Harvest (3 page)

“
I think it
did.”

“
If you don’t ask me how
work is then we have a deal.”

“
That bad?” She
winced.

“
Yup.” He didn’t make eye
contact at all now as he found it uncomfortable on top of their new
level of familiarity.

“
Sorry, hope it improves
for you. And that’s the last you will hear on the subject from me.”
She plugged her keys in the door but left them there. “I have seen
that you’re around a bit during the day, so if you ever fancy a
cuppa and giving me some adult company and conversation then feel
free to give me a knock.”

“
Ok, I
will,” he lied. “Cheers.” He keyed his door open. They said goodbye
to each other and he entered his flat
and stabbed the
play message button of his answer machine.

“
Er,
’ello this is mum.” Silence. “This did go beep, didn’t it? Er, how
are you? Me and your dad were wondering how you were. How’s your
job?”
Dull and unfulfilling.
“Taken any arty pictures?”
Too busy
earning.
“Have you heard from any of your friends from
school or university?”
Sporadic emails and
vague plans – none of them live in the area, but thanks for the
reminder, you nearly have a full list of my shortcomings there,
Mum.
“Met a girl or anything?”
Bingo! Cheers, Mum, yep – don’t think you have missed out any
sensitive area.
“Your brother tells us you ’ave ’ad a
few problems with cash.”
My mistake, you
had one last nail to hammer home.
Craig cursed; he had
told Darren in confidence.
Bastard!
“Now don’t moan at ’im!” she continued
with her jovial west-country brogue that he missed so much, yet he
still couldn’t bring himself to call home on a regular basis. “He’s
just worried for his younger brother, that’s all. Not gloating, so
don’t get on your ’igh ’orse. If you can’t afford to keep yerself,
you can’t afford an ’igh ’orse.” Thanks for that pearl of
wisdom
Mum.
There was a heavy breath
forced by her plumpness then she continued. “’Enry, I mean your
dad, said he’s got some cash put aside for you. And there’s always
a place at ’ome. Just ’ow you left it –
but tidier.
” He could imagine the sharp twinkle
in her eye and the slant of her smile, and it forced him to grin
too. “Love you, darlin’. Call me back. Er... Bye, son.” A pause. “I
’ope that bloody machine works...” she tailed off as she hung
up.

Thanks mum. Amused by her
tightness with her ‘H’s’ but irritated by the reminder of the
things that depressed him.

The machine clicked and clunked
again.

“
Hiya, Craig, you
reprobate! It’s Vicki. I know you’re off taking pictures of little
girls, you perve. But, I just thought I should return your call.
Sorry, there hasn’t been much work to go round the past week. Don’t
lose heart. You can count on me!”

Craig sank into his armchair
dejectedly with the heavy reminder of the lack of work. He exhaled
a deep breath as the reality of his life crushed down on him.

“
Fuck.”

Chapter
Two

Cat Thorn struggled out of her
bed and ran her hands down her slim body, smoothing the creases out
of her tee-shirt nightie. It was three in the afternoon and she had
been in bed since she had tried to rise that morning. She steadied
herself against what felt like a hangover, her head feeling
over-sized as her vision swam and swirled. Her surroundings seemed
unanchored, yet she hadn’t been drinking. Her legs were weak at the
knees and she was cold inside, as if her body was hollowed out.

She staggered over to the
full-length dress mirror, dresses and tops hung from each side of
it like curtains at a window. She brushed her feathered auburn hair
from her face and leaned close to the glass. Her eyes showed little
sign of illness. She looked pale, but then her creamy complexion
had never had much colour. The storm had woken her up with its
violence, and had left her with a distracting pressure in her head
that forced itself between her eyes, creating a disorientating
headiness. Her face had all the signs of disturbed sleep. She
shuffled to the lounge, gripping the doorframes and then her
sideboard for support. She couldn’t understand the feeling in her
head and the sluggishness that clung to her limbs.

