Of Things Gone Astray

Mrs Featherby.

THE BUILDER, WHO’D INTRODUCED HIMSELF simply as Bruno, sucked air through his teeth and looked at Mrs Featherby’s absence of wall speculatively.

‘Well,’ said Mrs Featherby. ‘How soon can you have a wall for me?’

‘Christ,’ he said, as if that was a sufficient answer. He walked across Mrs Featherby’s yard with callous disregard for her roses, and he gazed in at her exposed rooms. Mrs Featherby was glad to see her roses put up a bit of a fight, in the form of a thorn snagging on the corner of the man’s t-shirt as he passed, pulling a thread loose.

‘I mean, holy shit, you know,’ he continued. Mrs Featherby did not deign to reply. She waited, arms crossed low on her hips, one brogued foot resisting the urge to tap impatiently. She reminded herself that she ought to be grateful for the builder’s quick arrival, grateful she’d not had to wait until tomorrow.

‘It’s not going to be easy,’ he said. ‘It’s not going to be quick. I mean, I’ve never even seen this happen. How did this happen?’

‘I have put the police in charge of ascertaining that.’

Bruno scoffed lightly.

Mrs Featherby suddenly found him a much more sympathetic character; she felt an unexpected urge to give an answering smirk. ‘How long?’ she asked. ‘How long will it take? When will you have a wall for me?’

‘Well, it’s not like I can just order in one wall, please, and slot it into place. I have to match the materials; I have to integrate what I do with the existing house, which, by the way, is over 150 years old. And the other walls are plaster over brick, which I can do, or I can put up a dry wall and then just put bricks over the outside.’

‘But that wouldn’t be the same as the rest of the house. It wouldn’t be the same as it was.’

‘No. But it would be easier for you. There would be something up to protect you.’

‘Please rebuild it as it was. Keep it the same.’

‘Well, it’s up to you,’ said the builder.

‘How long will it be?’

‘Hard to say. I’ll have to find the exact brick, or as close as I can, so I’ll need to call a few people before I can say. I don’t like to give an estimate, you know, and then have it take longer.’

‘I appreciate that, young man, but I have to live here. This is my home. You may think you have a problem of an old house that’s missing a wall; I have a problem that my home is broken.’

‘You might want to think about where else you can stay. You got family or friends that’d put you up? That’s what you’re going to need to do.’

‘That’s not possible,’ said Mrs Featherby cooly. ‘Nor am I willing to stay in a hotel. This is my home and I do not wish to leave it.’

‘Well. I guess, if you’re sure. The most I can do for now is rig up some kind of temporary protection for you. Something to keep the weather outside. Bloody lucky it’s still warm. No telling how long that’ll last, mind.’

‘Indeed.’

Mrs Featherby tried to get on with her day while the builder attached a thick sheet of plastic to the gaping side of the house. She baked a chocolate cake and darned a batch of old socks. She laundered the guest linens she kept, in spite of the fact that she never had any guests.

Finally, after the builder was done, he gave Mrs Featherby a sympathetic nod as he went to leave.

‘Not sure what this’ll end up costing. If you put me in touch with your insurance company I can deal with it all directly with them. Save you some stress, right?’

‘Thank you. I shall call them directly and let them have your number.’

Mrs Featherby gave Bruno the builder a slice of cake and sent him on his way.

Cassie.

CASSIE HAD ALMOST STOPPED SEEING her surroundings. Her eyelids drooped and flickered, and although her gaze was still fixed on the arrivals gate, she was having trouble differentiating between the people who walked through it.

She was just becoming aware of an ache in her neck when a woman walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder.

‘Cass?’

Cassie gave a start and blinked a couple of times.

‘Oh, Mum. You didn’t have to come all the way out here.’

‘You stopped answering your phone. I was worried.’

‘No, I’m fine. I’m just waiting. I’ll wait here.’

‘Cass, I think you should come home.’

Cassie was so tired. Too tired to argue really, but she didn’t want to give in. She bit her lip and stared stubbornly at the gate.

‘It’s going to get late, love. You’ve been here for hours. Come home and we’ll figure out what’s happened. Maybe she’s going to come tomorrow. You can come back tomorrow. I’ll come with you.’

Cassie swallowed.

‘You must be hungry, Cass. There’s dinner at home. I did a crumble.’

Cassie breathed in deeply and closed her eyes.

‘Come on. We’ll sort it out in the morning.’

Cassie sighed and took her mother’s arm. ‘I can’t move,’ she said. ‘I can’t move my feet.’

They both looked down at Cassie’s feet. The brown leather of her sandals had become rough as bark. Her skin had merged with them and her toes had put forth roots into the floor. She was growing into the ground.

Robert.

