Wild Houses by Colin Barrett

Author:Colin Barrett [Barrett, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-05T17:00:34+00:00

7

Nicky woke up in Doll’s bed, threw up in the toilet, and made her way downstairs. She had to pass through the sitting room to get to the kitchen. Everything in the Englishes’ sitting room looked the same as it always did, the same only a little more shabby and palpable in the unlovely clarity of the sober, late-morning light: the sofa’s greasy, toffee-coloured leatherette, so old sections of it appeared congealed, the pulverised cushions wadded like paper stuffing into the seat of the lamed rocking chair that no longer rocked, the old widescreen TV, its screen patinaed in a fuzz of glinting dust that made the back of Nicky’s throat itch to look at. She came into the kitchen where Sheila, in her dark glasses, was looking out the window above the sink, waiting for the electric kettle as it rattled noisily to a boil in its cradle.

‘There she is.’ Sheila smiled. ‘How’s the head?’

‘Not too bad,’ Nicky lied.

‘Sit down there now.’

Nicky sank gratefully into a seat at the kitchen table.

‘Tea?’

‘Sure.’

Sheila pulled back the dishwasher door and pulled two mugs from the jangling dentition of crockery crowding the upper rack.

‘Would you be able for a bit of sausage and rasher?’

‘No way,’ Nicky winced.

Sheila fixed the teas and joined Nicky at the table. She asked about last night, where they went and who they saw. Nicky sipped sparely at her tea, hedging her answers, wary of letting slip anything that might suggest she and Doll had had a falling-out. As they spoke, Sheila glanced intermittently over Nicky’s shoulder into the hallway, expecting at any moment that Doll would join them.

‘He’s not actually here,’ Nicky said, with a little flutter of her conscience like she was finally admitting to a dishonesty.

‘Oh?’

‘We sort of lost each other at Cannon’s party last night.’

‘Doll’s not here?’

‘No.’

‘Where is he if he’s not here?’

‘Cillian’s, I’d say.’

‘That would make sense,’ Sheila said, sharpening her posture and removing her glasses to pinch the bridge of her nose. ‘How is all at that man’s place?’ she asked.

‘Quiet enough, actually,’ Nicky said, paraphrasing Doll lest she inadvertently let slip her own opinion with regards to Cillian. She watched Sheila replace her glasses on her nose and wince as she rubbed gently the back of her neck.

‘That migraine get you in the end?’ Nicky said, recalling the exchange in the car yesterday and eager to change the subject.

‘Oh now,’ Sheila scoffed with subdued rue, ‘it’s not quite broken through, but it’s certainly still hanging around and thinking about it.’

‘Are you getting the, ah, the auras?’

Sheila looked at the kitchen window brimming with daylight.

‘How bright does that sky look?’ she asked Nicky.

‘It looks a regular amount of bright,’ Nicky said after a moment of consideration.

‘That’s what I thought,’ Sheila said. ‘So you came back here by yourself?’

‘I did.’

‘Did you get a taxi?’

‘I walked it.’

‘On your own? At what hour?’

‘It was late,’ Nicky admitted. ‘But I liked the walk. My head needed it.’

‘And that man just disappeared on you?’

‘The party got fairly hectic,’ Nicky said.

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