The Blue Book by A. L. Kennedy

Author:A. L. Kennedy [Kennedy, A. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780544027701
Publisher: Harcourt
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

‘Cloudberries.’

‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’ Beth is sitting and frowning up at a tall, nervy man in a pebble-dashed jacket and bad shoes. He is standing beside her and is someone she has never seen before.

It’s 1989 and not Beth’s birthday; close, but this is just a party – one of her own making and in her own flat. At least, it’s in the flat she shares with two other students, both of whom are slightly dull. She picked them for their dullness – uninvolving Sarah and boring Elaine. She wants to get her PhD – which would please her dad: she doesn’t have to please her dad, but she would like to – and Sarah and Elaine will not be a distraction. She has shared accommodation before and been through the shouty boyfriends and strange compulsions and sad compulsions and haphazard mental collapses of too many strangers and acquaintances and very-much-former-friends to expose herself again. She is tired of being a student: of bar jobs and waitress jobs and telesales jobs and learning the words and numbers of what seems a pointless game. It doesn’t feel as she’d hoped: like owning secrets, like enlightenment. And she’s older: this sad case the campus can’t shake, because where else would she go? At least she’ll have peace with Elaine and Sarah – if both of them exploded, burst into flames, they still would be proudly unable to draw a crowd.

‘I said cloudberries.’

Beth is tucked at the top of the stairs, just inside the dim quiet of the landing – no lights on up here, guests being encouraged to stay below, keep tidy and not creep off for sly shags in or on other people’s beds. The man must have crossed the landing behind her soundlessly and is, in a minor way, an intruder. The idea of this is disturbing. She doesn’t know where he’s come from and had assumed she was alone – meaning that, for a while, she has been defenceless.

He drops to sit beside her, knees high to his chin. ‘Like when you were a kid, isn’t it?’ And he is, all at once, companionable, easy. ‘Up late and peeking at your parents’ noise.’

But he is not her companion and shouldn’t be easy so Beth tells him, ‘You can’t peek at noise. You can’t see it at all. In fact.’ She feels he may be uninvited – he certainly isn’t Sarah’s or Elaine’s style – long blond hair and a fussily shaped beard, a sense of intelligence about him.

Which he’s probably faking.

He looks like General Custer – so he can’t be that bright.

He looks like a fake.

He doesn’t look like a part of her future – a long, fluttering tear in years and years and years. She has no prediction in her pocket which reads On the 4th day of the 3rd month in 1989 Elizabeth Caroline Barber will meet Arthur Peter Lockwood and they will be bad for each other, ever after.

She doesn’t even fancy him – not especially.

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