Attica by Kilworth Garry

Author:Kilworth, Garry [Kilworth, Garry]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781405528283
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2013-04-03T17:00:00+00:00

Chloe woke to see pulsing lights in the attic heavens far in the distance. Every so often there would be a crackle and a lightning fork would flash down to the boards below. Alex was still fast asleep so she left him there while she watched this phenomenon taking place in the faraway regions of this world of boards and timbers. She sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees and enjoyed the spectacle as one might from the cosiness and security of a bedroom window in the middle of the night at home.

‘How strange,’ she murmured. ‘How very strange.’

As with bedroom window storms, the sight was not alarming; in fact, it was somehow comforting. She had called it strange but in fact it felt familiar: an experience which reached down into her racial memory. Humankind has witnessed magnificent storms since they first got up on to their back legs and started calling their fellow mammals ‘beasts’. She could have been viewing it from the window of a modern office building or from the entrance to a cave. It was an ancient sport, watching the distant storm.

Finally, Chloe had had enough of the wonders of the attic and once again curled up and went to sleep, a little easier in her own mind.

When she woke again a bleary-eyed Alex was speaking to her from the depths of the folds in his greatcoat. ‘Any tea going?’

She was surprised to see his stomach move under the coat.

What was happening to him? Something was coming out.

Whether it was a monster which finally emerged depended upon your point of view. Certainly Chloe didn’t regard him as such, but a mouse or a sparrow might. Nelson’s gingery face appeared in the gap between the second and third button on the coat. He stared, gave an enormous yawn which not only showed his teeth but also the back of his throat, then he squeezed out, popping one of the buttons as he did so.

‘What’s Nelson doing in there?’ asked Chloe indignantly. ‘Has he been sleeping inside your coat all night?’

‘Yep.’

‘And I suppose he’s brought you another rat?’

‘Nope.’

‘In that case, it’s a veggy breakfast.’

Alex groaned. He stood up and went for a wash in the nearest water tank, which was about fifty metres away. When he got back he found Chloe had boiled the eggs given them by the puppets. Alex sat down and, full of gratitude for Punch and Judy, ate his fill.

‘Not too many of those,’ warned Chloe. ‘You’ll block up. Eggs do that to you.’

‘You sound like a mum.’

Chloe acknowledged this. She felt a bit like a mum sometimes. Boys needed to be told to wash, eat properly and to change their socks. Why they didn’t respect cleanliness or treat the food they threw down into their stomachs with caution she couldn’t imagine, but they started out life with a mum and most seemed to need one for ever.

Nelson didn’t appear to need anything to eat. He limped over to a spotlight thrown down from the roof, and stretched out again.

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