‘Tuesday?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tuesday this week?’
‘Two days ago, yes.’
‘Oh.’
Robert stared at the girl, whose eyes were wide and bewildered. He felt as if he was going to start crying. Or like he was going to faint. Or maybe run out into the street, rip his shirt off and scream into the sky.
Instead he quietly said ‘thank you’ and left.
In a daze, he walked back down the street towards the station. In a daze, he passed through the ticket barrier. The train was delayed for thirty-five minutes at Kings Cross and he didn’t notice. He stood outside his front door for three minutes and forty-one seconds before opening it. He had no idea what he would say when he went inside. He had no idea what he was supposed to do now.
Cassie.
‘HEY,’ SAID A VOICE CLOSE to Cassie’s head.
She was standing with her eyes closed, trying to ignore the stares. Trying to be somewhere else.
There was a security guard standing in front of her when she opened her eyes, one of the younger ones.
‘Hey,’ he said again. ‘Hi.’
Cassie looked at him and didn’t reply.
‘I was just wondering if you wanted me to find those screens again,’ the security guard, Jasper, according to his name tag, went on.
‘What?’ said Cassie.
‘The other day you had screens. To give you a bit of privacy. Do you want me to get them back for you?’
‘Oh,’ said Cassie. ‘I don’t know. No, I think. They make me feel like I’m in a hospital or something. I didn’t like them.’
‘Fair enough. I’m Jasper, by the way. You give me a shout if you need anything.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You just give me a shout.’
Jasper walked off slowly, leaving Cassie alone, or as alone as she could be. There were still debarking passengers to stare at her, and flight attendants to walk past her a little too close, saying ‘My god, she’s still here.’
There was still her mother, dozing quietly a few metres away.
There were lots of people. There was no Floss.
There was no Floss, there was no Cassie.
Delia.
DELIA WALKED QUICKLY THROUGH THE park until she found an empty bench. With a gasp of relief, she collapsed onto it, reminding herself to just sit, and not to curl up into the foetal position. She closed her eyes and let the sun shine onto her face and it was all she could do not to moan aloud in a mix of pleasure and panic.
She stayed there for longer than she could tell, letting her fear be stilled by her inactivity. She’d told her mother she’d be out for two hours at most. She’d taken the tube and got out two blocks from the square she was aiming for. It had taken her an hour and a half to find it.
She stayed still.
When she opened her eyes she found she was no longer alone on the bench. A man was sitting at the other end and he was looking at her. She felt a rising tide of embarrassment and reached for her bag to go, but before she stood the man spoke.
‘How do you do that?’
‘What?’
‘Sorry. I was staring. Rude. You just looked so relaxed. I don’t think I know how to do that.’
‘How to look relaxed? It’s easy. You don’t even have to actually be relaxed, as it turns out.’
‘You mean, you’re not?’
‘Oh, Christ.’ Delia laughed. ‘Not at all. I’m terrified.’
‘Of what?’
‘That I won’t be able to find my way home, mainly.’
‘Oh, well. It’s a scary city if you haven’t lived here for that long.’
‘I’ve lived here my entire life. I’ve lived in the same house since I was born. I just wandered around this area for almost two hours trying to get here, to get to a park I’ve known for as long as I can remember, and I’m terrified beyond belief that when I try to leave I’ll become irrevocably lost. That I’ll never find my way home again. That I’ll die, broken and alone, with no idea where I even am.’
‘Today?’
‘Well, eventually, you know.’
‘Oh.’
‘Sorry. I’m not crazy.’ She paused. ‘Oh god, I am. I am crazy. That’s the only explanation for what’s happened.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘I, well, I’ve just lost my sense of direction. Completely.’
‘Oh.’
‘You don’t think it’s that big a thing. But that’s just because you’ve no idea. Yesterday I left my house. I walked around the corner, around one corner, and I couldn’t find my way back. To my own house. How can that happen? I stood there for about half an hour trying to figure it out and then this old man came up looking for help and he was so sad and polite and I just freaked out at him completely and ran away. The wrong way, as it turned out. Was gone for hours, my mother was terrified, it was a disaster.’
