Best British Short Stories 2020 by Nicholas Royle (best novels to read for students txt) 📕

morning. ‘Go get ’em, tiger,’ she would say and continue to water the plants.

By the end of the week I was exhausted. I left the office at 7 pm and stood in a long queue for a bus. The sun was setting and the humidity made me feel feverish and dizzy. Bill’s car pulled up and he offered me a ride. I said yes.

Instead of driving home, we went to a bar. I asked Bill a few questions about his life, out of politeness. He asked about my living situation and I described the villa to him.

‘So it’s just you two in the house, you and Linda?’ Bill asked. His chubby fingers wrapped around his beer bottle like a paw.

‘Well, technically Linda is in the villa and I’m in the pool house.’

‘What does Linda do?’

‘Insurance, I think. She rarely leaves the house.’

‘She must be divorced.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘There’s no way she could afford to have a villa on that compound. Someone must have given it to her.’

‘I don’t know. I think she’s just sick of life.’

When Bill drove me home, he parked outside the front gate and I asked if he wanted to come inside and see the villa. No guests were allowed onto the property without permission, Linda had said, but it was late and I decided to take the risk.

‘You’ll have to climb over the wall though.’

‘What?’

‘Linda hasn’t given me a clicker yet. For the front gate. Don’t worry it’s fun – we can pretend we’re burglars.’

Bill struggled to swing his leg over the railings on the top of the wall. He listened to my step-by-step instructions and landed softly on the grass. He looked cute, like a racoon. I showed him the swimming pool and the garden, which shone nicely in the moonlight, and opened the door of the poolhouse.

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘It’s small, I know.’

His eyes scanned the metal bed frame and the lino floor. ‘How much do you pay her for this?’

‘It’s cheap.’

‘You know it’s the maid’s room, right?’

I heard the door click behind me.

Bill must have seen the look in my eye. ‘Families in these villas always make their maids sleep in an outhouse,’ he said. ‘You’ve made it nice though.’

A lizard ran up the wall and I jumped. Bill put his arm around me to calm me down and then kissed me. The sex was clumsy even though it felt rehearsed. Afterwards, he snored and I couldn’t sleep. Around 4 am he started to grind his teeth.

I woke up to the sound of the front gate and Linda’s SUV pulling out of the driveway. She liked to spend a few hours in the mall at the weekend. I pushed Bill’s fat arm to wake him. His eyes opened and he smiled at me. I regretted hating him so much while he was asleep.

‘Do you want to go for a swim? Linda won’t be back for a few hours.’

The sun was bright and the pool water was hot against our skin. We swam and then we kissed some more.

‘You know, I’m happy they hired you,’ he said and pulled his face away from mine. It was a surprise.’

‘A surprise?’

‘Have you decided what you’ll do when the office closes? You can’t stay here.’ He studied my face the same way he had studied the room. ‘Oh, you didn’t know.’

The company was on its last legs, Bill explained. Most of the staff had been made redundant before I arrived. He was hanging around for some extra money before he went travelling.

Bill left before midday. I guessed Linda would return around 1 pm and she did.

‘Hello stranger,’ she said. I was lying on the sun lounger, drenched in sweat. ‘Would you mind helping me unload the trunk? I struck gold at the garden store.’

‘Sure.’ I was glad to see her.

The trunk was full of strips of bamboo, different types of rope and a lever mechanism. Linda passed a bundle to me, then I carried the bundle inside the villa. Once the job was done, we stood in the kitchen and drank lemonade.

‘I’m making a cage.’

‘You’re what?’

‘A cage. For the white cat. It won’t know what hit it.’

She planned to build the cage by weaving the bamboo together like a basket. I helped her cut the wood into identical lengths and collected some of the dead fronds from the palm trees to camouflage it. She screwed the lever mechanism onto the outside of the villa, next to the swimming pool.

‘All you’ve got to do is lie on a sun lounger. Put one hand on the rope, the other hand on a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, and wait for the cat to fall into the trap,’ she said and demonstrated the technique.

‘Wow, it works.’

‘Of course it does.’

Linda manned the cage for a few hours each day. When I came home late from work, she would leave potato chips and a can of beer for me to take over on the lounger. It was relaxing to sit by the pool and rest.

I considered telling Bill about the cage but I knew he wouldn’t understand. We went for lunch together a couple of times after he stayed over. He talked a lot about his upcoming travels.

One night, Linda waited for me by the pool until I got home. She was wearing a large sun hat and looked happy.

‘We did it!’ She jumped up and handed me a glass of wine.

I looked up to where the cage should have been hanging from its rope, but the cage was gone.

‘We did it?’

‘Yes, ma’am. That nasty son of a bitch kept wriggling and hissing but I took care of it.’

She hadn’t been able to shoot it with the harpoon. Instead she put the cat in a potato sack and fastened it with a seat belt on the passenger seat. She drove for an hour along the highway and into the desert. When there were no more buildings in sight, she threw the potato sack out of the door and drove away as fast as