‘Just forget it.’
‘You’re your own man, Andrew.’
‘Yes, I am. Now why are you here?’
‘Problems.’
‘Really?’
‘I haven’t opened the shop up in three months.’
‘I know. It’s been nice and peaceful.’
But Andy hated that peace. The night before last he had whispered fiercely to Vince that he detested living above a shop that was always shut. He said he wouldn’t have minded a closed shop full of clothes or furniture. ‘But it’s a shop of dead things.’
Vince had laughed. ‘And that’s not good for a healthy young imagination.’ He was trying to play down Andy’s distress which, in the middle of that night, was quite real. It was as if he’d saved it up until the moment he knew Vince would come back. He could tell him he hated the way he was living now. And Vince thought that it must be terrible, to work in that bar at night and come home alone to a dark shop, a shop empty apart from stuffed, mildewy bodies with black, glassy eyes. Imagine coming home to that threadbare, testy-looking leopard.
Ethan Nesbit sighed. ‘Business is down.’ The scraping noise came again. He must be shifting position, Vince thought. Getting a better purchase on the pitted floor as he prepares to deliver terrible news.
‘Nobody wants taxidermy these days,’ he said. ‘You know, I used to have regular customers. People who had big houses with dark corners. They liked to fill them up with beasties that looked natural, ready to spring up at unwary visitors, or friendly-looking things, happy to be there.
‘But customers go away. People die or they change their minds. Things that aren’t stuffed aren’t constant.’
The taxidermist laughed at himself, at his own wit and wisdom.
Vince sat down on the stairs, listening harder.
‘That’s not true,’ Andy said. ‘Some of them fellers in the shop are starting to go off. It’s the damp.’
‘Shit!’ The old man’s mug came down on the Formica with a sharp crack. ‘Have you been putting the fire on regular like I said, to warm them through?’
‘Course I have.’
‘Well,’ said Ethan bitterly. ‘The long and the short of it is that this place is finished with. Animals are dead and gone. You young people are wanting computer arcades, aren’t you? Video shops and internetting, that’s you lot.’
Vince knew Andy too well. He could hear him shrug in response.
Then Andy said, ‘So you’ll want me out, then?’
The old man didn’t say anything.
‘Uncle Ethan …’
Vince stopped himself from laughing. Uncle, he thought. That’s why the rent’s so cheap. It’s not a sugar daddy, it’s Uncle Ethan. Like something out of fucking Dickens.
‘You’ll want me out of the upstairs.’
‘When your parents died I said I’d watch out for you. Give you somewhere to live.’
‘You never adopted me. Anyway, I’m all grown up now, aren’t I?’
Glumly the old man said, ‘Aye, but to chuck you out on the street… God knows what your little Nanna Jean will say when she hears.’
‘Maybe she can put me up.’
‘Haven’t you heard? She’s trying to get into the Sheltered.’
‘Not Nanna Jean. She wouldn’t go into Sheltered. She says it’s like living in MFI.’
‘Aye, well. That’s what she reckons.’
Andy let out a slow breath. ‘Everyone’s giving up the ghost.’ By now Uncle Ethan sounded doubly apologetic. ‘You see, I need the money. It’s time I cut my losses. I’m getting married, son. I’m giving up all the animals and I’m settling down. I want you to be happy for me. I want you to be my best man.’ The taxidermist couldn’t keep the tremor of excitement out of his voice. In his mind the conversation had passed on to pleasanter things. There was a spring in his conversational stride that surprised both Andy and the hidden Vince. He sounded like a much younger man, just embarking on something. This vigour of his shamed the pair of them and made them feel sapped.
It was Nirvana in the sixth-form common room this morning and that was the last thing Penny wanted to hear. She sat in her squashy chair and glared at everyone. This morning she had woken on the living-room carpet, rueful and stiff. She couldn’t quite remember walking back from the road and the fields. Somehow she had got herself back after walking for hours. She arrived home in the dawn. Now she felt dirty and crusty and Kurt Cobain wasn’t helping, bless him.
She was in torpor and what she wanted to be was organised, even prim, like the other girls who sat round now, eating their sandwiches early, from very small Tupperware dishes which they balanced on their knees. Nibbling crispbreads and considering their options. Penny wanted to shape up, suddenly.
She went to the window and stared out over the drab school fields. From way up here she could see the dark, forbidding trees down the Burn. She could see the grey ribbon of Burn Lane, connecting the Yellowhouse, Blackhouse and Redhouse estates to the town centre. I’ve got a whole panorama here, she thought, distractedly. She wondered if Liz was home yet, crawling back from wherever she had ended up with the bus driver. Surely they’d never shagged on board his Road Ranger.
‘Penelope, I’ve been looking into those clerical courses for you.’
‘What?’
Her careers consultant was standing behind her, his pale, podgy face in her personal space. ‘Last time you mentioned that you were interested in typing …’
Her heart sank. ‘No, I’m not.’
His mouth opened, revealing very small teeth and a mouth full of saliva. His teeth were like a breakwater. Penny thought, No matter what, your teeth are always wet.
‘I’ve put myself to a lot of effort on your behalf, young woman. How can you simply change your mind like this?’
‘I never made it up in the first place.’ She looked him up and down. She stared at his green nylon suit and realised his limitations. She saw that he thought he was doing her a favour. ‘I never wanted to be a typist.’ He’s doing what he thinks is a day’s work, Penny thought. Messing about with
