The Casual Electrocution of Strangers by Literary Salmon

IN PRAISE OF THE COLLECTION

‘Like a modern, sassy version of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected, the stories in this collection are highly original, enjoyable and unpredictable. There’s beautiful writing here, and a sense of strangeness which lingers long after you’ve finished reading.’ - Jonathan Taylor (author) ‘Work that really does electrify through well-drawn characters, sparky prose and, in some cases, by being so cryptic they leave you wondering what really happened long after the story finishes.’ - Amanda Saint (author) ‘As the Word Factory celebrates and encourages the variety of writing styles and narratives that the short story provides, The Casual Electrocution of Strangers showcases these in spades. Who would have thought that one title could ignite such a variety of themes and characters, from cherry pickers to ageing groupies! An electrifying read.’ - Alison Hitchcock (writer and managing editor of The Word Factory) ‘This is a fascinating idea - chuck a provocative title at a bunch of talented writers and see what happens. The stories range from the poignant to the downright weird and if I had anything to do with it, at least one of them would end up in one of those Best Of anthologies in the coming year.’ - Jonathan Pinnock (author) ‘A fizzing current pervades every story, sparking a trail of anguish, loss, thrill and fatality. The brilliant concept of linking their electrifying charge with the sinister undertones of impermanence and spontaneity conveyed by ‘casual’, together with the mysterious connotations of ‘strangers’, has created a compelling collection of skilfully wired tales which sparkle with the effervescence their shared title promises. … Every story takes you away—and takes you by surprise.’ - Joanna Campbell (author) ‘A new anthology is always cause for celebration, but Literary Salmon’s The Casual Electrocution of Strangers is unique from the outset. These stories demonstrate the extraordinary breadth of the creative imagination, twisting and turning that single phrase until it takes on different shapes in different lights, from the whimsical to the sentimental to the macabre. There’s some real talent behind these stories, made all the more exciting by the fact that nobody here is a household name – yet.’ - Dan Coxon (author and editor) ‘A sleek, electric eel of a thing, full of fiction that’s as liable to shock as it is to light up the waters.’ - Ashley Stokes (writer and editor at Unthank Books) ‘Jane Roberts’ sensual, slithery two-page delight alone will mollify even the most voracious of literary appetites. Imbibe away.’ - Tom Vowler (author) ‘One thing my years as an arts editor has introduced me to, is the array of writers who are producing vital work away from what you might call the mainstream world of publishing. Fascinating voices spring up in fascinating projects all across the wider landscape of literature. These projects are diverse, always built on a foundation of unadulterated passion, and often have the distinct advantage of being the work of writers writing for themselves, filling their boots, living out their fantasies, without any care for anything other than truth, craft and excellence. This collection is one such project, and it is filled with such voices.’ - Gary Raymond (author and editor at Wales Arts Review) ‘Ranging from a problem with cherries, a mother’s desire to do everything right, a boy who plays Ghostbusters, and a dangerous tattoo, these stories dip between the familiar and the speculative. They share only a title, and the ominous sense that nothing in life can ever be taken for granted.’ - Angela Readman (author)

THE CASUAL ELECTROCUTION OF STRANGERS ONE TITLE. 12 STORIES. ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN.

LITERARY SALMON

First published in Great Britain by Literary Salmon 2015 literarysalmon.wordpress.com Copyright © for all stories remains with the authors. This collection copyright © Bernie Deehan, Françoise Harvey and Jane Roberts. All rights reserved. The moral right of the editors and authors has been asserted.

Edited and published by Bernie Deehan, Françoise Harvey and Jane Roberts Cover illustration by Harry Milburn, aka Prints Harry (printsharry.bigcartel.com) Literary Salmon logo design by Kate Townsend

CONTENTS 7 INTRODUCTION

81 LAURA WINDLEY

9 KAREN BALL

REBECCA ROUILLARD

LISA BLOWER

71 JANE ROBERTS

The Casual Electrocution of Strangers

THIRZA CLOUT

ALEXA RADCLIFFE-HART

54 NADIA KINGSLEY

33 BERNIE DEEHAN 38 FRANÇOISE HARVEY 45

ALEC JOHNSON

58 DARREN LEE

ABOUT THE WRITERS

91 WITH THANKS TO... 5

INTRODUCTION

What’s in a title? Quite a lot, apparently.

When a Twitter conversation with Val McDermid threw up a phrase that made us think, ‘That’d be a good name for a book’, we had little idea that we’d end up with the pages you are about to read. That conversation sparked this project. We wondered: What if we asked 12 writers to write a story, all with the same title? What tales would be inspired by those five words? A wide variety, it turns out, with each author’s personality written through them like a stick of rock. And what if we asked the writers to comment on each other’s stories to make them stronger and tighter? Would that be beneficial to the final tales, and would we all learn something from editing another’s work? Of course we would – and we did.

So, dear reader, turn the page and dip your toes into the fresh water as Literary Salmon invites you to explore The Casual Electrocution of Strangers.

What’s in a title? Nothing less than the whole world.

Bernie Deehan, Françoise Harvey, Jane Roberts The Literary Salmon Team

KAREN BALL

‘I

t’s the invention of which I’m most proud,’ said Heath, watching over the other man’s shoulder. The outline of a snake twitched across the tattooist’s bare arm as he dragged the point of a needle across Emma’s skin.

She glanced up at her mentor, blocking out the pain. ‘But what does it do?’ This wasn’t

any ordinary tattoo parlour and this wasn’t any ordinary tattoo. Heath gazed out of the window at the cobbled yard opposite. London motorcycle couriers leant against their vehicles, smoking and chatting. Emma never knew what they carried for The Organisation; she’d been taught not to ask. The professor didn’t bother looking round. ‘It allows for the casual electrocution of strangers,’ he said. Emma felt the tattooist’s hand tighten as he gripped her forearm. ‘What does that even mean?’ The tattooist leant back and flicked a switch, the buzz of the needle falling silent. He wiped a swab over Emma’s inner wrist, smiling despite himself. ‘Not bad,’ he muttered. Heath strode back across the room. All three of them stared at the image that would be with Emma for ever. I didn’t even get to choose. ‘Good job,’ Heath said, shaking the tattooist’s hand. Neither of them extended a hand to Emma. She climbed out of the reclining chair and shrugged on her jacket. ‘You still haven’t explained,’ she said, picking up her bag and draping it across her body. ‘What does it do?’ The tattooist walked away behind a curtain. It was just the two of them now. The professor hesitated. ‘Have you ever heard of je ne sais quoi, Emma?’ ‘Yes, I’ve heard of je ne sais quoi. Charisma. Presence. Magnetism. So what? How does that help me?’ Heath was gathering up his things. An old leather slip case with papers spilling out. He cast a narrow glance at his protégé.

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‘You’ll find out,’ he said. ‘When you’re ready.’ Silently, he left the room. She watched his departing figure stride past the couriers. None of them seemed to notice him. Invisible to the last. Now, she truly was alone. The pad of her thumb stroked the skin above the tattoo. She’d find out when she was ready, Heath had said. But how will I know I’m ready? *** Emma’s spine strained as her back craned over the yacht’s bulwark. A man’s arm pressed against her throat, his breath warm in her ear. ‘Are you ready?’ he asked. ‘For what?’ She squeezed out the question only to feel the pressure on her larynx increase. ‘To die,’ he whispered. The lights from the harbour blurred. She knew he wasn’t kidding. If she didn’t die of asphyxia first, her neck would snap. Trembling, she brought her hands up to grip his wrists. ‘Get off!’ ‘Not until you give it to me.’ His voice was calm. Emma knew he had the strength and stubbornness to carry out his threat. She thought back to her training and allowed her body to slump against the steel railing. She felt the man hesitate and went in – fast. Sinking to the floor of the yacht, she scrambled between his feet. Leapt up behind him. He swivelled round, forearm extended like a baton, and she swiftly ducked beneath his limb. She could hear voices now, drifting up through the warm air. An open door. Party -goers coming up to deck to watch the blood red sunset. No time. She had to end this now. Emma reached out, stroking a finger down his cheek. There – she pressed her tattoo against his skin. She kept her eyes trained on his face and was relieved to see his gaze soften. Laughter billowed out as she gathered the last of her courage and drew him to her. It was a risky manoeuvre – slipped inside her bra strap was the note she’d been passed by a waitress. If the silk of her sleeve shuddered down her skin, he’d be able to… He reached for

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her hand, and pulled it away from his face, gripping so tightly that she gasped in pain. Is this it? Had she misjudged the effect? The man hesitated, and then brought her hand to his lips, kissing the skin. Emma’s sleeve drifted back down the glistening bronze of her arm. He turned her hand over, gazed at her tattoo, then planted another kiss against her wrist. His body seemed to vibrate. ‘Enjoying yourselves?’ asked a voice. Emma didn’t need to turn round to see who was talking. It was the host. The man who’d invited her. The stranger who’d set her up – or almost set her up. ‘A perfect evening,’ she said, pulling away. ‘But I have to go now.’ Her attacker’s fingers weaved between hers, reluctant to let go. He was rendered mute. Their host glanced between them, assessing one face and then the other. Weighing up the odds. Measuring failure. ‘So glad you could join us,’ he said weakly. Emma was already heading towards the jetty. She ignored the call that followed: ‘But, Cinderella! It’s not even midnight!’ Cinderella? She stifled a laugh as she strode past the waitress, who dipped her body in a curtsy. No eye contact. They’d been warned about that. Crossing the boardwalk, Emma realised how lucky she’d been. She’d escaped with her life, even if it had cost her a bruised spine. She’d escaped with something else, too – knowledge. It didn’t take long to make her way back to the hotel room. It took even less time to pack her case. Curtains ballooned at the open patio windows. She stepped out onto the balcony and gazed over the vista. Italy, it turned out, had been easy. Too easy? She pulled the folded piece of paper out from beneath her dress. She didn’t bother reading it. She’d find out tomorrow. ‘Tomorrow,’ she whispered. ‘It happens.’ *** The waitress’s note had told her nothing other than her next destination, 12 hours across the border by train. It had taken years to convince The Organisation how she preferred to travel, but on this occasion Heath relented. ‘It’ll give you chance to practice your skill,’ he said during their Skype conversation in the hotel. ‘Just don’t get reckless. Remember, it’s the casual electrocution of strangers. It only works the first time you meet someone. If you don’t go in quick, you don’t go in at all.’

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Emma gave a thin smile. ‘When am I ever reckless?’ Heath raised his eyebrows, before leaning forwards and terminating the connection. Her mentor shrank to a tiny dot on the screen, then disappeared. ‘Hardly ever,’ she said to the empty room. Once on the train, she’d done as Heath suggested. Shaking hands with strangers, passing over cash, reaching to help someone up the steps. Each time her tattoo came into contact with another person’s flesh, there would be a snap and a fizz. Did they feel it, too? Emma wasn’t sure, but she’d watch as their eyes dilated and then, a moment later, glazed over. For a while, they became putty in her hands. It made no difference if it was a man or a woman. No one was immune. No one? she asked herself, as she stepped onto the concourse. The answer could cost Emma her life. Now, a domed palace roof glided past the window. As the train eased into the station, she retrieved her case from the luggage rack. Soon, she was descending the steps. ‘Welcome to Bucharest,’ said a woman, stepping forwards. They shook hands, the woman’s long fingers grazing Emma’s wrist. She watched as something passed over her companion’s face. A softening of the edges. This power could be dangerous, too. She didn’t need her colleagues getting careless. She gripped the woman’s shoulder, her fingers digging in cruelly. The woman winced and shook her off, staring in confusion and anger. ‘If you’d … come this way?’ She marched off across the concourse and Emma followed her past a newspaper stand. ‘Vogue?’ offered the stallholder, holding out the glossy fashion pages. ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ Emma quickened her pace. Beyond the stone archway ahead, a taxi door stood open, the dim interior waiting to embrace her. Ducking her head, she plunged into darkness. *** They’d left the other woman back at the station. Emma didn’t want to be slowed down. The taxi swerved between narrow streets, her driver inscrutable. He seemed to know where

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he was going, and Emma had to trust that he was part of The Organisation’s network. As he screeched to a halt besides a tall, white building, she passed him cash and asked for a receipt – her Bulgarian flawless. The man passed back a piece of paper. As her tattoo skated across his arm, his shoulders relaxed and he sank deeper into his seat. ‘What should I look out for?’ she asked quickly, whilst he was in her trance. She needed every extra bit of help she could get, going in to this. Heath had warned her how high the stakes were. ‘He’s a psychopath,’ the driver said in a voice slightly blurred at the edges. His eyes met Emma’s in the rear view mirror. It was like looking into the face of a ghost. ‘You can never tell when he’s lying.’ Emma felt a cold stone in the pit of her stomach. Detecting fakery – it had been the one weak spot in her training. Heath had told her, without a flicker of sympathy, that growing up as an orphan had irretrievably damaged her ability to read other people. Not that she’d ever asked for sympathy. ‘There’s no way of knowing?’ she asked. The taxi driver gave a grim smile. ‘Only those who know him, can tell.’ He suddenly shook himself and gripped the wheel. He turned the engine back on; Emma’s signal to leave. As she clambered out he wound down the window and leant an elbow on the frame. ‘Good luck,’ he said, in a voice drained of hope. The taxi pulled away, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake. Emma stepped out of the pool of light cast by a street lamp and gazed up at the rows of windows. She turned over the receipt in her hand. On the back was scrawled a code beside the taxi company’s motif: a diamond. The code told her she’d arrived at the home of one of Russia’s most notorious gang leaders. Not that he’d appreciate being called a criminal – few of them did. Diplomat, she reminded herself. Diplomat Latvinov. A man known for brokering impossible deals with the United States. A man known as a liar. As for the diamond? She recognised it instantly. The Orloff. 190 carats. Presidents could be bought for less. The gem lived in Moscow’s Diamond Treasury. Emma looked up at the building. Not any more.

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This was one detail Heath hadn’t told her. *** It didn’t take her long to locate a side entrance, moving beneath the shadows of plane trees. The parquet floor echoed beneath her feet, high ceilings sending the noise reverberating back down. There wasn’t another human being in her sight line and this made Emma nervous. Her tattoo counted for nothing right now. She approached the white marble stairs and ducked behind them to find what she’d hoped would be there. A hidden servants’ door, leading to the guts of the building. Perfect. She slipped through the door and gazed down the flag-stone corridor. To her right was another, smaller wooden door leading – she guessed – to a secret staircase. If she took that, she’d be vulnerable. Small, claustrophobic spaces weren’t her friend. But if she walked down the corridor… Her back would be exposed to attackers. Latvinov was known for his weapons collection and Emma had seen the scars that daggers left. She shuddered, and ducked into the doorway. Immediately, the air closed around her. She concentrated on slowing her heartbeat and stayed still, listening for noises. There! People talking above her head. She crept up the winding stairs, trying to memorise each creak and groan, counting steps, her head bent beneath the low ceiling. Her hand slipped into the secret pocket tucked into the seam of her skirt. A thumb stroked the familiar and deadly flick knife, its mechanism freshly oiled. Slam! She was thrown back against the whitewashed wall by a slender foot kicking into her sternum. She gasped painfully for breath and reached out for her attacker, but her fingers closed over thin air. Whoever it was, they were already running up the stairs. A door slammed open. A shouted warning. The voices stopped. As she straightened up, another set of hands looped beneath her armpits so that suddenly she was dangling. She felt pathetic, kicking and struggling. She twisted her head to one side and sunk her teeth into a forearm covered with snake scales. Traitor!

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‘Stop fighting, you little fool,’ hissed the man who’d scarred her for life. A memory flashed behind her eyes – the shadow of long legs, just beyond the curtain. So, that’s why Heath wouldn’t tell me anything back then. Her tattoo wouldn’t work; she already knew this man. But he didn’t know her – not half as much as he thought he did. He suddenly dropped her and shoved her up the steps, causing her to stumble. His fist grasped a knot of hair and pulled her head back, the pain sending tears springing in her eyes. ‘Don’t fight me, girl,’ he said, coming alongside to take her arm. Now, they could see each other. She was right; it was the tattooist. He grinned. ‘You’re no better than any other woman I’ve met.’ He turned her arm over to expose the tattoo. ‘Even with this.’ Great, Emma thought dully. Just what I need. Still, misogyny had its uses. She didn’t mind being under estimated. Not always. She bowed her head, and allowed herself to be led up the stairs… *** I’m dead. That was the first thought that occurred to her. The second? Unless he’s never laid eyes on me before… She’d noticed it instantly. In the curve of his lip, the cowlick in his hair that made him look oddly vulnerable. She closed her eyes against the distant memory. The dog eared photograph that had been tucked into a baby’s shawl, shoved into her pudgy fingers when she’d asked as a child, Who am I? She’d recognise Latvinov anywhere. Did Heath know? She pushed the thought from her head. If that was true, the tattooist wasn’t the only person who’d betrayed her. Latvinov was circling her now, his movements slow and threatening. Emma couldn’t help smiling to herself. ‘She thinks this is funny!’ cried a woman on the other side of the room. It was the person who’d attacked her and then fled. Her hand gripped a champagne flute, so tightly that Emma could see the white of her knuckles. He brought his mouth close to her ear. ‘She has a mosquito gun strapped inside her

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dress. Damn fool doesn’t realise it can’t kill a squirrel.’ Emma didn’t flinch. ‘Anything can kill,’ she said coolly. ‘If you know how to use it.’ She flexed a hand, to underline her message. She felt her shoulders being gripped and swivelled round under the man’s pressure. ‘Who sent you here?’ he asked. Emma shrugged him off. ‘The American Embassy?’ ‘You’re nowhere near as funny as you think you are.’ His hand gripped her throat, pressing her up against a wall. Fingers tightened, then Latvinov’s features suddenly relaxed, and he pulled away. He snapped a finger at the tattooist. ‘Bring us drinks. Now!’ She glanced away, anxious that he shouldn’t see what she already had. He grasped her chin and drew her back round to look at him. ‘Where have you come from?’ His voice was quieter now. He gave her a gentle shake. ‘Hmmm?’ The tattooist brought over two martini glasses, each brimming with alcohol. Latvinov released her and with shaking hands she took the drink. Gazed into the bottom of the glass. A clear shape, hidden in the liquid. She looked back up in surprise. Latvinov gave a small nod. She glanced over his shoulder at the tattooist and the woman. They were watching her closely. ‘It’s what you came here for, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘Give it to Heath with my love. Tell him to send a better envoy next time.’ He was handing it over, just like that? Emma remembered the taxi driver’s warning. No one can tell when he’s lying. ‘Come, drink!’ He touched the base of her glass, pushing it towards her lips. What else was in the cocktail? She tried to pull the glass away and her arm angled up, revealing her tattoo. Time froze. He shouldn’t have seen. ‘What is this?’ Latvinov asked. Emma felt her throat constrict. He reached out to stroke the outline. Any moment now… ‘Don’t!’ She tried to twist her body away, but Latvinov suddenly had hold of her arms. Whatever game they’d been playing, the rules were changing.

