Spring was edging towards Hagwood Farm; the first tight buds had appeared on the hawthorn hedge, the winter aconites glowed like butterpats amongst the leaf litter, and Claud had stopped wearing the purple hat with earflaps that made him look like the Dalai Lama. Fran, leaning on her spade, watched the pale dome of his forehead bobbing ahead of a group of third-year Environmental Science students. He was leading them towards the sheep pen where Rodney and Delboy were waiting to be fed, their necks extruded desperately over the fence. They had developed a system of alternate bleating which meant they could produce a noise as continuous as a police siren and almost as hard to ignore; it increased in frequency as Claud approached, climaxed as he tilted the bag he was carrying, and then disappeared with magical suddenness as the orange chunks of mangel-wurzel bounced into the trough.
Fran resumed digging. After a cold February the ground was only just soft enough to take a spade, but steaming gently in readiness beside the vegetable patch was a four-foot high mound of horse manure, the greenish clods oozing with pongy goodness. It had been delivered that morning from the local police stables by a constable so cheerful, so flatteringly impressed by the place, so touchingly thrilled to be making a contribution, that Fran had cringed to remember that the bi-monthly donation was known on the farm as ‘Pigshit’.
‘Hoy, Fran.’
She turned to see Costas, the volunteer, waving a pair of secateurs at her.
‘What?’
‘This OK?’ He held up a bundle of hazel twigs that he had been cutting into plant supports. She knew without checking that they would all be of exactly equal length, the cuts at right angles, the ends as smooth as if planed.
‘That’s great, thanks.’
‘OK. What I should do now?’
‘You could help me dig this over. I’d love to get it done before dark.’
‘OK. It’s work for a man anyhow.’
‘What is?’
‘Digging. For women it makes ugly muscle.’ He mimed a grotesquely huge bicep and then walked off before she could say anything. Not that there was any point; sexism ran through Costas like a seam of coal and he was for ever extracting new lumps for her edification. He returned with the canvas bag in which he kept his own set of garden tools, the metal parts gleaming with oil, the handles silky with use, each implement wrapped in its own soft cloth. Squatting stiffly beside it, he wiped and sheathed the secateurs, and then beckoned Fran towards him.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, continuing to dig.
He put his finger to his lips and looked over his shoulder with exaggerated caution to where Barry stood thigh-deep in the pond, hooking out a mass of blanket weed with a hoe. ‘I have to say something,’ he said. His voice dropped in pitch, the nearest he could manage to a whisper. ‘Something private.’
‘Really?’ said Fran, unenthusiastically.
He nodded and beckoned again; with a sigh, Fran anchored her spade and went over to him.
‘So what’s up?’ she asked. ‘Is Barry being a pain?’
Costas checked over his shoulder again, and then leaned towards her. ‘Barry smell,’ he said in a bass rumble.
‘Smell?’
‘Stink.’
‘Of what?’
‘Pig.’
‘Well that’s his job – cleaning Porky out.’
Costas shook his head dismissively. ‘He smell before he clean Porky out. He smell in the mornings when I walk on the farm.’
‘Well I haven’t noticed.’
‘I notice when I stand next to him.’
‘When do you stand next to him?’
Costas frowned as if she’d asked something distasteful. ‘Men’s business,’ he said.
‘Oh I see.’ In a way that put a new light on it. If Barry could be smelled over and above a urinal then it must be quite significant. ‘So, did you ask him why?’
‘No no no.’ Costas looked quite shocked at the idea; men’s business obviously didn’t include mentioning BO.
‘Maybe his hot water’s not working,’ she suggested, her own boiler problems springing to mind.
He shrugged, and started unwrapping his spade. The secret communication seemed to be at an end and Fran glanced over at the pond, where Barry had stopped grappling with the weed and was instead bent over at right angles, one arm submerged up to the shoulder. He seemed to be groping for something, and even from this distance Fran could see that water was beginning to slop over the top of his waders. Before she could shout anything, however, he straightened up and began to pull a long muddy stick from the depths. It was the hoe. She caught Costas’s eye and he shook his head and said something in Greek.
As they dug, the brisk wind pulled a succession of wispy clouds across the sky, and the sun blinked on and off like an Aldis lamp. Fran peeled off her jumper and was immediately too cold; put it on again and the sweat started trickling down her ribs. As she took it off for the second time, a chorus of wolf whistles erupted behind her, and she spun round to see that Claud’s school group had reached the vegetable patch. She put the jumper back on again.
