom was the exception. Her boudoir was pristine. But this room was her secret anomaly, her perverse aberration).

Katherine was diligently chaotic, consistently scruffy, discerningly squalid, because nothing — not any small thing — in that tiny, filthy, miserable little bungalow escaped the fine tooth-comb of her careful attentions.

She’d been blessed (but was it a blessing?) with the hunter’s round eye; the eyes of a merlin (could see a vole skulking at fifty metres) — the keen nose of the shrew (the shrill voice too, if ever she needed it, although crueller in content than tone, by a margin) fine, feline ears (could actually move them — like a cat does — but only if she concentrated, hard, at a party — to illustrate her versatility — although she was rarely, if ever, socially busy), and the sharpest incisors for killing and chewing.

‘Fuck and double-fuck. ’

Katherine slammed the front door behind her, growling like an old scooter-motor, and threw down the bike — still folded — her arms aching horribly. It was twelve fucking fifty-three. She’d had to walk the best part of it after the Southend turn-off (so a lorry carrying baby food or yoghurt or UHT — or something suitably sloppy — finally took pity on her after forty long minutes standing by the roadside, absolutely freezing her bloody arse off, and did her the great honour of carrying her that far. But no further. And after? Nothing).

There’d been fog. It’d been icy. And the bike was portable but bugger me, it was heavy. Had little wheels to the rear — like the kind you got on a supermarket trolley; just as stiff and stupid and clumsy — and a strap you were intended to pull it by, but to pull it meant stooping at a ridiculous angle, ricking your back, straining your knees, so she’d picked it up and carried it instead, all the long, hard trog back into bloodless Canvey.

Saw that twat who worked in the Lambeth Café. The miserable shit. Drove straight past her. She’d been at school with him. And the local sports injury chappie in his pathetic little van. And Mr and Mrs Sullivan from two doors down. Two doors. The snivelling…

She sniffed the air. The air smelled hmmmn. The air smelled… Good stilton. Old hay. Something queer and… queer. Something mouldering. She glanced around her. Peach schnapps bottles. In the hallway. They’d been moved. Shoved up against the wall. One bag had tipped over, leaving schnapps remnants on the parquet.

She sidled through like a ghost at the feast: like a vengeful spectre whose bones had been disturbed in an ancient cemetery… The living room. Aha! Her cushions on the sofa. They’d been adjusted. And the embroidered throw on the chair’d been straightened. And dear Mr Tiger’s fur (how could they?) had been smoothed down, smoothed back, all neat and straight and shiny and tidy. Urgh. He was de-scruffy. He was slick and tame and glossy as a pussy. Not dear, emery-board-furred Mr Angry Tiger. Not lovely, familiar, dear Mr…

Katherine scuffed the tiger’s spine with the heel of her hand, delicately, like she was tenderly rubbing a big kitten’s belly. Okay. What else? The net curtains (she’d noticed while walking up the path — no, before then, even; all the way over from the other side of the stupid street, Goddammit) had been yanked out of kilter. They were skewwhiff. Not at all as she liked them. Not at all as she arranged them herself, in general.

Oh yes. And the inevitable trail of sawdust. She’d seen that too. Had glared at it, briefly, before finding her key and unlocking the front door.

The distinctive angle of the hydrangea…

Katherine’s grey-blue eyes glimmered. She pushed her aching shoulders back, ominously. She had been invaded. Indubitably. And by the look of the cushions — set straight, puffed out, propped up — Gentle Teddy had been here; with his pale ginger hair, his fiddling fingers, his throat-clearing, his stooped back, his nervousness, his neatness.

The sawdust? She grimaced. Dewi. Dewi outside, peering in furtively at this pale-hearted invader.

Yes. A picture formed in her head. She scowled (still not entirely content with the shape of it), her calcimine eyes casually resting on the well-packed shelf behind the TV.

Hang on. Something distinctly amiss there… A vacancy. She focussed. Two mango-stone creatures staring straight back at her; clay-nosed, wire-legged, beady-eyed, unblinking. Gap between them. The middle one. Where was he? Where could the middle mango one be?

Katherine stalked over and gazed down behind the TV, just in case there’d been a faller. Nope. Retrieved a dried azalea — dust-splattered — a small dice she’d been looking for, an old two pence coin and a copy of the special TV Times edition of The Tomorrow People’s children’s adventure series (‘Based on the exciting Thames Television programme…’), its spine broken, its pages bent over. She kissed the cover. ‘ Starring Mr Nick Young as John …’