Reversed Forecast by Nicola Barker Read Free Book Online

the television and watch whatever was on in companionable silence. Sylvia didn’t actually watch. She always kept her eyes closed. Brera supposed that this was because she had no interest in television, but the truth was that Sylvia had become too sensitive. She could either listen or watch, but she couldn’t manage both. She couldn’t cope with the noise of television - the conflict of voices, music, slogans - while taking in its speedy visual menu of flashing colours, signs and faces. It overwhelmed her, but she realized that she and Brera had little else in common except the television - sitting in front of it, together.
    Brera picked a raspberry pip from between her teeth. She knew that Sylvia’s trip out was a form of protest, but she didn’t want to consider Sylvia’s motivation too fully, couldn’t risk feeling implicated.
    Instead of wondering why she’d gone, she wondered where she’d gone. This seemed an altogether simpler proposition.
     
    The act of walking with purpose and the elimination of her usual close environment made Sylvia’s inhalation easier and reduced her coughing. She was in the process of considering this fact when, just after six-thirty, she made her way briskly down to the canal. She intended to follow it to Victoria Park. She fancied seeing the ducks.
    On Saturday evenings the canal was usually chock-a-block with fishermen. Each sat in a solitary daze, focusing only on the water. Each resented the presence of others, resented the casual purposelessness of the average stroller.
    Sylvia kept her head down on her way to the canal, through the complex assortment of streets that led from the flat to the water’s edge. But it was dusk, a quiet time. Most people were at home by now. Most birds were thinking about roosting.
    She reached the canal in good time, but before following its curvaceous route to the park, she paused on its brink and stared at herself in the black, polluted water. Her face shimmered as a tiny fish swam under the surface and breathed a bubble of oxygen to the top.
    The canal was silent and eerie. For the first time since leaving the flat she felt fully a sense of the hugeness of her environment. She envied the birds their more acute understanding of space, their capacity to fill it and use it.
    She turned and began to walk. Her eyes watched her own feet, the beginning of each step and its completion. The pathway was covered in a golden gravel substance which threw up a light dust in front of her and behind her. The old sandals she wore gave it access and she felt it settle between her toes.
    The rhythm of walking calmed her. It made her mind empty itself of all things except the single task of consuming distance.The birds were rarely a problem when she walked at this time of day. Had it been earlier, they might have flocked, massed and pestered her, but in the late afternoon they were dozy and dazy. Just the same, she thought it best to move rapidly, quietly and to stare at her feet.
    When she had covered a good three-quarters of the route, her concentration was interrupted by a small group of boys who were hunched in a bundle by the edge of the river. One of them was passing a fishing net to and fro in the water. As she walked by, the boy with the net looked up and stared at her. He was a mean-faced child of eight or ten - thin, petulant and aggressive. Sylvia sensed him watching her. She walked until she was directly adjacent to him and then caught his eye. This was foolish. He grinned and said, ‘You’ve got a face like a pig. You look like a monkey. You’re stupid.’
    She continued walking, her eyes returning to the ground. She sensed the other boys staring at her too, their eyes making the skin on her back crawl. One of them (larger than the others) said, ‘She’s from a funny farm. She’s an old woman. She’s got no tits.’
    The other boys laughed in unison and then pored over the net to see if anything was caught in its mesh.
    Sylvia flinched but did not