Cold Boy's Wood by Carol Birch (best books to read for students txt) 📕

‘You OK, Lily?’

‘Yeah.’

I had a horrible Barbie vision of her with breast implants and injections. She looked so nice when she was just flopping about at home. ‘Oh Lily,’ I said, ‘do you really want so badly to look like a sex object? You don’t have to do this.’

‘Do what?’ She didn’t look up from her book.

‘Make yourself up as if you’re off on a photoshoot every time you step out of the house.’

Harriet stood at the door, solemnly watching.

‘This is how I want to look,’ Lily said. ‘If I don’t wear my makeup I’m ugly.’

‘Oh, don’t be so stupid!’

‘You’re not!’ declared Harriet, outraged.

‘Yes, I am. It’s just a fact. I’m just facing facts.’

‘You’re not!’

‘Well, Terry doesn’t think you’re ugly,’ I said, ‘that’s for sure.’

‘How do you know? You don’t know what anybody thinks.’

‘He thinks you’re lovely,’ I said, ‘it’s obvious.’

‘You don’t know.’

I lay down on Harriet’s bed. ‘You and Johnny,’ I said, closing my eyes, ‘you’re as bad as each other. Neither one of you sees straight.’

She started crying again. ‘I’m not horrible,’ she said. ‘I’m not! He’s saying I’m horrible and I’m not!’

‘Of course you’re not horrible,’ I said.

‘He thinks I’m horrible! He thinks I don’t care about things! It’s not fair! It’s not fair!’

‘He doesn’t really think that,’ I said, and got up and went to her and tried to put my arms around her, but she wasn’t having any.

Harriet came over. ‘There,’ she said, sitting by her side and stroking Lily’s shoulder. ‘There, Lily.’

‘But my friends are going tonight,’ she said.

‘Well, maybe they shouldn’t.’

Eve called weakly from the other room. ‘Oh God,’ she said when I went in, ‘I think I’m going to have this baby in your flat.’

You are fucking not, I thought. Got to get rid of her.

Thank God Steve came rapping on the door five minutes later, in a terrible mood.

‘Is she here?’

I opened the door and waved towards her.

‘Come on, love,’ he said furiously, ‘I’m going mad here. I need my fucking fix.’

*

Harriet came out and turned on the TV. It was a gentle nature programme about badgers and we slumped together there recovering our wits. Much later Lily emerged and curled herself away in the corner of the settee, sucking her thumb, covering her face and pulling up her fishnet knees.

19

A feeling of grievance rose in Dan’s chest as he stood gazing out of the kitchen window at the drips falling from the eaves. He didn’t want trouble or fuss. Never had done. That’s the last time I do anything like that, he thought. Leave her to it. And these stupid cats taking over.

‘That’s it,’ he said, and turned from the window. He walked with decisive tread into the living room. ‘You!’ he said to the mother cat. ‘You! Out. Now. You and your kits. You can’t have them in here.’ Then he stood with his arms hanging stupidly limp, thinking, if I move them will she eat them or something? Or is that rabbits?

He didn’t want her eating them. Leaving heads about the place. So he flipped up the lid on the laptop and googled ‘moving kittens’. Oh Christ, it’s never just a yes or no, is it? He skimmed. Blah blah… oh, it looks all right. Nothing about eating them. She might abandon them. Well, if she does the RSPCA can sort it out.

‘Time’s up,’ he murmured, stooping over the furry mass. Blind squirmy newborns. The birthing chair was covered with a grimy crocheted blanket, now ruined. Oh well, he always hated it. Hippie seventies shite. Look at them. When do they start shitting? Not in here. He tried scooping the whole striped squirmy lot up in the blanket in one go, but the kittens mewed like seagulls and the mother hissed and lashed at him.

‘Gaa-a-agh!’ He shook her off but she clung to the blanket with four legs, all claws extended. Closing the blanket round them, he bore them away. She hung on, a great weight swinging alongside, something between a snarl and a yowl ululating from her throat, all the way into the back room where all the rubbish was. It was cold in here because of the open pipe where the cats got in and out of the house.

He set them down gently – poor fuckers, five fur blobs – on the floor in a space between the sideboard and a suitcase from around 1958, overflowing with pointless cotton nothings and ancient embroidery silks; my God, what crap, envelopes full of photographs fading away like rocks to the scrape of time, papers, what? Oh my God, chuck the lot. What are these? Papers. Is that what it’s all about? Nothing here can be important after all this time. He dumped the lot out of the case onto the floor. But oh look. A ration card. I should keep that. Historical. Look at that. Ocella Morse. Chuck the lot. Chuck the fucking lot.

‘There!’ He scooped up the kittens, even the indignant mother, and put them in the case, stinky blanket and all.

‘Now shut up,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you some food.’ He went to the kitchen and poured a bowl of kibbles, couldn’t find a spare so gave her his breakfast bowl, filled another with water. Gave them that, pulled another horrible crochet thing off another chair in the living room, gave them that, closed up the room and left them there. Time I did that, he thought. Keep them out. Time I closed that door.

*

Pete and Eric were in the pub. Eric was settling into the look of a seedy guy trying to sell you something you didn’t want. Pete, in an expansive mood, stood everyone a tableful of Nobby’s Nuts and seasalt crisps.

Nobody wanted a kitten.

‘Take ’em down the animal rescue,’ said Eric.

‘That’s right.’ Pete ripped open a packet of crisps. ‘They’ll take the lot off your hands. And all them others too. They’ll be glad of it. And they don’t put them down, you know. Not any more.’

It was quiet