Wendy’s voice was calm. “I’m not here to beg for that old man’s money.”
“Oh, lovey, come on. None of us can afford to be that noble.”
“I feel sick.”
Aunty Anne gave her a gentle push, and nudged her elbow. “Would you really turn up your nose at all his millions?”
“You’ve brought me here to beg...to...”
Aunty Anne became flustered and cross. “Not ‘to’ anything. What was I meant to do? Of course I brought you here.” Her voice had gone too loud. “Now, look...don’t spoil it. Come on, let’s find a shop for trendy young ladies...and let’s blow that money.”
Wendy crinkled the notes in her pocket. “I wish you’d left me at home.”
Aunty Anne drew herself up to her full height. Even with a scarf wrapped into a turban to cover her hair, pink bits were poking out from under and she looked ridiculous. It was like candy floss under her turban, Wendy thought. “I think you’re kidding yourself, Wendy. It was your choice. You thought as well as I did that you deserved a crack at ending up in that old devil’s will. You’re not as innocent as all that.”
Wendy kept quiet. She couldn’t look her aunt in the eye.
Anne said, “Let’s get you dressed up. Come on. He’s serious about going out to dinner. He doesn’t want you looking scraggy-arsed, does he?”
The next time I went to the museum I headed straight to my glass cabinet full of all the kinds of bears in the world. They hadn’t budged an inch. I liked this about them...but, I realised, what I also liked about them (a lot) was that, on the other side of that outside wall behind them...was a Balti restaurant. Did the Balti people know? It was probably their toilets, at the back of that place. I imagined fellas peeing up against urinals. And I was pleased, because I imagined them suddenly getting X-ray specs and seeing all these splendid bears.
The extinct room made me think, too. In one corner they had the tallest bird that had ever walked the earth. It was shaggy like horsehair. Ten foot tall. And I knew for a fact it backed up against a green grocer’s. I waited to see it come to life and peck a hole in the wall. Give someone a fright. I would sit here for an hour or more, looking at stuffed beasts. It calmed me down.
ELEVEN
Her new town—The New Town, as they called it—was in a grid. Streets like a crossword. Three across. Two down. Starts with a V, six letters, second last letter R. Wendy zig-zagged everywhere she needed to go. It was Georgian architecture, Captain Simon said. Obviously the product of a tidy mind. Of a whole host of tidy minds. They all had tidy minds in the eighteenth century.
“A tidy mind!” said Aunty Anne, as if she had never heard of such a thing. It was breakfast time and, while the others were reading their post, she was flipping through last night’s Evening Post. There had been a collision in space between an unmanned supply ship and a Russian space station. It was the worst space accident in years. Aunty Anne had found herself talking about these things quite a lot recently, with Captain Simon, whose hobby, he said, was outer space. Anne scanned through the small piece on the accident, genning up.
Wendy, meanwhile, was thinking about spending the day zig-zagging around town on her bike. Aunty Anne had given her an old bike, which had been left in the outhouse in the shared garden. It was as good as new. Uncle Pat had bought her a blue riding helmet and, although Wendy wasn’t convinced that she looked right on a bike, the new blue helmet settled the matter: she would have to make an effort.
But the traffic on the streets of Edinburgh was very fierce.
For the moment, she put it out of her mind and read Timon’s letter.
I’m flakey. I’m flighty. You know I am, hon. So I’m rubbish at writing to absent friends—but I’ve been missing you, even though I’m hanging out with other people. You know how it is.
I don’t want to go making you jealous with talk of all my new lady friends. I’ve been seeing a bit of your sisters, of Mandy and Linda. I even went up to Lancaster to see your Mandy in her new house. Did you know she’d pulled out of her course? Silly girl. I told her: you’ll live to regret this. You’ll look back one day at all your golden chances—Oh, fuck off, Timon, she snapped, you horrible black bugger. So that shut me up, and we went out for a drink. We didn’t take that silly stuffy boyfriend of hers. He hardly said a word to me the whole time I was there. I think he was jealous. I can’t see why Mandy sticks it with him. She reckons he’s the dog’s bollocks in bed, and I couldn’t work out if that meant he was bad or good.
You know, Wendy, you never told me about that trick your Mandy does—with those metal bangles she wears. When we sat in the bay window of the City Bar, she pushed both bangles inside her mouth, to stretch her lips as wide as they’d go. She looked frigging awful, bless her. She says, Timon, why do the men never look at me now? And I laugh, because when she does that, she looks like a monster. Your Mandy’s been doing that trick too much. She went to the doctor, he told her to stop. She’s stretched her lips and the bottom one is bending curling over and it won’t go back. The Doctor said, my dear, you are losing your elasticity. That’s what he said. You must stop this nonsense at once. So there she is, hon. That’s the shape your loopy sister is in. I’m ok. I’m writing still. My