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Emma felt the fight leave her body. Her fingers loosened and the martini glass shattered at her feet. The diamond skidded across the floor, coming to rest at the tattooist’s feet. He began to bend over. ‘Touch that and I’ll tear your throat out,’ Latvinov growled. The tattooist slowly straightened back up. The jewel lay abandoned on the floor. ‘Tell me,’ Latvinov said. His glance hadn’t left her tattoo. He increased his pressure. As he did so, the shirt cuffs slid up his arms. There, at Emma’s eye level, was a matching diamond inked upon his skin. ‘Where does your tattoo come from?’ he said. Their bodies moved closer, arms almost touching. ‘Heath gave it to me. It allows for the casual electrocution of strangers.’ She closed her eyes, her mentor’s words scrolling behind her eyelids. You’ll find out. When you’re ready. ‘Strangers?’ Latvinov repeated, his hand coming to fold around Emma’s. ‘Is that what we are?’ Her eyes flew open. Really, she should have rescued the diamond by now. It would be easy to slip out of Latvinov’s grip whilst he was this distracted and those other two… They’re a joke. A shove and a thrust of the flick knife and they’d be sprawled at her feet. But she didn’t care about the mission any more. Something bigger was at stake and she was ready. In a sudden movement, she pushed her wrist against his. Flesh on flesh. ‘Let’s find out,’ she whispered, watching for the reaction in his eyes. They brought their faces closer, as they stood beside the open window, overlooking the rooftops of Bucharest. A single church bell rang, drowning the words that followed. ‘Damn!’ Heath cried, tearing the earpiece out of his lobe. He gazed round at the collection of useless suits who’d gathered in his Thames-side office. ‘Abandoning the mission. She’s doing it again. She’s bloody doing it to me again!’

LISA BLOWER

‘T

here’s a window with cherries,’ Roxanne was telling Thea. ‘You’ve got two, three days at most before the birds have them. They’ll clear a tree in minutes. So if it’s ok, we’d like to pick our cherries right now.’

The cherry tree was at the far end of Thea’s garden. It was part way into summer and the

weather was warm. Roxanne was standing on Thea’s doorstep with her son, Toby, who had already announced to Thea that he was eight. This had made Thea look at Roxanne and then back at Toby. There must’ve been but fifteen years between them, if that, as it seemed that Roxanne was now pregnant with her second child. Toby was also carrying an empty shoebox which Thea thought very presumptuous. ‘You see, the tree is rooted in our garden,’ said Roxanne. ‘But most of the fruit grows on the branches that are in your garden. We can only reach them if we pick them by standing on the wall in your yard.’ Thea did not like all this talk of yours and mine. Neither did she wish for Roxanne to come into her house, which she would have to do to get to the tree. So she said, ‘I’m sorry,’ and closed the door.

The door, which Thea had recently repainted with a white emulsion, had two panels of frosted glass which she often cleaned with vinegar, so she was quite able to see Roxanne and her son still standing on her doorstep. She had also fitted an alarm and removed the doorbell. ‘The cherries are mine!’ Toby shouted. And in case Thea hadn’t heard, ‘They’re mine!’ very loud. He then kicked the door and Thea scowled. Not only would this leave a scuff, but boys like this were a nuisance. Boys like this should be told. ‘Ours Toby,’ Thea heard Roxanne cajole rather than scold. ‘The cherries are ours. Be a good boy now. We must try and share.’ ‘Then tell that old biddy to share,’ he said. ‘Those cherries are mine!’ Thea could see Roxanne bending down to talk to her son. She had seen her do this once before in the corner shop. There, she had bent down and asked him, once again, to put the

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sweets down. They were not his. She didn’t have enough pennies. And there were plenty of sweets at home. ‘But I want these sweets!’ he had wailed. Roxanne had put a hand on his shoulder. ‘No Toby. The sweets belong to the lady on the till. See? She wants her sweets back, don’t you?’ The lady on the till, and her name was Barbara, had smiled and played along: told the little boy that the shop didn’t sell sweets after four o’clock. She was sorry, but that was the law. Then she’d turned to Thea, looked into her basket, and said, ‘Is that everything?’ which is what she said every week to Thea when putting her loaf, vinegar, rice and bleach through the till. Meanwhile, Toby had put the sweets into his pocket and left the shop. What had happened next was strange. Roxanne, neither embarrassed nor alarmed, simply sidled out with two loaves of bread and a decent Chardonnay and never came back to pay for any of it. ‘She’s just stolen from the shop!’ Thea had declared. ‘Aren’t you going to go after her?’ Barbara had shrugged. ‘We know where she lives,’ she told Thea. ‘And it’s just sweets,’ as if that was all the explanation needed. But it wasn’t just sweets and Thea had felt confronted. That boy was naughty, she had said. He was wanting and he took without asking. That was stealing. He should’ve been scolded, shown right from wrong, and Thea decided that if she saw them again she would say this. Like mother like son, she would say. It’s in his blood. And that he owed 55 pence for the sweets. So that’s what she said to the door that now stood between them. ‘You never paid for the sweets, wine and bread,’ she said. ‘You stole from the shop.’ Outside, Roxanne said something to Toby that Thea couldn’t quite hear. Whatever it was, it was certainly not what Toby wanted to hear, for he kicked the door again and harder than before. That would mean a second scuff. Possibly a boot mark. So Thea said it louder: ‘I said, you never paid for your goods in the shop the other day. You owe for the sweets, wine and bread.’ Roxanne bent down and flipped up the letterbox. ‘We’ll pick them quick, I promise,’ she told Thea. ‘You won’t even know we’re there. Just let my son pick his cherries and that’ll be the end of it.’

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‘I’m sorry,’ Thea replied. ‘But until you pay your way please go away. Life isn’t about getting all your own way and your son needs to be shown there’s a better way.’ ‘But they are our cherries. Legally speaking, we own the tree.’ Thea moved away from the door at this. It was true that the roots of the tree were not in her garden but the main boughs of the tree were. And though the tree required those roots to bear this fruit, Roxanne would have to walk through her house to get to that fruit. To walk through Thea’s house was to know, and Thea didn’t want anyone to know, as someone who didn’t know (since Thea was not in the business of letting people in) would walk through her house and assume things: she is poor, they might think. She is mad. Or perhaps she has lost everything. Maybe given it away. Thea turned away from the door and walked through her house. It was a long and narrow mid-terrace, with rooms one on top of the other. From the hallway was the sitting room, which led into the kitchen and ended with large patio doors that opened out into the small garden where the boughs of the cherry tree took up more room than they should. She had, when she had first taken on the house, thought about chopping those boughs down. They seemed so imposing, allowing nothing else in the garden to grow. But the whole world was her family now. The whole earth was her home. She was clothed by the sun. And the cherry tree would live on. Yet the roots of that tree had also spread under her patio. The paving slabs were lifting here, here, and here. She had tripped often, the last time stubbing her toe so badly it had needed a stitch. So Thea went back to the front door and told Roxanne: ‘You might own the tree, but I own the sweets,’ and she pulled across the curtain she had fixed up at the front door and went back outside to look at the tree.

The tree, at this time of year, was glorious. The cherries were ripe. The leaves lush. Look up high and you could see just how many cherries this tree gave. It was impossible to count them. There was more than enough. Though they were up high and ladders would be needed which she didn’t have. But they were in her garden. That much was true. And then, the boughs seemed to suddenly bow to her, gifting her with its fruit. The cherries were within her reach.

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‘So if anyone will pick these cherries it will be me,’ she said looking up at the sky, and she went into the kitchen to look for a suitable container. By now, Roxanne was hammering at the front door with her fists. ‘Open this door!’ she yelled. ‘Those cherries are mine! Do you hear? Mine!’ whilst her son kicked the door as hard as he could. And then Thea heard another voice: ‘Is everything ok? Has something happened? Do you need to use a phone?’ Roxanne took no time in explaining her problem. She had come to pick her cherries from her tree but this woman in this house wouldn’t let them. ‘Those cherries are mine,’ she told whoever. ‘The tree is in my garden so legally they are mine.’ The neighbour, or perhaps just a passer-by, had now approached the door and was cupping her hands about her eyes and peering into the frosted glass. Thea overheard: ‘I don’t really know her. She’s not one for mixing and there seems to be a curtain. Is she definitely in?’ ‘She’s in,’ shouted Roxanne. ‘She told my son that he couldn’t pick his cherries then slammed the door in his face!’ The neighbour appeared to be leaving, for she said, ‘I can’t help you I’m afraid. I don’t know the woman and I really don’t understand the situation. I’m so sorry.’ But Toby, used to getting his own way, was screaming. He would scream then kick the door, scream then kick the door. Thea counted him doing this no less than ten times before Roxanne told him to calm down. ‘Call the police!’ he told his mother, and Thea suddenly felt so very afraid. She leant against the hall wall. This was why she had never wanted children, why she had always wanted children, what she had done when she couldn’t have children. She remembered the rage like yesterday, the kicks and the screams. How her husband, her dear, patient husband, had covered his face with his hands: It’s no-one’s fault Thea. Not mine, not yours, it just is. Thea had detached herself from everything then else she would have dropped out from life itself. She looked up at door again and saw that the wires from the alarm she’d fitted had come loose and were swaying in the draught like boughs on a tree.

The doorbell took her by surprise. Thea had thought she had disabled it when fitting the alarm. She looked up at the box on the wall and wondered whether she had, in fact, rewired the doorbell

LISA BLOWER

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rather than wired in the alarm. Yet when the doorbell was pushed again it sounded brand new. She pulled the curtain slightly so to see through the panels of frosted glass. A luminous yellow and lawenforcing black figure loomed. It pushed the doorbell again. Again, it sounded full of life. There was knocking. A polite request. ‘May we come in?’ Another knock. ‘Might you open the door?’ Thea pulled the curtain right back and saw the three figures through the frosted glass. Had they actually called the police? Or had they simply been patrolling by? Thea moved closer to the glass and asked: ‘Why are you here?’ ‘I’d rather you open the door Madam to speak with you,’ and it was a thick accent that suggested somewhere north and perhaps to the west rather than the east. ‘I am sure that everything can be worked out.’ The figure of authority, Thea could see, was of stocky build. They might need only to lurch a shoulder to ram the door open and Thea wondered who, legally-speaking, would then have to pay for the new door. So she said, ‘I’d appreciate it if everyone would go away.’ ‘Well that can happen as soon as you open the door,’ came the reply. Thea thought about turning the key. Then she thought better of it. She must stand her ground. So she said, ‘You do know that these people are criminals? They stole from the corner shop. I was there. I saw them do it.’ ‘Well, if you could just open the door now we can all sit down and have a conversation. I understand that this is about some cherries in a tree?’ And it suddenly sounded so very silly. ‘It’s gone beyond the cherries,’ Thea replied. ‘Those people are thieves.’ ‘No-one is stealing from you, I can assure you that. But please open the door. ‘ The three figures were now huddled together against the glass and Thea felt barricaded. She was about to say, ‘You are trapping me in my own home,’ but another voice was speaking, a familiar voice, though one Thea had not heard in very a long time: ‘What’s happened? Is Thea alright? Is she in there? I have a key.’ And Thea closed her eyes and sighed. Fay.

‘What’s going on Thea?’ Fay enquired, pushing her key into the outside lock. ‘Why won’t you open the door, dear? Are you ill?’

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This made Thea feel very guilty. She was not ill, that was just something else people would assume, and she tried to remember when she had given Fay a key. Then why she had given Fay a key. She tried to remember Fay’s face – horsey yet pinched. How she would wear that certain look as Thea talked – serious and knowing. The agreeing nods. The disagreeing hmmms. And though Fay had been a friend, in the sense that she was someone who had known Thea well and at a particular time when Thea had needed such a friend, it had never been a friendship. Still, she had given Fay a key. ‘You know you’ll have to give me a key, don’t you?’ And though one might assume that Thea was in danger, a danger, or that these were simply dangerous parts in dangerous times, a key had still been given and Thea could not at all remember why.

It was quite a crowd that had gathered outside of Thea’s front door by now. Thea would have no idea for who any of them were or why they felt the need to stop and listen to Roxanne’s version of events. Thea could hear her and realised that she must be standing on the small wall outside of her house, all but three bricks in height, as if preaching. At one point, she was sure she heard a heckling ‘God be with you!’ But Thea was distracted by Fay, persistent with her key, pushing, no, ramming her key into the lock to try and push Thea’s key out from the other side. The police officer cupped her hands through the frosted glass and called Thea’s name over and over. Someone was holding a finger down on the doorbell and the din ripped through Thea’s insides. ‘The cherries are mine!’ screamed Toby. ‘THEY ARE MINE!’ So Thea turned her key and opened the door.

She was thrown by the flashes of cameras on mobile phones, just how many people had congregated outside of her house as if this was, indeed, a spectacle to be seen, and she immediately tried to push the door shut. Not quite in time, for the picture that appeared in the local paper had her looking frightened and thin in the sackcloth she now rarely took off. She would, for a long time after, wish that she’d just let them pick those cherries instead of standing her ground. They had, after all, come to pick cherries, not to see how she lived, why she lived as she did, how she punished herself for not bearing fruit. How she’d made a deal

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with nature, unkind nature, to understand why it’d chosen to renounce her as it did. But that boy was a nuisance. He needed to be told. And he and his mother were thieves. ‘We can’t always have what we want,’ is all that Thea would say. The wires from the alarm had only grazed the boy, but it was enough to give him a shock and a paramedic called. And although Thea had been astonished by how, somehow in the commotion, the alarm had come away from the wall leaving four big holes where she had drilled, she was secretly pleased that she had wired the alarm in correctly. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, Thea had thought to herself. And in thine hand is power and might*. As it was, the cherries never did get picked. Roxanne was right. The birds do have them. They steal from one another’s beaks, fight over them, drop them, squish them, ground them into the slabs and spit out the stones, and the mess that was left behind on Thea’s patio was nothing but thoughtless greed. It took many trips to the corner shop for cleaning products to clean up. In fact, Thea was forced to use so much bleach it killed the tree.

*1 Chronicles 29:11-12.

THIRZA CLOUT

‘T

he Aegean is so blue,’ I wrote. Original. None of your wine-dark effusions. I stared at the sea. It was calm, flat, still, no, not still, shimmering in the

heat, lines of sequins dancing on its cerulean surface. Byronic. Trickles of sweat were making my breasts itch. I reached under my T shirt, undid and eased off my bra, pulled it out of one sleeve and dropped it on the balcony floor. I took a sip from my café frappé, rattling ice in the tall glass, then picked up my pencil again, one of six new 2B Faber Castell Grip, all green, triangular or maybe pyramidal, like a long narrow pyramid with the two lines of black dots down each of the three sides for ease of grip. I wrote ‘shimmering with dancing lines of sequins sparkling on the cerulean blue’, erased ‘blue’, replaced it with ‘surface’, put it down. Moronic. I drained the feeble instant coffee dregs, wishing I’d stuck out for Italy instead of taking a so-called healing Odyssey to this particular island. Not a lot on the page. ‘I’ve got so much more, I’m a good writer,’ I wrote, then erased the last phrase. Strictly Private was lettered on the buff canvas-textured cover of my journal but if anyone read it, maybe to write a biography of me once I was famous, I wouldn’t want to be seen showing off. Especially after my death. Experience life in the moment. ‘I need to get out there, meet people, generate memories,’ I wrote. Raw material. ‘Watch people, talk to them, travel and drink with them.’ The world is so waiting for a female Jack Kerouac. ‘All I need is inspiration. I need to hear stories from interesting people.’ I rubbed that last sentence out. Avoid future claims of plagiarism.

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It was too hot to write. I needed a shower. Or a nap? I allowed myself to hear the soft snores coming from inside the room behind me. If sleep’s the answer what’s the question? I gathered up my Writer’s Materials, tucked my journal safely into my handbag and moved from sunshine into the small square room where my lover was spread-eagled naked on a narrow double bed. How to avoid death by boredom? I tiptoed across the room into the shower cell, then changed my mind. Outside the sun was shining, bars were open; inside my lover was snoring. I retrieved my bra from the balcony, wriggled up my T shirt and eased into the warm satin. I scribbled a note, propped it on the little dressing table against a vase of plastic flowers. I picked up my handbag and left quietly. Snoring on the first afternoon, for fuck’s sake. Thought it would be different.

As I left the Themis Rooms and stepped back into the sunshine, I remember smiling and thinking perhaps it would be nice to have a little free time. I was choosing to go out on my own. I turned left and walked round the corner down towards the harbour, avoiding stepping on the lines whitewashed around the crazy-paved stones. No sense in inviting more bad luck. I was surprised it was so good to be back. It was a different island of course but it felt familiar, with those faded shop signs, dusty bottles of Tropicana and Ambre Solaire, the repeated idylls of whitewashed houses, blue church domes and sleek cats stacked up in the postcard racks,. Skinny cats were dozing in the shade, a three-legged sandy-brown dog trotting unevenly along – surely not the same mongrel? It would get the same kicks and curses from islanders who would also like to be fed juicy meat by sentimental tourists At the harbour I turned right, away from the baker’s shop and the peeling yellow-painted periptero kiosk, which were both shut for whatever Greeks call a siesta. I headed along the harbour, towards a bright blue bar I’d spotted from the ferry as we’d arrived. Always note likely looking bars. I sat at a round blue metal table, just in the shade of the awning but with an unobstructed view of the sea. The shimmering blue sea. I settled down to wait.