‘Didn’t mean to interrupt,’ said Claud. He looked strained. ‘We’ve just got five minutes before the… the…’ He gestured vaguely at the rutted strip that served as a car park. ‘Just thought we’d drop by. Everyone’s very keen to see your compost heap.’
‘Oh right.’ Fran dusted her hands and surveyed the group of fourteen-year-olds. She had rarely seen less enthusiasm on a set of human faces. ‘Would you like me to give the guided tour?’
‘No, that’s all right. We’ve only got time for a quick… a quick…’
‘Shag,’ said someone, fairly loudly, and the class erupted.
‘I think we should… er…’
‘Hey, Miss,’ said one of the boys, raising his arm.
‘Yes,’ she said, warily, alerted by the innocence of his tone.
‘Did you do that?’ He pointed to the heap of horseshit. This time the laugh was a cannonade, the girls screaming and covering their mouths, the deliverer of the line basking in the uproar.
Fran folded her arms. ‘Yes I did,’ she said seriously, when the noise had died down. ‘That’s what happens when you eat a lot of roughage. I didn’t even have to strain.’
They were deeply shocked – she even heard a couple of gasps – and a worried-looking Claud took advantage of the sudden silence to usher them away. One or two looked back as they straggled towards the compost heap, apparently checking that she wasn’t following them. Before they’d reached their destination, however, a coach pulled into the car park and the group broke and ran, streaming past Claud as if he were a bump in the road. He watched them go and then walked slowly back to Fran.
‘What a horrible bunch,’ she said, when he was within earshot.
‘Oh, they were just…’ He waved an arm. ‘Adolescents.’
‘Sorry about the cheap joke.’
‘No, don’t apologize. I mean I always think you’re so much better at, er… connecting with them than, than… I mean one of them even asked me what “roughage” meant, though the coach came before I could really, er…’
‘So out of evil came good,’ said Fran, hefting the spade.
‘Yes, you could say…’ He sounded even more distracted than usual, and his eyeline wavered between Fran and his wellingtons. ‘Er, while we’re talking, I wondered if you have a moment…. it’s just there’s something a bit… delicate…’
She put the spade down again. Claud’s face was clenched in the anxious spasm that meant he had something important to say. He looked at his wellingtons again.
‘Er… I don’t know if you’ve noticed over the last few days, but Barry has begun to… to…’
‘Stink,’ said Costas, helpfully, digging his way past them with a spade action so perfect that the turned earth behind him looked like a cable-knit sweater. ‘Stink like a pig.’
Claud nodded, relieved that he hadn’t had to say the word.
‘No, I hadn’t noticed,’ said Fran. ‘I haven’t been anywhere near him – he’s been doing fence posts all week.’
‘Right, right.’ He carried on nodding for a while. ‘It’s just that it’s becoming rather… obvious.’
She guessed what was coming; at home, Sylvie might consider her an insensitive clod, but on the farm she was automatically handed any tasks deemed vaguely delicate, partly because she was the only female, and partly because Claud was too embarrassed to deal with them himself. She feigned innocence. ‘So have you actually asked him what the problem is?’
‘Er…’ He looked trapped. ‘No,’ he said eventually, as if he’d just remembered the answer.
‘Or even mentioned it?’
‘Er… it seemed a bit…’
‘Or even just hinted, tactfully?’
‘I don’t, er, think so…’
‘So would you like me to have a word?’
His face broke into a smile of such relief that she almost felt mean for having strung him along. ‘Could you? It’s just that you put things so… so… and I know that Barry…’
He was drying his waders using the time-honoured method of hanging them upside down on sticks, in this case two six-foot raspberry canes he’d stuck into the marshy section by the pond edge. Across one of the soles he had draped his jumper, the left sleeve black with water, and was in the process of wringing out his socks when he looked up and saw Fran approaching.
‘Hello, Barry.’
‘Hi, there,’ he said, in a tight, bright voice and backed away from her, a move so untypical that it was startling. She halted a few yards from him.
‘Everything all right?’
‘Fine.’ His shirt was blotched with pond water and his jeans soaked from ankles to thigh. ‘I got a bit wet,’ he added unnecessarily.
‘You could dry your stuff on the radiator in the classroom.’
