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

I excused myself to the kitchen and started to pour packets of nuts, crisps, and olives into bowls. I held a clutch of grapes under the cold tap until my fingers throbbed. Would the kids eat this? Would they say out loud if there was nothing for them here, and that I didn’t know how to look after them?

In a single second it seemed that I’d prepared everything I possibly could and it was time to go back. I heard Margo’s hushed voice from the living room, “Don’t touch anything, don’t go into any other room, and don’t hurt your sister.”

I carried the bowls into the living room on a tray shaped like a fish. As I placed the bowls on the table I asked, “Where are the kids?”

Adam waved his hand in the air. “Jasper’s taken Georgie to the toilet. It’s just at the top of the stairs, right?”

Something twisted, tight and deep.

Art was biting his lips, fighting soundlessly, his face white. I couldn’t hear anything upstairs, the house was hushed. Even the music had stopped playing. Could I hear their muffled voices? Or was it thunder?

“Arthur, you were going to tell us about your piece de resistance?” Margo asked. “Should we expect something that’ll change the world?”

His eyes were as white as snowballs. How would he be able to speak, with his mouth pinned closed between his teeth?

“Sure we should,” Adam bellowed. “The Grove must believe he can do it. Did they make you do an IQ test or something?”

“You have to pass proficiencies. To prove you can make the most of a longer life.” Mike’s head was down by Rosa’s neck. She turned her head towards him, nuzzling his cheek.

“It’s more general testing,” Art croaked. “They ask what we want from life.”

Adam leant forwards. “Fuck. That’s big. What did you say?”

Margo looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure how much of anything matters in the end.”

“Shhh, Margo. What did you say?” Adam growled, insisting we bare our innards. The silence upstairs was setting my skin on fire.

“I want to be remembered for making something that moves people. I’m never going to be in the history books, but maybe something I write will. A parable.”

“And what about your cash cows?”

“They’ll keep going. People will keep buying them, forgetting them, buying them again.”

“And what about you, Norah? You’re different. What’s your USP?”

There was no air left in the room. Already on my knees, the room was black and grey, grainy, filling in with white noise. Adam’s lips were moving, first upturned, then downturned. I felt hot breath behind my ear, and Art’s voice was underwater. “Norah has the world at her feet. She is goodness. She is kindness. She’s exactly what the world needs.”

A pair of ropes in green tweed around my neck. And then ticking, faster than a clock, right in my ear: tick tick tick tick tick.

A high voice, a woman: “But that’s not what she wants. What did you tell them, Norah?”

Were my eyes closed or open? Art’s breath, “It doesn’t matter. That’s for us.”

Tick tick tick tick tick. Like a pen clicking. But no one there had a pen.

Take myself away from it. Oh, hot, sweet breeze through trees. I could smell almonds and peanuts and plum wine. If I rest my head back on Art, would that help me come back?

The sound of the sea, and then the squeal of a pig. It cut through me like glass.

“Georgie?” Margo stood up unsteadily, her colours coming back into focus. I was weightless, off-balance. I bit my tongue to resist laughing out loud.

“Go see what’s going on, Adam. They’ve been too long.”

Adam lifted his huge frame from the chair and headed doggedly towards the staircase. Margo stayed standing where she was, on the brink of staying and going. Adam had reached the doorway when Georgie flung herself at his thighs, reaching her tiny hands up his midriff. He picked her up and I caught a glimpse of a shining red face streaked with silver over his shoulder before it buried itself in his shirt.

“Jasper.” Adam’s voice was low, a lion. “What have you done? Why’s she upset?”

Thump, thump, thump, went footsteps down the stairs. But Jasper didn’t come into the living room.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“This isn’t on, Jasper. You’re showing us up. Apologise to your sister.”

“No.”

“You’ll do it now.”

“Dad–”

Adam drove forwards and grabbed Jasper’s wrist. He rotated his grip, twisting the skin beneath.

“Dad, there’s a thing up there. A monster. It scared Georgie, not me. It bit her.”

He continued to twist and Jasper ducked, contorting his whole body to follow his skin.

Thump, thump, thump on the stairs again. And from between the bannisters watched Nut, her fleshy face pushed against the bars, one round, blue eye in each gap. Her mouth hung open as if she’d bitten something with sore gums, her hands bony waterfalls, pouring between the posts.

Something changed.

I saw her through Adam’s eyes, through Georgie’s eyes, through Jasper’s eyes, and I understood. I understood Adam’s stepping back into the living room, his face a mask of horror. Georgie’s drawn-out moan. Nut was a whale out of water, her heavy breathing the heartbeat of the house.

“What the fuck?”

Margo broke the music and pulled Adam and Georgie back. Never taking her eyes off Nut, her open mouth dripped with disgust. Adam ran one hand through his hair like he didn’t know what was happening.

Art was on his feet; I hadn’t even felt the ropes slipping. “I’ll put her away.”

“Georgie. Georgie. Where did it get you?” Margo fumbled in Georgie’s clothes for an injury. Georgie’s face was still pushed into Adam’s neck, so Margo lifted her arm. A blue sleeve, dampened with saliva in a semicircle as wide as a bowl. She wiggled Georgie’s wrist and kissed her fingers, rolling up the sleeve to check her elbow. No blood.

Why? Why must we hide her away?

Margo turned on me, baring her teeth like a cat. “What the fuck is it doing out?”

She grabbed her progeny and crushed her