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THIRZA CLOUT

Ouzo? Bit early for an ouzo, after the bottle of oily retsina on the ferry to celebrate being on our first holiday together which was after the breakfast gins to settle our stomachs at the airport and the sparkling wine on the plane to celebrate the start of our first holiday together. Glass of wine? One of those small bottles of retsina? I looked around for interesting people to watch. Two tables away on my right sat a couple staring above tiny coffee cups and glasses of water at the blue sea. They were silent. To my left another man and woman were each reading a thick paperback, glasses and bottles of beer in front of them. Cold beer would be good. Just one here then take one, no, two, back. We would sit side by side on the balcony, bare arms touching, admire the sunset. Does the balcony face the right way for sunset? Celebrate being on holiday together anyway. Celebrate being together. Enjoy the sea view and toast to happiness. Ten days of happiness at least. Still no sign of a waiter. I went inside the taverna. It was empty except for a man slumped over a newspaper at one of the tables. He was snoring. More snoring, for God’s sake. I coughed, coughed again more loudly then said: ‘Excuse me? Kalimera?’ Damn, that was good morning and I couldn’t remember good afternoon. We’d never got past the first conversation on the tape. That was when we were still amazed to find ourselves planning to go to Greece together, heads close above the phrase book, intoxicated by the scent of each other as well as by the wine, not quite touching, prolonging those electric moments before we were sure we were going to be more than friends. No snoring that night. I touched his arm. The man jolted awake, sat up and looked at me. Blue eyes. Blue as the Aegean, deep dark blue. Cerulean. Young, with his smooth skin only a little rumpled by sleep. I ordered an ouzo. Waving me towards the light he said: ‘I bring.’ Would have been just my type once. I added a little water, watched the ouzo cloud, sipped and savoured the aniseed heat in my

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throat. He didn’t go back in. He stood at the front of the bar, looking out to sea and smoking a cigarette, carefully blowing the smoke forward, away from me. I watched him watching the sea and not watching me. He was not tall, maybe five eight or so, muscular, light blue cotton T shirt, dark blue jeans, nice arse. Time for another ouzo, then get a mini bottle to take back and share on the balcony. When he brought me the second ouzo and another little jug of water he gave me the usual smile, looking into my eyes. I pushed my hair away from my hot face, smiled back until I remembered and stopped. The reading couple looked up from their books, murmured to each other and ordered two more beers. The man in the silent couple pulled some notes from his wallet, peered at them, peered at coins from his pocket. The waiter went over, took a few drachmas. They left, silently walking away in single file, the blue sea on their left, shuttered shops on their right. The waiter returned to his pose, leaning against the awning frame, lit another cigarette. The shops re-open about five. Cheaper to get a full-size bottle of ouzo to take back and some cold water, maybe even ice. I looked at my watch. It was only four thirty. I said: ‘Scusi, another ouzo please, per favore, I mean parakalo.’ This time he brought the bottle out and tipped a generous couple of slugs into my glass. This time I continued smiling at him. This time he sat down opposite me and began the familiar game. The old questions and answers. More ouzo. More electricity. Life goes on.

I woke suddenly. Alarm clock? Noise outside. Sirens. Police? A little room, hot, bars of sunlight filtering through gaps in shutters. I didn’t know this room. More sirens. My head hurt. Never again. What time was it? Christ, six thirty. I eased myself off the narrow bed, peeling myself away from a damp white sheet. I was naked. Where were my pants and bra? By my trousers and T shirt on the floor. My bag was there too, passport, cards, journal and purse intact. A condom lay beside it, sickly pink, spilling onto the wooden floor. Thank the gods.

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THIRZA CLOUT

I had been out hours. I had to get back. I couldn’t take my stickiness, his smell, back to our room. I had to shower. There was nowhere to shower. I was desperate to plunge my aching head under warm water, scrub myself clean. I couldn’t go back with wet hair. I could say I’d showered at the room and then just gone out for something. Gone out to fetch a drink for us both. No, our towels wouldn’t be wet. The lavatory was dim but I couldn’t find the light switch. I settled for just a pee and a wash. I remember I hoped the soap was cleaner than it felt, that the slightly rough texture was manufactured not acquired. I was so thirsty but didn’t want to drink from the tap. My head ached. The walls were swaying a little. I threw up neatly in the lavatory, found and pulled the feeble flush button in the cistern above. Better out than in. I’d say I just had a couple of drinks with a group of women who seemed nice. German? Did that sound right? Or should I say couple? Less suspicious? Uncharted territory. With Michael I would have known exactly what to say, the lies so practised they told themselves. Never too much detail. Easier when you can’t remember. And he never knew. Did the same rules apply? I could say: ‘I went for a walk because you were asleep, snoring your head off. I stopped for a drink, got chatting and didn’t notice the time.’ I wouldn’t say which bar, just say along the harbour somewhere, couldn’t read the name in Greek letters. I stared into a small mirror on the bedroom wall. It was next to a silver coloured icon of the Virgin Mary with a little red electric light bulb in front of it. I tucked my hair more neatly behind my ears, lifted my head up high and walked out, down the stairs into the bar. Never apologise, never explain. Outside the waiter was taking orders from early evening newly-showered couples. He smiled at me. I know I didn’t smile back. My ouzo glass and water were still on the table. I left too many drachmas beside them and walked out, turned left, past dusty oleanders drooping in concrete pots then turned left again up the steep little street towards the rooms. I remember my raging thirst.

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THE CASUAL ELECTROCUTION OF STRANGERS

The smell of jasmine was so strong and sweet it was rotten. Drains. I longed to drink cold clear water, neck a few paracetamol, maybe Solpadine, but I didn’t see a chemist or a minimarket, didn’t want to get back even later. Round the corner and the street was blocked by an ambulance and a car with a flashing blue light. I pushed open the front door and pressed the light switch. Nothing. I climbed two dark flights of stone stairs, trying to make sense of some shouting above, holding on to the wobbling iron handrail. There were several people clustered around our door. A man shoved me back as I tried to enter our room. I could see two more men bending over a woman on the floor. Attacking her? I struggled to get to Rosie. A man in uniform shouted at me in Greek. ‘What’s happening? Rosie, Rosie.’ The man shoved me back against the wall to let two other men pass with a stretcher. Rosie’s face looked so small above the blanket, eyes closed. Drops of water from her hair were spattering the blue blanket. I tried to grasp her hand but the men brushed me aside as they negotiated the door. Someone was following me down the stairs, talking. ‘I found her, I heard her scream and came to see what was wrong. She was in the shower screaming and I saw it was smoking.’ She was speaking English but what she said was nonsense. ‘Rosie doesn’t smoke,’ I said. ‘I’m Moira, from the room next door, I heard her screaming. She was in the shower and it was smoking, the shower was smoking and she was screaming.’ ‘I don’t understand.’ ‘It was the shower, it was giving her an electric shock. I ran downstairs, threw the main power switch by the door. I called the ambulance. I tried to get her out of the shower, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. They’re doing all they can.’ I said: ‘I went for a walk but I didn’t stand on the cracks. It can’t be my fault, not this time, I didn’t stand on the cracks.’

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THIRZA CLOUT

I must wake up. The ambulance drove off without me, siren noise bouncing off the walls of the houses crashing my eardrums. The woman, Moira, said: ‘I’ll call a taxi.’ ‘We’re on holiday, Rosie can’t leave me, it’s our first holiday together,’ I said. When I wake up Rosie will be here.

At the hospital the doctor asked me if I was Rosie’s sister. ‘No, I’m her next of kin, well, we live together.’ ‘I’ll put down friend,’ he said and wrote on a form. When I had to see Michael, no one asked if we were married. No one said I couldn’t be the one to identify him, no-one assumed he was living with his sister or his friend. I didn’t protest. Such a rubbish lesbian. I followed the doctor along a corridor and into a cubicle. Rosie opened her eyes and smiled. ‘Here’s your friend,’ the doctor said. ‘Lover,’ said Rosie. She’s so much better at this. ‘Yes, lover,’ I said, looking at her not him. I touched her bandaged hand gently. ‘She’ll have to stay in overnight but the burns are fairly superficial, we should be able to discharge her tomorrow morning. You can stay a few minutes but she needs to rest,’ he said and left, pulling the curtains wide open as he went.

Back at Themis Rooms, Moira was waiting with her door open. ‘I’ve seen the landlady and written some notices for all the room doors, warning them not to use the showers,’ she said. ‘Don’t the police do that? Somebody official?’ ‘No, they were pretty laid back, ilektrologos avrio. Avrio, you know, tomorrow, mañana without the urgency.’

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‘Rosie doesn’t want to come back here. We’ll catch a boat to the next island tomorrow so long as she’s well enough, maybe stay in a hotel. God I can’t believe this is happening. She could have been killed if you hadn’t rescued her.’ ‘No, the current is too low. And anyone would have done the same.’ ‘Not me, I have no idea where to find a switch or what the hell to do if I did. And certainly the burns could have been worse. Thank you. I owe you a drink at least.’ ‘I was just in the right place at the right time. Funnily enough I nearly went next door but then our lovely little old landlady was so persuasive.’ ‘Yes, that album of slightly faded photos and the promise of balcony and sea views – I take it you chose her from the crowd as you got off the ferry too like Rosie did? She said the woman reminded her of photos of her great-granny. All in black and her plaits wound round her head.’ ‘Yes. I used to come here every year with my husband before he died and we loved being free to hop around the islands as we pleased, moving on when we wanted, finding a room wherever. We’ve been coming here so long, I remember when it didn’t have electricity. Now that was a party the night we were connected up in this little village over the other side of the island. Everyone got drunk, the electricians, people from the village, us.’ ‘Michael would have said that was fate. His grandparents were Greek. We came here together, well to another island, but he was killed. Freak accident. The right person for me but in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ ‘I’m sorry.’ Moira said, then instead of making that sympathy face which I hate, she smiled and picked up her handbag. ‘I really could do with a drink and I expect you could too. What about one of those lovely little bars on the harbour?’ ‘Yes, if we go along to the far end I could check ferry times for tomorrow.’ As we walked down the street I held her arm and stepped on every whitewashed crack. I was going to drink another glass of water and then some Metaxa. A lot of Metaxa. The Fates could do whatever they wished.

BERNIE DEEHAN

RACK 1: Crazy about the Girl That was the first time she heard Ricky Watts. The song rocketed out of the radio, a technicolour blast that ricocheted off the bedroom walls, the keyboards

crashing in waves, the drums beating out the future, and that voice, strong yet vulnerable, reaching out its hand... all in three minutes and seven seconds. It was better than any medication. *** It makes her smile, the thought of it, and the memory calms her as she stands in the

hallway thirty years later. ‘Back by midnight, make sure he brushes his teeth,’ she says, squeezing her arm into the denim jacket. Please God, she whispers, let it fit. A sudden urge had made her reach for it from the back of the wardrobe, but now she wants to peel it off and not go out at all. ‘Where’d you get that jacket?’ says Lee. ‘Straight out of the 80s! Maybe you… need the next size?’ She gives him the look. ‘Sorry.’ Lee stands by the living room doorway, trying to stop Connor hitting him on the legs with a plastic guitar. She’d much rather watch that all night instead of feeling nervous. Connor gets bored after a few hits, drops the guitar and runs up to clutch his mother’s legs. ‘Where you going, Mummy?’ Good question. ‘Mummy’s going to meet an old friend. Like one of your friends from school. Just older. You be good and I’ll see you in the morning.’ She kisses him on the head, her lips against the softness of his hair. Needs a cut; she makes a mental note to put it on the list for tomorrow, and then leaves before she can talk herself onto the sofa.

TRACK 3: C’mon Now Her Dad died suddenly that year, a massive heart attack with no bloody warning whatsoever. She became ill, off school for months. She begged her shattered Mum to take her

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to the shops so she could buy the album the day it came out – Zap, it was called. She already had the poster of Ricky Watts on her wall, and clippings in a new scrapbook with his name lovingly etched on the front in silver calligraphy. It was good to keep busy. The student behind the record shop counter smirked when she handed him the LP, followed by a slow shaking of the head as he rang it up on the till. When they got home she raced to her room and played it three times in a row, like gorging on a box of chocolates, both layers. Only her Mum’s tired voice calling ‘Dinner!’ up the stairs stopped her putting the needle down on Side One again. *** It’s a cool mid-September evening as she walks to the bus stop. She had told Lee she was meeting an old friend from school tonight, someone who had Facebooked her out of the blue. The old friend part was correct at least. It was the supermarket’s fault: she’d been in the fruit and veg aisle two weeks ago, testing a lemon for firmness, when the song came on, Crazy about the Girl. She hadn’t heard it in years. A smile cracked across her face. Ricky Watts: she’d buried him at the back of her mind and now here he was, switching on the lights again. An old man in the aisle stopped, concerned, put a hand on her shoulder, and she realised she was standing there with a lemon in her palm and a smile that had melted into quiet tears. ‘You OK, love?’ he said. After loading up the car with shopping and climbing into the driver’s seat, she saw a row of posters on the wall beside the electric doors and had to look twice at the last one. Was that Ricky Watts or just her mind playing tricks? She would be late to pick up Connor but she got out of the car anyway. As she approached the poster she realised it was him, it really was Ricky. She touched his face instinctively then pulled her fingers away. He was doing an anniversary tour for his one and only album. He was back.

TRACK 4: Don’t You Say I Told You So The Track 4 ballad. Every pop album worth its salt has a Track 4 ballad, a slow-building anthem made for lighters held above heads. When she was off school for two terms, her so-

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called friends melted away. But she wasn’t alone; she had found Ricky. Or Ricky had found her. This is the song she would waltz around the bedroom to, holding a pillow tightly to her chest, imagining the pillow was holding her. She would stare at Ricky’s poster, the one where he had the shy smile, and they would sway in each other’s arms as the Track 4 ballad played. *** She gets off the bus and sees the venue on the other side of the square. Standing in front of the poster at the supermarket, she’d told herself she wouldn’t go, it would dredge up too much. She hoped the concert would sell out but knew that it wouldn’t, writing the date in her diary in faint pencil like a ghost struggling to make its mark. On the day of the gig, her finger hovered over the BUY TICKET button before losing its battle with gravity. On the walk across the square to the venue, she thinks about taking off the jacket – it’s pinching her shoulders and making her walk like a robot – but she can still see her Dad’s face as she unwrapped it, his first and only foray into buying his daughter a present that Mum had no hand in choosing. She keeps it on. At the venue, the doorman is so young he wasn’t even born when Zap came out. It’s packed in the foyer, which surprises her. She feels jealous for a moment, as if these people have hijacked a past she thought was hers alone. She buys a vodka and tonic before moving into the main room. It’s mostly women. She spots a few who have clearly come alone, and instantly sees a picture of their teenage years that mirrors her own. They grip their drinks tightly and take furtive glances around the room; she notices because she’s doing it too.

TRACK 7: Tears in Ocean Rain She would take the needle off the record before this song started; she didn’t like to hear Ricky sounding sad. It was about missing someone who had gone away. After her Dad’s funeral service, one of her second cousins, the goth one, had told her that if you’re feeling blue, play a sad song and it will counteract your mood. She didn’t believe her. She would raise

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the needle quickly after track 6 and skip over Tears in Ocean Rain. There were enough tears already. *** The support band is impossibly young, as if they’ve bunked off a geography class. They play perky pop that channels the 1980s but with a raised eyebrow rather than that decade’s steely confidence. The boys are trying hard though, and she finds herself slowly warming to them as the set goes on. Something about that promise in their eyes, the sense of exciting lives ahead of them… it’s infectious. By the time they finish her hands are clapping above her head and the jacket fits perfectly. In the interval she queues for another vodka and tonic, and as soon as she has it in her hands there’s a cheer behind her and she finds herself running towards the noise and making it into the main room just as the keyboard player vamps the opening notes of C’mon Now and the drummer starts that primal beat and her heart is laughing and crying at the same time and then there he is, Ricky, walking onto the stage in a pastel jacket from 1985 with the sleeves rolled up. She feels a jolt through her bones, through the whole crowd. It’s Him. He jumps around by the microphone stand. She starts to tap her foot, a little self-conscious at first but then growing in strength as the song builds and the tears come as she knew they would and she feels 15 again, the pain and joy mixed together, and she raises her hand in the air, everyone does, the whole room a connected circuit.

TRACK 9: Summerland This song was the summer of 1986. She still played the album sometimes, a whole year after buying it, but her head was now full of Matthew Shepherd from the Lower Sixth, with his golden hair and stone-washed jeans. Not much room for Ricky Watts; his poster still clung to her wall but the sun had started to fade his features. At Jeanette Patterson’s house party, Matthew ‘Call me Matt’ Shepherd kissed her in the dark of the coat cupboard. ‘What music do you like?’ he said later in the garden.

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‘Erm… I dunno. All sorts.’ ‘Someone told me you like Ricky Watts. You like that twat?’ ‘No… no, course not. Ricky Watts?’ She let out a laugh that tasted bitter in her mouth. The next day, she played Zap as penance, but the guilt of betrayal was too much and she took it off halfway through Don’t You Say I Told You So. The poster came down soon after and ended up at the bottom of a cardboard box in the spider-webbed attic, along with the LP, the scrapbook, the badges, the whole of 1985. *** Ricky Watts comes back for an encore and then pulls out the song she knows he has to play, the one that started it all: Crazy about the Girl. The music comes at her in a rush of emotion. She is euphoric, floating in time, weightless. When the drummer does the final symbol crash, Ricky Watts waves and she waves back and then he’s gone and her hand slowly comes down, her whole body comes down from the rafters. Tomorrow she will take Connor for his haircut, pick up the Captain America duvet from the dry cleaners, and watch Lee make his once-aweek attempt at dinner (spag bol, of course), and she will think about how she got from 1985 to here, how grateful she is for Lee and Connor and the house, and she will think about who helped her across that swollen river all those years ago. But now she shuffles with the crowd out of the main room to the foyer and she wants to leave immediately, she wants it to be like that, a fleeting happy sad memory that comes and then disappears in dry ice. But then she realises that Ricky is there, actually there at the merchandise stand. Leave now, she thinks. But she looks over again. She doesn’t want to meet him, doesn’t want his autograph – it would make him seen real, vulnerable, with bad handwriting. She looks to the exit but her legs carry her to the stand like a needle finds a groove. What on earth could she say? He flashes that shy smile from the poster and a thousand teenage words quiver behind her lips, words for him and words for Dad and words for him about Dad. He holds a marker pen expectantly. ‘Thank you,’ she blurts, and stumbles off towards the doors. Thank you.