‘You live with your mother?’
‘Yeah, well. I’m her carer, I suppose.’
‘Why does your mother need a carer?’
‘She was in an accident.’ Delia said. She paused for a moment before adding, ‘Sometimes I suspect she doesn’t need one, really. But she thinks she does, and the compensation allowed for one, so.’
‘What happened?’
‘She was hit by a van. She was hit by a Fortnum and Mason’s van.’
‘Wow.’
‘I know.’
‘So you both live off that?’
‘We have done for five years. It was a lot. It was a lot of money. Although, it’s amazing how much she can spend now she doesn’t have to worry about it. I don’t think she has any idea how much she goes through so quickly. Mind you, if she did know, it would mean nothing, it would bear no relation to how much we have to live on. It’s weird, really, because until the accident she must have been very aware of that kind of thing. She raised me alone, so of course she was. Then the accident and she’s all, ‘Oh, OK, your job now,’ and simultaneously stops caring about or understanding life’s minutiae. Oh god, this is boring. Why haven’t you stopped me going on?’
‘I’ve been asking you.’
‘Oh right. Sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I’m Anthony, by the way.’
‘I’m Delia. It’s nice to meet you. You’re not English.’
‘I am actually. I haven’t lived here since I was eighteen, though, so it’s not surprising I don’t quite have the accent. I went to New Zealand for a year, and then just stayed. I moved back with my son about six months ago.’
‘With your son? Just the two of you?’
‘Yeah. Just me and Jake.’
Delia bit her lip and looked down. She didn’t say anything.
‘Look, I have to go,’ said Anthony. ‘Do you come here a lot?’
‘Not really,’ said Delia. ‘And if I wanted to, there’s no guarantee I’d find my way back again.’
‘Oh. Well, it was nice to meet you.’
Delia didn’t watch him as he left. She stayed sitting on her bench for a couple of minutes then, suddenly restless, picked up her bag and headed towards the water.
After taking almost three hours to get home, she wasn’t surprised to find her mother a little frantic.
‘We’ve no tea,’ she said as Delia entered. ‘I need a cup of tea and I thought you said you’d put it somewhere reachable, but the box was empty.’
‘There’s a shop on the corner, Mum. Did you not think of popping down to get some?’
There was a dark pause.
‘You know I can’t do that. Why would you say something like that?’
‘It’s not that far. There are no steps on the way.’
‘Well, anyway, you can go now, can’t you?’
‘I …’ started Delia. ‘It’s just, it might take me a while.’
‘Why? It’s just on the corner, you said so yourself.’
‘Fine. Fine. See you soon.’
Back outside the front door, Delia concentrated, trying to pin dow
n the route to the shop in her mind. She stepped out to the footpath, and turned right. And wrong.
Mrs Featherby.
THERE IS NO PREPARING A person for having someone call their attention by shouting and rattling the thick plastic that stands in place of an erstwhile front wall. Mrs Featherby sighed as she remembered the elegant chime of the doorbell that had been in the middle of the door that had been in the middle of the wall, or the quiet rat-a-tat of the knocker beneath it. She thought wistfully of how rarely she’d heard either of them used, and sighed again.
Since the disappearance of her wall, the plastic had been pounded at least four times every day. While Mrs Featherby was willing to concede that one or two of the interferences were kindly meant, most were simply scandalised curiosity, ineffectively hidden. Certainly, the two teenage girls with the uncomfortably tight trousers had been much more agog than was generally acceptable for a social call. Then there was the middle-aged man who had seemed immune to Mrs Featherby’s strongest hints that he should leave. Mrs Featherby had had to use all her skills of deception and evasion, which had been superfluous for years. Later, she reflected that it had actually been rather nice to try them out again, despite the inconvenience of having to.
