Nicola Barker - Wide Open

She put out her free hand, looped it around his neck and pulled his head down towards her. His face was bright. She kissed his lips. They were soft. She pressed hard and felt his teeth, all firm, just under them. His skin was so smooth she could have rubbed her wet nose all over it. But he pulled away.

“It’s a car,” he said, wiping his mouth. His face was fully illuminated and then it went dark again.

“I didn’t hear it,” Connie whispered, “I didn’t see it.”

She let go of his hand and touched her lips with her fingertips.

Jim was free again. He backed off, slowly, but he did not break Connie’s gaze. He held it with infinite care, like it was a fragile egg balanced between his forefinger and his thumb. He held it and held it, then something untoward and terrible seemed to strike him and he let go, his eyes dropped, he turned and strode away, in the direction of the beach and the prefabs, his shoulders hunching up again and his head balancing between them like a pale field mushroom.

Lily refused to put the box into the boot or to rest it upon the back seat. “Nothing’s as safe as my own two arms,” she’d observed, and to prove as much had placed the box on to her scraggy lap, had slung her arms around it and then perched her small but pointy chin on top. Her shoulders were soon aching, but she didn’t care.

Her sense of direction was pitiable. Even after crossing the Kingsferry bridge she gave every appearance of being completely adrift when by rights she should have been plumb back in her own zone.

Nathan found her astonishing. As a child he’d developed an affection for American comics. There he’d discovered all kinds of exotica, not least, the Twinkie and the Oreo cookie, neither of which had he ever tasted, only dreamed of. And also, among the small ads with a tiny illustration, he’d encountered the Sea Monkey. A kind of underwater creature, a leggy mermaid; wispy and pale and lean. A female gargoyle, all loose-limbed and translucent. All fish-lipped and long-lashed, and with witchy nails that dragged and snagged. It was a real entity, for sale (just add water) but Nathan thought it must be like a unicorn or a dragon. It was pure, crazy, comic-book folly.

Yet in Lily he thought he’d found this aquatic organism made flesh. She was every inch a Sea Monkey. She was fish and chimp in one being. Pale and alien and underwatery.

She didn’t speak much, only when he requested directions. Then she’d say, “Uh, left, maybe?” and peer off anxiously to the right. So this was how they’d proceeded, tentatively. They didn’t say much otherwise. Nathan turned on the radio and doodled along quietly to the gentle tunes that filtered out at random.

“Ah! The prison.”

Lily perked up.

“I finally know where I am.” She pointed. “See?”

Through his side window Nathan saw a distant crust of mismatching eczema perched on the crest of a preponderantly flat landscape. It was dusk. Lights hatched out like angry zits.

“Right. Yes.”

He shuddered.

“I saw that.”

“What?”

“You shivered.”

“Cold.”

He put his hand to the heater.

“Brake.”

Lily spoke so gently that Nathan didn’t initially register the nature of her request.

“I said stop !” This time she spoke louder.

He pulled over. They were on a small, winding country road. Lily wound down her window.

“Oi!”

The engine idled. Behind him Nathan saw a fat man, trundling in the verge.

“Oi!”

The fat man paused and then looked over his shoulder. He faltered. He didn’t seem especially pleased to see them.

“Where are you going?” Lily yelled.

The fat man scowled. “Why?”

“I just wondered.”

“I’m going to the pub to buy cigarettes.”

“But you’re way past it.”

“Pardon?”

“You’re way past it. You should’ve turned off to the left a mile or so back.”

The flat man looked deflated. “Shit.”

“So I suppose you’ll be after a lift, then?”

The fat man took a few steps towards them. “Actually, yes. If that isn’t too much trouble.”

“But it is too much trouble.” Lily wound up her window. “Let’s go.”

Nathan didn’t move. He kept checking his rear-view mirror. Luke looked a mixture of angry and disconsolate. It was a pitiable combination.

“We can’t just leave him, surely?”

“Of course we can. Do it!”

Nathan pulled off and accelerated away.

“Anyhow,” Lily grinned, “he smells of fish. He’d stink out the car.”

“Offish?”

“Yep. Revolting.”

A loose stone hit their flanks. Nathan braked slightly. It was almost dark now. He turned his headlights on. To the right of his peripheral vision he saw something temporarily illuminated in the sudden blaze. It appeared solid but mobile and fairly prodigious. It bucked once and then skittered from view.

“Did you see that thing?”

His foot touched the brake again. Lily was clutching the parcel and staring straight ahead of her.

“Keep driving.”

“But did you see it?” he repeated.

“I saw it.”

She seemed slightly unnerved but grimly unflappable. “We need to get home. Quickly.”

Her directions became minutely precise, her voice, curter, gruffer. “Faster,” she said, when he’d changed down a gear to negotiate a corner, “keep going.”

“Was it a pig or a pony?”

“A boar. A wild boar. We farm them.”

“Should it be out on the road like that?”

Lily rolled her eyes.

“Is it dangerous?”

She cleared her throat but neglected to answer.

They were heading along a rough road next to a large field of maize. Up in front of them a car was parked with its lights off and driving door wide open. There were two people, standing alongside it.

Nathan slowed down.

“Don’t slow down.”

“I’m not sure if there’s room on this road for two cars.”

“There’s room.”

She was such a bully. A little tyrant. Even so, Nathan slowed down an iota and dipped his lights. They passed — just enough space — and he glanced over at the couple. Lily looked too. She inhaled sharply. She saw Connie and she thought she saw Ronny.

Nathan could only see the man clearly. A tall man. Hairless. The light bounced off his bald head and formed a glossy halo. He was sharp and thin and badly dressed. The woman — much smaller — was almost entirely obscured by his bony shoulders. But the man…

Nathan’s brain didn’t react, or his head, or his tongue or his chest — unlike Lily’s — even his belly failed to respond. Only his heart reacted. It swooped, it tapped, it buckled.

“Are you listening to me?”

His head swivelled. “What?”

“I said next left. Sharp left.”

He turned the car. “Stop!” Lily squealed. “That’s my mother!”

Nathan slammed on the brakes.

There, next to a large, open, wrought-iron fence stood a dark-haired woman holding a torch and a shotgun. Lily carefully placed the box on to the back seat then clambered out and marched up to her. “I saw something at the turn-off,” she said, “we both did.”

Sara was blinking in the glare of the headlights. “The turn-off? Are you certain?”

“Yep.”

“I sent Connie out in the Volvo…”

Lily clucked. “We just passed her, parked up next to the maize.”

Sara switched off her torch. “What was she doing?”

“How should I know?”

“The turn-off…” Sara was perplexed, “that’s some distance.”

She indicated towards Nathan with the gun. Nathan didn’t observe this. He was looking at his own face in the side mirror. Inspecting every niche and nook and cranny of it. Trying to recognize something.