Page 74 of The Unlikely Pair
“Bollocks. We should have disposed of the fish remains further away from our camp. It’s a rookie mistake,” Harry says.
“Not cleaning up the kitchen properly doesn’t usually have these kinds of consequences,” I comment.
“I should have thought it through,” Harry says.
“Harry, don’t be ridiculous.”
In the light from the torch, I can see the strain on his face. It reminds me of how he looked when the fish got off the hook.
Harry puts so much pressure on himself to get everything perfect.
But I don’t have time to worry about Harry’s psychology right now. The cold is starting to penetrate me, and my hands feel numb.
I shiver violently.
Because we’re trapped up a tree in the freezing cold with wolves circling below.
Suddenly, hysteria rises up and takes control of my mouth.
“Holy fuck, Harry, how are we going to survive this?”
“Survive what?”
“This.” I gesture wildly around us. “We can’t spend the whole night in the tree. We’ll freeze. But we can’t climb down because there are wolves.”
“I agree it’s important to prevent the wolves from consuming your corpse because they might die from all the putrid poisoning of liberal values.”
I blink at him. “What?”
“I’m just saying, I can imagine your feculent taste might be harmful to the wildlife.”
I swallow the lump of panic in my throat so I can answer him. “If we’re going to take a bet, I think the years of aristocratic inbreeding would have led to a particularly foul, gamy taste to your own flesh.”
“I’m fairly sure you’re the one who would leave a repugnant aftertaste in their mouths,” Harry retorts.
Are we really doing this? Is now, sitting in a tree with wolves circulating, the right time for us to speculate how each other would taste?
But I can’t back down from a Harry insult. And suddenly, I realize that’s the whole point.
“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” I say.
“What?”
“You’re deliberately antagonizing me to distract me.”
Harry’s face remains impassive. “Sure. Let’s go with that. Or else I could just be using the opportunity to point out the rancidness of Labour policies,” he says.
But I’m staring at him, my mind ticking over the last few days.
Harry has been doing this the whole time. Every time I’ve started to panic, he’s picked an argument with me.
It’s like him eating the burnt parts of the fish, claiming he prefers them when he doesn’t.
In his stiff, formal, wanker-like way, Harry Matheson is actually slightly…kind.
The thought makes my head swirl. It’s like looking at one of those optical illusions, where you’re convinced you’re looking at one thing, only to have it morph into something completely different. Then you wonder how the hell you missed what had been there the whole time.
“We need to scare the wolves off,” Harry says.