FRANÇOISE HARVEY

ireflies, we thought at first. I thought. ‘Never had fireflies round here,’ said Sam. ‘It’s lights reflecting on water or something.’

‘What water?’ I said. We were crowded in the front doorway, I remember, mugs of tea (or ale, if you were Dad)

in our hands. It was the hottest season, the last one Sam would be with us for, and we were working the fields late into the nights because the middays were like to have drowned us in our own sweat. Even so, the hour wasn’t much of a comfort. The gnats drifted in on the dim light and settled in our eyes and on our skin. The dirt we sweated off, but the gnats stuck and had to be wiped away in the shower, which could never be cold enough or long enough. We were only just home, all of us stinking. The dark had dropped suddenly, as it does, and those distant unfamiliar glimmerings had us caught like kids with fireworks; daft moths to an open flame. ‘We should go and take a closer look,’ said Sam. But Dad vetoed that idea by shrugging and shouldering his way gently past us into the house. He settled in his old chair with a groan and a sigh, and probably saved us all.

Sam woke up next morning with the rumbling of the 5.10 – standard for him, who timed his life by the trains. He rolled out of bed with his usual thunk and shaking of the room we shared, but instead of settling to his morning studies he grabbed my ankles, pulling me upright and awake. I let him because I knew I’d miss it when he left, but I grumbled just the same. ‘Up and away, Stella,’ he said, like he does when he’s put himself in charge and expects no argument. ‘Your fireflies were along the tracks, I reckon. Near Mr Hakim’s patch.’ The patch was an easy stretch from the house. It was where our lodger, an ex-academic and bird-fancier, had been living for as long as we could remember. He’d turned up and talked Dad into letting him park his old camper by the useless copse in the lower middle of the small

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field. He paid well and didn’t mind being surrounded by sheep and cows – preferred them to people, in fact. He spent his time bird-watching, and he treated the birds like pets: hanging feeders, whistling to them, laying out water for them through the long summer. He claimed their songs as being just for him and wrote papers about their habits that he never published. He and Dad got on just fine, but he had no patience for me and Sam. We snuck out, reckoning a short hour before Dad upped and looked for us, and cut straight over to where the train track divided the long slope of the north-west field and its flat lower half. The slope was for the sheep, this year. They sat unperturbed, staring as we followed the rails out into the silent morning. Growing up we each had our own fascination with that bit of track crossing our land. I didn’t like it. More than the ugly metal and stone-chunk that split through the curve and sway of the fields, more than the poles and swaying power lines strewn like stripped tinsel over our otherwise clear view, it was the background noise I hated. A hum that never quite stopped. Doing the morning head count of our stock, I’d imagine a silence deeper than the one the tracks let us have. I’d imagine a dawn chorus without the filth of an electric bassline. Maybe I picked up the feeling from Dad, who remembered the north-west field being whole and the sky unblemished by poles. It was Grandad who’d given the nod and sold the space for them to be laid, like he’d had much choice, and now, whenever the air filled with the shuckashuck of a train going by – the 16.41 to Aberfell, the 17.59 to Glen Ibbott, the 19.00 to the northern-most tip of bloody nowhere – Dad would watch it pass with an expression halffascination, half-resentment, like he was prodding an impressive but painful bruise. He told me once that, before the track, they’d had a talk in school where they’d coloured in pictures of trains and tracks and had to watch films telling them to stay off the rails and not fly kites into the power lines. Pointless, since they didn’t have trains up this way then, but all the same it scared the wool out of him. ‘It took years before I realised you could travel on the damn things,’ he said. ‘I just thought they were some sort of trap, with all that zapping and squashing. Never occurred to me that they went anywhere.’ He laughed when he said it. Stopped laughing, though, when Sam admitted that it’d occurred to him: that he’d been dreaming about where they went and

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beyond for the better part of his life, and what’s more he intended to go and see for himself. There wasn’t a fight as such, but the long, hot days stretched longer and hotter after that. We worked in a steady, hurting silence punctuated with the regular shuckashuck reminder that Sam would soon be leaving. Too good for us, said Dad’s steady gaze, whenever he looked at Sam. I’ll come home, said Sam’s equally steady gaze right back, but Dad couldn’t believe it and as September drew closer they’d stopped looking each other in the eye. I spent my time with them struggling to balance the weight of their silence and need; struggling to drop neither the one nor the other. So it was a relief to have some time with only my brother. I happily followed his newly broad back, newly adult strides along the edge of the track to Mr Hakim’s patch, us drowning out the hum of the railway power lines and covering the absence of birdsong with our own morning chorus of jokes and sniping. As we walked we scoured the ground for the remains of fireworks or a water source that hadn’t dried up, checking the hedges for signs of unfamiliar insects. We were looking for lights, not shadows, and were so busy squinting against the already boiling blue sky that we didn’t notice the power lines becoming weighed down with a row of hunched, winged bodies, dark and silent and watching. We didn’t notice, as we climbed the stile into the small field, that the copse there was less leaf and more feather. It was all shapes to us. All morning haze. We were two steps from a quick and silent death when Mr Hakim shouted. He’s got lungs like a moose – can’t half bellow, and you can’t ignore it. His voice grabbed us by the ears and yanked us to a stop before we knew we were obeying: ‘Stay there! Stay right there!’ Mr Hakim was stood in the door of his camper with his old air rifle aimed shakily in our direction. He was in his pyjamas, respectable and blue, with his wellies on and a pair of bright yellow Marigolds on his hands. His bit of hair stood out from his head. He carried on shouting, but the moose-bellow faded and cracked. His words were drowned out by a twittering hum and the belly-rumble coo of angry woodpigeons. The noise rattled in my ears and threw my balance. Sam turned to look at me, mouth set worried, saying something, but I couldn’t hear him either.

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Behind Sam, on the power lines, I finally noticed the mass of birds that had been missing from the walk over. They were perched in the middle of the lines, well away from the poles – every breed of bird I’d ever seen. Some of them had their necks and beaks stretched and were calling, ruffling their feathers, readying themselves for flight. They were all, every one of them, watching us, and their eyes… their eyes were shot with yellow, brighter than I’d ever seen. Their beaks were gleaming, even the dark greys and blacks of the corvids’ – the hard glaze catching the sun like headlights left on in daylight. As Sam turned and grabbed my arm, the birds fell silent and still. Too still. ‘Stella, did you hear me?’ I shook my head, slowly, no sudden movements. ‘Stella, I’ll talk to him. I’ll be very careful. You need to run back and get Dad.’ And I realised then that Sam hadn’t seen the birds at all. He thought Mr Hakim – hermity, polite Mr Hakim – had flipped. ‘Sam,’ I said, quietly, calmly as I could manage. ‘Sam, the birds…’ ‘Step back!’ called Mr Hakim again. He hadn’t come any closer to us. His voice was cracking. ‘It’s not safe – please step back!’ Sam looked at me and raised his eyebrows, dropped my arm. He turned to look at Mr Hakim, and shouted, easy, friendly, ‘You all right there, Mr H?’ I grabbed Sam’s elbow and tried to pull him back towards the stile with me. The birds were started to move again, a white noise rustle on the air. He shook me off. ‘Mr H, want to tell me what’s going on?’ ‘Sam,’ I whispered. There was a particular blackbird watching him, tilting its head, calling the alarm, eyes too bright. ‘Let’s just do what he says.’ ‘Mr Hakim, please put the gun down.’ I heard a gurgle in Sam’s voice as he said it, choking back a nervous laugh at saying such a clichéd line. ‘I can’t do that,’ said Mr Hakim. ‘They got Cook, and if I don’t hold them off, they’ll get you. Please –’ There was a flurry of feathers as the birds on one section of line rose and shifted and settled again. ‘Please – you need to run.’ And that was when we both noticed Cook, the retired dog that adopted Mr Hakim when he first moved in. Old and limpy and would do anything for a crust, and there was his nose and tail sticking out stiff and cold from under a towel laid out near the dishes of water.

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I saw Sam notice Cook, and a mistle thrush in the copse flashed its chest and raised its voice, and the birds on the wires lifted in a wave of shrill humming and calling, rose and dropped, a cloud of warning. We ran. I heard the gun go off, just the once, and I felt Sam jolt and gasp as though the air had been punched from his chest. I turned and saw him fall, eyes wide and surprised, skin red, breath stopped. I saw the birds wheel round and return to the lines. I heard Mr Hakim wail, a long, thin cry – or maybe that was me.

The bullet took the blackbird through the eye just a second too late. It hit the ground next to Sam, limp and cooling, leaving my brother with what would be lasting gifts of a tremor, stuttering thoughts and the scar of a silver filigree tree that grew from the spot on his shoulder where the wing touched him. And it was just a touch – no need for blood and beaks for these birds. A touch was enough for all the power that the bird had gathered from the lines to sketch its passing down his body, stop-start his heart and char his synapses, until it burst through his feet back into the earth where it belonged.

The story became public. Of course it did. Someone at the railway company couldn’t resist the joke of Dad’s letters – letters into which he awkwardly spilled all the grief and anger he couldn’t unleash in front of Sam, along with the vindication of years of hatred of the railway company and what they’d taken then and taken now. It made my chest hurt like a kick to think of Dad’s spidery writing mocked on someone’s leatherette desk, then again on the internet. The coverage led to a burst of idiot visitors to the farm, searching for the ‘electrobirds’. We got a reputation for being unwelcoming at best – for their own good, the fools, but we never let them get close enough to find that out. Photos of Dad and Mr Hakim, wild-angry and chasing people away from the camper, sprouted in the paper. Dad’s pen was powered by the sight of Sam sat out the front of the house, charred skin protected from the sun, tremoring and listening to his future shuckashucking away from him.

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Sam didn’t smile anymore, he didn’t talk. He couldn’t concentrate long enough to study; he couldn’t stand long enough to work. Mr Hakim, a hero to us when he’d dragged Sam over the stile, away from the nests in the trees and their protectors on the power lines, went from being a hermit to haunting us with his useless help. He couldn’t get over what his beloved birds had done, could do. Barely able to lift a hoe, let alone wrestle a gnarly sheep from its lodge in a fence, his guilt drove him to work. We told him again and again that by now Sam would’ve left anyway and that we could manage. But he wanted to punish himself, and we didn’t have the heart to turn him away. His guilt spilled over into his conversation, and eventually he told us so many times how he was to blame that he talked us round to it. ‘They stopped singing of a morning, most of them,’ he said to me – story time in the fields, every day. ‘So I came out to check on them, and they’re all sat along the power lines. Humming, not singing. A bit odd, but I put the food out anyway and then Cook comes out like he does as usual for his share of the water, and this robin, he drops down for a bit of a splash, and Cook turns round to snap, you know, it’s all a game to him, and the bird – I swear it barely touched him. Brush of the wing… his fur, you know... the smell.’ He wiped his forehead. ‘I should’ve called you then, but I thought, they just want to be left alone. I thought I understood that. If I hadn’t fed them, Stella – if I hadn’t treated them like pets, there never would’ve been such a mob. We never would have known.’ And then he cried. Every time. When the sun sank, Mr Hakim followed us to the house as usual, and I made him a cuppa to have before he went back to his camper. We stood in the doorway, gazing at the bird lights with Sam, except for Dad who couldn’t bear to watch Sam watching. He went and sat in his chair and sifted through the mail. A short while later I followed him, topped up his mug. A letter had arrived that day. Fed up, the railway company had switched from dismissive to business-like. Someone there had dug up the land sale agreement signed by them and Grandad the many years before, and highlighted the rights we didn’t have. They’d topped the documents up with a lot of rude and lawyerly speak about lack of evidence, mental health issues, environmental awareness, and a threat of whose fault it was should there be a death on our property. It boiled down to a basic thing.

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‘They won’t shut a mainline for the sake of a few birds,’ said Dad into the hot silence. I was horrified to see his eyes fill and his hands trembling like Sam’s. ‘Not for a few birds. Not for our Sam.’

In the end, there was only one thing left we could do. Mr Hakim, food-giver, care-taker, filled the feeders while Dad and I watched from the rise beyond the stile, ready with more bags of the seed. We could see him, a small dark figure in wellies in the sun, surrounded by the waiting feathered masses. He mopped his eyes as he unscrewed the wire tops and filled the casings with the same love and care he’d always done. He stood under the trees for a while just watching the chicks in the nests, before he reached with his yellow Marigolded hands for the lower branches to hang the toxic fat balls, crying all the while. He scattered the rest of the seed around the copse and under the power-lines, avoiding the patch where Cook had died. He threw it in great, sad arcs so it whispered onto the ground; a light tattoo that sounded for all the world like rain, finally, had come, so much so that we looked up into the cloudless blue and wondered why we couldn’t feel it on our skin. Then, as the birds began to gather to feed, he retreated to his camper. He would move out a week later. Dad and I sat and watched the birds eat, the sky streaking red behind them, the terrible glow of their eyes and beaks growing brighter as the light failed – but still, from here, just birds. Singing the day out, protecting their nests, perching on wires. We stayed until we saw the first body fall.

ALEC JOHNSON

‘H

ow long you planning to keep on doing this?’ Addison shoved the door open with his hip and went through backwards, pulling the trolley with him.

Harris wiped his feet on the doormat in the corridor and followed Addison inside. ‘Plenty

of years yet,’ he said. ‘I see no reason not to.’ ‘Christ, I’m bored already.’ ‘That, son, is because you’re young and have the patience of a peanut.’ ‘Peanuts are impatient?’ ‘Turn of phrase.’ Harris pulled on his latex gloves. ‘Let’s start with the kitchen.’ *** The apartment was in reasonable shape, but not perfect – and that was how Harris liked it. Thick brown carpets throughout, a stripe of dust ground into them where they met the walls. Paint just right: none of the cracks and streaks of age, but not so new it shone, either. He found himself mentally working out how much the place would go for. He was doing that a lot lately. ‘You could make more dough, though,’ Addison insisted. ‘I mean, you know a hell of a lot about this stuff. You could, I don’t know, manage people or something.’ Harris squatted down to plug the vacuum cleaner in. ‘Maybe I could,’ he said. ‘But I can’t say as I want to. A man can take some satisfaction in knowing what he’s about. In being reliable. And in terms of income, myself and Amy, we do just fine.’ ‘This is a marriage thing, yeah?’ said Addison, ripping a black bag off the roll and stuffing it into the bin. ‘Where things are better the longer they stay the same?’ ‘There is such a thing as being content, son.’ ‘How long’s it been now?’ Addison clicked open a plastic container and started filling the bin with pre-mixed food mush. Apple skin, the peel off a squash, a scattering of brown rice, scraps of toast, root beer bottles. Then a selection from the big bag of trash: a sock (male,

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medium), a snapped wooden spoon, a slew of junk mail, a broken guitar string unravelling at the end. ‘Nine years,’ said Harris. ‘Nine short years. September ’62. Anniversary’s next Friday but one.’ He watched, unimpressed, as Addison filled the bin. Maybe whatever life they were faking here was meant to belong to some kind of hippy – the rice, the guitar string, none of the usual T-bones and pork gristle. But the balance was all wrong – a collection of random food offcuts rather than a convincing impression of someone’s diet. Worse still, the peel was all the same age. That was just careless. He supposed it didn’t really matter, but he liked them to get it right. ‘Christ. Nine years. ’Nother thing I can’t imagine.’ Addison clanged the bin lid down. ‘I once again draw your attention to exhibit A: your age.’ Then Harris hit the Hoover button, and that was that for conversation for the next few minutes. *** Addison squared up to the man-high yellow fridge, flexing his shoulders. Harris had finished vacuuming, and was loading up the cupboards with tinned tomatoes, tinned pineapple, tinned tuna. Tins tins tins. God knows how they’d done this job before tins were invented. How long ago was that, anyway? Addison started to move the fridge out of its space, shuffling it from corner to corner. As he leaned the fridge back towards him, he wondered what would happen if it fell on him. That would really mess things up: the field agent arrives at his newly prepped flat and finds some guy sprawled under his fridge. Addison would’ve laughed if he hadn’t had the fridge leaning against his chest. The dude who gets crushed by an appliance pulls himself out of the promotion pool pretty efficiently. Behind the fridge was too clean, so he chucked in a couple of grapes and gave the Hoover bag a swing to get a good layer of dust back there. Then he levered the fridge back into position. Like anyone would care. But Harris was always droning on about the details. Harris had been here something like ten years. An actual decade. Nearly half Addison’s life. He’d been at it barely six months, and wasn’t sure he’d be hanging around much longer.

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Thorpe back at headquarters had been talking about new placements for a few weeks now. Six months, and already moving up. ‘Seriously,’ he said to Harris, watching the older man rinsing a glass and half drying it to leave just the right tide mark. ‘Were you never bore-able?’ ‘I’ve known some honest-to-goodness wearisomeness in my time. I taught school. And before that I spent a year as a cleaner. Now that, sir, is a grim line of work.’ Addison laughed and chipped a bowl with the butt of his penknife. A cleaner. These days cleaners meant guys with guns, not mops. ‘Now you’re more like a dirtier than a cleaner. Does that make you feel sick or something?’ ‘Not in the slightest. A man’s got a life to lead; this way I can lead it. A simple exchange. My time for their dollars, their security. Plus the reward of knowing what we achieve for this nation.’ ‘We don’t know squat about what we achieve.’ ‘We know we keep things right – we know it every morning we wake up and our streets remain our own. That’s plenty for a man to achieve.’ Harris scattered cumin across the oventop and lit the gas, leaving it on until the scent of burning spice clogged the small kitchen. ‘I guess.’ Addison opened the window and looked out across the tangle of phone lines and the Brooklyn rooftops. They were halfway up an apartment block made of brick so brown it was nearly red. A black iron fire escape zigzagging down to a furious sea of motorists. What they fought to defend, and all that. *** Harris sprawled on a low cream sofa, taking a break. They’d have to move the furniture in a minute – the hardest part of the job. Sometimes he wondered why they did it this way – why not get the same guys who brought the furniture here to sort the apartment out? But he knew there’d be a reason. Not that he envied the shifters. It was no easy thing getting a sofa through a door, after all. That’s one thing he’d learnt when he and Amy had moved to their house. An actual house, after a life of apartments. He still felt like he was trespassing when he took the stairs. And kids like Addison ask why he didn’t do something else.

