Behindlings by Nicola Barker Read Free Book Online Page B

the object he was holding. ‘ Fuck, ’ he butted in, ‘pass it over.’
    Ted returned to the workbench and gave Wesley a small, plain, wire-legged, pearl-eyed, mango stone creature. Wesley took it and carefully balanced it onto the flattened palm of his fingerless hand. ‘Holy Moly,’ he murmured.
    ‘I think it’s a lion,’ Ted explained. ‘See the way she’s brushed up the natural strings and fibres on one end of the stone so that it resembles a mane?’
    As he spoke, Ted concentrated –almost too fiercely –on the inconsequential little mango stone creature, yet all he was really seeing was the badly truncated hand below. He hadn’t noticed it before… he…
    But how was that possible? How on earth could something so patent, so profound, so grotesque have escaped his attention formerly?
    His mind rapidly flipped back to a full hour previously:
    The initial meeting…
    Shaking Wesley’s hand… (they did shake, didn’t they?)
    Making him a cup of coffee…
    Wesley, sitting on the swivel chair, efficiently turning over the printed sheets of property details whilst chatting away, amiably…
    He was suddenly very warm. Unsettled. Almost queasy. He clenched his hands together and tightened his buttocks, his gentle brown eyes clambering over Katherine’s white walls like a couple of stir-crazy arachnids.
    Warm? He was boiling. And it was no mere coincidence. Because the heat was one of Katherine’s trademarks –
    The heat
    – well, the heat and rodents, more particularly. No. The heat and rodents and peach schnapps. She literally lived on the stuff. Locals joked –and it wasn’t funny –that she took it intravenously.
    Antique clothing, too, of course. And beansprouts, obviously. And mahjong (Chinese backgammon, to the uninitiated), and sex, and basic engineering. Yes. But mainly the heat. It was her thing. Always had been.
    It was just so… just so Katherine.
    Ted swallowed. Tried to clear his throat. Couldn’t. Because it… it agitated him – The heat
    – he’d always found it disquieting. In fact he was currently feeling more than a little off-colour –uncomfortable –sticky –out of sorts –
    No
    – out of place – that was it –like he was trespassing or gatecrashing or sneakily intruding…
    Of course she’d given him the key –
    Yes
    – he was here legitimately –
    Yes
    – but wasn’t he… wasn’t he facilitating something, just the same? Something improper? Something unscrupulous? Something… something unseemly?
    Ted’s mind began clicking. He felt over-wound and jerky. His skin was damp but the air in his lungs seemed horribly scant and thin and dry. His head felt all cotton-woolly. So did his tongue. Sweat trickled into his right eye. It stung. He blinked repeatedly.
    Wesley finally broke the protracted silence between them. ‘This is twisted, Ted,’ he murmured, continuing to stare approvingly at the mango-stone creature. ‘Does she actually sell these things?’
    ‘Yes. Yes she does sell them, occasionally,’ Ted’s voice was flat. His tongue struggled to juggle with the weight of its syllables. He drew a deep breath, ‘and if you don’t mind my asking,’ he paused, frowned, ‘where did your fingers get to, exactly?’ (Where did they get to? Oh Lord)
    After he’d spoken, he couldn’t quite believe what he’d said. He sounded drunk to himself.
    Wesley’s eyebrows rose a fraction, but his eyes did not shift from the mango-lion. ‘I fed them to an owl,’ he said, matter-of-factly, ‘an eagle owl. Years ago. In an act of penance. I trapped my brother in an abandoned fridge. Christopher. Chris. When we were kids. A prank. He died. He was my right hand.’
    They both stared for a moment, in silence, at Wesley’s right hand.
    ‘And you know what? I like this house,’ Wesley continued calmly, as if these two thoughts were somehow naturally conjoined. ‘Will I be able to move in immediately?’
    Ted was still dreamy, ‘Absolutely not,’ he