Page 24 of Glitterland
He nuzzled into my shoulder. It was like owning a dog that wouldn’t shut up. But there I was, not pushing him away. “Don’t be like that, babes. It’s not nice to talk abaht people dying like it don’t mean nuffin.”
“Sorry.”
Sorry?God, what was he doing to me? He was pulling me to pieces, and he didn’t even realise. I leaned against him, letting the warmth of his body lap at me like waves, letting him hold me as though any of this mattered, and we sat like that for a few minutes, in my unintended sepulchre for forsaken plants and forsaken selves. Of course, it was too good to last.
“Got anuvver question.”
“What now?”
“You ’aven’t got no food eeva.”
“Bollocks.”
“No, seriously, look.” He unwound us, took my hand, and pulled me into the kitchen, flinging wide my fridge door.
I pointed at the jar of Branston Pickle. “That’s food.”
“That’s a condiment, babes.”
“It is not a condiment. It contains vegetables. Ergo, it’s a foodstuff.”
“Anyfing what you put on anuvver fing is a condiment.”
“Well, by that twisted logic, maybe.” I started opening and shutting cupboards pretty much at random. “Hah! What’s that, eh? Eh?”
He peered. “Whas what?”
“This!”
I pulled out a half-used Merchant Gourmet packet from behind a dusty colander. Darian took it from me and peered inside, then flinched back like I’d handed him a box of alligator faeces. “Ahh, it’s dead as well, mate.”
“They’re not dead. They’re porcini mushrooms. They’re supposed to be like that.”
“I nevva seen a flat mushroom. That ain’t right.”
“They’re dried, you…you…donut.”
He kissed me, and it tasted sweet, like his laughing.
I boiled the kettle and soaked the mushrooms. We ate them with Branston Pickle, sitting on the kitchen floor, and Darian said they were well rank. He was right.
“I tried to read your uvver book,” he said, when we’d given up on the possibility of food. “The one abaht the smoke being briars or whateva. But I couldn’t get into it.”
“Oh. Right.”
My discouraging monosyllables failed to have the desired effect. “Well, it weren’t abaht anyfing. It didn’t ’ave a proper beginning or a middle or a end or anyfing. And I didn’t know what was supposed to be ’appening now and what’d already ’appened and what wasn’t ’appening at all. What’s wif that?”
I shrugged. “In fiction, like life, there’s only ever the now. And the boundary between the real and the unreal is simply a matter of perception.”
Who knew that now better than I?
“That don’t make sense, babes,” said Darian Taylor, Literary Critic. “I fink you should stick to the other stuff. You’re good at that.”
I rolled my eyes. “Genre tat.”
“What? Don’t you like it?”
“Well, I suppose it’s better than digging a hole.”
