Mark Haddon - The Red House

I bet you don’t really like peace and quiet .

He wasn’t bad at this.

I love it here. You know, the space, the view from up there .

Or from down here . She raised an eyebrow.

They were silent for a while. Then he reached out and put a hand on her thigh. The warmth of her skin under her jeans. They looked at the hand, like a bird they didn’t want to scare away. He turned and kissed her. She tasted so good. She put her hand on his chest but he couldn’t stop because sometimes girls pretended they didn’t want to and it was so hard to turn back. His hand was on one of her breasts. But he smelt faintly of sweat and he was pushing his tongue into her mouth and she was surprised by how strong he was. She grabbed one of his fingers and bent it back. Just fucking stop, OK?

He sat back. Sorry .

Christ .

I got carried away .

I noticed .

They sat beside one another, saying nothing. A helicopter buzzed over Black Hill like a housefly. The taste of her mouth. He still had an erection. Melissa got down off the wall. Anyway. Things to do. People to see . She walked off towards the door carrying her book and Alex had absolutely no idea what to think.

♦

There was a random collection of Victorian engravings in the house, purchased as a job lot from the dump-bin of a gallery-cum-junkshop in Gloucester. The North Gable of Whitby Abbey, a dog baiting a bear, Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, the Brampton hunt at full pelt, a baroque faux-temple of indeterminate location, Mount Serbál from Wády Feirán…

♦

Louisa slotted her iPhone into the dock and pressed play . She squeezed the handles of the tin opener and the sharp little wheel popped through the metal lid. U2. ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’. She poured the beans into the colander and rinsed off the gluey purple juice. There was no food processor so she used the potato masher, banging it on the rim when the holes became clogged. It made her think of her mother in the kitchen, beef dripping and hand-mixers. What are you doing?

I’m selecting a snack , said Benjy. He loved standing in the golden light and the cold air that poured out of the fridge with its treasure hoard of food.

Well, if you could select quickly I would be really grateful .

He selected and shut the fridge door. That thump and tinkle. Then he was gone. The pepper grinder was empty so she took the little plastic tub off the shelf, ridges round the lid like a fat white coin. She took it off and smelt the contents. Absolutely nothing. Like house dust.

Benjy walked into the dining room, peeling back the little plastic cover then licking the yoghurty patch on his trousers where it had spilt. He put the pot to one side and then folded a sheet of A4 paper into eight so that it formed a little book. He took out the pen that wrote in eight colours. It would be called A Hundred Horrible Ways to Die and it would include torture and killing but not cancer. But Mum was standing beside him. Who said you could have that yoghurt, young man?

Auntie Louisa did .

Is that a lie?

Only slightly .

Now the suitors waited for evening to come by entertaining themselves with dances and happy songs… But Richard was falling asleep.

♦

To be honest , said Angela, it’s not just the Richard thing .

Go on .

It’s Karen’s birthday on Thursday . She levered a pistachio shell open.

Wasn’t that in February?

Not the day she died. The day she was meant to be born .

What do you mean, the day she was meant to be born?

5 thMay. It was my due date .

You’ve never talked about this before .

She’d cracked a nail. I think I might be going a little crazy .

♦

Sayid follows the twisted metal cable into the jungle. Marimba and harp, the sky a scattered blue jigsaw in the canopy, spiderweb glimmer at ankle height. He crouches and sees the single tripwire. High dissonant violins. He steps carefully over. The whip-slither of a rope snapping tight as a sharpened stake is fired into his thigh. He screams, his legs are yanked from under him and he’s hoisted like a pig for slaughter.

Alex fast-forwards through the beach section because he needs dramatic tension to stop himself thinking about Melissa. Over the last year he has become something of a film buff. Two, maybe three full-length features every shift at Moving Pictures, just a weather eye on the screen during the busy times. Best of all he likes TV box sets. Lost, 24, Battlestar Galactica . The consistency mostly. You enjoyed episode 3? You’ll probably enjoy episode 4. Less hassle all round.

Night-time. Sayid is lying on the ground. The blur of semi-consciousness. Someone approaches wearing military fatigues. Moonlight on a jagged knife. Sayid’s eye fills the screen, then flickers, then closes.

♦

I poured myself another glass of the Monbazillac. As I raised it to my lips something moved in the darkened hallway. Was it the white shoe? My heart hammered, the stimulus rushing through my sensory cortex and hypothalamus to the brainstem, flooding my body with adrenaline. I walked over and found that my coat had slipped off its hook. I breathed deeply trying to slow my racing pulse. Fight or flight, the loyal guard dog that has sat by our side for a million years, alerting us to every sign of danger. But how could one fight an imaginary threat? How could one flee the pictures in one’s head? As Hecht had written in his article for Nature, we had tamed the outside world but not the weapons we possessed for dealing with it…

Melissa put the soggy paperback face down on the edge of the bath, the pages turning slowly into a great damp ruff. Avison would ask Michelle how they’d been bullying her. What was she going to say? She couldn’t show him the picture, could she. But if the police were involved they’d look at everything. Shit. She’d always managed to tread the line. You could smoke as long as you did A Midsummer Night’s Dream . You could skip the odd class as long as you got the grades. But if she got expelled Dad would go fucking ballistic. Goodbye allowance for starters. She didn’t even want to think what shitty school she’d end up going to.

There was a print of a robin above the toilet and an air freshener in a crappy pink holster thing on the side of the cistern. Alex groping her. God, she hated this place.

♦

Benjy had a special dispensation to play his Nintendo at the table because he was bored of grown-up talk. Daisy tried to prise him away by asking him about school but he wanted to talk about his ongoing fantasy in which Mrs Wallis killed and ate children in her class which Daisy found tiresome and distasteful so she admitted defeat. She tried talking to Alex but he kept stealing glances at Melissa who was studiously ignoring him. She felt oddly protective and wanted to apologise for her brother’s behaviour though she was pretty sure it was Alex who’d come off worst. She stared at her willow-patterned plate. She must have seen the picture a thousand times but she’d never really looked at it, the ship, the temple garden, the figures on the bridge. What was happening?

Mum and Dad were sitting at opposite corners of the table. Why didn’t they love each other? It was easier being here with Louisa and Richard and Melissa who acted as a kind of padding. At home the temperature was always a little cooler when the two of them were together. She’d been at Bella’s house one day when she was eleven. Bella’s father slipped an arm round her mum’s waist and kissed her for way too long. Daisy was horrified at first, then she realised and it made her sad.