The pale streetlight coming through the windows was enough to show that the furniture was overturned. Someone had taken a Stanley knife to the sofa and chairs and slashed through the upholstery as if they were looking for money. Elsewhere the destruction was more aimless. The coffee and dining tables had been dismembered and scattered, the bookshelves tipped and their contents shredded apart. Mirrors were smashed everywhere and all that glass kept Elsie from dashing into the room. She still had enough sense left not to fall on the glass. She counted in her head how many mirrors had been broken, how many seven years of bad luck that made.
Her pictures had been wrenched off the walls and dashed on the floor. On the mantelpiece the brass ornaments —the ladies who were bells inside, the Aladdin’s shoe, the Scotty dog —were all melted into each other. The real-effect fire had been kicked in.
There was no message. Nothing written in blood or shit across the emptied walls. No clue.
“Oh, me house,” Elsie said.
She knelt and opened the cupboard on the wall unit. The wine glasses they never used were shattered and blackened, as if by fire. She reached past them for what she was looking for. A shoebox she had covered in lilac sticky-backed plastic. Her memory box. For a moment, as she grasped it to her chest, she didn’t dare open it But it rattled, it was heavy with the papers and photographs inside. That was something.
Elsie untied the purple ribbon to check. She squinted in the gloom at the pictures. The photographs were safe.
What would impress her? Nothing would impress her. Look at her powers, look at her intellect. She isn’t a girl who’s easily impressed.
And what can I do for her? Is there anything left? I thought I was good to her. I wish I could put things right, put things in a way she’ll listen.
After gym that night I went to the Acorn with Mary. She came on friendly today. I don’t know what that’s about. The lads egged me on, so I went for a drink with her. The lads would rather me be with Mary than Penny. Mary’s more our sort, Steve said. The first thing he’s said directly to me in weeks. So he’d approve of me going with Mary. Mind, they couldn’t laugh at her fanny in Lycra if I was going with her.
But…I don’t want Mary. I don’t want a skinny gym lass. I want Penny with all her softness and quickness, and them powers of hers.
In the pub after gym I had a few pints fast. After gym they go right to my head. It’s good, though. I hate first dates with a lass. I never know what they want to talk about. My palms sweat on the glass and my thoughts go too fast. It wasn’t a first date, though. But I drank and was on my third pint before you knew it.
Mary was giving it all this chat. I thought she’d been standoffish before. Now she was coming on like I dunno what. I thought, if this had been a month ago, I’d be over the moon. Why did all my opportunities come at once? But I reckon it’s like Steve said once. You get a charisma, a sexual confidence when you’re knocking someone off regular and you feel horny all the time. The lasses come flocking round. They can’t keep away, you’re so confident and that. And here Mary is, in her going-out outfit, sitting on the edge of her barstool and she’s making her little skirt ride up like that. Penny would never do that. I’m noticing little things about Mary I’d never have noticed before, because of Penny. Like how much make-up Mary’s wearing.
When Mary goes to powder her nose, as she calls it, I’m away. I’m out of that pub and running through Aycliffe precinct before I know it. I’ve escaped.
I can run like the clappers. I’m not even limping. I’m drunk but even drunk I couldn’t run like this before. Something has happened to me.
When Mary was singing my praises, staring up at me and saying how strong I was, she was referring to how much I was lifting this afternoon. Without any extra effort I doubled the weight I usually lift. Well, not quite doubled, but I added a fair bit on. Everyone noticed. I hardly sweated any extra.
Downstairs I showered and I sat in the sauna. I looked for an extra towel to cover my damaged foot, as I always do, when I heard someone else come in the room and I am naked. I felt my feet self-consciously, but my foot was a normal shape. My foot was foot-shaped for the first time I could remember. I set it beside the other and they looked almost the same. Spot the difference! Left and right mirror reflections! Snap! I had a pair, a pair the same!
I’m still not sure what’s happened.
I run like a bastard. In slow motion, covering some graceful ground like Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man. We have the technology — we can rebuild him. Here I am, Penny, here I come restored. Will Penny be my Lyndsey Wagner, my Bionic Woman? Will we be super-heroes together, do you think?
Mary will have come out of the bog, brushing her hands on her skirt, pushing her skirt into place. She’ll come on tiptoes back to the bar, thinking about putting her hands over my eyes as she comes up
