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

was plenty of time to press into the walls of my cocoon. Art had suggested we have another New Year’s party, to mark everything that’d happened that year. It was such a change to hear Art suggest anything social, so I immediately agreed to it – thinking that it seemed like an age away. With almost three weeks booked off from work I was looking forward to switching off and maybe even teaching Nut a few more tricks. Perhaps how to stand on her back legs, or handle a spoon.

My final week at work dragged as I knew it would. On the last day I decided to leave a little early, so set to packing up my desk – Stokers’ policy – to remove any trace of myself from my cubicle. When the office was closed, management liked the idea of the place being wiped clean. New Year, new start.

I was almost finished squeezing the last of my notebooks into a drawer when Markus appeared by the side of my desk. His face and neck were puce, his jaw locked tight against his words.

“Are you off, Norah?”

“Yep. I’ve tied everything up, not started anything new.”

Markus laughed under his breath and began to pick at the fabric at the top of my divider wall.

“I’m glad I caught you then. Come for a minute, will you?”

I followed Markus through the mostly uninhabited cubes. A few faces peered over the top of cubicle walls, their brows furrowed. A middle-aged woman a few feet from Markus’ office tilted her head as I approached, her tongue flicking off the edge of her incisors. A few seconds passed before I recognised her as Markus’ PA. She’d been out of the office for most of the year, and in that time I’d overheard soft, sympathetic voices in the lunchroom discussing how she’d finally reached the top of the waiting list for an NHS hospital bed, and would finally receive treatment for her greying. Intensive chemotherapy. No mercy. The voices seemed to disagree about the cause of it, though. One thought it must be the city air and shoddy purifiers that Stokers was determined to never invest in, while the other thought it must be something in the PA’s food – “She never ate anything organic.”

I kept walking towards the woman, wearing what I hoped was a soft, encouraging smile. She looked well to me – thin, I suppose, but her blonde hair was voluminous, sticking out in curls that would normally belong to someone less than half her age. But as soon as our eyes met, the woman lowered her head and started scribbling blindly on a notepad with so much force that the paper was tearing beneath the nib. Her mouth was a tiny little knot now, pinned shut. My skin stung as if doused in cold water.

Something wasn’t right.

Markus held the door open with his head down, and waited for me to enter. Against the wall adjacent to Markus’s desk sat Fia, wearing a three-piece tweed suit, and next to her a face I hadn’t ever wanted to see again. The man at our door, pressing his face in at our window. He was completely bald, his head shining under the brutal corporate fluorescence. He wore little round glasses and a vividly blue suit. A bright red handkerchief poked from a top pocket, and a battered flat cap lay across his lap. He peered up at me casually, as if I was simply squeezing past him on a train. Both he and Fia looked like they were dressed for a wedding, rather than the sterile grey of an insurance firm.

Fia looked up with a smile as the bald man stood up and offered me his hand. I shook it silently and sat in the steel chair opposite the desk. Markus sank into his executive chair, slouching low in the seat, his fingers stacked in a pyramid in front of his face. I held my breath and blinked slowly, demurely, waiting for one of them to speak. No way was I going first. Fia cleared her throat.

“It’s lovely to see you in your domain, Norah. How long’s it been now?”

I paused, for effect. “Four months or so. You weren’t there when we brought Nut in.”

Fia and the bald man looked at each other. “Nut?” Fia laughed, her forehead creased in confusion. “Goodness, yes. Five months. You’ve been very quiet.”

“I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to be quiet. Our next appointment with you isn’t until February, isn’t it?”

The bald man stared, perfectly still. Fia smiled to herself, her finger scrolling up on her tablet. “That’s right. Though there’s been home visits scheduled on a few occasions but you’ve cancelled each one. Is everything alright?”

I made sure my hands lay open on my knees, placid, and open. “Better than alright. We’ve just been finding it hard to book an evening when we’re free together, and I thought you’d prefer to see both of us, rather than just me or Arthur on our own.”

“But we have nothing scheduled yet. Have you not found a date?”

“I’m trying. Art’s hugely focussed on his book, and I’ve been pulling quite long hours here.” Excuses. They came readily to me, shrouding me like moths on bark.

“But your manager here tells us you usually finish at 5.30pm? And we’ve made lots of alternative dates for you…”

“I’ve had three letters, which I called you after.”

“We’ve sent you eight letters, Norah. We’ve not heard from you after the first three. Mr Martin, my colleague here, has called round personally to your house four times to see you and there’s no answer, though it seems like there’s someone home. Can you explain that?”

Why couldn’t they just step back? Why couldn’t they just leave us alone? “The doorbell’s broken. It’s been like that for months.” My voice croaked and betrayed my lies. Why, even now, did I want to see Fia smile?

She tipped her head. “We need to make sure you, Art and the ovum organi are working