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

blue speckled with flakes of gold around the pupil. They were far too big for her face, and in the loft’s red gloom they shone, flickering as if on the verge of tears. A little pink tongue emerged and delicately licked the flecks of jelly from her muzzle.

“Hello, Nut.”

She didn’t move, just continued to stare me down with those bulbous, cartoonish eyes. From beneath the ladder there was a shuffle, and out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of Art standing beneath the ladder and drying his hands on a tea towel, his eyes looking up at me dolefully.

“Errr, no kisses?”

I took a long, deep breath. His cheek felt hot under my lips, and I pushed my beating heart against his to remember the life we shared.

6

And so you adapt. One day bleeds into the next, and though the tide washes in and out, it’s the same sea. You’ve plugged your toes in the same sand. This beach isn’t going anywhere.

It took a few weeks before I started to relax into our new routine. I spent a lot of January second-guessing everything around me, from the brand of tinned slush we gave Nut (was this one that would definitely help her grow?), to the posturing of cushions and lamps. Art kept prodding me about why I still hadn’t told anyone about our engagement, and each time I answered him with a breath in his ear, a brush cheek-on-cheek. Sensual movements. I flipped reality, squeezing myself into a “truth” where there were fewer questions, more squeezes of my arm. But there wasn’t a moment of the day when I didn’t feel the weight of that opal, or the treacherous swing of the gold – ready to slip from my finger if I stopped concentrating.

I wondered whether I should get Art an engagement present in return, but nothing seemed right. Apart from his laptop and vast collection of notebooks and novels there wasn’t much he prized. Besides, before I had the chance to do anything it was my birthday. Thirty-two this time. It sprung on me suddenly – probably because everything was so different, the world was spinning faster. All those birthdays before, all the drinks clinked in the air by Aubrey, Rosa and Eleanor to commiserate another year gone, belonged to another lifetime. This time there had been no build-up, and when I’d spoken to Eleanor by text the week before, she hadn’t even mentioned it. It was as if with Art and Nut in my life, perhaps I wouldn’t get any older at all.

But when March arrived, I awoke to the sound of trumpets.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY WIFE-TO-BE!”

I pulled down the duvet to see Art at the foot of the bed, not actually playing a trumpet, but holding his phone in place of a saxophone, bouncing his knee to the rousing tune of “Congratulations”. I sat up in a bed of petal spray in bright shades of red, plum, and violet. Some were so silky that I could hardly feel them between my fingertips.

“They’re beautiful. Are they real?”

“Does it matter?” Art slid one across the duvet with his thumb. “They’re all for you. No half measures today. Drink!” He thrust a small glass of something pink and chemical-looking between my eyes. “Just in case you can’t see it, you know, with getting older and your eyesight failing, n’all.”

I took the glass and took a swig, crossing my eyes as I did it for good measure. The fizz hit my empty stomach immediately, and I felt a strong urge to eat whatever the petals were just to soak it up.

“Still want to marry an old maid?”

“Not sure. It wasn’t part of the deal that you’d turn thirty-two.”

“May I remind you that you’re thirty-eight?”

“But with the face of an angel. I mean – look at this skin.”

Art pushed his cheeks together between his palms and fluttered his eyelids. Disgusting.

“As long as I don’t end up looking like a devil in comparison.”

I imagined myself thin, wizened, bald apart from a fuzz of grey around my face. Chin too, most likely. And Art beside me, looking like my adopted grandson, looking up at me with those saucer eyes.

Art was often met with surprise when people learned his age, particularly at conferences. I didn’t see it, but then again I woke up with the stubbled Art and went to bed with the Art with shadows beneath his eyes. Everywhere else, he was paid to be perky, paid to grin with his short white teeth.

I’d watched online videos of Art answering questions at book launches and events and it always struck me how incredibly earnest and open he looked. When asked a question, he’d pause for a second or two and then open his whole face to answer. It lit up the camera. The audience hung on his every word like he was telling them their futures, their cards pulled from his mysterious tarot. Maybe you had to be there, but listening objectively, I didn’t think he said anything particularly insightful. Perhaps it was the way he said it, or that the audience was already in love with the idea of his words and he didn’t need to do all that much at all.

It did make me wonder whether I had it in me to hypnotise like he did. After all, Art and I were compatible, two side by side pieces of a wider jigsaw. Maybe I just hadn’t found my niche yet. To have one person hanging on your every word… I’ve never even been close. Even I get distracted when I’m talking.

A week or so before my birthday, after I’d been back at work for almost two months, I’d told Art a story about a conversation I’d heard through my cubicle wall. Joyce, my neighbour, was crying. She was on the phone and I could tell by the voice she put on that it was someone she didn’t really know. She enunciated every syllable, and