Sue Townsend - The Woman who Went to Bed for a Year

Brianne was handcuffed, then Brian Junior. They were told to step over the splintered door, sit on the bed and keep quiet. Brian Junior could not work out who the people in the black overalls and smoked-glass helmets were.

It pained them both to see their computer, laptops, smartphones, cameras, notebooks and MP3 players packed carefully into evidence bags and cardboard boxes.

Brianne said, ‘You must know that we’re only eighteen.’ A woman’s voice said, ‘Yes, and playtime’s over, children. You work for us now So, if you wouldn’t mind removing your underwear and spreading your legs.’

When the twins’ orifices had been thoroughly examined, and they had been put into white forensic suits, they were led away. The other students in the block had been told to stay in their rooms and keep the main entrance clear.

Two people carriers with blacked-out windows waited for them at the kerb, their engines running. They were not allowed to speak before they got into separate cars, but Brianne communicated to Brian Junior that all would be well, eventually. And as Brian Junior was turned away from her, she shouted, ‘I love you, bro!’

Ho was lying in his own bed, kissing Poppy’s pregnant belly. He spoke to the baby, asking if it was a boy or a girl.

He should have been dissecting the cadaver he had been allocated, a Mrs Iris Bristol. She had donated her body to medical science because she’d spent her funeral money on a 46-inch 3D television. Ho was thinking that he ought to go back to Mrs Bristol and replace her intestines, which were strewn across the dissecting table.

Poppy had sent him a text:

Come at once

He had removed his gown, mask and boots and hurried to Poppy’s side.

She needed money again. She explained why to him, but it was a complicated story and Ho’s English was not top notch. Sometimes he thought the English textbooks he had used in China were a little out of date.

Since he had been in England, he had not heard a single person say, ‘Top hole!’

Poppy smirked at the memory of Brianne and Brian Junior being led away, in silly white suits and handcuffs. She was glad she had made the phone call. The person on the other end had asked her to keep an eye on the rest of Professor Nikitanova’s students, and she’d said delightedly, ‘It would be a pleasure.’

Brian was watching the repeat of Loose Women in room twelve of a Travelodge in a suburb near Leeds. He didn’t know what the Loose Women were talking about. And he had never heard of the orange man with the grotesquely white teeth and sticky black hair. The man was being interviewed about the county where he lived, Essex, but all he could say about this location was, ‘It’s reem. ’

Brian tried to apply formal logic to the problem.

Could he decode it given the paucity of the information?

Earlier, he had stopped off at a retail park and bought a blue paisley one hundred per cent acetate dressing gown. He had debated with himself whether or not to buy some matching slippers. He looked around for some assistance. He needed a woman’s point of view He had approached a young woman in Marks & Spencer’s uniform who was newly returned after five weeks of sick leave due to stress.

He said, ‘I’m a mere man…

What Kerry, in her nervous state, heard was, ‘I’m a merman.’ She tried to remember what a merman was, then it came to her – a merman was a mermaid’s partner.

Brian continued, ‘And as a hapless male, I’d like some advice. I have a lady friend who’s more or less your age. Can you tell me what’s cool on the street regarding dressing gowns and slippers?’

When Kerry didn’t answer, he prompted, ‘Would a dressing gown and slippers be considered sophisticated bedroom wear or, as the kids say, “a turn-off”?’

Kerry, who was only passing through men’s shoes on her way to her tea break, hesitated. Her inability to make a decision had been a large part of her problem. She stammered, ‘I don’t know I can’t help you.’ Then she fled, knocking into a male mannequin dressed in discounted Late Sun pastel beachwear.

Brian was disgusted. M &S were féted for the quality of their shop assistants.

He had taken his dressing gown and slippers to the Food Hall where he bought a large baguette, French butter, cheese and a bottle of cava. Champagne was wasted on a young girl, he thought. On an impulse, he had grabbed a bag of multi-coloured lollipops. As he stood in the queue he was in a state of mild sexual arousal. He was looking forward to his early evening assignation.

He had been careful over the summer – each time they had met in a different hotel. Brian hadn’t seen Poppy since their last meeting, at the Palace Hotel in Leeds.

She had said then, ‘My love for you is infinite, Brian.’ Brian had been tempted to correct her use of ‘infinite’, but instead had said, ‘I love you more than there are stars in the sky.’

They had been lying together, looking up at a Victorian brass light fitting which Poppy was afraid might fall from its mountings and kill them both. She wouldn’t want to be found all mashed up with an old fat bloke who was nearly a pensioner.

She had placed his free hand on her belly and said, ‘Bri, we’re going to have a baby.’

Brian was not keen on babies. After the twins were born, he had volunteered to work in Australia but had been turned down on the grounds that he was now ‘a family man’.

After a tiny pause, he had said, ‘How marvellous.’

She could tell he didn’t want the baby. She didn’t want Brian either. But whoever had said life was just a bowl of cherries had forgotten that inside each cherry was a hard stone, waiting to catch the unwary, resulting in a chipped tooth, a choking fit, slipping and falling.

All caused by those innocuous little cherry stones.

Now there was a gentle knock at the door. Brian leapt to his feet, pulled Eva’s comb through his beard and opened the door.

Poppy said, ‘What took you so long?’ She was wearing an orange poppy in her hair, and a flower-sprigged prom dress with Mary Jane shoes. She was not wearing her new piercings, and she had washed her face clean of make-up.

When Brian opened the door she was dismayed to see that he was in an old git’s dressing gown and the type of slippers that cartoonists draw He was also carrying a mug of Horlicks, the smell of which made Poppy heave. What Poppy saw when the door opened was the grandfather illustration in her Heidi book. Brian’s beard hadn’t turned white yet, but it would not be long. His ankles looked so frail and pasty in the big slippers that she was surprised they could hold him up without snapping. He pulled her inside as though he were taking delivery of Semtex.

Brian said, ‘Darling, you look so sweet, so charming, so young.’

Poppy sat on the end of the bed with her little finger crooked in the side of her mouth.

‘In other circumstances she would have looked gormless,’ thought Brian. But this was his Poppy, the mercurial child/woman whose presence he craved. He turned on the MP3 player that he had dug out of a drawer at home for the occasion. He searched the short playlist, found Songs for Swingin’ Lovers, selected ‘You Make Me Feel So Young’ and pressed play.

‘Ugh!’ thought Poppy. ‘More of that dead bloke, Frank Sinatra.’

When Poppy went into the bathroom, Brian lay on the bed and arranged the dressing gown so that his pale upper thighs were exposed. Because his feet had hard skin and corns, he kept his slippers on.

When she came out of the bathroom, she was naked apart from the flower in her hair. Before she turned the light off, her slightly swollen belly was in profile.