Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker (best story books to read .TXT) 📗

When I look back to those days, I can’t help but cringe at how ignorant I was. How I was sure I understood everything, but in reality, how lightly I walked through the assessments and training. It wasn’t that I hadn’t prepped. I had. I read all the material meticulously, asked all the right questions, showed all the right signs. I was the one with the shining eyes and a hand in the air. I wouldn’t have made it through the programme otherwise. But perhaps it was that there had been so many papers to shuffle, sites to trawl, clinic appointments every week – and of course, Art – that neither of us had time to really digest what we were doing. We wore the facts like badges, never looking down at the truth we’d created.

Because before Nut arrived I had no idea. Like everyone, I spent all my time listening, not truly thinking. I’ve seen it in others time and time again – relying on that instinctual stab in the belly to tell them something’s wrong before the misfortune slaps them in the face. But the gut can be distracted by other things, and in those instances the stomach-twist never comes.

And then it’s too late.

3

My graduating from phase four synced with Art and I moving in together.

Moving Art into my flat was out of the question. It hardly had enough room for me, and Art needed an office. Art looked into extending his contract but the landlord replied with a clear and definite “No”, never elaborating on why and refusing to meet. Art asked again, even offering to up his rent voluntarily, but the landlord stopped replying to his emails, and instead issued an end of contract letter for his tenancy, signed and predated.

We started looking at rental properties just out of the city, so I wouldn’t be too far from work and Art could look out to the green belt, with its stretches of seeded earth and the scatterers treading up and down the rows in their overalls and sprinkling the dead soil with good numbers. To me, they looked like the pictures of old beekeepers you’d see in books, but the green of their overalls was almost bleached white from the hip down. Sometimes they’d be driving some sort of tractor that sprayed the fertilisers from a chute at the back, but most kept their practice primitive – walking slowly up and down the furrows, often coughing into their elbows every few feet. A horrible job. And even though the city air clung to my hair and stung my nostrils when leaving Stokers, I still preferred it to the fertilisers when caught in a crosswind. Whatever they were, they burned deep in the chest. But Art said the cleaner air would help him think, so we started searching for a place that would fit the two of us comfortably and that felt like a “step up” from our apartments. Somewhere cosy, with room to grow.

But the main priority was that the house would need a sizeable, soundproof loft that could be easily accessed and securely sealed.

We viewed three properties before we found our house on Dukesberry Terrace – a slim, two-bedroomed red-brick with a little yard at the front (for show) and a decent-sized creamy lawn out the back. From the front windows you could watch the terraces coil like a snail shell, dotted with little figures hurrying from A to B. Everyone’s curtains were either closed or obscured by netting, which made me wonder whether they were hiding too. Even if their circumstances weren’t like mine and Art’s, they were all blocking off the world, the light. Perhaps if they knew what we were doing they’d understand. The estate agent turned out to be far more open-minded than Art’s landlord had been, blithely telling us that people here kept to themselves, and that there were other couples just like us across the street and a few doors down. He said there was a community drive to pick up litter every fortnight but taking part was optional, and a fruit seller set up shop on the corner two streets down every Saturday.

I loved how the house sat propped by its brothers, as if being backed up in a fight or leaning together against a cold wind. Despite the house technically having three floors, the building was still a little shorter than its neighbours, which had additional conservatories, annexes, and extensions built on all the available sides. What were once probably front gardens were now all paved over, with plastic gnomes replacing what would have been flowers. I suppose it was easier than fighting the losing battle every day. Cleaner than coating your front step in fertilisers.

Our front door was painted purple with fine white streaks through it like the petals on a primrose. We had two ground floor windows and two on the first floor. The house looked like a child’s drawing of what a home should be. There was even a chimney, which I imagined would puff white clouds from its lips.

We decided to make the place ours before moving in. We painted a room each evening after I’d finished work at Stokers. We’d start out full of chatter, but by the time night came we’d be side by side, stroking the French grey and earthy olive up and down in meditative, easy silence. While painting I sometimes thought I heard the doorbell go, but Art never looked away from the walls so I ignored it too.

When he wasn’t looking, I watched for little things that Art did that might give his game away. Like when he dropped paint on the hardwood and tried to rub it off secretly with his fist in a sock. How he kept giving me only half the sugar I asked for in my coffee, and never explained why.

We’d usually lie on the sofa