10 . F.E.A.R

We slept really late. At some point I made it upstairs to my room and crawled under the duvet where it was soft and clean. Once my shivers had transferred some heat to the fibres I slid down into the cocoon and blocked out the light that was threatening to impose a new day before I’d had a chance to recover from the last.

While I forced myself to sleep fitfully I heard Jane pad upstairs. I froze, and slowed my breathing so it was almost silent, listened to her steps as they paused for a moment by my open door, then carried on down the landing to Mum’s bedroom. I faintly heard the springs creak as she climbed into the bed and settled down. I fell into a rhythm of pushing myself down into unconsciousness while the speed left in my bloodstream buoyed it back up.

As soon as I opened my eyes I knew I couldn’t force myself back under. Sunlight was incandescent now around the edges of the curtains and the room was stuffy with the heat of the day. My mouth felt gummy and I wasn’t sure where the grittiness in the bed had come from. My pelvis hurt. I tried rolling onto my belly and burying my head in the pillow but it wasn’t long before I couldn’t breathe any more. I’d kicked the duvet off hours before but now the bottom sheet had come untucked and was wrinkled up round my legs, threatening to trap me every time I moved. I cursed them. When I was lying on the bare mattress and the sheet was trailing down onto the carpet it seemed like the only sensible thing to do was get up. The cheap fabric of the mattress itched my skin and made the room feel even hotter. I angled my right leg out off the side and felt for the floor with my foot, reached out further until my lower body tipped down onto the floor. It’s the only way to get up with a hangover. Kneeling next to the bed I rested my head on the edge of the mattress for a bit but it was no good.

I noticed that Jane had shut Mum’s bedroom door when I went to the bathroom to get a shower. The pressure on the hot tap always goes after a bit so I ended up with the water getting colder and colder but I didn’t bother sorting it out like I would normally because it felt quite nice: more cleansing than cold. When I stuck my head under I could feel each hair follicle stand to attention while I soaped and rubbed them and rinsed them off. I felt smashing after that. The towels on the floor looked pretty grubby so I dug a new one out of the drawer. It smelled fresh and was warm against my showered skin.

You can’t beat clean clothes. I felt like a new person as I went down the stairs. I put the kettle on and washed a cup up for tea, found a couple of slices of Mighty White to toast, wiped down the worktop, stacked all the dirty plates neatly so it didn’t look like they were going to take over the kitchen. Mum had planted some petunias in a pot outside and they smelled good when I opened the back door to let a bit of air through. I spotted the ashtray we’d left out there, a lack layer crusting the bottom where the ash had congealed with the dew. I scraped it all out into the bin and ran it under the tap until it was nice and clean. I’d forgotten there was no milk but even that didn’t dent my good mood as I wandered into the lounge.

Jane must have picked her clothes up when she’d gone upstairs but my pyjamas still lay drunkenly across the back of the armchair where I’d thrown them the night before. They made me feel a bit sick, and reminded me of Em’s face at the window. I bundled them and quickly dropped them down the back of the sofa. When I turned round Jane was standing in the doorway. She looked tired, but her pale face made her dark eyes seem larger than ever. It’s funny, she looked so frail, with her clothes hanging off her skinny bones, and it makes everyone want to take care of her, but she’s probably the toughest person I know. She grinned at me.

“Can’t believe how long I slept. Your mum’s bed’s well comfy.”

I smiled back.

“Oh, yeah I know. She’s got really squashy pillows,” which sounded as dumb when it came out as it looks on the page as I write it down. Jane ignored this luckily.

“Got any food? I’m starving!”

I nodded and moved past her into the hallway. I could feel her shoulder too close to mine, stepped aside a little so we were away from each other’s sphere of influence.

I switched on the radio to fill the kitchen with a bit of inane noise while I made Jane some breakfast. It must have been near the hour because instead of music or some cheesy DJ the news was on. I was about to switch to another channel when something caught my ear.

“ … at Platt Hall in the Rusholme area of the city yesterday evening. The painting, by Wyndham Lewis, is valued at around £10,000. The police are appealing to members of the public who were in the area at the time, and might have useful information, to come forward.”

The newsreader continued to the next piece. My hand was frozen over the buttons on the radio, stuck in mid air as if we were playing musical statues. I felt sick, and then cold and then hot, and then all of them at the same time. I knew things would never be the same again. I hit the power button and wheeled round to gauge Jane’s reaction. Her big eyes were staring back at me.

“No way, switch it back on you idiot and see if we’re on again. Switch it on!” she insisted.

The weather was finishing: storms forecast. The next programme started. I couldn’t bear to hear it so I switched the radio off again. My brain was tumbling over itself calculating strategies to get out of this mess, running up dead ends and reversing back out, combining routes to get somewhere safe. There seemed to be a road block in effect. Do not pass GO.

“I can’t believe they even noticed,” Jane was jubilant for some reason, seemed to be enjoying the drama, “they never go in there.”

“Well they must do Jane,” each word that came out of my mouth was strained with the effort of keeping it together, appearing calm while my heart felt like it would vaporise in my chest, “if it’s really worth £10,000 of course they must check on it.”

“I bet it was that lazy arse guard yesterday,” she laughed, “bet he decided it was weird a good looking chick like me was chatting him up, must have got suspicious.”

I wanted her to go away, take the picture, fade and disappear until we were back last Friday and Em and me were holding hands and nothing bad had happened and all we had to look forward to was another three weeks of summer boredom. I wanted to run upstairs and hide, to call my Mum and get her to sort this out with a note to teacher and a grounding for a couple of weeks.

“So what are we going to do?”

My voice sounded small and shaky, even to me.

“Hide it somewhere.”

Jane’s idea galvanised us into action. We grabbed the painting from the next room and wrapped it back in its shroud. The back of Mum’s big pine wardrobe seemed as good a place as any. It’s where she hides our Christmas presents. We jammed it behind the clothes hanging up, pulled bags and shoes in front of it. Then Jane said we should check all the local news programmes to see what else they said. We brought the radio from the kitchen into the lounge and put the TV on, as well as the radio on the hifi. We moved from one to the other, scanning channels to try and catch each news bulletin. When they came on Century didn’t say much at first, just the same as before, but Piccadilly Radio were quite excited about it, went on about a gang of international art thieves who’d hatched a plan to take one of Manchester’s most valuable art treasures. That made even me laugh it was so stupid. We decided they must have left the trainee news team running things, it being Sunday and all.

At six o’clock we were repeating the exercise, keeping our ears to the radios with the main TV news turned down, waiting for the local news to start.

It didn’t register at first when a picture of our painting flashed up on screen. I thought North Wet Tonight must have started. But when I turned the sound up it was still Moira Stewart, only she was talking about what we’d done the day before. As the words ‘police operation’ left her mouth the loudest banging on the front door I’d ever heard started up. Before I could get to the window to see what was going on there were police filling the room and they were thumping up the stairs in their big boots. I remember thinking what if the neighbours hear and complain to Mum.

09 . Corpses in her Mouth

I remember being woken up early by the sun on my face and a knocking on the front door. When I opened my eyes we were lying under the curtain we’d carried the painting in and Em was staring at us through the front window. I shut my eyes again, pulled the cover over my face and hoped it was a bad dream.