Part of her experience of last
night seemed absent from her mind. The symptoms had come on too
quick to be viral. She checked her watch. She was due to cover the
end of Ryan’s shift at the clothes shop she worked at. She could
make it to the railway arches in Camden market where the shop was,
but there was no way she felt fit enough. She would have to call
him and tell him that she wouldn’t be able to make it in today.

Her memory of the night
before was suddenly unlocked as some-
thing
came through the air at her. She couldn’t
see anything but she knew it was there. Just as she had experienced
in the night, as if the storm that had raged outside had torn into
her flat. Her terror took hold of her again as
it
came like a wind blasting through her flat
from a great change in air pressure. It raked her hair into the air
around her face like wild flames that forced her to clench her eyes
closed, yet a brilliant green light washed over her with a
brilliance that filtered through her lids. She dare not open her
eyes, even as her feet began to tread the air as she was swept from
the floor, she didn’t want to see what raced around her body yet
pressed against every millimetre of her body as it held her and
lifted her.

Cat cupped her hands over
her ears as a tortuous screech lanced through the current and into
her head with the sound of a hundred infantile screams. Her
instinct was to call for her mother –
but her mother
was dead
. The pressure from the air pressed against
her body and held her in place while a throbbing pain pounded in
her head as the lengthy wail seemed to crack her skull and press
deep into her mind. Her cry of pain joined the chorus as she called
for the only person who claimed to care for her –
“RACHEL!”

Rachel Williams stood at the
butcher’s window and stared. The sweet musty smell of meat carried
from the shop on the warm air. It never smelt like that at the meat
counter in the large metal Sainsbury’s she worked in on Camden
Road, it was too clinical there – just like the service; they were
discouraged from chatting to customers. Checkout staff were told it
affected the scan rate and delayed shoppers through the queues it
made. She preferred the independent retailers for her shopping; the
service was more personal and friendly. You could have a good
banter, you got to know people. You need that in a city the size of
London and you relied upon the people you saw in your travels for
company.

She found that her gaze was no
longer on the succulent sides of meat but her reflection. She
realised her tights were sagging and pulled at them as discretely
as she could. Sadly it wasn’t only her tights that had subsidence,
like the loose skin at the top of her arms that her friends down
Mecca also had and called ‘bingo wings’ due to the way it hung and
wobbled when you thrust your hand in the air and shouted “House!”
if you won, or her belly button which was no longer a hole punched
in a taut navel but an eye squinting out of a puffy socket, or her
rear that had gotten dimpled and a little closer to the ground. At
least her breasts were still full, even if they no longer stared
ahead of her. What was it Linda at work had said about her own
breasts? More of an averted gaze. She laughed to herself, being a
bit of mutton staring in at the fresh meat, some of which boasted
about only being twenty-one days old. Twenty-one was forty years
ago now, when her hair had been long and a rich chest-nut brown,
not dull greying and forced into curls and waves through a tired
perm.

When she laughed and smiled her
cheeks bunched up and the lines around her eyes and lips smoothed
out a little. accentuated her expression. Shame she couldn’t claim
they were laughter lines, just age. In one of these rare moments of
self-examination like this she marvelled at how easily she could
present a smile despite the pain that never seemed much further
away than the background. Her eyes were cast in shadow in the
reflection, but she had been told they shimmered like grey opals.
But that was a long time ago and she wouldn’t hear that voice
again.

She may be heading for
the twilight years, she decided, but at least she kept her eye on
the fashion trends and tried to keep of with whatever her age
decided she could get away with. She hadn’t let herself go. The
heavy bottle in her shopping bag glanced off her shin in a sharp
accusation.
Well, not entirely.

