Nicola Barker - Wide Open

“I didn’t realize that you had any money,” Ronny said, “I never actually considered it.”

Ronny had three giant piles of shells around him, each of which he was now laboriously placing into three black dustbin liners.

“Dot-to-dot,” Luke said boldly.

Ronny scratched his nose. “What’s that?”

“Dot-to-dot books. That’s how I made my money. Dirty ones. A photograph, only partially revealed, with the rest of the page numbered and dotted so that you can take a pen and fill in the pornographic segment yourself.”

“Really?” Ronny was vaguely incredulous. He’d never heard of such a thing.

“Yes. It wasn’t entirely my idea. I just did the photos. Before that I’d done straight glamour work. Calendars, postcards, but I’d always found it frustrating. My tastes were generally more…eclectic.”

“Eclectic,” Ronny nodded.

“So I made some money on the dot-to-dots. I’ve done three books altogether. All quite successful. But what I couldn’t help noticing — I mean at the time — was that I was basically taking pictures that no one would really get to see. So much of the picture was obscured. It was as though the picture’s only…interest, strength , was in what was actually missing.”

“I like that.”

At last Ronny was fully engaged.

“What?”

“That the thing you are most interested in is the thing no one gets to see.”

“Really?” Luke’s voice was cool. “It’s chilly.”

He rubbed his arms and decided that Ronny was either thoroughly insensitive, purposefully facetious or intensely, no, incredibly stupid.

♦

Connie had worked out that all roads in this part of Sheppey were basically one road, and on this premiss, when her path divided into the route she’d taken the previous afternoon with Lily, to her right, and a rough walkway into what looked like a nature reserve to her left, she took the left-hand path and bargained that ultimately she’d end up exactly where she wanted.

In her arms she held the towel Jim had given her. When she’d taken it down from the line she’d sniffed at it, expecting to discover something. But the towel felt rough and smelled only of synthetic soap. She’d folded it and then kissed it. She often kissed inanimate objects and attached no significance to this practice. It was merely a foible.

In the reserve she saw a heron and a lark — a little brown bird which called so shrilly and then rose and rose up into the sky until it was almost invisible before diving down, dropping, plummeting, like a disappointed heart, a stone, a bullet.

She passed by the hides. She did not venture inside any of them. It was a bare day; huge and flat and empty and blowy and cheek-reddeningly cold. Her nose tingled.

Then she saw it. By chance. The rabbit. Far to her left, on a bushy little hillock. Running, no, chasing. Another rabbit. A brown one. But the first rabbit was jet black. An ink-spot. A small, tight pupil inside the pale green eye of the landscape.

It was so damn obvious! This sable bunny. This oddity. It was its own worst enemy. It was its own bellringer; a walking announcement. A misfit. She stopped and watched as it zipped along the horizon, like the tip of an etch-a-sketch, a nib, a shaving, a harsh jut of dark lead.

How did it survive? She laughed out loud. She didn’t know why. How did it survive? Then she walked on, jauntily, fully secure that she merged in her blue jeans and her grey jumper, with her pale hair, her pale skin, confident, adapted, invisible, disguised .

On the beach Connie saw Ronny and Luke, deep in conversation. She skittered across the highest of the dunes, over and along, until she reached the prefabs. She raised her knuckles and knocked on Jim’s door but the door was not shut, just pulled to, and it swung open under the weight of her fist.

“Oh. Sorry…”

She stood in the doorway. The room was grey, the curtains closed. She saw the tip of Jim’s smooth head protruding over the arm of the sofa. Then it jerked. A hiccup.

“Hello,” she said, very quietly.

Jim sat up. He corkscrewed around. He rubbed at his eyes and then stared at her over the back of the sofa. “What do you want?”

“I brought your towel back.”

He said nothing. Then he hiccupped.

“When was the last time you saw a white horse?”

“What?”

“A white horse.”

Jim hiccupped again.

“My dad used to say it. It’s one of those things you always try when someone has the hiccups.”

“Right.”

“To distract them. If they think about something else then they forget that they have the hiccups and so get rid of them.”

Jim shook his head. “That wouldn’t work for me.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not psychological. It’s a physical thing. My stomach goes into spasms. I can have them for whole days at a time.”

“You should visit a doctor.”

“Yes I should.”

Jim’s voice was brutally dismissive. He hiccupped.

“It must be driving you crazy.”

He hiccupped. Connie grinned. “It’s driving me crazy.”

“So go away.”

Jim sniffed. His nose kept on running.

“I brought you back your towel,” Connie pointed to the towel.

He nodded. He did not think to thank her for returning it. He hiccupped.

“Prison Issue,” she said.

He jerked up. “What?”

“Prison Issue.”

Jim was silent for a while. He stared at her. Eventually he said, “So what’s your problem?”

“My problem?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t have a problem.”

Connie continued to stand in the doorway. There was something about this squib of a man that she found oddly compelling. When she asked herself why this should be, she decided that it was because he was the one thing she could not be interested in. He was not interesting. He was ungenial, self-contained, dull. And he was not Ronny Ronny was sitting on the beach with his lacerated wrists and muck green eyes.

Jim had closed his own eyes for a moment, hoping that when he opened them Connie would be gone. But when he did finally open them she had drawn two steps closer.

“Gone,” she said.

“Pardon?”

“They’ve gone. Your hiccups.”

They had gone. Jim regretted their passing. Connie saw his expression. “You’re missing them.”

“What?”

“Are you deaf?”

“Deaf?”

“Every time I say something you repeat it.”

“I’m tired.”

He was still shivering. He struggled to stop himself.

“Are you ill?”

“No.” He sniffed.

“Can I ask you something?”

Jim’s neck was hurting from staring over the back of the sofa. He turned around again so that he faced away from her. She took this as an invitation to walk around the sofa herself and to stand in front of him. He stared blankly at her grey sweater. The wool. The fibre. He hated wool. Why was that? He shuddered. Always a reason.

She thought he was looking at her breasts and actually didn’t mind.

“I’m in a rather strange situation,” she said, and then cleared her throat. “Uh…” she paused for a moment, “It’s Ronny,” she said, “there’s a kind of…well, connection.”

For a moment Jim inspected Connie with what actually amounted to genuine interest. “You know Ronny?”

“Well, not…kind of.” She nodded. “Actually my father knew him. At least I think he did.”

“Your father?” Jim considered this for a second and then something astonishing struck him. “Don’t tell me you’re his sister?”

“His sister?” Connie scowled. “I didn’t even know he had a sister.”

She thought about this for a moment and then burst out laughing. It was a ridiculous idea. His sister.