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Addison was smoking, tapping ash off over the carpet and pressing it in with his heel. Harris winced. ‘That’s one thing a man stops doing soon as he sees how much carpets cost.’ ‘But our man’s on a lease, yeah? And if he’s anything like me, he hasn’t a clue how much a carpet costs, and wants things to stay that way.’ ‘True enough. It’s just, well, these are good carpets.’ ‘’Nother marriage thing, I’m reckoning,’ said Addison. He shook his head. ‘Nine years.’ ‘Nine years.’ Harris smiled and looked at the ceiling rose. They’d have to cobweb up that lampshade. ‘How’d the two of you meet, anyway?’ ‘You looking for tips, son?’ ‘Yeah, no. Just fine as I am for now, thanks.’ ‘For the best. The way we met hasn’t exactly got a wide applicability.’ ‘How’s that?’ said Addison, grinding out his cigarette on the sofa arm. ‘Arranged marriage?’ ‘We met doing science.’ ‘Yeah? Didn’t picture you as a boffin. No offence, right.’ ‘You’re coming dangerously close to getting an old-man story out of me.’ Addison gestured round the room with the stubbed-out cigarette. ‘We got all afternoon, right?’ *** So Addison listened while they strained against the furniture, while they piled bank statements and shirt catalogues on the coffee table, while they loaded up the bookshelves with Burroughs, Hesse, Lenin, Heinlein, Cohen and Kerouac. ‘It was at this college building in New Haven,’ said Harris. ‘Quite the place, by the looks of it. Long corridors that didn’t seem to go anywhere. Did you have your interview at the Gatehouse? Bit like that.’ Addison reckoned talking about the Gatehouse was a sure way to get stuck fixing up apartments for ten years, so he kept his mouth shut while Harris went on. ‘There was this waiting room, reminded me of a trip to hospital. Every so often a scientist would enter – white coat, thick glasses, as you might expect. Could have been playing a movie

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part. He even had a clipboard to take notes on. ‘This scientist would call out pairs of people, and we’d follow him out into another room. My partner was a woman. Quite the looker. Tallish, thin, a kind smile to her. Dark hair, striking eyes. She was about my age.’ ‘Old, then.’ ‘Talk that way, son, and it’s no surprise you’re single.’ Harris slid a box of records over to where Addison was setting up the hifi. ‘Stack these up. No alphabetical order.’ Addison gave a mock salute and flicked through Baez, Beach Boys, Beatles, Bob and Byrds. That was just the Bs. You’re faking a life for a single guy, half the effort goes into picking the records. ‘It was meant to be a memory test,’ continued Harris, ‘with one of us the teacher, the other the subject. The pupil, if you prefer. Me, I got teacher.’ ‘Fittingly.’ ‘This wasn’t much like any classroom I’d ever seen. She had to memorise these pairs of words, and I had to tell her when she got it wrong.’ Harris halted, pressed an armchair down to make a proper carpet indentation. ‘Here’s the kicker, son. When she gave the wrong answer, I had to press a button, give her an electric shock.’ ‘Seriously? I bet you wish you’d had that when you were a real teacher.’ ‘Each time she got it wrong, the shock got bigger.’ ‘Brutal.’ ‘I reckoned this was to get her to improve. No different from a parking fine.’ ‘But more painful.’ ‘I take it you don’t drive.’ A pause, but Addison was interested now. ‘Did you do it?’ ‘Yes I did, son. Yes I did.’ Addison gave a low whistle. ‘I felt bad, believe me. But I knew there’d be a reason. You can’t build a country out of people just doing what they want. That way lies anarchy.’ ‘Still, you electrocuted your wife.’ Addison was almost impressed. It wasn’t what he’d expected of Harris. He was too solid, too normal for that sort of thing.

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‘She wasn’t my wife yet. And technically it’s only electrocution if it’s fatal. Until then it’s just a shock.’ ‘So that’s all right then.’ ‘You think you’d have done differently?’ ‘Electrocu – electrify – a woman for some dork in a lab coat? I don’t think so.’ ‘A lot of people say that,’ said Harris, standing up and brushing down his trousers. ‘But Amy says that ain’t how it worked out.’ ‘She went back?’ Another pause. ‘Turns out she was part of it.’ ‘So were you, though, right?’ ‘Not like her. She was helping them run it. I hadn’t been shocking her at all. It had been a trick.’ ‘What the hell?’ Harris undid a bag of crumpled tissues and emptied them into the wastepaper bin. ‘Come on son, clock’s ticking.’ *** They did the bathroom after that – the right coloured hairs caught in the plug, the right shaving detritus below the mirror, the right used razors in the chrome bin. On their way out, Addison left the toilet seat up. Harris couldn’t help giving him the look. ‘Single guy, right?’ said Addison. *** The bedroom came last, and by that point Addison was getting bored with the whole damn thing. Harris was carefully arranging loose change on the bedside table, setting the alarm clock, hanging paisley shirts and brown cords in the wardrobe. Meanwhile Addison darted about the room in spurts of motion – chipping a hexagon of paint off the wall where the doorknob would hit; dumping an armful of socks into the chest of drawers. ‘Harris, listen,’ he said in the end. ‘I’m listening.’

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‘There’s a jump from “saw her in a room” to “got married for nine years”.’ ‘Surely is. You want the rest, huh?’ Addison didn’t bother answering. He could hear the satisfaction in Harris’s voice. Suppose that’s what happens when you get enough years behind you: you want to go round telling people about them. ‘I was on the steps outside,’ said Harris. ‘A fine afternoon – you could smell the hot tar of the roads. I’d paused at the top of the college steps for a smoke. My hand was still shaking from the – well, from the experiment. I could barely point the lighter at my cigarette. Then a woman cleared her throat behind me and said, “Can I help you with that?”’ ‘Cheesy.’ ‘She said it as a joke. So I turned around, and of course it was her. I asked if she was okay, and that’s when she told me: that it was fake, that there wasn’t even a memory test. That it was just to see what I’d do. But she’d felt as bad as I had, and wanted to come and tell me that. I figured she couldn’t go running after everyone who did the experiment, so, well, that’s what gave me that bit of confidence I needed.’ ‘Did you tell her you’d felt a spark between you?’ ‘We had standards in those days, son.’ ‘Like hell you did. I’ve seen the TV reruns.’ Harris half-opened the blinds. ‘Think we’re just about done here.’ ‘Thank Christ for that,’ said Addison, and started to load the trolley. When he was done, he watched Harris going about the final checks, and realised he wasn’t satisfied. There was something missing from Harris’s story. Addison knew that, with an instinct that made him certain he was right for this job – or at least right for the jobs that would come after. The ones when he’d stay in the room, undercover, with a pistol duct-taped to the underside of the table. Rather than just being the guy who arranged the damn furniture. *** Hand on the doorknob, Harris glanced back into the apartment. It looked lived-in now. Someone would be along soon, ready to pretend to have their life there for a few days. Events

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would transpire. Then someone else would take it all apart again and pack the parts away, ready to be taken somewhere else so Harris and Addison, or someone very much like them, could do it all again. Harris opened the door and pushed the trolley out, satisfied with another day done. Addison followed behind, looking thoughtful. Not a look Harris associated with the kid. ‘Something gnawing at you, son?’ ‘What about the experiment?’ asked Addison. ‘What about it?’ ‘What was it for? What was the moral?’ ‘Conclusion, son. Stories have morals. Science has conclusions.’ ‘Whatever. What was it?’ ‘It’s not something I let myself get too concerned about. That was more Amy’s department.’ ‘That right?’ said Addison. He leaned back against the corridor wall, arms crossed. ‘Then what did you get out of it?’ ‘Plenty. I got Amy. That’s more than a man has a right to ask for.’ He pondered that one, then added: ‘So if you really want a conclusion, I guess mine is that there’s good that can come out of any bad.’ Addison frowned. ‘You sure about that?’ ‘Simple soul, Addison. Simple soul.’ ‘I got something else out of it.’ ‘You did, huh?’ Harris thought about the experimenter standing there, his coat white as paper, his eyes avoiding all contact, his voice level as he gave each instruction. It was science, he told himself. It had done whatever it had been meant to do. But still: that shriek through the intercom. Amy’s shriek. He still carried that in his head, even though he knew it had been a trick. ‘Yeah,’ said Addison. ‘What I get’s that a guy like you – a decent God-fearing guy – can electrocute his future wife.’ ‘Now hold on a minute.’ He wasn’t here to be judged by some college boy half his age. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

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‘Well, that’s what it shows me, right? That a man like you’ll do a thing like that.’ ‘Sometimes we all of us have to do things we don’t much like.’ He laid a hand on the trolley. ‘Exactly. So that’s the moral, isn’t it?’ ‘What?’ Addison uncrossed his arms. ‘That when it comes down to it, people are assholes.’ ‘People are assholes.’ Harris shook his head, thought about it for a moment, then laughed. ‘People are assholes. That’s pretty good.’ He took hold of the trolley handles. ‘But I’ll tell you what,’ said Addison, falling in behind Harris as the trolley squeaked towards the lift. ‘I didn’t need no scientist to tell me that.’

NADIA KINGSLEY

haron sits back from her computer, pushing herself away from it with her foot, and breathing out slowly. She breathes in, and out again once more, as a whispered ‘There,’ slips out of her parted lips.

She sits like that for some minutes, then jerks her wrist up. 6:15. She hears Alice stir. She presses ‘Save as’, then types Getting inside the mind of a pre-school child: One mother’s

thoughts, and is just going through the process of checking that the computer is turned off, for the seventh time, as Alice wanders in: adorable Barbie pyjamas, gorgeous five-year-old girl, saying her usual ‘I’m hungry Mummy’ while still yawning. Sharon scoops her up, Children need habit and routine to make them feel safe, says ‘I’m hungry too. And I’m going to gobble you up whole!’ Alice squirms and giggles as Sharon carries her down the stairs to the kitchen.

As they sit opposite each other at the table – Alice stirring her Coco Pops around in her milk, and Sharon looking over her mug of black ground coffee at Alice – Alice asks, ‘What’s today?’ ‘Just Sunday,’ says Sharon, with a quiet smile. ‘Nooo… that’s wrong,’ says Alice. Then together they chant, ‘It’s not any old SUNDAY. It’s Alice and Mummy’s great big FUN DAY!’ Sharon laughs, ‘and pleasurable. It will be pleasurable. It will be fun.’ Expand your child’s vocabulary by introducing a new word to their regular routine. Alice looks at Sharon, scoops up some cereal, then tilts her head, and points the spoon at Sharon, spilling most of it onto the table. ‘And so today,’ says Sharon, ‘as it’s going to be sunny, we are going to go out. Into the country! And do you know what we’ll do there?’ ‘We’ll see what we can see.’ ‘That’s right, Alice. I wonder what we’ll see and experience this time?’

THE CASUAL ELECTROCUTION OF STRANGERS

NADIA KINGSLEY

Sharon has already planned a route, having checked it out earlier in the week while Alice was at nursery: a walking path that goes past fields of animals and ends at a petting zoo. They have to double back the same way to the car, but that’s OK. She doesn’t tell Alice she’s got it all planned. She never does. This too is in her article: Keep things as a surprise. Let the child feel they have discovered something for themselves. Let them lead. Let their imagination out. ‘So,’ says Sharon, ‘let’s go and clean our teeth and then let’s get out, and have some fun!’ ‘H’RAY!’ says Alice, as she slips from her chair and races up to the bathroom.

Sharon lets Alice’s hand slip out of hers. Like letting a dog off a lead, she thinks, and smiles as she watches her little girl race along the path and then suddenly come to a halt, in front of a field of sheep. ‘Look, Mummy!’ ‘Gosh.’ ‘Sheep!’ ‘Yes. Sheep. How lovely,’ says Sharon. And is pleased with how surprised she sounds. ‘Can we stay for bit, Mummy? Can we stay watch?’ ‘Of course we can, Alice. Let’s stay for a bit and watch the sheep. Just don’t go too close to the fence,’ says Sharon. ‘’Kay,’ says Alice. They both stand quietly. Sharon keeps herself a little way away from Alice, to give her the physical and mental space to grow, even though she would have preferred to crouch behind her, and hug her and hug her. ‘Bah,’ says Alice. ‘BAH!’ ‘It is more of a meh,’ says Sharon. Alice gives her a look, but this time Sharon knows she’s right, so smiles in an encouraging way. A strong sense of phonemic awareness is essential in order for children to learn how to read and spell words. She had lifted it straight from a website article, and hadn’t found a better way of putting it, though she wonders now if phonemic awareness is a little too academic for her expected readership.

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Sharon starts to really watch her daughter watching the sheep. ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asks. ‘What do sheep say all day?’ says Alice. ‘That’s what.’ Sharon hadn’t noticed quite how noisy a field of sheep could be, until Alice had pointed it out. Particularly this one nearest them – who seems to be snagged somehow on the thorny hedge. ‘Perhaps they’re saying how much greener the grass looks on the other side of the fence,’ says Sharon. She’s rather pleased with this, but Alice gives her one of her telling-off looks. Sharon immediately regrets it: Never impinge your own thoughts on a pre-school child who is in imaginative play – it will stunt their mental growth, then reminds herself: This takes vigilance. And a staying in the moment. ‘Maybe,’ says Alice, then visibly brightens. Alice rushes at the electric fence so fast that Sharon lets out a gasp and grabs out instinctively. Misses. ‘MEH!’ says Alice, then skips away along the path. Sharon follows.

The petting zoo is a great success. Sharon has had it on her to-do list for some time, but has been waiting for the right moment in Alice’s development. The walk there has been a great success too, with Sharon cleverly covering up her need to open and close the farm gates seven times, by muttering, as if to herself, Gosh, this one’s stiff, and The farmer needs to oil his gates – just as she had rehearsed. Alice had been looking the other way each time, but Sharon knew that she had heard her. She uses the Distraction Method on the way back, as it’s always good to chop and change, and anyway, Alice is full of what she’s just seen at the petting zoo, and is telling it to Sharon, as if Sharon hadn’t even been there: a great success. They get back to the field of sheep. ‘You can’t pet these ones, Alice. See that white thin fence? It has electricity running through it. That’s why we must be careful not to touch it.’ Educate and keep safe – before tragedy strikes.

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NADIA KINGSLEY

Your child will benefit, while feeling safe in his/her consistent boundaries. ‘That was one in a million place. Weren’t it Mummy?’ Sharon pauses. ‘Yes. It was very special.’ They smile at each other. Sharon wants the moment to go on forever. Alice looks away. Then points into the field. ‘Look at that sheep. It’s bahing, I mean mewing. Mummy, it’s stuck! We’ve gotta help him, Mummy. Help him, HELP HIM MUMMY!’ The sheep is indeed stuck in the thorny hedge. It must have been stuck there for hours. ‘Shoo,’ says Sharon. ‘Shoo.’ ‘SHOO!’ says Alice. The sheep doesn’t move. ‘Stay back,’ says Sharon as she approaches the fence. She gets her body between the two white ribbons, like that fairground game with a hoop and a wiggly metal line. She is engulfed by her constant and overwhelming need to do every single action in her day seven times over: To keep Alice well. To keep everything safe. She backs out, then steps back in, in between the ribbons, and is about to step back out again. ‘Mummy,’ says Alice. ‘There’s no time for that.’ Sharon straightens in surprise at this, then collapses from a sudden jolt. Her leg, still twisted around the lower electrified ribbon, is shaking rhythmically. She panics as she tries to kick it free. The sheep walks away from the hedge, giving Sharon a backward glance as it goes.

DARREN LEE

e were playing Ghostbusters and I was the Marshmallow Man. I was always the Marshmallow Man. The chaos was typical of any school lunchtime. Us kids had been given our

fill of stodgy canteen chips and were busy pinballing around the playground in a carbohydrate high. Sweating in our Teflon uniforms, we frantically exhausted the cola and baked beans from our systems before the inevitable and unwelcome crash when we returned to class. No inch of the school grounds spared from the anarchy: there were games of tag, British Bulldog, catch and footy, elsewhere groups of kids skidded down a muddy slope using plastic bags as makeshift sleds, some played Superman and ran around in improvised capes made out of their parkas. In the centre of this were The Gang: this is Robbie Hall, Dunc Clough, Iqbal Khan and myself. For us the playground was no longer a concrete pitch in a Midlands town, instead we were in the exotic metropolis of New York, saving the city atop a giant skyscraper. I was stood in the middle of the group while the others surrounded me, arms extended like weapons, the gang making swooshing noises as I writhed half-heartedly in front of them. ‘Do I explode now?’ I asked them. Robbie sighed loudly and threw his arms down in a mardy fit. ‘You’re not doing it right,’ he said. ‘You never do it right!’ ‘Spazzer!’ said Dunc. Iqbal chipped in. ‘That’s not what the Marshmallow Man does. And you move too quickly. You’re not stomping properly. It’s like you’ve not seen the film at all.’ ‘I have!’ I protested, even though I hadn’t. ‘You never,’ said Robbie. ‘We have to explain everything to you. Everything!’ ‘Spazzer!’ said Dunc. The four of us had always hung out together at lunchtimes, mucking about, wearing holes in the knees of our trousers as we scraped them on the tarmac. We had been Jedis, The A-Team, cowboys, Knight Riders and D-Day landers. We were inseparable; that was, until this new game had come along.

