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

a silk pouch, tied with a gold cord. I jingled it by my ear. He looked down at the floor, and the skin near his hairline flushed.

“Sorry it’s not wrapped…”

He tailed off as I pulled open the bow and tipped the contents onto my palm. A little rock, partially polished, mounted on a pin. I was staring at it, trying to work out what to say, when Art said, “It’s an ammonite.”

It wasn’t an ammonite. It was obvious that this was something else, definitely a fossil, but not an ammonite. My throat had constricted when I’d opened the pouch but it loosened a little when I realised that he’d got it wrong.

Art seemed to sense that I didn’t know what to do. “It’s just a little thing, it’s fine if you don’t like it. The Grove said you’d appreciate it.”

“I do,” I said, closing the pin in my fist and squeezing it tight. Art looked pleased.

“But anyway,” Art leaned to the side, reaching into his pocket, “this is your main present. The others are crap.”

He pulled out a velvet box. Like the pouch, it wasn’t wrapped. He offered it to me on the flat of his hand, his doe-eyes peering at me below heavy brows. I took it, and it weighed nothing at all. I could have tossed it in the air and expected it never to have come down again.

The lid creaked open, and inside was planted a ring made of two loops – one gold and one silver, twisting around each other like rope. I didn’t understand.

“It’s an eternity ring. I know it’s more usual to be married first, but we’re not normal, are we? We’re ultra-normal. And this is forever, isn’t it? We’re going to be together longer than any other couple we know. If that doesn’t mean eternity, I don’t know what does.”

His eyes shone. He was either crying or just very, very tired. He wiped his eyes with one maroon cuff.

“Wear it now, you don’t need to wait.”

Art slipped it from the box and fed my ring-finger through its mouth. My heart was thudding in my chest, but if I closed my eyes I couldn’t even feel the difference on my finger. How did I feel, really? I don’t know. I was so happy that day with my head stuck deep in the sand, eating sand, drinking rainwater through the sand. Why was this ring, a symbol of love, now a shackle?

I kissed him. It seemed like something I could always do to answer without an answer. A key unlocking our next scene. Art smiled without parting his lips at the socks, giving me a knowing glance and pulling on a pair. He responded to the weekend in Cornwall with a similarly silent kiss.

By my knee there was one gift left, one little wrapped package tied with gold ribbon. Art clapped his hands together with a dull thump, both of them clad in another pair of fluorescent socks. “Oooh, one left for me, how exciting.”

He pouted coyly, resting his pointed chin on his shoulder. I shook my head in defiance, holding my own chin aloft. “Well actually, no. This one is for Nut.”

Art’s face became blank. He looked at the package and then at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I bought her a little present of her own. For Christmas.”

Art stared at me, his jaw snapped to the side. Something had changed, shifted, as if I’d told a lie, or a lie had been exposed and we both had to face the shame. We were dancing around a gaping chasm, both looking away, lest we turn to stone.

“Norah, what are you doing?”

I couldn’t meet his eye. “What? How is this different to us buying her feed? Changing her litter tray?”

Art shook his head. “It’s very different, you know it is. This isn’t just about the Grove finding out – this is about you now. You’re going too far.”

“I’m doing things right.”

“You’ve crossed so many lines, Norah. I’ve been protecting you, protecting us both. But at some point you’re going to have to stop. You’re going to drive yourself mad.” His mouth twisted with each word, and all I wanted to do was slap my hands over it. How could he still pretend to pursue the same old course, as if he hadn’t learned anything? As if he hadn’t said himself that he’d heard her voice in his head? Whatever he said out loud – I wasn’t alone in this. He was saying it for the sake of it, that’s all. But why? My breath caught in my throat, and it occurred to me that Easton Grove might have bugged the house. Might be listening to everything we were doing. Would Art let them do that to me? To Nut?

I fingered the little parcel, wrapped lovingly in the iridescent silver paper I’d chosen because it looked like mackerel skin. I placed it between us on the floor.

“It’s Christmas, and I was feeling giving. That’s all. It’s nothing really. She’ll like it.”

“Will she? Should she?”

“Yes!” I leaned towards him and brushed my lips against his ear. “She feels, she thinks. She thinks just like we do. She likes to be scratched behind the left ear and not the right. She hates the zest of lemons. She comes to us for warmth in the night.”

Art leapt away, his eyes screwed shut. “Fuck. You can’t say that–”

“I can. I see it all clearly, Arthur. You see that life in her too, don’t make out that you don’t. You’ve kept the den she made in your study. I saw it. Why shouldn’t I make her happy? She’s alive, alive now. Isn’t it our responsibility right now to make her content?”

Art stared at the little package. As if she knew, Nut strolled through the open doorway and sidled up behind Art, scratching her flank on his back like a bear on bark.

“Would you rather she was just miserable?”

Art shook his head and covered his mouth with his fingers. “We need