‘That’s OK. There’s a nice breeze out here.’ He held out a sock to illustrate, and it stirred minimally.
She took another couple of steps towards him and he skittered away again, holding the sock in front of him as if to ward her off.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’ He smiled unconvincingly and swayed on the balls of his feet, poised for further flight. Fran wondered how on earth she could edge this non-conversation round to the subject of BO. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something moving and turned to see one of the raspberry canes starting to keel over. Barry noticed simultaneously and they both lunged towards it, hands outstretched. It was too late; jumper and wader landed in the pond for a second time and Fran found herself off-balance, one hand clutching Barry’s arm for support, her face shoved against his shirt buttons.
‘Jesus H Christ,’ she said, jerking her head back. ‘You stink.’
He leapt away from her, but the smell remained, almost tangible – the unmistakable odour of wet pig.
‘Bloody hell, Barry. What have you been doing – sleeping in the sty?’
He froze, the muscles of his jaw clenching and unclenching as he worked through a decision. ‘Yes,’ he said, after a moment and then bent to retrieve the jumper.
‘You’ve been sleeping in the sty,’ she repeated, a statement this time, just to check that they’d both been hearing the same words.
He nodded. ‘Since last Thursday. Not on the floor, obviously,’ he added, as if to dismiss a really ridiculous idea. ‘On the raised bit where we keep the bales.’
‘But why?’
‘Well, the straw’s really warm and you can pile it –’
‘No. I mean why are you sleeping in the pigsty?’
‘Oh. Because my girlfriend threw me out. Changed the locks when I was at work.’
‘And that was the only place you could find to stay?’
‘Thursday night I slept in the classroom but I nearly got caught by the cleaner.’
‘What about friends?’
‘Well…’ He looked discomfited. ‘They were all Janette’s friends first. And she’s really angry with me.’
Fran opened her mouth.
‘I can’t say why,’ he said quickly. ‘I just can’t.’
‘What about bed and breakfast?’
‘Not enough money. Everything’s at the flat – cards, cheque-book. All my clothes.’
‘What have you been eating?’
‘Pot noodles.’
‘Well –’ she shook her head, dazed by the sheer inanity of his solution, the last possible idea that would ever have occurred to anyone else ‘– how long were you intending to stay here?’
He looked blank.
‘A couple of weeks? Right through the summer? Put in double glazing and spend the winter there? I warn you, Porky might start charging rent.’
He grasped the point. ‘No, no, it was just until Janette came round to… to what I did. I thought it would only be a day or two but she won’t answer the door and she keeps putting the phone down on me. We just need a bit of a talk. I’ve sent her a letter explaining things.’
He had drifted towards her during the course of the conversation, and she caught a second noseful. The porcine whiff seemed to extend a good two yards beyond him.
‘Couldn’t you at least have washed? We’ve got basins here.’
‘It’s my clothes,’ he said earnestly. ‘The smell’s in my clothes. I hadn’t realized it would get this bad. If I could just use someone’s washing machine, or borrow a pair of jeans or something, I’d be all right.’
‘You can’t carry on sleeping in the pigsty, Barry. Not now that I know about it.’
‘But where can I go?’
Fran clasped her hands behind her head and swung round to look at her fellow workers: Costas, still digging, but shortly to return to the one-bedroomed fourteenth-floor flat that he shared with his disabled wife; Spike (re-felting the hen-house roof) whose partner had recently given birth to twins; and Claud (supposedly helping Spike but in fact looking anxiously at Fran), unlikely fount of testosterone and father of six, five of them still living at home. With a sigh of resignation, she turned back to Barry.
There was an arthritic twang as the frame of the sofa bed swung out from the crumb-strewn interior. It was a while since it had been used, and after unpleating the mattress and easing out the stiffened legs, Fran bounced cautiously on the edge a couple of times and then wriggled to the centre and lay flat. It had a distinct starboard list and she got up again and slid a folded newspaper under the right leg. The living room seemed even colder than the rest of the house, and she made up the bed with three blankets and the duvet from Peter and Sylvie’s room before returning to her vigil beside the boiler. She had reached page nineteen out of twenty-six of the central-heating instruction manual without any hint as to why the pilot light sometimes stayed lit, and sometimes didn’t.
Barry was next door, scrubbing himself raw, she hoped, in Iris’s bath, while his clothes whirled through an ecologically unsound but in this case necessary boil wash with some specially bought biological powder.
