Phillips, Gin - Fierce Kingdom by Phillips Gin

Author:Phillips, Gin [Phillips, Gin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857525000
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2017-06-14T18:30:00+00:00

7:12 p.m.

His shirt rides up as he eases down into her lap, and she thinks of the boniness of his spine and the narrowness of his hips. He was a huge baby – over ten pounds – and he had multiple chins for a while, although it was a handsome fatness that made unknown women stop her on the street to squeeze his thighs. He stayed round for so long, but somehow he has turned long and lean.

She unwraps his crackers and hands him one – the wrapper is louder than she would like, but she tears it down the middle, the crackers falling loose on top of the plastic – and she adjusts herself so that she is solidly on stone instead of mulch. The wide, flat leaves, cold, fall against her head and shoulders. The speakers are now playing the whirling instrumental number that always signaled the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz. The woodwinds are loud and frantic. The sound is grating, but she does not want it to stop. She does not want to hear anything else.

Lincoln has eaten two crackers before she realizes it. She fishes his sips from her purse, shakes the cup, and thankfully it is at least half full. She pops the stopper and sets the bottle between his knees, which are tucked between her knees.

‘Thank you,’ he says. He is bouncing slightly, his rump nearly levitating off the ground. The crackers have had an effect that seems barely short of magical.

‘You got a candy bar?’ he asks. ‘What kind is it? Can I have some?’

She breaks off a piece and holds it out to him. She is slow making the words come. ‘It’s called a Zero Bar,’ she says. ‘It’s white chocolate and caramel.’

‘You don’t like white chocolate. It makes you throw up.’

This is normally true. It is a remnant from her time in Thailand. She had been working with nuns in Ireland before she went to Bangkok, and it had been Lent, so she had given up chocolate because when you are around nuns you pick up ideas of self-denial, and then it was Easter Day in Thailand, and she bought a solid white-chocolate bunny – why did they even have Easter candy in Thailand? – but she ate it all, and then she threw up, and that was it for her and white chocolate.

‘I used to like white chocolate a long time ago,’ she says. The edge of the rock is sharp under her thighs, and when she shifts to adjust herself, she scrapes her hand against the stone. She feels a sting and then a rush of liquid – she has reopened the cut in her palm.

‘Before I was born?’ Lincoln asks.

‘Yes,’ she says, clenching and opening her fist, feeling the stickiness of the blood. ‘Way before you were born.’

‘Back when you went to different countries?’

‘Back then.’

He tries the candy bar tentatively, and he hums a pleased sound, and the whole piece disappears in his mouth.

‘You ate this all the time before I was born,’ he says.

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