Nomance, T Price [bookreader .TXT] 📗

was puzzled,because the place looked the same. But more than that, he sensedthat he too had changed in some way, and this frightened him alittle. For a start, he found he could no longer take comfort with“Beast Horde: The Ultimate Conflict” on his GameBoy. Thathad never happened to him before. Still more disturbing was how hehad lost his urge to play in a band. It didn’t rankle with him inthe least that Pod, Ba’a and Rocco had kicked him out of TheDead Dianas.

Now that wasodd.

In his experience,getting kicked out of a band should have rankled – and keptrankling for at least two whole years non stop.

Whatever theexplanation, not being rankled led to an unexpected consequence –he stopped rankling other people.

And the first person hestopped rankling was his sister. Of course, Carla had shouted andballed when he first came back home, but Carla’s shouting andballing was something he had heard countless times before. Hedidn’t see the point in answering anymore. And because he wasn’tanswering, Carla appeared to lose the thread of her argument.

Which wasn’t to say hehad stopped communicating with her.

For instance, a weekafter his return to Romance, and just as he was about tofinish his breakfast, he looked up from his cereal bowl and staredlong and hard at her.

After a full thirtyseconds, he asked, ‘Didn’t you used to be pregnant, orsomething?’

Carla started, like shehadn’t been aware he was there and answered yes, rather thantelling him to mind your own fucking business, which is whathe’d sort of expected to hear.

But even so, Gwynne wasa little too pushed for time right then to think of the nextquestion.

He would be merely ontime for work if he didn’t get going, rather than early.

That’s right, nowadayshe made a point of arriving at the EasyHomes DIY Superstoreeven earlier than he needed to.

You see, there had beena change at work as well as at home, and he took his newresponsibilities at the EasyHomes DIY Superstore veryseriously indeed.

These responsibilitieshad devolved upon him because his superiors had noted how quietGwynne had become since he’d broken up with Charmaine. Interpretinghis lifeless expression as a mark of a sober young man, maturebeyond his years, they had offered him promotion.

Well, it was either himor that complete drip, Ba’a, in Tiles and Grouting.

Gwynne jumped at theoffer. After all, even a complete drip knew promotion meant moremoney. What did come as an unpleasant surprise was the hiddencatch. Promotion, as it turned out, involved stock taking.

Just his luck!

And Gwynne could tellyou a thing or two about his luck. Things to make your hair standon end. Except . . . wait about! After a few faltering first steps,Gwynne found himself zipping through the new procedures with ease.No, it was worse than that – he was soon taking an exotic pleasurein learning them.

Now who the hell couldhave predicted that?

Not Gwynne, for astart. For although stock taking theory was devoted to materialobjects it was, nevertheless, a form of abstract thought and tillthat day Gwynne had been a stranger to abstract thought. An enemy,even. Or at least he felt thinking rationally was something to betreated as a hazard. Thus he had engaged with abstract thought astentatively as he would a tray of cacti back at Romance. Tohis delight, however, the result was not the very familiar pain andmisery, but rather a revelation. Stock taking, unlike Charmaine,car insurance, Elaine, the popular music industry, Carla, Kitty andflowers made . . . perfect sense.

In fact, if it came tothat, what stock taking procedures actually made was . . . lifeworth living again!

By sheer chance Gwynnehad stumbled upon what so many fail to attain in this restless andcorrupting world – self-realisation.

And to think that ifCharmaine and him hadn’t split he might never have got promoted andlearned stock taking. Just shows what a fine line runs betweentragedy and comedy.

And then, all hisfriends had been wrong, hadn’t they? They thought they were fuckinghim over by kicking him out of the Dead Dianas. But who waslaughing now? Him, with a career in stock taking? Or that load of,plinky-plocky, warbling, guitar-twanging failed pop-starwankers?

And he would belaughing a lot, lot more when he found a way to frame Pod, Ba’a andRocco for all the stuff that was going missing from thewarehouse.

Stock taking –geddit?

So, anyway, that wasthe essence of Gwynne’s transmogrification, and a rundown of hiscurrent intellectual obsessions, so it was not terribly surprisingthat the next question that logically followed from – Didn’t youused to be pregnant? had yet to occur to him.

The hours passed. Thenthe days.

What he needed was agood Samaritan to jog his memory and give him a clue. And as luckwould have it, that office was performed by Philip Westhrop, whenhe came to call at Romance one Saturday morning.

There was a knock onthe back door, which was the nominal tradesman’s entrance.

Just then Gwynnehappened to be showing Carla the plastic buckets he’d nicked fromthe EasyHomes Superstone – a bit of stock taking lite – and,coming at that delicate juncture, the confident rap on the doorplayed strongly on Gwynne’s imagination. Glancing at the door inquestion, he was suddenly and absolutely convinced that the law waslined up on the other side of it, and at that moment he found hisplastic buckets weighing like lead buckets instead.

‘Don’t answer it!’ Hehissed, ‘I’ll take that new shower attachment back tomorrow.’

Carla turned to thedoor and yelled, ‘It’s open!’

‘For fuck’s sake!’Gwynne was too indignant to run. He watched, filled by sullenresignation, as the door opened to reveal a tall, rather desiccatedyoung man, dressed in a grey flannel suit.

‘Oh great.’ He thought.‘Someone from the non uniformed services!’

‘Not another one tryingto flog sphagnum moss?’ Carla jeered lustily. She enjoyed a bit ofraillery now and then with the salesmen.

‘No, I’m not,’ the mansaid.

‘Everyone’s trying tounload sphagnum moss just lately. Come on then, tell us what yougot.’

He stepped in. ‘I don’tthink you remember me, do you?’

‘We get loads ofsalesmen.’

‘I’m not a salesman.I’m Philip Westhrop. We have met, Carla. You know, during theparty.’

Gwynne, struck as hewas by his sister’s abrupt loss of colour, was enormously relievedto learn that the plainclothes detective was here to arrest hissister instead.

‘Yes, I recognise