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

for an hour or so after giving up the brush. When he was absorbed in watching something on TV, he’d rest his head in the spread of his hand and squeeze his scalp. One night we were watching the news, and afterwards a sponsorship clip came up for Easton Grove. He perked up in his chair, his eyes wide and white, when the man and woman began to laugh into the lake again. The woman’s fine gold necklace glittered impossibly.

“That’ll be us next year, lover,” he whispered, shaking my elbow. “Me and you.”

In an effort to wake the house up, I went through a phase of buying spidery ferns, trees, and fertilisers at a garden centre after work nearly every day, dripping the compounds they needed onto the roots with love and lining the windowsills with life. Part of me did it because Art had had so many plants in his old flat, and I thought this might help to make the place feel like home. When he saw me carry in the third batch, he let out an “Ohhhhh”, as if he’d only just realised something, and told me that the greenery in his apartment had been artificial and already there when he’d rented it.

Art wanted to set up his new “aviary” alone. He painted the walls in beetle-shell green, and spent long nights after I’d gone home mounting shelves and ordering his books and papers first one way, and then another way, stacking them up from the floor and along the windowsills. He placed his desk, a square slab of polished oak, in the centre of the room so if you walked in you’d be facing him, sitting in his leather chair.

I left him to it, and spent the time packing up my flat into boxes labelled “Keep”, “Donate”, and “Bin”. I didn’t want to bring anything that reminded me of the life I’d had, which didn’t leave me with much. Frankly, it was horrifying that I could disappear so easily into a few cardboard boxes. What would Art think when he saw my lack of substance? He’d only been in the UK a few months and already he had awards, certificates, validation.

I found that most things I didn’t know what to do with lived in the top drawers of cabinets that I never opened – thin rolls of sticky tape, plastic keyrings from museums, cinema tickets, birthday cards. To anyone else it would look like junk. I left this drawer until last, but there’s no avoiding these things forever.

I poured a glass of wine down my throat before I set to work.

In the front corner of the drawer was a small wooden box that used to contain an ammonite. You know, the fossil that coils in on itself? It wasn’t lost; I could picture exactly where the ammonite was – sitting in a top drawer in another flat with darker walls but more light. Perhaps being lifted from its secret home by hands that loved old things. Hands that’d once felt like warm butter on my skin and smelled like vanilla.

On autopilot, I reached to the back and pulled at a plastic bag which clinked as it slid towards me. Inside the bag, the shattered glass shone invitingly like diamond. I knew one of the faces in the photo beneath the glitter was mine, but it looked rounder, or maybe the hair was shorter. Anyway, she wasn’t me.

I stroked my finger around the edge of the gold picture frame before pressing a fingertip to a spike, holding it there until a dome of red bloomed. I couldn’t feel a thing. I wiped the blood over the two faces with their cheeks pressed together, then stuffed the orange bag and wooden box in the kitchen bin. After that, the rest of the drawer was easier.

As Art and I spread our haul of new furniture and soft things around the house, it turned out that there wasn’t a lot of room left for memories anyway. We placed our photos side by side on the dark wood mantelpiece in the living room, placed our towels tight together on the bathroom rail, and stacked mugs on the branches of our new mug stand, which twisted up and out from its base like a family tree.

I was careful to only put my things in the left side of the bedroom, and not be presumptuous. I squished my clothes to the left of the wardrobe, left him three empty drawers, and plumped up the pillows. I brought up the patchwork blanket, and, sure that Art would hate its tastelessness, rolled it up tight and stowed it under my side of the bed where it wouldn’t be seen.

Just as I was finishing the bedroom, something fell through the letterbox with a heavy thump. I leapt down the stairs to find a slim blue box with “Arthur and Norah” written in iridescent bronze ink. There was no postmark or address, so I pressed my face to the living room window to see who had dropped it off, but the street was cold and still.

I sat with the box on the bottom stair. Art was at the market, picking up some bits to see us through. I knew that the Grove would want us to open the box together, to bond, but I couldn’t resist the temptation of some kind of head start. I opened the box gently, so it could be closed seamlessly again afterwards. Inside the nest of tissue were a pair of bronze keyrings, a long and shimmering “Welcome Home” banner, a pair of envelopes – one addressed to each of us, and a window sticker for the front of the house, which read “We are the future”. I pocketed the sticker straight away, almost sure that Art wouldn’t want to broadcast our lives either, but it was easier to not give him the option. Next, I opened the envelope with “Norah” handwritten across the sleeve. Inside