BLACK BAG Luke Kennard by Georgia Garrett

Author:Georgia Garrett [Garrett, Georgia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

48

There are days, you know them too, when you have to remind yourself to be grateful. Maybe you have a little headache, cannot concentrate on a sentence, cannot choose an action to perform with any elegance. On these days I remember a child named Brian my mother cared for once a week. Brian had severe cerebral palsy and if it was a Saturday I’d go along for the planned activity. We’d go to the swimming pool and I’d swim with Brian – he’d lie on his back and I’d hold him underneath the shoulders and pull him up and down the pool turning when the water was too deep for my feet to reach the bottom. He’d laugh and I’d feel profoundly useful. Or we’d go to the coast, where Brian hated the seagulls and I’d run around the chair like a character in a computer game, hollering at the seagulls and waving my arms if they got too close.

Defending Brian from the seagulls was a pure form of purpose, and one that I miss.

On such days you need the little pink skull embroidered on your undershirt. You are already dead. You already know how this ends. On such days it would be very good to be given a large brass or silver bowl to polish. A clattering detachable drawer of cutlery the size of a coffin. Fish knives, soup spoons. A scouring pad, a thick and odorous salve. It would be good to be put to work. Or take to your bed.

I try to make porridge but I do it wrong and it reduces into a knot which I chew on with a black instant coffee. I try to read the paper but get lost between the by-line and the verbiage; what do these people want from me?

I sit in my leather chair and stare at the wall. I doze off.

When I wake up I go to the shops and buy a bag of King Edward potatoes, a bottle of Italian red wine and some salted butter.

I go back to my flat and cut an X in the biggest potato and put it directly onto the oven shelf, which I set to one hundred and fifty degrees. I return to my chair. It is now half past four in the afternoon. The potato will be perfect by half past six.

My phone rings against my breast and I take a video call from Howard at Half a Mind to Kill.

I’m working, Howard.

Mate, he says. I’m sorry it’s been a while since the clusterfuck at Browns.

No, no, that’s fine, I say. I’ve been busy with a little long term thing.

You still want me to call? This is a good one, is all. Detective, conman, art world thing.

Right.

Two weeks time. One night only. A grand.

Now, part of me hoped I had left all of this behind. Pouring my energy into overwrought farces with a murder bolted on and a mystery less satisfying than a cracker puzzle. Catering to an audience I despise and who, if they have any sense at all of the tragedy of human life, probably pity me.

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