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DARREN LEE

Robbie’s dad had taken the three of them one weekend to see the Ghostbusters movie and they had enjoyed it so much that from then on all they ever wanted to be was the Ghostbusters. Robbie had explained that the reason why I hadn’t been invited on the cinema trip was that there was no room for me in his dad’s Vauxhall: a none-too-subtle dig at the recent growth spurt that had seen me stretch both vertically and horizontally – a prelude to the full horror of puberty to come. ‘And besides,’ he went on, ‘you probably can’t afford a ticket anyway. My dad says your dad goes through bins like a gyppo.’ Robbie only saw his dad at weekends, and seeing as it was the early eighties, divorced parents were still something of a novelty. I remember my mum explaining to me that Robbie was from a ‘broken home’, her words hushed, solemn and disapproving, the same tone of voice that Dad used whenever Maggie Thatcher appeared on the telly. With such a burden Robbie needed to be tolerated and indulged, rather than confronted. Despite this, I decided to flob on the back of his duffel coat the next time I saw it hanging up outside class; with any luck it would dry and go all crusty before he found it. The inaugural game of Ghostbusters had been played the week before, and such was the gang’s zeal that it had been the only game we had played since then, and gradually other kids who had seen the film started to join in. It wasn’t long before everyone had been allotted their particular roles. ‘I’m Venkman,’ said Robbie. ‘I’m Egon,’ said Iqbal. ‘And I’m Ray,’ said Dunc before adding an obligatory ‘Spazzer!’ I asked them what I should be. Robbie called the other Ghostbusters together in a huddle where they conferred, grinning in my direction as they whispered. ‘You can be the Marshmallow Man,’ he announced sniggering. The other kids laughed; an indication that this was another insult at my expense. The Marshmallow Man, I was told, was the giant monster who appeared at the end of the movie to stomp all over the city. Despite not understanding any of the story, I lumbered and

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stomped while the heroes fired their imaginary proton packs at me. When they were fed up with this, and only then, I was to explode and the game would be over with the heroes left to fight another day. It was fine for the first five or six times times, but my sticky marshmallow heart craved a more exciting role. ‘Can’t I be a Ghostbuster?’ ‘No. No you can’t,’ said Iqbal. ‘Everyone knows we’re the Ghostbusters, and besides, you’d just ruin it.’ ‘He’s right,’ said Robbie. ‘You can’t play Ghostbusters again until you’ve seen the film.’ A crowd was beginning to gather as all the other characters were wondering why the game had been stopped just before its gooey climax. They too grumbled when they learnt that yet again, my lack of modern cinema knowledge was ruining everyone’s fun. ‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘This is a stupid game anyway.’ Robbie stamped his feet. ‘It’s not stupid, it’s GHOSTBUSTERS!’ Dunc stooped down and began clapping his hands together slowly, chanting ‘Spa-zzer!’ ‘Spazzer!’ until everyone else began to join in. They circled me so that I couldn’t run away and I began to feel the familiar slow burn of dryness in my throat that signified tears were starting to well up. Iqbal had bent down behind me to tie up his shoelaces, giving Robbie the perfect opportunity to push me over him and onto the floor. This was the oldest trick in the book, and every kid had experienced this several times during their education; like stuntmen, we saw it coming and perfected a safe landing. My arm was a little bruised – and my pride stung – but otherwise I was OK. One thing was certain: this was not how Ghostbusters was supposed to end. I leapt up, fists clenched and ready to thump away, but the crowd had already began to disperse: one of the sledging kids had careered into a tree and been knocked unconscious. The gang ran away, eager to witness the new drama. The knocked-out kid was all anyone talked about that afternoon, and Ghostbusters was quickly forgotten by everyone. Except me; I no longer wanted to be their Marshmallow Man. I had to see that movie. *** 60

THE CASUAL ELECTROCUTION OF STRANGERS

DARREN LEE

‘Dad, can we see Ghostbusters?’ Dad was doing his tinkering. A year before, he had adopted the Reader’s Digest DIY manual as his bible and converted the garage into a workshop. The garage was cluttered with random bits of junk that Dad had salvaged on his trips to the council tip: washing machine parts, broken televisions and toasters sat on the shelves that he himself had made. This hobby had arrived out of the blue and his enthusiasm hadn’t dimmed in the months since. My childhood books were littered with crackpot inventors who went on adventures, so I was naturally disappointed with Dad’s quiet dedication to fixing broken things rather than building me a flying machine, or the R2-D2 I requested for my birthday. Whenever he went into his workshop, Dad would dress in a pair of navy blue overalls, as if it were part of a ritual of work and he would be unable to tinker without the right clothes. The overalls were dirty, covered in splotches of paint and with a few scorch marks where things had not gone according to plan. They smelt earthy and sulphurous, like the smell that’s in the air just before a large storm. I had already spoken about the cinema to Mum, who sighed and told me to ‘go ask your father’. ‘Dad, can we go and see Ghostbusters?’ He was hunched over a circuit board, barely paying attention. Blue sparks lit up the garage like tiny fireworks. Eventually he put down the soldering iron and removed his goggles. ‘What do you think?’ he asked, waving demurely towards his latest project, like one of Bruce Forsyth’s Dolly Dealers unveiling that week’s grand prize. It was a smaller version of one of those Wacky Wire fairground games where you have to guide a ring on the end of a stick through a snaking course without touching the metal; as soon as you do, it triggers an alarm, the buzz of which was so loud and deep that you could feel it vibrating in your chest. It looked fun, but at that age dexterity was not one of my virtues, and besides, I refused to be drawn away from the task in hand. ‘Dad, all the other kids have seen it. Can we go?’ ‘What’s a Ghostbuster?’ ‘It’s a film. It’s about Ghostbusters, they catch ghosts and there’s some monsters and chases and explosions and can we go, can we go?’

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My nagging continued unabated at the dinner table. We used to talk about our days as we ate, but dinner times had become much quieter; you’d think my parents would have been pleased that I was making an effort to create plenty of noise to fill the long silences. Mum was the first to give in: ‘Why don’t you just take him, Graham?’ ‘Are you not coming too, Mum?’ I asked ‘No.’ I didn’t understand why she had to snap, but I figured that it was because she was probably afraid of ghosts; when Jaws was on the TV she watched most of it through her fingers. ‘It would be good practice,’ continued Mum. Before I could ask what she meant, she stood up to clean away the plates. I grabbed one of Dad’s uneaten fish fingers before she could whisk them away. Dad looked sad so I said I was sorry for being greedy. He stared off into the distance, deep in thought as Mum clattered away in the kitchen. It was only a fish finger, I thought. I bet Captain Birdseye doesn’t get all grumpy when someone tucks into his leftovers. Dad rubbed his temples before turning to me with a broad all-is-forgiven smile. ‘Let me change out of these overalls,’ he said. ‘If we’re quick enough we can make the eight o’clock showing.’ I jumped up and gave him a hug. I was so excited. I think Dad was excited too because we both rushed out of the house without saying goodbye to Mum. *** It turned out that the gang had lied to me. There are four Ghostbusters, not three! They could have let me be Winston, although Winston doesn’t really get to do much ghostbusting. I bet you had forgotten him. You’ve probably forgotten him already. Who is Winston? I hear you ask. None of that mattered because Ghostbusters was everything I imagined it to be and more. Even our decrepit local fleapit did nothing to dull the occasion. The dusty red velvet seat

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coverings, the scratchy adverts for local businesses and the concessions stand selling boxes of rock-hard Fruit Gums: all these things added to the sense of adventure. I really liked the ghost in the library at the start, the bit when they caught the slimer, and the dog monster living in that lady’s fridge. I even liked the Marshmallow Man, although I still couldn’t see what was wrong with my stomping technique. However, the scenes I liked the most were everything with Bill Murray in. Venkman was clearly the best Ghostbuster: cool, sarky, laid-back, funny and heroic. From his first scene when he keeps electrocuting one of his students to impress a girl, I was hooked. It wasn’t so much Ghostbusters that I fell in love with, but Bill Murray himself; from then on I only wanted to play Venkman in the playground. I would be a Marshmallow Man no more. Throughout the film I kept looking across to Dad, who also seemed to be enjoying himself, sat still, eyes wide and bulging, staring at the screen and almost refusing to blink. ‘It’s good this,’ I whispered to him. But I don’t think he heard me. We drove home after the movie and, despite the sweets I had eaten, Dad suggested we share a bag of chips. Looking back, this was probably a cunning ploy to keep my mouth busy and stop me from talking about the film: had Bill Murray done anything else? Did he live in Hollywood or New York? Would he come round for tea if we asked nicely? Do you think he likes potato waffles? This continued all the way to the chip shop, in the queue and then back in the car, where we split the chips, stinking the air with vinegar fumes. I was still talking in between mouthfuls. We got down to the crusty chips at the bottom of the bag before Dad got a word in edgeways: ‘When I was your age your Grandad took me to see Goldfinger,’ he said. ‘I was the same, I remember looking at Sean Connery and thinking that was who I wanted to be when I grew up. I only managed to get his chest hair – trouble is now it’s also on my back, in my ears and up my nose!’ He laughed a little at his joke and then drifted off again. I couldn’t make out what he was trying to look at outside because the chips had steamed up the windows. ‘It’s good for you to have heroes,’ he said. His eyes were glazed more than usual and had began to water. A trickle fell down his cheek

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and landed on his shirt, blotting a damp patch against the polyester. He sniffed and blew his nose before starting the engine and driving us home. I had never seen my father cry before, but I didn’t blame him: it had been an amazing evening. Or maybe he was tired. We drove in silence. Dad was concentrating on the road, and I was replaying the movie again in my head, all of Bill’s highlights: demons in New York, gunky phantasms and the casual electrocution of strangers. *** The next day I returned to the playground with an excited swagger. I sat in morning maths channelling my new hero, answering mental arithmetic with a deadpan nonchalance and rebelling in PE by only pretending to care about vaulting the wooden horse; I couldn’t wait until lunchtime to show off all my ghostbusting knowledge. When the lunch bell rang I was one of the first to hit the playground, powered up and ready to go. ‘I’ve seen it!’ I told the gang, ‘It was ace!... Wicked even!’ The gang had been taken in before, so Iqbal fired off a load of questions at me to check my credentials. Iqqy was the playground’s ghostbusting expert after having seen the film a whopping three times. He nodded to the others, satisfied that I was able to play. In later life he became a nightclub bouncer: I’m sure this is no coincidence. ‘Can I be Venkman?’ I pleaded. ‘I want to be Venkman this time.’ Robbie cut me off. ‘I’m Venkman,’ he said. ‘I’m always Venkman. And you’re always the Marshmallow Man.’ ‘Spazzer,’ said Dunc. I was forced to endure the game as usual, but for the first time I understood the parts everyone played in the melee, how everything fitted together as they scuttled around. I could see some of the other kids were also bored and reluctant with their roles; they were just as tired with their assortment of minor characters as I was with mine. When the time came I stomped and I stomped and I stomped, imagining I was crushing the playground Ghostbusters with every gooey footfall.

THE CASUAL ELECTROCUTION OF STRANGERS

DARREN LEE

*** The skip turned up outside the house a few days later. It had been delivered while I was at school and Mum had already filled most of it with the junk from Dad’s workshop. Certain things were explained: 1. Dad will see you soon. 2. These things happen. 3. You need to be the man of the house now. 4. It’s not your fault. 5. We tried. Mum gave me fifty pence to go and buy some sweets while she carried on loading the skip. I didn’t feel like any Refreshers or Fruit Salads, so I walked around the corner shop idling and wasting time, avoiding having to witness the removal of Dad’s things. I was trying not to cry, and had skirted past the shelves of shortcake biscuits and Pot Noodles before finding myself staring at the video rentals section. The selection was small but there was a familiar face staring straight at me from the shelves; the light shone through the shop window and illuminated a dustmottled path to Bill Murray’s face smirking at me from a sun-bleached Betamax cover. I handed over my money and took the tape home to watch; I’m glad I lied at the shop saying it was for my parents because the film was quite rude. It was called Stripes, and Bill Murray was in the army, although he didn’t want to be, and there were boobs and bums in it, which could have been embarrassing if Mum wasn’t so pre-occupied. When the film finished I looked out of the front window towards the skip, now mostly full. Hands ruffled my hair. Mum. ‘That’s all I can load today,’ she said. ‘Did you like your film?’ I told her I did, but I left out mentioning the mud wrestling scene. Mum went upstairs for a bath and I stayed looking at the skip. Dad didn’t have enough space where he had moved and all those strange things he had collected, oddities that had been nursed back into a purpose, were now bound for the tip again. At the top of the pile was the cherry on the cake, his final project, the buzzing fairground wire game.

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THE CASUAL ELECTROCUTION OF STRANGERS

Suddenly I knew what Bill Murray would do if he were in my shoes. I let the door on the latch and snuck out; Mum was running the bath with the radio on so she didn’t hear me creep out. I climbed into the wreckage and pulled out the Wacky Wire, dragged it across the driveway and back into the garage. Some of Dad’s tools were still there, the manuals strewn about, some still open mid-project. All I needed to take was the battery and the hoop from the machine to build something of my own. I had watched Dad often enough, and I was convinced my plan would work. *** The next day I gathered the Ghostbusters to unveil my creation. I had built my own replica of the electric shock machine that Bill Murray used in the film. I lied and said it was the real thing, and that a fictitious uncle working in California had rescued the prop from the studio’s scrapheap before bringing it to me; everyone usually had such an imaginary uncle. Robbie was fascinated and he instantly reached out his hand to grab at the machine. I flicked the switch, applying the current, and for one brief moment, literally a flash, I was finally Venkman. After the gang had picked the stunned Robbie up off the floor, Bill Murray had gone from my mind; I couldn’t help but think of Dad, the way he had made me laugh on the way home from the cinema with talk of heroes, nose hair and Sean Connery’s chest, the time when it looked like the tears in his eyes were from laughter rather than The Other Thing: ‘Schocking,’ I said. ‘Poshitively schocking.’ This was lost on everybody; I was the only one who had seen Goldfinger.

ALEXA RADCLIFFE-HART

ea was trapped. The weight of a body that she no longer knew twisted the bed cover, her feet snared by the tangle of sheets, skin bared to the heavy air. Her eyes had been open long enough for the dark to be visible. She shut them tight

to choose a dream, the good bad kind. One where a smile changes everything. She felt her tongue moisten the edge of her mouth before it rushed across her lips. From the corner with the dimple, to the one without, the action was futile. No taste lingered to tell her what had happened was real. She tried to fantasise about the kiss that was planted purposefully in the space between her dimple and her mouth. And the smile that followed. She tried to grow the fantasy. What she would have done if Jesse had not turned away and walked back into her cell and laid on the bed. It was not an invitation. She faced the wall with folded arms, understanding the protocol. The door was locked again whether they wanted to stop it or not. A guttural intake of air reinstated the reality of the man lying next to her. Beaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s disappointment rose with bile before she swallowed. Dreams she wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t choose crept closer, the almost-dark no longer a comfort. Her focus settled on the shape of her husbandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mouth as it inhaled and exhaled stale breath. She had killed men bigger than him, but this did not prepare her for his monthly visits. Every time he returned, in the spaces between jobs that took him on highways away from Nashville, they became strangers once again. Not the kind who wanted to get to know each other, though still with married rights. He would be gone tomorrow. The band of red skin should have enough time to heal before she would have to force the ring into place again. The kiss was a gift. She should not have gone back into the prison the day after the death row call, but a shift needed to be covered and she needed a distraction. Her work should not have been a distraction, but then being an executioner should have been anything but casual. The snores next to her changed. Bea listened for the rattle with hope but instead it settled into a regular pattern that forewarned her of his heavy paws across her body whether she

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wanted them or not. She counted out the minutes until he would be gone again. Once alone, she would take the next life. *** Her eyes are green like a cat’s. On night shifts it is like she can see in the dark. She don’t suppose she is looking after me for any good reason, but she is. And I’m grateful. She says my name, slow like. Jeyss-aey. Like she wants to hear it. She never did shout it. It’s a whisper now but I know she can’t stay with me. I have always known I was gonna die. I know what my anger does to my loves. Jealousy has always got me in trouble. Came into the world kicking and I will leave that way. I haven’t told her, but when she took me into the yard on Tuesday it was like I was free again. I could ignore the drag and rattle of the chains. She talked to me like a human. Like I was someone new. When she asked me why I did it, it was to sate her curiosity, not to condemn. So I told her the truth. The girl I held in my hands until she couldn’t breathe no more was my love. The man I’d seen her with wasn’t my man but hers, once. He ran, was never a witness to trouble or trial, and I couldn’t see another way to stop her. All her excuses, all the lies. I didn’t do it thinking that I’d end up here. I tried to appeal, crimes of a passionate woman protecting herself. I tried to get the law men to tell the truth, that I loved her. I know that don’t make it right, but I did it from love. Too much love. But they reckoned that it wouldn’t help my case any. I knew my time to go was coming up. Solitary for good behaviour don’t happen here, but then again I get my special treatment sometimes as there’s nobody like me. Women ain’t supposed to be like me. Not the real bad. That’s why they’ve taken so long to decide what’s to be done with me. This place has been a home longer than any house I ever lived. As we walked back through locked corridors Beatrice told me that it would happen at midnight between Thursday and Friday. She told me everything she knew she had to say. And then she asked me if she could do anything. For me. I asked if it could be her. Her eyes widened a little. I told her that there weren’t never a secret in these places. I wouldn’t tell no one it was her. Her secret would be going to my grave. I’m not one to gossip. Her green eyes accepted before her head wobbled on her neck to agree. The red skin she twists on her

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wedding finger is always there, so I weren’t sure what she would feel about these things, but I thanked her the only way I know. With a little love. *** Jesse, look at me, keep looking at me. I try to focus her, voice calm. Unshaken. The microphone isn’t on yet, and my back is turned to the audience, hiding how I hold her hand whilst the others strap her limbs in place. She is already becoming a body but the fear is human. I shouldn’t be here. I need to get into the next room otherwise they’ll know something is wrong. Them. The ones with their eyes watching our every move. To make sure we get it right. There’s always someone watching for that. Before the Warden can walk in, I give her my last promise as I kiss her lips. It will be quick. On the other side of the wall, all I can hear is the hum of the electricity waiting. All I can see clearly is the lit up button on the dashboard. The cloth disguises my identity and I’m careful not to move too much, to give myself away. I’m not alone in this, a voice behind me tells me when to start and stop. He does not say if he notices the slip of my hand on the dial nudging the voltage, but tells me to start. One, two, three, four… I learn that women don’t scream like the men do. The silence between the numbers until he says thirty is deafening. *** My contract as an executioner said casual. My contract with the women’s prison said permanent. It was just extra work. Next. So just for extra pay? Not much, but enough. She will insist Sarah should call her Bea, although her name tag states BEATRICE and will remain in place although her pinny will lie balled next to her on the bench in the booth.