The years she’d spent crafting a reputation for being reclusive seemed entirely wasted. One simply cannot be a believable recluse when one is cursed with a transparent wall.
The pungent man who claimed to be from next door had been talking about his trouble with his third cat for nearly a quarter of an hour and Mrs Featherby was struggling to find a polite reason to make him leave. She had never had a pet of any kind, so she was having difficulty empathising with Queen Victoria’s constant need to vomit.
Mrs Featherby had never been able to see the benefit of having a creature in the house that was constantly making demands on you while giving you no reward. You had to do everything: feed, clean, and even, so Mrs Featherby understood, brush teeth. And if they became ill or died you were expected to have an emotional response. It all sounded like an exhausting and ultimately meaningless investment.
The man kept talking, undeterred by how indistinct and noncommittal Mrs Featherby’s responses were. For some reason he used the cat’s name all the time. He never once referred to her as ‘she’. Slowly, as he was repeating the phrase ‘Queen Victoria’, Mrs Featherby became aware of a familiar but long-forgotten feeling trickling through her.
She didn’t think the cat’s name was Queen Victoria. In fact, she wondered if her pungent neighbour even had a third cat.
Mrs Featherby was distracted by this thought, distracted enough to stop looking for a way to extricate herself from the conversation without breaching the dictates of etiquette. Distracted enough to not notice the pungent man was grinding to a halt.
However, it did not lessen her relief to have him gone. He’d been the fourth unwanted visitor that day and irritation was high.
The temptation was, of course, to remain as far from the front of her house and the attendant inquisition as possible, but that would be deeply unsatisfying. To allow such a mischance to rule her behaviour, Mrs Featherby had decided, would be allowing circumstance to have more control than choice. She had always taken her afternoon tea in the sitting room. She had always read in the wing chair by the fireplace and always done her sewing by the window. What was the use of a sitting room in which she could not sit?
This was the question she put to the builder the third time she called him to check on his progress.
‘Right,’ Bruno said. ‘Yep, I understand that. Naturally. But if you’ll remember, Mrs F, I did suggest that you might like to find somewhere else to stay.’
‘That would be a far more inconvenient thing for me to do, I’m afraid. All I wish to ascertain is how much longer I am going to have to exist in this state of constant interruption.’
‘You want to know when I’ll be able to fix your wall?’
‘I wish to know when you’ll be able to fix my wall.’
‘Well, the good news is, I’ve found a place I can source matching bricks.’
‘That is excellent news.’
‘Yes, well. It is actually, they weren’t that easy to track down.’
‘Believe me, you have my full respect for having done so.’
‘Sure. Cheers for that. Thing is, though, they’re not that common, those bricks, anymore. There’s not a high demand, see, so the supplier I’ve managed to find, doesn’t carry large numbers of them as a matter of course. So he can get them in for me, not a problem there, per say, but he’s not sure how long he’ll have to wait. And obviously, I have to wait until he has them. And—’
‘And I, in turn, must wait until they are with you.’
‘Yeah.’
Mrs Featherby sighed again, quietly.
‘What’s the biggest hassle, there, Mrs F? Is it getting too cold? Or is the plastic too noisy? I can throw up another layer, try and insulate it better. See if there’s a way I can weight it down so it doesn’t move as much, that kind of thing.’
‘Oh, well, if you could, I’m sure that would be lovely. There’s not much you can do to stop the people, I’m afraid.’
‘The people?’
‘Yes. They will insist on trying to talk to me. Asking all kinds of impertinent questions about what’s going on. They seem to have forgotten that a person in their house is still in private domicile, even if the walls are made of plastic.’
‘Is it so bad? Talking to people?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Conversation, love. Doesn’t kill you.’
‘You will let me know, won’t you? When you’ll be able to start work?’
‘Oh, course, course. Soon as poss, Mrs F.’
Mrs Featherby stood for a moment after the phone call. She didn’t want to go back through to the front of the house, but there was knitting to be done, and there was only one place she was happy to do it.
