Composite Creatures, Caroline Hardaker [best ebook reader for laptop txt] 📗

to her chin. Another slow blink and the taxi driver rang the doorbell. Despite the weight, I heaved myself from my chair to help Rosa and Eleanor, who were jostling together by the front door with their coats and fleecy layers. Rosa’s hair was caught in her zip, and she squealed one long “Eeeeeeeee”. Once I’d liberated her she hugged me and Art together. Eleanor leant over and kissed Art on the cheek, whispering to me on the way past, “When it all goes down the shitter, tell him to call me. He’s a keeper.” She winked over her shoulder, and then swaggered into the night.

Aubrey was last to go, and raised a palm to Art as she slipped out the door. She didn’t even look at me. I couldn’t let her leave like that, I couldn’t. Lurching forwards, I grabbed her wrist and pulled her around to face me. She jerked her head back, eyes wide, and glanced between my hand and my face as if I was uncontrollable. Me. In that moment I was ready to say anything to make it right, to make it like it used to be. I didn’t want her to go and not come back, and I somehow knew that this could be my last chance to make her see.

“I’m OK. I’m really OK. I’m happy. I’m going to be fine,” I whispered under my breath.

At first, she seemed to consider what I’d said, and parted her lips to ready a reply. “How’s Luke?”

I froze, terrified that Art would hear her from the kitchen. She hadn’t even kept her voice down. How could I answer that, here?

This time she lowered her tone. “I saw him, you know. Not long ago.”

That knot in my stomach twisted hard, and I felt a flash of something dark. I let go of her wrist and backed away. My hand felt dirty.

I stood there, silent, until she reached across and squeezed my wrist, looking at me in a way that made something in the lower part of my stomach do a sharp flip. She was stoking embers I’d buried under coal, and she knew it. I looked away, but already dreaded being left in the dark.

Aubrey gave a little shake of her head, and was gone.

I’ve never forgotten how she looked at me then, and how quickly it all changed. How dare she judge me? Us. She didn’t even try.

I locked the front door and rolled my forehead left and right on the cool wood, letting out one long, deep groan. Behind me, Art’s breath tickled my neck.

“Why didn’t you tell them?”

There wasn’t an answer to this. No answer he would have liked. To be honest, I just wasn’t ready to act up to it. I was happy, obviously I was happy, but there’d be questions, then more questions, and I’d need answers, and not instinctual answers that come unstructured. I’d have made a mess of it all, and I’d have let him down. He didn’t deserve that. Imagine how it would feel, to have proposed and then for your fiancée to sound unwilling?

I turned, and flashed him one of my finest flirtatious smiles.

“I kind of liked it as our little secret.”

I sidled up to him, wrapping my arms around his back. He stood still for a moment before taking my waist. I could taste his breath on the air between us, tinted with wine and Art’s unique woody scent.

“There’s plenty of time to get everyone else in on it. But for now, it’s ours. Our secret.”

4

Nut arrived in a small, unmarked white box made from everyday corrugated cardboard. Art carried her in like we’d have carried a new baby in a Moses basket, while I followed behind clutching a rainbow of plastic folders. The house already felt different.

We’d taken down our meagre Christmas decorations the day before (we’d only hung them up so the house looked festive for the party), and though the place felt lifeless now and drained of colour, that wasn’t why it was odd. The passageway seemed lighter and the doors further away, as if I was psychically stretching out into every room on alert for sharp things or towers likely to fall. I was a thousand eyes cast across the floor and tingled with electricity, ready to release a bolt.

I dropped the folders at the bottom of the stairs and flung my soaking boots on the shoe pile. Art and I gave each other a look and then began to walk the mile up the stairs, Art balancing the box carefully in his arms. My hand kept slipping on the bannister, and either because of nerves or the cold, I couldn’t feel my feet.

When we reached the first floor, I stretched up and grabbed the long white cord hanging down from the ceiling. With a gentle pull, the stepladder swung down and landed with a soft thud on the carpet. Art led the way, hugging the box close to his body, his knuckles bone-white. I followed him, and once I reached the loft placed four interlocking baby gates in a square around the hatch, as I’d practised. Two of the corners snapped into place with extra childproof locks, and as the hinge on the third corner was tested it made a shrill whine, despite the fact it was all new equipment and shouldn’t need adjusting so soon.

“At least we’ll be able to tell if she makes a great escape,” Art whispered. He sat on the polished floor close to the white box, watching me with one hand on his knee and the other fiddling with his collar. I sat beside him and grasped his cold hand for reassurance, though I must admit, my skin bristled with excitement at this new beginning. A huge part of my future, no, wait, our future, was curled up inside this oh-so-average box. Nut was going to be a symbol of our life together, our commitment to each other, all wrapped up in