Iris had been very understanding when they had turned up at her front door in search of hot water. ‘I wasn’t doing anything,’ she’d said and for once that had appeared to be the case; there had been an open book on the kitchen table and a half-eaten apple beside it and Iris herself had had the slightly guilty air of a truant.
‘Evening to myself,’ she’d said, after Barry had been banished to the bathroom, and she was rinsing out the teapot. ‘Dad’s gone to the cinema again. He’s decided he likes Harrison Ford.’
‘And where are the boys?’
‘Oh… out somewhere. They’ve been a bit mysterious lately. I’m protecting my sanity by not asking.’
‘And by reading a psychiatry textbook?’ Fran had said, incredulously, picking it off the table. It was the real thing: five hundred pages of polysyllables interspersed with graphs.
Iris had looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Spencer lent it to me. We were talking about phobias.’
‘Oh right.’ Fran had suppressed the infantile twinge of jealousy she always felt when Iris talked about Spencer, the pre-school urge to shout ‘but he’s my friend’.
‘Anyway, I was only dipping into a chapter,’ Iris had said, dismissively. She’d poured some milk into Fran’s mug. ‘So how long’s Barry going to stay for?’
‘One night. Only. Just to make himself presentable again. If Janette won’t take him back he can stay at the YMCA. I’ll lend him the money if necessary.’
‘It’s very kind of you.’
‘No it’s not,’ Fran had said, disconcerted. ‘It’s just –’ she’d shied away from Sylvie’s favourite word ‘– the obvious solution.’
She reached the last page of the manual without revelation, closed it and looked at the boiler. The little flame danced tauntingly in the window. She turned the black knob so that the arrow pointed towards the words CONSTANT HOT WATER and the flame went out again. For the ninth time she relit the pilot light and then closed the boiler door and looked at the manual, weighing it in her hands. The clue was in the colour; the paper was a mottled yellow, the pages curled at the edges, the spine a series of parallel cracks from which little threads dangled. Like the boiler, it was a museum piece. She threw it into a corner and a sunburst of pages broke loose and fluttered to the floor.
‘It’s a bit cold in here,’ said Barry, when she showed him his bed in the living room. ‘Can’t we light the fire?’
‘Chimney’s not swept.’
‘Oh. Pity.’ He rested his mug of tea on the piano and bent over to fiddle with his trouser legs. He had returned from next door smelling of sweet-pea body lotion and dressed in a selection of laughably enormous clothing from the twins’ wardrobe.
‘They must be complete freaks,’ he said, aggrieved, adjusting the turn-ups around his knees.
‘Just taller than you, Barry,’ said Fran, removing the mug, ‘and this piano belongs to somebody who’s very strict about how it should be treated. Apparently it’s very old and very valuable.’
‘Is it?’ Barry flipped up the lid and played a speedy two-finger version of ‘Chopsticks’. ‘It’s not bad. Keys are a bit yellow.’
‘And only she’s allowed to play it,’ said Fran, repressively (and untruthfully), putting the lid back down again.
‘Sowwy,’ he said, in a baby voice. Fran frowned; the touching gratitude he’d shown when she’d first invited him back to the house had given way to a disconcerting perkiness, the excitement of a kid on a school trip.
‘I’m going to cook some pasta,’ she said. ‘Do you want to try phoning Janette?’
His face fell. ‘Yeah, all right.’
He bounced into the kitchen as she was picking the bones out of Mr Tibbs’s supper, a repulsive sludge of steamed fish and vitamin powder. The cat sat at her ankles, mouth stretched in a soundless mew.
‘Any luck?’
He shook his head. ‘She’s not in. I left a message.’
‘What are you going to do if she doesn’t get back to you? You’ll have to collect your stuff sometime.’
‘I think she’ll be fine when she gets the letter,’ said Barry. ‘I explained everything in it, I think she’ll come round.’
‘When did you send it?’
‘Day before yesterday.’
‘Then she should have got it by now.’
‘Second-class stamp,’ said Barry laconically. He opened the fridge and took a good long look at the contents. ‘Any beer?’
‘No.’ She put down her fork decisively. ‘Barry.’
‘Uhuh?’ He turned, a piece of cheese in his hand.
‘I’m serious, you know, about you only staying one night. This is not an open-ended invitation.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Sure.’ His vivid blue eyes widened with sincerity. ‘God, Fran, I’m really grateful, I mean – you saved my life. I’m not going to take advantage.’