Robert.
ROBERT STOOD JUST INSIDE THE front door listening to Mara and Bonny in the kitchen. They were reading a story but stopping to giggle too much for him to be able to tell what it was. After a few minutes he realised he’d left the door open behind him. At the sound of it closing, Mara came through.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘What are you doing home? Is everything OK?’
‘Um, I kind of lost my job.’
‘What do you mean? You were fired? What for?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so. I mean it would be a pretty elaborate way of firing someone. And it would cost, just, untold millions. And a lot of people. And time. The logistics of the thing would be staggering and I’m pretty sure it’d be hard to get council permission. And to get it done in the time it took, well, that would be absurd. Unless there’s more going on than we’re aware of. Like maybe they can actually freeze time or something.’
‘They?’ said Mara. ‘What are you talking about?’
Robert took a deep breath and tried to look his sanest. ‘I can’t find my job. I’ve just lost it.’
‘You’ve lost it.’
‘Yep. I can’t find it.’
‘Rob, I am 100 per cent confused right now.’
‘Oh god, me too.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘OK, so, yesterday I went to work, at least I tried to, but it wasn’t there. So I freaked out, you know, and spent the whole day just wandering around until it occurred to me to come home. And then there was the whole debacle about Bonny and by the end of that I just thought that maybe I’d made it up, you know, had a weird daydream on the tube. But then this morning, the same thing. I went to work, the same place I’ve been going for the last several years, and nothing.’
‘You mean, what, the building’s fallen down?’
‘No. I mean it’s not there. There’s no gap, there’s nothing new in its place, it’s just not there.’
‘OK. You understand that there’s no way this can have actually happened, right?’
‘Oh, I know. This is
very against the laws of physics.’
‘Bloody hell. Bloody hell. I just … I don’t … Can you show me?’
Forty minutes later the three of them were stood on the street where Robert used to work.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Mara. ‘How …? What …? Let’s go for ice cream.’
‘You’re the best girl in the world.’
‘I am aware of it.’ Mara shot Robert an appraising look before turning and walking down the street with Bonny. He looked back at where his building should be one more time before following after them.
Cassie.
ALMOST TWO WEEKS AFTER CASSIE’S roots appeared, her mother called in an arborist. She’d tried a podiatrist first, who said that as far as he could see, the complaint wasn’t specifically related to Cassie’s feet, although it had started there. He told them he could rule out verrucae and suggested they ask someone else. The next person to examine Cassie was a gynaecologist, which Cassie didn’t understand. As far as she could tell, the fact that she was turning into a tree was nothing to do with the fact that she was female, but her mother insisted they try. The last medical professional was a surgeon, whose opinion was that the safest bet would be to amputate Cassie’s feet just below the knee, although she did admit that she couldn’t guarantee that the bark wouldn’t simply reappear over the stumps. Cassie had thought her mother might punch her.
All any of the doctors were willing to categorically state was that Cassie’s feet had become distinctly plant-based. And were continuing to do so, for the bark was spreading. After one day it had reached halfway up her feet, to the spot where two or three long blonde hairs were wont to grow. After two days it was cresting around the pairs of bumps on either side of her ankles. Cassie had watched it for hours, certain that at this rate of growth she should be able to detect movement, but she never could. After two weeks it was approaching her knees.
The arborist was a squat woman in her fifties. She wore a strange hodgepodge of clothes that seemed specifically designed to not match. Her long, flyaway hair was piled up on her head and topped with a knitted hat that a five-year-old child might have worn in stripes of purple and orange. She wore a shirt, a couple of sizes too big, which had once been smart and had a pinstripe running through it, but that had evidently been much worn. It was clear that a lot of the wearing had been done in a garden or forest or glade. Over that was a military jacket with several medals pinned to the lapel. Her feet were besandalled and her trousers were flared.
Of Things Gone Astray Page 6