AFTER A WHILE ROBERT DECIDED to call his assistant. Assistants were supposed to always know what was going on, so Derek would know. It was Derek’s job to know. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his contact list. He was halfway through the Fs before he realised he’d gone too far. He scrolled back up. Derek’s name wasn’t there. This was obviously ridiculous, it had been there yesterday; he’d hardly have deleted it. You don’t delete your assistant’s number, otherwise how can you call him when you’ve sent him out somewhere and tell him to bring you back an almond croissant? You can’t. He looked again. There was no Derek. Derek was gone. Feverishly, he scrolled through the names on his phone, looking for his boss, his intern, the receptionist, but none of them were there. His colleagues were gone. Work was gone. Everything was gone.

Robert walked back down the street in a daze. He wandered past buildings that had not disappeared, through crowds of people who would manage to arrive at their destinations. He didn’t stop until he reached the river. He sat on a bench and stared in front of him.

Slowly the foot traffic that passed him changed from harried business people into slowly meandering tourists. A young couple approached him and asked for directions.

‘I told you,’ the girl said, elbowing the boy in the ribs. ‘You should always listen to me.’

‘OK, OK,’ the boy said. ‘I mean, I’m sure you’re right about that, maybe, but I’m probably not going to.’

Robert stared after them as they walked away. He got out his phone and stared at it, suddenly frightened. Derek had vanished from it, what if Mara had too? What if he’d go home to find his house had vanished as well, and Mara and Bonny with it? Robert once again scrolled through the contacts list on his phone. Mara. There she was. Mara. His torchbearer.

He called her but it went to voicemail. Of course it did, he thought, he ought to have known better; she hated being interrupted, she would have left her phone upstairs where it wouldn’t distract her.

Robert sat and stared at the Thames. He got up and walked along it and sat on another bench. He crossed over and walked back up the other side. He browsed the gift shops of the theatres and art galleries. He sat at a rickety table outside and drank a burnt coffee. He walked over to the river again and stared down into its muddy dullness. He wandered away.

It wasn’t until a few hours later that he came across a tube station and decided to go home.

Marcus.

THE DOOR OPENING STARTLED HIM. He had no idea how much time had passed.

‘Dad?’

She looked like her mother. Funny how a girl raised by two men can so closely resemble the mother she barely knew. Not that ‘mother’ was really the right word. But then, what was? Nothing. There was no right word.

‘Don’t you have a class?’

‘Jasper’s taking notes for me. I was worried.’

‘I don’t know what to do.’

She blinked at him and walked into the room. She crossed to the piano and opened the cover.

‘Oh my god.’

‘What?’

‘They’re really gone.’

He’d been hoping he was crazy.

‘What did you do with them?’ she asked.

‘Me? I didn’t touch them. Not since yesterday. Not since I was playing yesterday. They were fine.’

‘So, they just vanished?’

‘Yes. I came down this morning, I had my breakfast, I went to play. They were gone.’

She stared. She wrinkled her nose. No, she didn’t look like her mother. She looked like Albert. Thank god.

She hesitantly put out a hand as if to touch the keys that weren’t there, then abruptly shut the lid.

‘Let’s have a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘I went to Fortnum’s and got some new ones for us to try.’

She walked out of the room, giving Albert’s picture a casual pat as she passed it, and led the way into the kitchen.

‘I thought we could all have dinner tonight,’ she said, pulling down a tea pot. ‘I asked Jasper to come over and bring some food from the Iraqi place around the corner. That’s the place that we got the really good fish from that time, isn’t it? And you haven’t really spent any time with Jasper; haven’t you only met him the once? It’s my fault, of course. I should have brought him around here earlier.’

She stopped pottering around and sat at the table across from him.

‘What do I do?’

‘I don’t know, Dad. I suppose I’ll call a piano repair company. Do you think it’d cost a lot to replace them?’

The question unsettled him. It was his piano. He didn’t want someone else’s hands on his piano.

He suddenly didn’t like being still. He took his cup to the sink even though it wasn’t yet even half empty. He couldn’t decide if he wanted to empty it or keep drinking.

‘Dad?’

‘When’s he, when’s he coming? Your boy?’

‘It’s OK. I don’t have to ring someone now. We’ll just take some time. We won’t think about it for a while.’

His arm was itchy. Something had bitten him.

‘Dad?’

He turned back.

‘Right. Yes. Dinner will be lovely. We’ll have dinner.’

Delia.

DELIA LAY IN BED THAT night, still embarrassed about how wildly she’d got lost. There weren’t all that many things she prided herself on these days, but her unerring sense of direction was one of them, and it was something she needed.

Most of her days were spent in the same way, in the same place. She’d grown to rely on being able to escape, to wander in any direction for as long as she needed to, being fully confident that she’d have no trouble finding her way back when she needed to. Admitting to this tiny failure was somehow more difficult than admitting to all the giant ones.