ALEXA RADCLIFFE-HART

THE CASUAL ELECTROCUTION OF STRANGERS

Either way, the world will not know this story is hers. Bea once practiced how to study someone with her green eyes to force the conversation further. Why did you stop? You’re asking the wrong things. Why ask if you already know the answers? Bea is going to lean forward on the table between them to loop sugar into her coffee. Both will watch the spoon, then listen until they cannot hear the scrape of the granules between the metal and the china. Sarah’s back won’t touch the plastic-coated form of the booth. In the silence, one hand will rest in her lap, the other will lead a pen to scratch into the paper pad. The recorder lays more towards Bea’s side of the table, whirring louder than either of them. Bea was right, Sarah had done all the research she could, but they wouldn’t print it until she got a real story. There were changes to how procedures are carried out in Tennessee; that I know. Why choose here? You’re not here to ask me about working in a diner. There weren’t many choices when I started my work, and there’s only a few more now. I wasn’t born with the music. That doesn’t leave much else. Get to the hard questions already. How were you chosen to do a job that has been historically given to men? Women have killed men for thousands of years. History has only written about men doing the killing but we all do it. We all could do it. You talk a whole lot about choices. I weren’t chosen. I volunteered. With this, Sarah’s pen will stop. Bea has said the thing she wanted to hear. I pressed a button when someone else couldn’t do it. I didn’t kill them. They did that themselves. Doesn’t take a big strong man to press a button. While I was there, the big strong men stopped having to press the button, but they still had to do other parts of the work. No-one knows who is underneath the cape, but they see who is strapping them in place. There are worse jobs.

JANE ROBERTS

er life now is a clinical one of elements and chemicals – silver iodide, silver-plated sheets of copper, and iodine vapours. These are not the usual, destructive chemicals of the Mesdames of the Parisian backstreets, those

visited by the unfortunate Mesdemoiselles with their bellies swollen from shameful acts. She knew too much of that life once, this husband-less Madame who made the money to purchase her photography studio in that time-honoured way. No, with this melange of modern wizardry, she creates. Madame Beauregard has a typical photographer’s eye. A love of and affinity for precision and aspect. For her, perhaps a harkening back to her previous profession – The World’s Oldest Profession – a picture without a human portrait is not a complete picture. It is the study of character that drives her. To know what makes a person tick. And yet that is so very difficult a task when one is involved with the portraiture of strangers. Strangers one cannot touch. It is impossible to know what a stranger is thinking at the best of times. Impossible, in part, due to the fact that no one smiles when sitting for their photograph. They hold their facial muscles taut, as if beset by rigor mortis, while they await the magic of the chemicals inside the box of the camera. Posing for minutes at a time. Not one single crease of a dimple. Nor even a rippling of that sensuous curve of Cupid’s bow on the upper lip. Not even unsettling the wax or form of the moustaches of the Messieurs. Each person paying her meagre francs for a picture that displays no real truth, no real beauty. In the unlikely event that there is an accidental smile when the camera flashes – that jewel of a picture – it is never remunerated; it is never sent off to the silversmith across the square for framing; and certainly, it is never placed with a loving hand into a treasured, heart-stroking, gold locket. It is these smiles that Madame Beauregard keeps safe in a cabinet at the back of the studio. Under lock and key, they grin away in obscurity, their pearly whites encased in the mussel shell tightness of the wooden drawer. And then she looks at them, after the business of the day is concluded; she tends to them; she frames them with more than joinery or metalwork. She regards these smiles as the family she never quite had.

JANE ROBERTS

THE CASUAL ELECTROCUTION OF STRANGERS

There used to be such a buzz in the air, thinks Madame Beauregard, as she surveys the overcast, dulled faces of the pedestrians traipsing over the scaled reptilian backs of the cobbled streets, ignorant of the trees in the parks and avenues blossoming around them. To awake one morning to a city without smiles… This is what it feels like. A sad notion. She casts her mind back to her younger, more scandalous days in vibrant Paris – 1880 and whatever those other figures on the calendar were that followed (fickle, vain Madame Beauregard does not like to dwell upon the passing of time): all those people – all sashaying and swaggering about the boulevards – their bodies having a riot, bedecked in the highest vogue. Oh, so à la mode, mes chéris! Yet now those thieves of smiles – war and pestilence, worry and care – have set the faces of these present-day pedestrians in hardened mausoleum marble, carved deep with frowns. More suitable for Père Lachaise cemetery than the fashionable boulevards. One can read a smile. One cannot read a frown. Perhaps even now, a thousand petites mortes per minute pulse through writhing bodies in the loft spaces of the bohemian quarters, down in the basements of the illicit pleasure zones, reclining on the red velvet luxury of the whore houses. Surges of desire climaxing into the ultimate… Fused bodies shorting-out in the moment of extreme… delight. And does this all happen with a smile now? No, not even The Oldest Profession can stir a genuine smile amongst the ever-regenerating present troubles of the world. But she is old, Madame Beauregard, and age has withered even her own smile. Each dead tooth remembered by dark shadow tombstone alone. The captivating perfection of silver frames embracing true smiles; it’s all that she has left to dream about – from the moment that pallid orb of sun shows itself, to the last warmth of over-exposed sunset before the skyline fades to monochrome. Smiles radiating, nay, conducting out of their silver frames – tingling the fingertips of the beholder. The casual power behind a smile! The idea sets her mind racing… An arrangement with the clients’ seat... A tweak of the camera... A small diversion of this thing scientists call ‘current’. The shutter of the camera. The click. The blinding light of epiphany. The anticipation excites her almost more than the final result.

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JANE ROBERTS

Soon Madame will be known throughout Paris as the woman who specialises in smiles. Like she used to specialise in smiles with all those petites mortes favoured away in the pleasure houses… before the wars and woes and age crept up upon the city. These honest, intractable, indomitable smiles – the ones just before La Grande Mort, final all-consuming Death itself. It is all she has left. Each time this electric moment happens, it will be a flash of purity, a glimpse into the soul of a stranger; each time it happens, she will understand a little more about humanity, a little more about smiles. She will regain that Golden Age of youth and exuberance once more. She lives in the Dark Room, this Madame Beauregard, and this is the spectacle that she surveys: the animated, electrifying smiles of those she frames – in fine-worked, adoring silver filigree – and the residue of their redundant, mortal bodies, packaged in wood, stacked up like spent-out gift boxes. Yes, this is what Madame Beauregard surveys until the final, faint, ghostly smile – her own shadowy smile – as she is transported away to the rope that swings to a laughing grin of its own.

REBECCA ROUILLARD

he first time was an accident; Alexei happened to be in the right place at the right time. He acted and the response was electric. You might call it fate.

Ironically, the thing that made it possible was also Alexei’s unique unhappiness. The sad

fact was that he was forgettable; nobody noticed him when he was there and nobody missed him when he wasn’t. He couldn’t say whether it was his face, his figure, his personality – whatever it was he was irredeemably bland. The only memorable thing about him was his name, Alexei. There was no trace of Russian blood in his ancestry but his mother was an avid reader of Russian literature, Anna Karenina in particular – she read it at least once a year throughout his childhood, tears dripping off the end of her nose to make a puddle of dampness on the front of her shirt. When he was at university, he finally read Anna Karenina himself and for a period he looked at his parent’s friends with suspicion in case one of them had been the object of his mother’s repressed passions. But they all seemed too old for romance. His co-workers called him Alex – he’d rather they didn’t but he didn’t have the courage to make an issue of it. Alexei was so much more interesting than plain old Alex Reynolds. Sometimes he would assume a Russian accent, not to anyone important – to bus drivers and baristas – and just for a moment he was someone interesting. In the rolling ‘r’s and musical cadences he hinted at something romantic and slightly illicit lurking behind his unassuming face.

The Girl travelled on the same train as him every morning. He got on at New Malden and she always got on at the next stop, Raynes Park, with one or two friends – flatmates perhaps. He’d never actually made eye contact with her but her haircut made her recognisable, even from behind: an ink-black, sharply sheared bob. He surmised that it might be a wig – how else did it remain so perfect? He had never seen her on his evening commute home. He liked to imagine she might look like a wild-haired Helena Bonham-Carter after a long day at work.

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On Monday The Girl was unusually quiet. He wondered if she was ill. Her friends, BrashBlonde and Squeaky-Voice, kept up the conversation but eventually one of them asked her if she was ok. ‘I’m fine,’ she said eventually, ‘It’s Don – he’s being weird.’ ‘Weird?’ ‘There’s something going on with him but he won’t tell me what it is. I think he’s going to break up with me.’ It sounded like she was trying not to cry. ‘He’s probably just having a bad week, I’m sure it’s nothing,’ said Squeaky-Voice. Brash-Blonde laid a hand on The Girl’s arm. In a minute they carried on talking about other things. The next day Alexei looked out for The Girl but the other two got on without her; perhaps she was ill. ‘Everybody knows about it but her; Don’s hardly subtle,’ said Brash-Blonde. ‘Leah’s such a bitch. She pretends to be her friend while she’s stabbing her in the back,’ said Squeaky-Voice. ‘Do you think we should tell her?’ ‘I don’t think we should get involved.’ ‘Yeah, better not to get involved.’ He hadn’t been listening on purpose – the squeaky voice was just so piercing – but at least the mystery of the moody boyfriend was solved. On Wednesday The Girl was back. She was still worried about the boyfriend. ‘Just talk to him,’ Brash Blonde said. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ Squeaky-Voice lied. They had clearly decided not to get involved. On Thursday The Girl was alone and she sat in the seat next to Alexei. He hadn’t been looking for her; he’d been reading, but as soon as she sat down he was aware that it was her. There was a current of knowing running through him. He could feel it in the space between their shoulders. If he touched anyone they would surely feel the jolt of it through his fingertips. He thought about telling her. But then he thought about how complicated it would

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be explain how he knew. She would think he was some sort of stalker. Wimbledon, Earlsfield, Clapham Junction, Vauxhall – he said nothing. He thought about all of her friends knowing that her boyfriend was cheating on her and none of them telling her. He thought about that dignified, silky black bob. He thought about her voice breaking when she’d said I think he’s going to break up with me. They were nearly at Waterloo. Now or never. He turned to the girl, ‘I have to tell you something.’ She looked up at him, unsuspecting. She even smiled. He’d never seen her face close up; she had tiny freckles on her nose. ‘Your boyfriend is cheating on you, that’s why he’s acting weird, and it’s with your friend, Leah.’ She stopped smiling. She seemed to have stopped breathing too; she was frozen in her seat, her eyes wide. She looked like she’d been electrified. He was waiting for her to ask him how he knew. She didn’t say anything. It was not at all what he expected, the awe and fear in her face, he felt a thrill run through him – she seemed to think he was some kind of psychic. He didn’t need to explain anything. In fact, Alexei realised, it was so much better if he didn’t explain. The train pulled into the station. He stood up, smiled at her, and walked away without looking back, his fingertips tingling. He swiped his Oyster card to get through the ticket barrier and then risked a quick look back. She was not following him.

Throughout the rest of the day, he kept picturing her face. The way he had shocked her to the very core. Him – boring old Alex Reynolds. It was intoxicating. She would be thinking about him too, he knew. She would never forget him. But if she saw him on the train again then she might work it all out, what seemed like some kind of psychic knowledge would become boring commuter eavesdropping. He didn’t want her to think he was a stalker; he wanted her to wonder, forever, how he had known. On Friday he set his alarm clock for fifteen minutes earlier than usual and took an earlier train. He chose a different carriage too, just to be safe, and he did not see The Girl again.

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The earlier train was quieter, it was more difficult to eavesdrop when you weren’t crammed up against people, but he found himself actively trying to listen in on people’s conversations. It was quite thrilling to think that he might be able to recreate that magic moment; to electrify another stranger with his mysterious knowledge. He took the earlier train for several weeks before he got another opportunity. He was sitting behind a couple he had never seen before, or had never seen together at least, because they were a strikingly attractive pair – the man was black and the woman had pale porcelain skin and white-blonde hair. ‘Horatio needs to be at his violin lesson at six o’clock, actually better make it five-to-six,’ The Woman said. ‘I won’t forget,’ The Man said. It was an arresting image – Alexei imagined a small admiral in regimental hat and epaulettes, scraping inexpertly at the violin. ‘Put a reminder on your phone,’ The Woman said. ‘I know what you’re like.’ ‘I won’t forget,’ The Man repeated. They didn’t talk much after that, but the violin-playing admiral stuck in Alexei’s mind. The following day he recognised The Woman on the platform, even though she was alone, and followed her on to the second carriage. There were no seats – they were both forced to stand. It wasn’t perfect, like last time, but perhaps it would do. They were just pulling into Clapham Junction when Alexei leaned towards The Woman and said, ‘I hope Horatio got to his violin lesson on time.’ The Woman was startled, but she was definitely not awed. ‘Who are you? How do you know my son’s name? What do you want?’ She was looking around to get help from someone official. She’s going to have me arrested, Alexei thought. ‘No,’ he tried to explain, ‘I was sitting behind you yesterday, and I heard you talking with your husband.’ She still looked furious.

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‘You were talking loudly,’ he said. ‘Just leave us the hell alone, creep,’ she said and then she walked away, down the length of the carriage to get away from him. He felt the rest of the carriage staring at him. He got out at Clapham Junction and waited for the next train. While he waited he thought again about The Girl who had been stunned into silence. He would have liked to have a photo of her face at the exact moment he had told her. It was perfect.

The following day he set his alarm clock another fifteen minutes earlier and took an even earlier train. His co-workers had begun to notice that he’d been early every day. They’d teased him about being keen, looking for a promotion. ‘I’m not giving you any more money no matter how early you are,’ his boss had joked with him. She was not really joking, he knew. He looked at the people on the train and wondered about their lives. There were people who claimed to be psychic but were actually reading body language and making deductions. Perhaps he did not need to eavesdrop on conversations; perhaps it was possible to read a person’s life from their set of their jaw, the slant of their shoulder, the angle of their feet. Perhaps even to read their future. He thought about The Girl once again. It seemed to him that even if he had not overheard the details it might have been possible to deduce, in the brutal slash of her cropped black hair, that that the man she loved would betray her. He felt again the tingle of electricity in his fingers. Perhaps he was meant to know things. A girl with long, curling, chestnut-brown hair got on the train at Earlsfield. He thought of Millais’ Ophelia – floating away to her doom, tendrils of her hair flowing around her head. He shut his eyes briefly and an image of the Chestnut-Haired Girl flashed before him – her eyes closed, her hair spread on the pavement behind her. Not drowning, but dying just the same. The sense of knowing surged and swelled in him. She turned her head suddenly and caught him looking at her. He spoke. ‘You’re going to die,’ he told her, ‘I see you dead.’ The words escaped him before he could reel them in. She didn’t say anything. He expected her to be afraid, angry, he expected some kind of

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reaction; he was shocked at what he’d said to her. But she said nothing. She looked at him and then she turned her head and looked away. There was not even disgust in her face – there was no reaction at all. She just lifted up her Kindle and carried on reading. That night he couldn’t sleep. All he could see was the face of the Chestnut-Haired Girl, looking straight through him. In his mind he raged at her, he swore, shouted, lectured, but it made no difference. She kept turning away, her face an uncaring blank. At 3am, he decided that he would have to kill her. It was the only solution – the only way to get a reaction, to make her see him. He’d already seen it anyway. She was meant to die. Over the next few days he thought of ways to kill the Chestnut-Haired Girl. It would be the perfect crime – there would be no motive, but it would still be best to make it look like an accident. He considered following her home and electrocuting her in the bath. But the logistics were just too complicated. Perhaps she didn’t even have a bath – most people preferred to shower these days. He considered poisoning her coffee but he had no idea how to get hold of a poison that would be potent enough to kill someone without making the coffee taste terrible. The only way to do it, he decided, was to push her in front of a train. If the platform was crowded enough and if he waited for exactly the right moment then it might just look like a tragic accident. On the fourth day he spotted the Chestnut-Haired Girl getting off the train at Waterloo and followed her down to the underground. The platforms of the tube were busier – it would be easier to make it look like an accident. He had considered wearing a disguise in case she recognised him from before, but he thought it might only draw attention – his own forgettable face was the best camouflage. She was taking the Northern Line and it was heaving, he was in luck. He looked at the board; he had three minutes till the next train, three minutes to get close enough to accidentally knock her in front of it. There was no way through so he darted along the edge of the platform on the wrong side of the yellow line. He could see a gap and he was about to step into it when the crowd surged forward. There was nowhere for him to go. He tried to backtrack but there was no space there either. Then he lost his balance and began to fall off the platform. Three minutes – was all he was thinking – I have three minutes to get off the track before the train comes, I will not die, I have three minutes. And then he was lying on

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his back across the tracks. He was in pain, definitely bruised. He stretched his arms and legs but fortunately nothing seemed to be broken. And then a multitude of hands stretched towards him – everyone had finally noticed him. ‘Come on man, get up. You OK?’ He leaned forward and put his hand down to push himself up, but as his hand touched the rail a great force came upon him and suddenly Anna Karenina was there with him. She wasn’t shocked to see him though, she gripped his hand – holding it down, attaching it to the rail, ‘It’s your destiny, Alexei,’ she told him. She was dressed like Kiera Knightly, in red, but she had his mother’s face. He felt it – the power exploding through his veins – and for a moment he understood everything. This weight, this significance he felt – surely this was fate.

LAURA WINDLEY

fter the vans had driven away, and they’d packed their stall up into the car, the two women stood in their pinnies in the muddy field, underneath the wind-whipped flutterings of the bunting. The sky was beginning to look ominous again.

June scanned the surrounding fence through her binoculars. Something caught her eye.

She adjusted the lenses, and looked more closely. ‘Another one!’ she said, passing the binoculars to Margery, who peered through. They looked at each other. ‘You’re right, y’know,’ said Margery, and let out a low whistle. ‘I wonder how they missed it.’ Every evening the vans would do a final circuit of all the fences around the fields and check for any extra finds. It was allegedly a foolproof system. ‘Must’ve come along just as they’d finished,’ she said. ‘All this slipping through the net. Happening rather a lot lately. They are getting slack.’ June chewed her lip, giving Margery the side-eye. ‘We couldn’t – could we?’ They both looked around the empty field. They watched the back of the last van as it waited at the gate, then turned and disappeared up the lane. Margery looked back at June. ‘Waste not, want not,’ she said.