‘Right. I just wanted to…’ She paused. What she really wanted to do was question her own sanity. What on earth had possessed her to offer him a bed in the first place? She didn’t like to think that part of the reason might have been the unexpected creakiness of the house last night, after Peter and Sylvie had left for the airport. She had realized, lying awake at 3 a.m., listening to a slithering noise that was almost certainly another tile easing its way off the roof, that she had never before stayed there alone, without either Peter’s antiphonal snoring down the hall, or Duncan’s long body beside her. She had never before been conscious of the absence of window locks in her own room, or the fact that only a couple of low garden walls separated the back door from the ill-lit street full of dented cars that ran behind the house. She was still slightly ashamed that she had shoved the bedside table in front of the door before finally managing to sleep.
Something nudged her leg, and she looked down to see that Mr Tibbs, desperate for his bowl of mush, had edged so close that he was dribbling on her trousers. She gave the dish a final stir to check for bones, and then plonked it beside him.
‘Can I do anything?’ asked Barry, his mouth full.
‘You could grate some cheese.’
‘Er….’ He swallowed. ‘I’ve just eaten it.’
‘Never mind.’
She stirred the pasta and gave a crusty-lidded jar of pesto a cautious sniff. With only a few flabby tomatoes to cut up for a salad, it seemed a poor first meal for someone who’d just spent half a week in a pigsty.
‘Tell you what,’ she said, ‘you could go and get a bottle of wine. Here –’ she fished a fiver from her purse and handed it to him ‘ – there’s an offie on the corner.’
‘Thanks, Fran.’ He gave her fingers a squeeze as he took the money.
‘Do you think I’ve got better?’ he asked, three glasses of Turkish Chardonnay later (‘I got two bottles for £4.30,’ he’d said excitedly on his return).
‘At what?’
‘At the job. Do you think I’ve got better at it?’ He rolled his glass along one cheekbone and looked at her through it.
‘Yes,’ said Fran, cautiously.
‘You think I’m definitely better at the job?’
‘Yes I do.’
‘Because of you,’ he said, setting down the glass half on and half off a coaster. ‘You made me what I am.’
‘Do you want some coffee?’ she said, getting to her feet and readjusting the glass before it fell over.
‘No, I’m fine. I’m soooo fine.’
‘I’ll make you some anyway.’
He had wolfed down the pasta and then got drunk with amazing rapidity, passing straight from giggling silliness to soused philosophy in the course of about three mouthfuls.
‘The thing is, Fran, the thing about you is –’ his eyes followed her as she washed up a couple of mugs ‘– the thing is you’re strong.’
‘Do you take sugar?’
‘You’re small but you’re strong, like a… a… diamond.’
‘Sugar?’
‘Or the bit that’s not going round in the middle of a hurricane. What’s it called?’
‘The eye,’ said Fran, through gritted teeth.
‘So when the storm blows you’re always… in the middle. To cling onto. Where’s the corkscrew?’ He looked vaguely around the table, the second bottle in his hand.
‘Ah no.’ She moved swiftly to confiscate it. ‘You’ve had plenty.’
‘Strong,’ he said, looking up at her admiringly.
The phone rang and she went to answer it, taking the bottle with her.
‘Hello?’
There was a pause and then a woman’s voice, cool as water, said, ‘Who’s that?’
‘Fran,’ said Fran, and realized, in the microsecond it took to say the word, that she shouldn’t have.
‘In that case,’ said the woman, ‘you can tell Barry he’s a lying fuckwit and he’ll find his stuff all over the pavement tomorrow morning.’ The line went dead.
Fran looked at the receiver for a moment before replacing it. Then, holding the bottle like a club, she went back to the kitchen.
‘Hey,’ said Barry, giving her what he probably imagined was a winning smile.
‘That was Janette.’
The smile faded. ‘Huh?’
‘Janette. You gave her this number, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah.’ The implication filtered through. ‘Oh… I should have answered –’
‘When I said my name she said "in that case" she was throwing your stuff out. What did she mean, "in that case"?’
He looked alarmed. ‘Throwing my stuff out? But I’ve got a guitar, I mean she can’t –’
‘Barry!’ He jumped and knocked his glass over. ‘Tell me what she meant. What have you been saying to her about me?’
‘I haven’t said anything.’