Although she wasn’t yet aware of it, and would never fully figure it out, a very specific thing was happening to Delia, and had been happening for years. The morning’s unwanted adventure was nothing more than the latest in a slow decline that had been precipitated by a small van full of tea and biscuits running a red light when Delia was 147 words away from finishing her dissertation.

Those 147 words had never been written.

Mrs Featherby.

‘YOUR WHAT’S BEEN STOLEN?’ said the brisk voice on the phone. It was several notes higher in tone than it had been thirty seconds previously. The bored indifference was almost entirely gone.

‘My wall,’ replied Mrs Featherby, patiently and efficiently. ‘The front wall of my house.’

‘Bloody hell, how did that happen?’

‘I don’t know how. I’ve reported it to the police. I’m sure they’ll have some kind of answer shortly.’ Mrs Featherby was not at all convinced that the police were going to come up with any kind of solution, but it would not do to express doubt to the insurance agent. Insurance agents pounce on doubt like rabid terriers. They could probably smell it, the way dogs can smell fear.

‘To be honest, Mrs, I’m not sure about this. I’m not sure about it at all.’

‘My home and contents insurance covers me against theft, does it not?’

‘Well, yeah, sure, but that’s theft of, well, the contents. Not theft of the house.’

‘The house has not been stolen. Only part of it has.’

‘Yeah, I know, but—’

‘If an unruly university student uplifted my mail box or my rose bush or my door knocker, which is an antique in the shape of an elephant, would that be covered?’

‘I suppose—’

‘Well, this is precisely the same situation. Someone has stolen from me; they’ve stolen a part of my house, including, I might add, my front door and, by extension, my rather lovely door knocker.’

The insurance agent changed tack: ‘Yeah, well, we can’t even know for sure that it’s theft, can we? Your wall disappearing. Can’t be that common, wall thieves. And you’re not covered for acts of God, so—’

‘Acts of God?’ said Mrs Featherby, audibly raising her eyebrow. ‘Are you actually suggesting that our Lord and Saviour, in His infinite wisdom, has used His omnipotent power to cause my front wall to dissolve away? Balaam had his donkey, Joan had her magic voices and I have a disappearing house? Is that, in your mind, the most logical explanation?’

‘Look, there’s no need—’

‘Perhaps you would be so good as to allow me to put in a claim, and if in the processing of that claim it is decided that the theft of my wall was, in fact, not theft but the divine intervention of the Almighty, you can take the moral high ground.’

There was a brief silence.

‘Could you confirm your post code, please?’

Robert.

ROBERT ARRIVED HOME JUST AS Mara and Bonny were getting out of the car.

‘Dad!’ said Bonny. ‘Did you know that lions can’t purr and we get to have pizza for dinner even though it’s not a Friday or a birthday? But not shop pizza; Mum’s going to make it. I would be sad if I were a lion that couldn’t purr. I wish humans could purr.’

‘You’re home early and oh my god, you’re not going to believe it,’ said Mara.

‘What?’ said Robert.

‘Just, just wait. A bit. Bonny, do you want to play a game while your dad and I cook dinner?’

‘Can dad not play with me?’

‘Not this time, pal,’ said Robert, staring curiously at Mara.

‘So,’ she said once she and Robert were alone in the kitchen. ‘So, I may have pulled her out of school.’

‘What?’ said Robert. ‘Why? Where are we going to send her?’

‘I know, oh I know, but honestly, I can’t even—’

‘Jeepers, Mara, breathe.’

Mara closed her mouth and glared at him.

‘Just, what happened, OK?’

‘All right. So, I get there, and everyone’s acting super nice, you know, would you like tea and a biscuit, like the school is a little old woman luring you into her house before she bakes you into a pie.’

‘I think she’d probably get more than one pie out of a whole human.’

‘And then they sit you down and start talking and it seems like they’re being nice, but halfway through you think, “hold on, you think I’m a idiot” and “fuck right off”, but you don’t want to interrupt them, because you’ve a mouth full of tea-dunked biscuit and it’s just not necessary to show people the inside of your mouth when it’s all coated in brown.’

‘But what did they say?’

Mara sighed and leaned forward with her elbows on the bench and her face in her hands.

‘OK, OK. So, apparently, a few weeks ago, when they took the register, instead of saying “present” like all the other children, Bonny got up, climbed onto her chair, and sang “Go Your Own Way”.’

‘Great song.’

‘And I mean, she didn’t just sing the chorus, she sang the whole song.’

‘Well, it’s not long, once you’ve taken out all the guitar solos. Unless she sang those too.’

‘I didn’t ask. Anyway, the next day it was “Short People”.’

‘Hey, that’s our song. She and I play it together. Well, I play the actual song and she plays a rather Dadaist solo. And sings, obviously.’