As they drove closer to the fence, their small green car bumping and jolting up the field, they started to make out the shape. It was slumped in a heap on the other side. It was wearing blue, a T-shirt or anorak perhaps, and shorts. Caught between two of the wires on the fence, they could see a bare leg sticking out with a sock and a trainer on the end of it. They got out of the car. The air buzzed with a faint hum coming from the electrified fence. Margery nodded to June, who trudged across to the big fuse box, opened it, and pulled down the handle to turn off the power. When the humming stopped, Margery got closer to inspect the shape. ‘Male, I take it?’ June called out. ‘Male,’ Margery nodded. ‘Rambler. Nice meaty legs. Bit singed, mind you.’

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June shrugged. ‘It’s easily dealt with. I’ll come around to the other side.’ With some difficulty, they managed to untangle the body from the wires and heave it over the fence into the field, then June helped Margery pack it into the boot of the car. They covered it with an old blanket in case any of the vans came back or they were stopped at one of the crossings. ‘What was he doing there anyway?’ said June. ‘It’s not even on the footpath.’ Margery sniffed. ‘Some of them think they’re too good for footpaths. It’s trespass, is what it is.’ On closer inspection it seemed that although the legs were good, the rest of the body was rather scrawny under the blue anorak and shorts and vest. It was a male of about sixty, a smattering of white hair on its chest. It had landed with its eyes wide open, its grey hair standing on end. ‘Bit old, really, isn’t it?’ June said, screwing up her nose. ‘We’ll not get much out of that.’ ‘We’ll manage,’ Margery said. ‘Let’s get on with it.’ Once they’d driven out of the field and passed the sign for the fair – painted crudely in white and stuck on one of the old road signs in an attempt to attract tourists – the mudsplattered car made its way up the lane towards their cottage. They had found a small black rucksack on the ground beside the body. June now had the rucksack on her knee in the front seat and was rummaging through while Margery drove. Inside, June found a water bottle, a map, some tissues, and a tupperware boxful of blackberries. ‘Well, look at that, Margery,’ she said, and Margery tutted and shook her head. June also found the wallet. It had a little money in it and a photocard. Ray Duffy, the name was. They reached the cottage without incident, and once they’d checked there was nobody around, together they hauled the body out of the boot, and dragged it across the doorstep into the house. June set to doing the necessary in the kitchen, while Margery, who had put a crackling ‘78 onto the record player to drown out the sounds of the chopping and hacking, sank down into the saggy chair in the front room. She sipped at her glass of home-made sherry. She gazed blankly at the abundance of commemorative plates in the glass-fronted wooden cabinet.

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LAURA WINDLEY

The stopped clock failed to tick on the mantelpiece above the fireplace where the remains of Ray Duffy’s rucksack were now burning. The cottage and many of its contents had belonged to Margery’s family for well over a century. It may have been falling apart, but Margery was damned if she’d be letting any of it go; it had memories of much better times. Superior times, she felt, where one knew where one stood, and none of this rubbish with outsiders.

Once the canning was complete and June had cleared the kitchen of any unusable parts, Margery came in to assist. Together, they scrubbed at the kitchen surfaces. When that was done, Margery helped June carry the tins and preserving jars down the steps into their cellar. She stood back and inspected the larder they had created. None of the others in the village, she knew, would have had the foresight to build a larder, and she and June had always been careful. It was a fine hoard, which should keep them right when the time inevitably came. June’s organisational skills were much in evidence. Everything had been carefully labelled in her schoolmistress hand, and they’d virtually built a wall from all the tins. The shelves were lined from floor to ceiling with jars, and nothing had been wasted. Margery leaned on one of the barrels of her homemade sherry. ‘We’ll be alright whatever happens, June,’ she said. June smiled. ‘I’m sure we will,’ she said.

Margery was half-dozing in the front room later when there was a rapping on the door. That time already – half-past six on the dot. Margery rolled her eyes, put down her glass, and rolled herself out of the comfortable chair. The rapping became more urgent. ‘Alright, alright,’ she said. She took the large key out of her pocket, and with a creak, opened the heavy wooden door. Outside was one of the weedy council men, clutching a clipboard. He pulled a face as the musty smell of the house seeped outside. Margery folded her arms and glared at him. ‘Yes?’ she said. ‘Weekly count, Madam,’ he said.

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‘There haven’t been any,’ she said. ‘Not one?’ The man tried to peer past the doorway behind her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not one. Your lot have taken them all.’ He looked at her with watery eyes. ‘Needs must,’ he said. ‘We all know the rules. Shall I put you down for a zero this week then?’ ‘You do that,’ she said, and watched as he wrote the zero in the box on his clipboard. ‘And will we be seeing Madam at the town hall meeting tomorrow?’ She saw his ballpoint hovering over the next tick-box. Households got points off for non-attendance. It didn’t much matter for herself and June on the food front, of course, but he wasn’t to know that, and they didn’t want to arouse too much suspicion. ‘I expect we will,’ she snapped. ‘And Madam’s – friend?’ He peered down the hallway at June ‘Yes, yes, she’ll be there. Is that all?’ ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘So we’ll be seeing you there?’ ‘Goodbye,’ said Margery, and shut the door in his face.

At around eleven the following morning, they walked together down the hill to the village. They trudged past the fields and the barn which had been full of tractors ever since the cows died off, and down the winding lane with the shops, all of which had been there as long as Margery could remember. They made their way through the churchyard, and arrived at the village hall as the meeting was about to start. Naturally, the whole village was there, around thirty of them, all with their same-featured faces. June and Margery exchanged nods with the one or two villagers whom they still didn’t mind too much. Some of the others, the bonier ones who neither of them much cared for – ‘Well, they’ve not got the brains really, have they?’ June would say. ‘Plus they’re always moaning.’ – looked them up and down as they entered, staring pointedly at Margery’s ample belly. Margery ignored the stares, and she and June went and sat at the back of the hall. As usual, the spoils of the week had been laid out on a table at the front in plastic bags, already with the labels on. The villagers, sitting in rows, were straining to see what was inside.

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LAURA WINDLEY

Mr Montague from the council with his red face and fat gut (‘I’ll bet he’s not surviving on any handouts,’ someone muttered) got onto the stage, cleared his throat and read out the week’s tally. It was indeed feeble. There had been a few tourists having long weekends, but as it was the week after half-term, the pickings had been slim. Mr Baxter had got one or two youngsters from the footpath section beside the field. The Coopers had managed to zap a few in the showers at the campsite. But really, given the time of year, the haul, Mr Montague told them, was meagre. There were zeros all around. Even the larger food bags were small. The weedy clipboard man from the council smirked across the room. People slumped back in their seats. Mr Montague read out the names and points in descending order. Those with the most – the ones who’d had a find, or been actively involved in the collection – got the largest bags. As the names were read out, people got up to collect them, then returned to their seats, peering inside. There were mutterings of discontent. As he went down the list, the bags got smaller and smaller, until finally he was down to the zeros, by which time the table was clear. People stared at the table. Mr Montague shrugged. ‘We will all just need to do better,’ he said. He moved, then, to the rest of the agenda, turning to a flipchart beside him. It was time, once again, for the monthly vote on penalties. For stealing in particular, in all its forms, examples of which he had listed, in bullet points on the chart. He ran down the list with his finger. ‘I trust,’ he said, scanning the faces in the hall, ‘you’ll see the need for us to keep the penalties as severe as before?’ He was sure he didn’t have to remind them about Myra Crook and how her case had brought practical advantage. She had lasted them a whole week, in fact. People put their heads down and stared at the floor, remembering Myra. She hadn’t exactly been a nice person, and though they’d been hungry, none of them were really sure, looking back on it, that she’d quite deserved what she got. Some of the villagers had been more zealous, of course. The Coopers, in particular, were always keen to test out new devices and methods, to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Mr Montague flipped the chart and revealed his latest list of proposed penalties, as the Coopers nodded and smiled. The new penalties chart, another points system, ranged in

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severity along with the level of misdemeanour. It was not, Margery thought, so much different from the last. He told the villagers they were all in this together and would do well to remember their civic duty. He announced the council was adding in rewards points to that end. His proposal presentation finished, Mr Montague looked slowly around the hall. ‘So that’s that then. I assume you will agree? All in favour,’ he said, ‘say aye.’ The man with the clipboard scanned the rows of people and scribbled from the side. ‘Aye,’ came the unenthused murmur across the hall, as Margery closed her eyes. It all meant so very little now, she thought.

After the vote was over, and the villagers shuffled out of the hall, Margery and June made their way back through the village and walked back up the hill, June with her customary briskness, Margery wheezing, complaining about her knees. Halfway up the hill, Margery stopped for a few minutes, massaging her aching lower back, and stood, breathing in the cool, grassy air, gazing at the fields. Just look at it all, she thought. Despite the clouds overhead and the lack of livestock, the fields and hills all around still seemed to her to be almost magical and protective. Beyond the ridge, even though the old path to the outside was still just about visible, she found she no longer cared to know how others lived at all. She felt herself swell with pride. The land was still theirs, she thought, however imperfect. Perhaps, when this crisis was over, time would work its magic and it would be great again. The great and the good would survive, as was always the way. The land could never belong to outsiders, and they got what they deserved. The Ray Duffys of this world, coming and stealing from their hedgerows as if they didn’t have enough outside; the people coming with their tents to ‘experience’ and pretend they knew what it was like, reliving a past she could remember, but knew they never could. Eyes on the prizes no doubt, greedily sizing up the houses and streets just like she’d heard had happened elsewhere. No, you were from here or you were not, and Margery knew her lineage went back farther than most. The land was in her blood. She would stand firm whatever happened; she would not let anyone change things and she did not intend to give in.

THE CASUAL ELECTROCUTION OF STRANGERS

LAURA WINDLEY

When they got back to the cottage, and after they’d peeled open one of the tins and eaten lunch, the two of them spent the afternoon making their preparations for the following week’s stall. They checked the same gel-filled jars and that all the labels looked fresh. The plastic fruit and cakes that would look tempting from a distance; it only ever had to be a distance, if anybody came in the field at all. They rewrote the sign for their stall that had been squashed in the back by Ray Duffy. They rolled it up carefully and put it in the boot of the car. The council had been known to take points off for shoddy effort and, despite the scheme’s lack of success, nobody was exempt from pitching in. ‘Yet another of the grand initiatives,’ sighed Margery, and glared into the boot at the jars. ‘When will they ever learn?’ ‘They won’t,’ said June, squinting up at the sky. ‘But let them do what they want. They can make their own mistakes. We’ve got to keep our standards, Margery. Play along ‘til it’s over, then we know we’ll be alright.’

That night, when June had gone to bed, Margery half-slept again in the front room with one of her old records crackling again softly on the record player. It was a tune that reminded her of her childhood. Her fingers tapped absently against the glass that rested on her chest, while the music sent her mind drifting in and out of familiar memories; the cottage, fruitpicking in the fields, the animals, the woods, the sound of tyres on gravel. Walks down to the village shops and how she always pictured the past as sunny. She thought about the cottage still standing, proudly, surviving through thick and thin; the way it had always, somehow, got through. A flash and Margery blinked awake and the room was illuminated for an instant, before there was a soft deep rumble of thunder outside. She thought she heard something else, too; a stone against glass, perhaps, the sound of car door being slammed. She held her breath for a moment and waited, but there was silence, nothing but rain spattering on the window. Slowly she hauled herself up in the dark, crossed the room, and peered past the curtain. It was then that she saw them. She could make out the dark shapes of people moving in the driveway, and with them, in the shadow of the English hills rising behind, a van coming

LAURA WINDLEY

THE CASUAL ELECTROCUTION OF STRANGERS

through the gate, and a circle of bright yellow headlamps, glowing through the rain. She heard footsteps coming down the stairs. She tried to call for June, and turned, but only saw June’s silhouette, passing the living room doorway into the hall. Through the window, she could see two figures in black, the rain pummelling their raincoats, as they hunched beside a dark, square box on the ground. She looked back around for June, but couldn’t see her. ‘No!’ said Margery clutching the curtain, as a rotund, wet-jacketed figure marched across the gravel outside, his glasses steamed from the wet. ‘No,’ she said, at the rapping on the door, the key turning in the lock from inside, and then the sound of the rain getting louder as the front door creaked and opened. And, ‘No,’ she said finally, as the front room was lit up by the sky again, and at the moment she turned to confront them all as they moved inside the room, she caught sight of their drawn faces, pale and shining, making them look like ghosts in the dim half-light.

About the writers KAREN BALL is a publisher at Little, Brown Books For Young Readers and co-organiser of the Book Bound writers’ retreat. Having worked in children’s publishing for over 23 years, she is known for her engagement with creative thinking and brainstorming. She is an author of over 20 children’s books and her passion is for team-based publishing that is imaginative, inclusive and innovative. Karen also hosts a successful sewing blog called Did You Make That with over 9,000 followers, and has written about sewing for The Guardian and several sewing publications. She lives in Walthamstow, east London with her miniature schnauzer, Ella. LISA BLOWER is an award-winning short story writer and novelist with a PhD in Creative & Critical Writing (Bangor University, 2011). She won The Guardian’s National Short Story competition in 2009 and was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in 2013. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Comma Press, The New Welsh Review, The Luminary, Short Story Sunday, and on Radio 4. Her debut novel Sitting Ducks is out in April 2016 with Fairacre Press, and she is currently finishing her short story collection, It’s Gone Dark over Bill’s Mother’s. www.lisablower.com THIRZA CLOUT writes short stories and poetry and lives in South Shropshire. Her first poetry pamphlet, The Bone Seeker, is being published by Mark Time Books in autumn 2015. You can follow her on Twitter (@thirzacloutpoet) or on her web page, thirzaclout.wordpress.com

BERNIE DEEHAN’s short stories have been performed at storytelling night Liars’ League, and published in Vintage Script, Cent Magazine, Litro, and the Visual Verse website, and in the anthologies New Ghost Stories II and the forthcoming To Hull & Back. You can find him on Twitter (@BernieDeehan) and his website is berniedeehan.com FRANÇOISE HARVEY’s short stories and poems have appeared in anthologies and magazines including Bare Fiction, Synaesthesia Magazine, Litro, Agenda and Furies (from For Book’s Sake). She works as editorial associate at Mslexia, the magazine for women who write. She blogs occasionally at bookwormsandcoffeemonsters.com and tweets as @zarahruth ALEC JOHNSON writes things. His novel, Greeks Bearing Gifts, is represented by Mulcahy Associates. He tweets at @alecijohnson NADIA KINGSLEY is a poet and writer who lives in Shropshire. Two of her short stories have been recorded by Short Story Radio. Her poetry and flash fiction can be found in magazines, pamphlets, and anthologies. She has read at the prestigious ‘Ones to Watch’ event at Wenlock Poetry Festival. She has written for e-x-p-a-n-d-i-n-g: The History of the Universe in 45 Minutes – an immersive performance in a mobile planetarium dome, and is currently commissioned to write a monthly poem for a herbal medicine blog, www.rootstohealth.co.uk. She’s the editor of Fair Acre Press, and has a ewe named after her. 89

About the writers continued DARREN LEE lives in London and has had work published in Transportation: Islands and Cities, Storgy, Londonist, Lover’s Lies, Fifty Stories For Pakistan and in volumes one and two of the Fugue anthologies. Several of his stories have also appeared in the pages of Open Pen magazine and have also been performed on stage at Liars’ League. His first horror story, ‘The Dead Pages’ is about to be published by Pigeonhole Press. He too was once a playground marshmallow man. ALEXA RADCLIFFE-HART is a short story writer, whose work featured in the inaugural Liquorice Fish anthology, Lost Voices. Liquorice Fish Books, an imprint of Cinnamon Press, will also be publishing her debut collection in 2016. Alongside writing, she works in marketing and as an editor for literary organisations including The Word Factory, First Story and Dog Horn Publishing. More details about the freelance literary services she provides and her work can be found at www.servicestoliterature.co.uk JANE ROBERTS is a freelance writer of fiction and non-fiction living in Shropshire, UK. Her short fiction can be found in anthologies (including: 100 Stories for Haiti, New Sun Rising: Stories for Japan, National Flash Fiction Day Anthologies, Unthology) and magazines (including: Litro, Litro Online, Bare Fiction, Firewords Quarterly, Hark

Magazine, The Lonely Crowd and Wales Arts Review). Among her short fiction credits: shortlisted for Bridport Prize Flash Fiction 2013 and Fish Short Story Prize 2015; winner of Writers’ and Artists’ Flash Fiction 2013. Twitter: @JaneEHRoberts Website: janeehroberts.wordpress.com REBECCA ROUILLARD was born in Oxford but grew up in Durban, South Africa. She studied graphic design and worked in advertising and design for ten years before turning to writing. In 2014 she completed a BA Creative Writing at Birkbeck with first class honours. Her short stories have been published in Litro, The Mechanics’ Institute Review Issue 11 and Issue 12, and in several competition anthologies. Her stories have also been performed by Word Theatre at the Latitude Festival, at WritLOUD, at Hubbub, and broadcast on Resonance 104.4fm. Twitter: @rrouillard LAURA WINDLEY is a short fiction writer from London. She was runner-up in the Bristol Short Story Prize, has been short and longlisted in other competitions such as Fish and has been published in print and online. She’s also written short plays and scripts, and is an occasional script reader, as well as a onetime book and journal production manager. She tweets at @laura_windley

With thanks to... All of our fabulous authors for being so generous with their time and their talent for this collaborative project

Harry Milburn for his electrifying cover design

Kate Townsend for designing our elegant Literary Salmon logo

The Word Factory (www.thewordfactory.tv) for creating a space for writers to share their love of short stories, without which the three editors would never have met and this ebook would not exist

Val McDermid, whose comment on Twitter led to the inspiration for our title

And of course you, the reader: thanks for taking the time to read these tales. We hope you enjoyed the experience

Literary Salmon will return soon for a brand new voyageâ&#x20AC;Ś â&#x20AC;Ś keep your eyes on the horizon