Ханиф Курейши - Best British Short Stories 2020

1 pair white diamante studded slingbacks size 6 w/labels

14 ornamental birdcages

3 gold-effect flower pedestals

150 satin-look polyester dusky pink chair covers (packs of 10. Sealed.)…

Each unit is a harvest and a grave. Wheat and tares together sown. All is safely gathered in, ere the winter sales begin.

1 metal rack storage system cont. asstd. vintage board games, jigsaw puzzles of world landmarks and countryside scenes and a Chemcraft chemistry set circa 1950

1 bisque porcelain doll – name tag ‘Elise’ – w/real blonde hair, wax arms and legs

3 medium boxes cont. Dinky toys. Varied condition 1935–1976

1 fruit crate cont. Gainsborough pink rose-pattern tea set. Missing sugar bowl

1 Willow Pattern serving platter. Circa 1980

1 tissue-wrapped monkey with cymbals. Batteries missing

1 Sotheby’s auction catalogue…

And this is where it will begin. In UNIT 322. You have no way of knowing. How can you? About the chemicals in the Chemcraft set. Their shelf life. Their instability. The vial within the box that has, over the years, been eroding to become hair thin, until it will finally crack. The solution will bleed from it and react instantly, flickering a livid blue flame. How fragile it all is, really, when you think about it.

The flame will shiver through the tinder-like chemistry box and caress the corner of the auction catalogue. It is all so dry. We pride ourselves on our anti-damp technology! See how the pages will arch and splay, touching onto the tips of Elise’s real hair, licking across her fine features, the glaze crackling. See how her hands will melt to flippers. It will drip drip onto the Dinky cars like fat oily rain as the heat rises and the leaden chassis will soften and soon they will run and form mercurial pools on the Willow Pattern platter. Flames will dance across this, hungry for the synthetic furred monkey, where the heat will spread through the mechanism, setting spasms in the springs and he will bang his cymbals frantically.

The heat will lean whispering against the unit walls, and the laced hem of the bridal gown in UNIT 323 will warm and soften. The bodice will crackle to life, beads popping, the plastic boning melting. The flame will flit up the polyester lining and char the garter suspended secretly from the hanger…

Flyers will burst from their box and spin to the ground like blackening sycamore seeds…

Bottles and tins will explode, Rioja mulled to volcanic anger hitting the ceiling, baked beans firing a tattoo against the corrugated walls…

The mahogany bureau will creak, the joints warping. A secret drawer will spring open and a small twist of paper will burst out. A photo? A love letter? A threat? A promise? It will be sucked up by the heat haze and disintegrate into skin-thin fragments…

Leather coats will raise their leather arms in the blast of the fire. The duffels will dance and pop their collars. And finally the sprinkler will start, the fine mist vaporising. And, of course, it will be far too late.

The sprinkler system will shower the unicorn chairs that have sprung from their bags into angular forms. The gas bottle will bulge. It will vibrate and the valve will hiss. The gauge arrow will melt in the moment immediately before the explosion.

And so later… much later… what do you think they will do?

Well, you have no way to tell.

But you secretly hope that they will come with their fine sieves, soft brushes and sifting trays to salvage fragments from between the ghosts of buckled corrugated walls. That they will catalogue the remnants and display them on soft velvet cushions behind glass in the city centre museum. Come see, thankful people, Come! Scraps of smutted lace, a tattered label clinging to a curved shard of wine bottle, the charred bones of a folding chair, one warped miniature cymbal… Sticky-fingered children will glance at them on their way to the gift shop, where they will pester their parents for erasers and pencils and snow globes decorated with the SelfStore4U logo. And nostalgic, misty-eyed parents will dig out their wallets.

Vanessa couldn’t believe her luck when Reggie asked her out. I’ll treat you to a Nando’s, he said.

He drove her to the West End in a silver Volkswagen Golf GTi. Vanessa didn’t dare ask where he’d got it. They abandoned the car down a side street off Charing Cross Road and ran laughing towards Trafalgar Square.

Reggie scrambled up the nearest stone plinth, pulling Vanessa up behind him until they were sitting opposite each other on one of the monumental bronze lions. Vanessa watched Reggie pull a spliff out of his pocket. He lit it, took a drag, and passed it to her. She inhaled and then breathed out as slowly and as nonchalantly as she could. She didn’t want to cough in case Reggie laughed at her. The air around them was herby, sickly sweet.

We should get married, Reggie said.

You’d have to ask me first, said Vanessa.

How many kids should we have?

Two. A girl and a boy.

In Nando’s, Reggie told Vanessa all about himself and Vanessa listened, nodded and smiled. The taste of peri-peri chicken, greasy fries, and the fizz of ice-cold Coke in her mouth was bliss. Reggie realised he’d forgotten his wallet at home so Vanessa paid.

They caught the N29 bus home, and when they got off at the last stop Reggie said, I’ll call you. And Vanessa thought but did not say, You haven’t got my number.

Two weeks later, Vanessa was out shopping with her mum when she noticed a boy and girl walking down the opposite side of the High Street. Vanessa couldn’t help but notice the way the girl’s belly strained against her T-shirt, protruding so much that she thought it might burst through the fabric, exposing its thin skin and thready veins to the world. The boy held the girl’s hand tightly. He was almost pulling her along.

Vanessa’s mum asked, Who are you staring at? And Vanessa replied, No-one.

You’ve been looking at the email for hours and hours, the same email. Or have hours joined together to create a day and in turn days added one after another to make a week, a fortnight, a month? You find it scary to think that. So look away from the screen. Turn your head and gaze around the room. Get up out of your chair. Tell yourself to get up. OK, flatten your feet on the floor under your desk. Feel the pressure in your arches, every wriggle of your toes. Concentrate and the rest will follow. Or don’t think at all and your muscles will act instinctively. Part of a chain reaction. Or perhaps not. Keep still, keep still, don’t move. You’re fuddled. Keep repeating yourself, it’s funny how quickly it all becomes true. Stay still. Concentrate.

If you start at the beginning, surely you’ll make sense of this. You will work out what is happening. You will work out why you feel this way. You can remember when the first email came. You were having coffee with… Maria? Somewhere down the road. Somewhere no more than one hundred steps from here. You’re faint and exhausted. Sweating. You don’t believe the clock in the bottom corner of your computer screen. But this is your room, your familiar room, you know everything in it, all your trinkets and non-precious objects, it’s your room, you’re repeating yourself now. Isn’t that meant to be comforting, isn’t that a way of reinforcing your sense of self in your surroundings if you just go on repeating this really isn’t, this really isn’t good for you. Keep saying it anyway. This is your room.