‘Well, her teacher’s only five foot tall, so I doubt it went down particularly well.’

‘That’s a bit rude of her; she’s still much taller than Bonny.’

‘Next it was “The Only Living Boy in New York”.’

‘Ooh, she’s been listening to your music.’

‘After a week or so, the other children started copying her.’

‘Typical. That’s exactly how indie trends become mainstream.’

‘Apparently it now takes an average of an hour and twenty minutes to take the register.’

‘Yeah, but it’s an hour and twenty minutes of pure joy. Well, assuming the other children are OK at carrying a tune.’

‘I think they’re more worried about cutting into valuable learning time. Anyway, they told her she couldn’t sing in class and she asked them why and they said because class wasn’t an appropriate place to sing and she asked them why not and obviously they’d started a never-ending discussion, because she’s a child, isn’t she, so they tried to cut it short by saying that if she ever answered the register with a song again she’d have to stay in for playtime and she wouldn’t be allowed to read or play with the toys, and she just cried and cried and all the other children cried, so they asked me if we would punish her at home for doing it so they don’t have to punish her at school and make all the children cry.’

‘Bloody hell. Bloody hell! They were going to … a school was going to tell a child she wasn’t allowed to read? Because she sings, she’s not allowed to read?’

‘I’m not telling her she can’t stand on a chair and sing, Rob. I’m not ever telling her that.’

Robert put a hand on the back of Mara’s neck and began massaging the base of her head.

‘I think we shouldn’t start off by letting her have a holiday.’

‘No. I think you’re right. I guess I’ll home-school her until we’ve found somewhere else.’

‘How will you meet your deadlines?’

‘I’ll have to work that out, won’t I? I don’t have anything due till the middle of next week.’

‘We have the best kid, Mara.’

‘The best.’

She sighed and pulled out the chopping board.

‘How was your day?’

‘Oh,’ said Robert. ‘Fine. You know. Nothing as dramatic as this.’

The day no longer seemed real to him. The impossibility of his work having actually vanished was far more real than his memory of it having done so. He wondered if he’d imagined it. He’d go back to work the next day and it would all be as normal.

Jake.

JAKE SAT AT THE KITCHEN table and did his homework without being asked. He started reading a book his teacher had said was good. His dad came in and looked in the cupboards. He looked in the fridge. He took out the leftover chicken from the night before and made soup. He defrosted bread rolls. He asked Jake about school and nodded as Jake talked. They went to the living room and silently watched some reality TV.

Jake blinked a couple of times as he looked at his dad. He seemed unclear, almost blurred. It was as if Jake was looking at him through a faint mist.

When Jake went to bed there was a card on his pillow. It had a picture of Spider-Man on it. Inside, below the printed message, it said, ‘Love you. Sorry. Dad.’

Cassie.

CASSIE WAS EXHAUSTED. THE TIDE of people that had surged around her after the discovery of her roots had baffled and broken her.

Her mother’s panicked screams had first brought security running. Then there had been medics, and a call over the loudspeaker for a doctor that resulted only in a seething crowd of curious onlookers.

All attempts to prise Cassie out of the floor had failed. The roots that her feet had become looked small, but they were strong and seemed to run deep. It wasn’t until Cassie was shaking with hysteria that someone saw fit to move the people on. They had brought some screens, like the kind you see in hospitals, and placed them around Cassie so she was protected from the curious stares. Cassie had forbidden her mother from spending the night behind the screens with her, but she was sure she was somewhere around. The nearest chair, probably.

The relief at being alone, or at least feeling alone, was dizzying. The freedom to think hit her like a drug. There was one thought that she had been frantic to return to: where was Floss? Cassie had checked the flight details until she had them by heart, and then gone on checking them. She couldn’t have been wrong.

And Floss must have been on the plane. If she had missed it, there were hours in which she could have let Cassie know what had gone wrong and how it was being fixed. She had been coming. She had been coming to Cassie.

Cassie didn’t doubt Floss’s intent to be there. Floss loved her. Floss would do anything to be there. It was not possible that Cassie could love Floss with so much of herself and Floss not love her back. It was not possible that the tether connecting Cassie to Floss went only in one direction.

Floss was coming. She was coming and Cassie was determined to be waiting for her.

The Status.

ONCE UPON A TIME, GEORGE Fortescue had status. Until one day, he lost it.

He had always been the kind to turn heads. Not because he was particularly good looking, he wasn’t. Not because he was tall, he was average. There was simply something about him. At school he’d been listened to by his peers. When he gave answers in class, the other students were silent. No one ever made fun of him, not because they were afraid of him, or liked him particularly, but because somehow the idea of making fun of George was too remote to consider. When he started work he was quickly promoted, although his work was not noticeably better than anyone else’s. He was marked out for leadership from the start; without talent, or charisma, he had status.