‘Bollocks you haven’t.’
‘I swear,’ he said, his expression so shifty that he looked like Wile Ε Coyote. ‘Not deliberately, anyway.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was accidental.’
‘What was?’
‘I –’ He looked at her helplessly. ‘You’re going to be angry.’
‘I’m angry now. You’ve got to tell me.’
‘OK, OK.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Can I have another glass of wine?’
‘No.’
‘Right. You see, I’d been thinking about you. I mean, I never stopped thinking about you even when I got back with Janette, but I was thinking about you more because I’d been thinking… well, I’d just been starting to think… what it was, was that I’d started to think that you’d probably…’
Fran put the bottle on the table with a thump and sat down opposite him; he blinked at her nervously and cleared his throat.
‘Right. You see, what it was, you stopped reading your letters in lunch break so I guessed you’d broken up with Duncan. If he wasn’t writing to you any more.’ He waited for her to say something. ‘That’s what I guessed,’ he added, when it became clear that she wasn’t going to. ‘That’s what I thought had probably happened.’
‘Get on with it.’
‘So, anyway, I… I kept thinking about you, and thinking I might be in with a chance again, and just – you know – working myself up, and there was one day last week when it rained and you got all wet, and you were in that black t-shirt –’
‘Oh God,’ said Fran.
‘And that night, I was with Janette and we were – having sex – and it came to the – you know –’
‘Oh God,’ said Fran, again, with awful prescience.
‘And I said – I said your name. Pretty loudly really. You know, shouted it. Several times.’ He laced his fingers together and looked at them. ‘Janette’s quite a jealous sort of a person.’
Fran’s first coherent thought was a vow never again to wear the black t-shirt; her second was more nebulous – a vague hope that at some time in the future she might attract someone who wasn’t looking for the calm in the centre of the storm, who didn’t require a lodestone, or a rock, or a compass, or a steady North Star – someone, in fact, who could read maps and stand upright all by himself, but who just liked having her along for the ride.
Barry sat silent, sneaking occasional glances at her, the expression on his face somewhere between fear and pleasurable anticipation, as if – and she suddenly knew this to be the case – as if he thought that she would find his confession so powerful that her defences would melt and she’d hurl herself into his arms.
‘Are you still angry?’ he asked, after a while.
‘Depressed,’ said Fran. ‘Deeply, deeply depressed.’
It took her a long time to get to sleep; at first she was disturbed by the sound of Barry doing the washing-up with careless vigour and then by the long, guilty silence after something smashed onto the floor. Her senses sharp with annoyance, she was sure that the next noise was the sound of a cork being drawn.
After that she drifted into a long and irritating dream, in which she was sitting in the Hagwood staffroom, reading a letter from Duncan. The letter was only three sentences long, but she could sense Barry watching her, so she sat with her eyes glued to the paper, reading the words over and over again. ‘Dear Fran, I hear you are looking for lodgers. Hella and I are moving to England and would love to move in. She is expecting twins in October. Love Duncan.’
She was woken instantly, completely, by a hoarse eldritch screech, followed by a couple of staccato footfalls, an indefinable rending sound, and a final enormous thud. As she leapt for the light switch there was a galloping noise that ended just outside her door and she opened it to see Mr Tibbs, more alert than she had ever seen him, sides heaving, tail cracking back and forth like a whip.
Barry was lying ghost-pale on the hall floor, dressed only in a pair of Tom and Jerry boxer shorts, his limbs flung outwards as if trying to acquire a tan. As Fran hurtled downstairs towards him she could see his chest jerking irregularly, ominously, his mouth searching for air, his head lolling. The sound he was making only registered as she knelt beside him, her face cold with fear. He was laughing.
‘Shtood on the cat,’ he said. ‘Ur her her her her her.’
Fran sat back on her heels, and looked at the stairs. Halfway down, just below the step that Mr Tibbs liked to think of as home, the banisters were bowed outwards as if an elephant had casually leaned on them.
‘Shorry,’ said Barry. ‘I wash coming to shay shorry.’ The heady bouquet of Istanbul white filled the air.
‘Do you hurt anywhere?’ asked Fran, voice like a stone.
‘Dunno.’ He heaved himself into a sitting position. ‘No.’ He put one hand on the radiator and one hand on Fran’s shoulder and tried to stand up. He sat down again with a thump. ‘Ankle,’ he said. ‘Ow.’