Reflected movement in the
window attracted her and she saw a small fluffy black and white
kitten. It meowed gently at her from its small pink mouth and
sniffed her shopping bag gingerly before nuzzling its head against
the smooth plastic. Her face bloomed. “Aren’t you a cutie?” her
pleasure at the sight faltered when she looked from the reflection
and saw that there was no cat sitting at her feet. The stark image
of the Royal Free hospital came to her mind. She knew that place
too well. She looked back at the window and found the cat’s
reflection had also gone.
“Hello, there – I wonder
where you’re going to come into things...”

Rachel arrived home, rattled
her key in the lock and dragged herself and the shopping bags
through the door of her flat. She was greeted by Simon, a builder
acquaintance who quickly apprised her of the jobs he had managed to
do for her while she was out. She thanked him and ensured he had
taken the money she had left him as he squeezed past her and out
onto the street.

“
Got to dash, see you in
church Saturday night.” He climbed into his white van marked “M.I.
Foreman & Son” and sat next to the old man, Simon’s father; the
father that only Rachel could see.

“
Oh, by the way;” he
called out the window as he started his engine. “I’ve had the front
door open to get bits from me van, and what with the floorboards
being up I shut your cat in the lounge.”

Rachel frowned. “But, I don’t
have a cat!” she called after him as he drove away. Puzzled, she
closed the door behind her and sat her shopping down on the
battered burgundy chaise longue nestled amongst the clutter of the
gloomy hallway. She moved to the lounge and stood before the door
thoughtfully. She opened it. No cat.

There was a faint
drumming sound on the floor and a familiar black and white kitten
trotted hesitantly up to her from behind her armchair and rubbed
its cold wet nose on her legs. She knelt down and ran her hands
through its soft fur, feeling the rapid beat of its little heart
and its reverberating purr. She beamed down at the fragile animal.
“Hello there, my little one!
Looking for a home, are
you?”

Jason Thompson lay on the floor
with his control pad, sending his character through to the next
level on the X-box, when his mum burst into the room. “Come on,
honey. We better get a move on. Claire and the twins are
waiting.”

Jason leapt to his feet and
shut the game down. They may be girls but he was bored. Since his
parents had separated, Jason and his mum regularly went round to
Claire’s for tea; they took it in turns to cook for each other some
nights. Claire and Jason’s mum were old school friends. He hoped he
would get a friend like that one day. Most of the friends he had
didn’t know how to be around him since his parents had split, even
though it was an uncommon situation for a class mate to be in, they
didn’t want a share of the bullying he received either.

Jason let his mum take him by
the hand as they went out the front door, a habit she had gone back
to since his dad had left them. He knew his hand had replaced his
dad’s. All through the storm the night before last he wanted to run
into his mum’s room, so he understood the need for comfort, but it
created uncomfortably deep feelings in him where he felt sorry for
his mum and missed his dad. Mischief welled up within him and he
used it as an excuse to shake loose from his mum’s grip. He dashed
to the stairs, calling after him, “Race you!” He heard his mum’s
feet skuffle into action as she flew after him.

“
N
ot fair!
You have a head
start on me!” He heard her giggling voice trail after
him.

“
You’ve got longer legs!”
he shouted back, already two flights down.

“
Smart arse!”

Jason rang Claire’s doorbell
and pushed past her as she answered it, just as his mum came
skidding down the corridor in second place. Claire called after
Jason, “She just can’t keep up with you, can she? I could give you
a run for your money though.” She winked at Jenny. “Being a younger
model and all!”

“
Six months younger!”
Jenny smirked, giving her friend a mock slap. “Cheeky
bitch!”

“
All counts, darlin’.”
Claire shut the door behind them. Jason scrunched his eyes up as
she rubbed his short black hair. “That new haircut makes the world
of difference! You know, he’s gonna be a right looker when he gets
older.” Jason could feel his face get hot.

“
Are
you saying my son is ugly
now?”
His mum
laughed, nudging Jason to say that it wasn’t so. “Made him have a
French crop, so he doesn’t look so much like his dad.” The
discomfort returned to Jason upon hearing his dad referred to
negatively, it left his innards feeling jumbled and
cold.