Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller (best large ereader txt) 📕

a TARDIS, innit?” He strides the two steps from Julius’s bed to the table and back, all the time looking around. She turns off the gas under the boiling water and he takes the photograph of her parents from the wall where Jeanie has hung it next to Angel’s painting, looks at it, and puts it back, tipping a corner so that it dangles crookedly. There are still voices coming from the radio, and Tom moves the dial until the conversation between the garden designer and presenter changes to a static hiss. He flicks up the long cushion on a bench seat as though they might be in the habit of keeping things tucked underneath. Below is a finger hole to access the storage space. He pulls the lid up, revealing their spare saucepans, plastic bags, wellington boots, and he lets the lid fall with a clatter. Moving around the space, he slides open a cupboard above the cooker, lifts the lid to the sink with one finger and lets it drop. “I heard you got more than cups and plates in this shithole.” Beside the cooker, he squats and opens the cupboard to look inside and, when he stands, kicks it shut. China rattles.

Jeanie turns off the radio. “My brother will be back soon, and he won’t be happy to find you here.” She doesn’t know when Julius will be home, whether he’ll come straight from work or go somewhere first.

“I wouldn’t want to make that batshit brother of yours unhappy. I see him now and then, you know, making a couple of pints last all day in the Plough.”

She will not rise to his needling. Tom takes a step towards the door and she exhales, but his move is a feint and he stops to lean against the jamb, blocking her exit.

“I used to come to these woods years ago,” he says. “Before they chopped down the trees and built them new houses. Shooting rabbits, pigeons, whatever I could find. I might come out here again one of these days with my gun. Still some things worth shooting, I reckon.” He straightens his right arm and points it at her, forming his hand into the shape of a gun—two fingers out, two curled in, thumb cocked—and then he turns and aims out of the door at Maude. He jerks his arm. “Pkwoo, pkwoo,” he says, firing. Jeanie flinches and Tom puts his arm down and casually looks around. “So, you can tell me where it is and we can bugger off.”

“Where what is?”

He yanks at a drawer and it comes all the way out, the contents—cutlery, potato masher, spoons, and the poker—crashing to the floor. “Whoops,” he says. “What a mess.”

“Get out!” Jeanie grabs the drawer from him and holds it up in front of her like a shield.

“I’ve heard you’ve got a big wad of money stashed away somewhere in here. A brown envelope full of cash.”

She thinks about when she gave the money to Ed in the pickup, how she’d turned away. Perhaps not far enough. Or when she waved the envelope at Mrs. Rawson across her kitchen island. “We haven’t got any money, you idiot. Do you think we’d be living here if we did?”

“Takes all sorts. I thought maybe you get a kick out of shitting in the woods.”

From outside she hears a beat, a regular hollow rhythm, and she pushes past him to the door, pressing the drawer to her chest. Lewis is sitting on a plastic chair with the upturned washing-up bowl between his knees. With straight fingers he is beating out a steady tempo. “Where’s the money? Where’s the money? Where’s the money?” he chants. Nathan is still sitting on the log smoking his cigarette and looking at the ground.

“Stop that,” Jeanie says to Lewis. “Stop it! There isn’t any money.” She goes up to him and pulls the bowl away so that she’s holding it in one hand and the drawer in the other, as though these are the only things she’s managed to save from a burning house or a sinking ship. Tom comes down the steps and Maude backs herself into the space under the caravan.

“Jeanie? Hello, Jeanie?” a woman’s voice calls, and a second later, Bridget, shiny-faced and with her handbag over her shoulder, arrives in front of the caravan. “So, this is where you’ve been hiding for the past two weeks,” she says as though she’s been practising what to say, uneasy with the fact that she hasn’t visited before. In the next instant she takes in everything else: the shabby caravan, the bikes, the two young men, and, lastly, her son. Her expression moves through surprise, to confusion, to something that Jeanie struggles to read, suspicion perhaps.

“Mum,” Nathan says. He throws down his cigarette and squashes it under a boot.

“What are you doing here?” she says. “And Lewis? And you too, Tom.” She turns her head one way and then the other. Nathan’s friends nod to her, mumble their greetings. Only then does Bridget notice that Jeanie is holding a washing-up bowl and a drawer. “What’s going on?”

Tom moves to his bike, puts on his helmet which he left on the seat, swings a leg over, and starts it up. “I’ve got to get off, Mrs. Clements,” he says above the noise of the engine.

“Wait a minute,” Bridget says.

Tom turns to Jeanie and smiles. “Very kind of you to let us come and see your new place, Miss Seeder. I’ll definitely be back soon.”

Jeanie clutches the bowl and the drawer closer. They watch him leave.

“Jeanie?” Bridget says. “Are you okay?” She goes towards her, but on the ground in front of the caravan’s steps the six peeled potatoes make her stop. Their pale exposed insides are smeared with dirt and two of them have been crushed into the earth by a heel. She looks from Jeanie to the mess, to Nathan.

“I’d better be off too,” Lewis says, and when he’s beside the bike seems surprised