Thor scrubs violently at a sticky spillage in the fridge. Hannah knows exactly how to wind him up. Only his cousin Kelly insists on calling him Alec, rather than his chosen name. Life here is shit at the best of times without the barmaid making it worse.
Underneath the dark and dangerous persona he carefully crafts online, Thor still feels like a boring little kid from Dudley. Well, Wombourne, which isn’t even the mean streets of Dudley proper. He’s twenty-four but Hannah doesn’t take him seriously; treats him like a kid.
When he finishes his boring work at the boring shop this afternoon, he will get the boat over to St Mary’s to visit Kelly, who’s a nurse over at the hospital there. Thor doesn’t really get on with his cousin, as Kelly’s much older, far too nosey, and far too bossy. He doesn’t see a lot of her because she often has other plans – she’s either working or out drinking with her mates. 68
For all the time he spends in the pub on Tresco, Thor doesn’t really have mates he drinks with. He has his online friends – but those blokes are not the type you can have a laugh with exactly. BDE666 is almost as bossy as Kelly, but at least he can unload stuff online. He could never tell anyone face to face what goes through his mind.
But sometimes loneliness forces him over to St Mary’s to spend time with the only relative he keeps in contact with. When dark feelings threaten to overwhelm him, his cousin is the lesser of two evils.
But Kelly is a medical professional, and she never lets him forget that. She’s always trying to diagnose him. She reckons his social anxiety is down to growing up with a mother who herself had various issues, problems denoted by acronyms: BPD, ADHD, OCD, GAD – all of which made her a total CUNT. No wonder his father fucked off.
If Thor thinks too much about any of that he spirals, and he has to list things he can see and hear, to stop those thoughts getting out of hand.
He is not obsessing about Hannah either, definitely not, but he can’t stop thinking about her. For months now, Thor has lived on scraps – reading into what Hannah says and how she says it. A simple, ‘Nice day for it,’ could suggest the barmaid is in a good mood and therefore there might be a possibility of a replay of the kiss they shared last year. ‘I’m hanging this morning’ might signify Hannah’s in a bad mood or, perhaps, scared of getting involved.
Thor considers all angles, apart from the obvious – Hannah is simply not interested.
And now by all accounts she’s hooked up with that long streak 69of piss, Kit, the son of the snooty Beatrice woman from Falcon. A ginger! Thor has not been as gobsmacked by Hannah’s choice of partner since that time she had a fling with that Aussie sous chef from the Star Castle Hotel on St Mary’s. After all her boyfriends, Hannah had suddenly gone lesbo!
He’d asked her if she’d had other girlfriends, but she just laughed and said, ‘Babe, the difference between gay, straight and bi is about four vodkas or half a spliff.’ Like it didn’t matter! Like she didn’t care what people thought or said about her!
As he prices up the local beef in the freezer (far more expensive than normal meat), Thor entertains himself by imagining how he might get his own back on Hannah. Teach her a lesson. Who does she think she is, calling him Alec?
He’d get her drunk and bring her back to his room, although his housemates would have to be out. Then he’d strip her and tie her naked to a chair, cut off all her hair, and whip her with barbed wire (he’d have to order that, or they might have some up at the farm) until she screamed and begged for mercy.
Such daydreams pass the time.