Darkmans. Nicola Barker

disappeared from view.

      ‘Is anything the matter?’ the woman asked, observing Kane’s sudden air of confusion.

      He turned to look at her. ‘No.’ He put his hand to his head.

      ‘Yeah.’ He removed his hand. ‘No…It’s just that…’ he paused, ‘Beede…There’s something…something odd.’

      She nodded, as if she understood what he meant.

      ‘What is it?’ he asked.

      She smiled (that smile again) but didn’t answer.

      ‘Do you know?’

      He struggled to mask his irritation. She folded her arms across her chest and nodded again, now almost teasing him.

      ‘Then what is it?’

      ‘His walk,’ she said, plainly.

      Kane drew a sharp breath. ‘His limp,’ he exclaimed (as if this information had come to him entirely without prompting). ‘He’s lost his limp.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘But how…? When?’

      ‘A while ago now.’

      ‘Really?’

      She nodded. Kane scratched his jaw –

      

       Two days’ growth

      He felt engulfed by a sudden wave of feeblemindedness –

      

       Too tired

       Too stoned

       Too fucked…

      He looked at her, hard, as if she might be the answer to his problem –

      

       Chiropodist

      ‘Did you get rid of it?’ he asked.

      She smiled, her eyes shining.

      Kane rubbed at his own eyes. He felt a little stupid. He steadied himself.

      ‘Beede’s had that verruca since I was a kid,’ he said slowly. ‘It was pretty bad.’

      ‘I believe it was very painful,’ she said, still smiling (as if the memory of Beede’s pain was somehow delightful to her).

      He coldly observed the smile –

      

       Is she mocking him?

       Is she mocking me?

      – then he gradually collected his thoughts together. ‘Yes,’ he said stiffly, ‘I have one in almost exactly the same place, but it’s never really…’

      His words petered out.

      She shrugged. ‘People often inherit them. It’s fairly common. Verrucas can be neurotic…’

      ‘Neurotic?’

      Kane’s voice sounded louder than he’d intended.

      ‘Yes,’ she was smiling again, ‘when a patient fails to get rid of something by means of conventional medicine we tend to categorise it as a psychological problem rather than as a physical one.’

      Kane struggled to digest the implications of this information. His brain seized, initially, then it belched –

      ‘But a verruca’s just some type of…of wart,’ he stuttered. ‘You catch them in changing rooms…’

      ‘Yes. But like any ailment it can be sustained by a kind of…’ she paused, thoughtfully ‘…inner turmoil.’

      The boy was now sitting on the floor and inspecting his matches. He shook each box, in turn, and listened intently to the sounds it made. ‘I can tell how many’s in there,’ he informed nobody in particular, ‘just from the rattlings.’

      ‘We’ve met before.’ Kane spoke, after a short silence.

      ‘Yes,’ she said.

      (He already heartily disliked how she just agreed to things, in that blank – that untroubled – way. The easy acquiescence. The cool compliance. He connected it to some kind of background in nursing. He loathed nurses. He found their bedside manner – that distinctively assertive servility – false and asphyxiating.)

      ‘You treated my mother,’ he said, feeling his chest tighten. She sat down on Beede’s chair, facing him. ‘I think I did. Years ago.’

      ‘That’s right. You came to the house. I remember now.’

      They were both quiet for a moment.

      ‘You’d just returned from Germany,’ Kane continued, plainly rather astonished (and then equally irritated) by the extent of his own recall.

      ‘Yes I had. I went there for a year, almost straight after I’d graduated.’

      ‘I remember.’

      He sniffed, trying to make it sound like nothing.

      ‘You have an impressive memory,’ she said, then put a polite hand up to her mouth, as if to suppress a yawn. This almost-yawn infuriated him. He didn’t know why.

      How old was she, anyway? Thirty-one? Thirty-three?

      ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s just your mole. Your birthmark. It’s extremely memorable.’

      She didn’t miss a beat.

      ‘Of course,’ she said.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he struggled to repress a childish smile, ‘that must’ve sounded rude.’

      ‘No…’ she shook her head, her voice still soft as ever, ‘it didn’t sound rude.’

      

      Didn’t sound rude.

      Kane stared at her. She stared back at him. He took out his phone and inspected his messages.

      ‘A psychiatrist,’ she observed mildly, ‘might call what you do with that phone “masking behaviour”.’

      He glanced up, astonished –

      

       The cheek of it

      – then quickly checked himself. ‘I guess they might,’ he said, returning casually to his messages and sending a quick response to one of them, ‘but then you’re just a foot doctor.’

      She chuckled. She didn’t seem at all offended. ‘You have eyes just like your father’s,’ she murmured, gracefully adjusting the long hem of her skirt (as if hers was a life without technology, without chatter. A life entirely about thinking and pausing and feeling. A quiet life). Kane’s jaw stiffened. ‘I don’t think so,’ he murmured thickly, ‘they’re a completely different colour.’

      She shrugged and then sighed, like he was just a boy. She glanced down, briefly, at her son (as if, Kane felt, to make the connection 100 per cent sure), then said blandly, ‘It was a difficult time for you.’

      ‘Pardon?’

      He put his phone away. The tone of his voice told her not to persist, but she ignored the warning.

      ‘Difficult. With your mother. I remember thinking how incredibly brave you were. Heroic, almost.’

      His cheeks reddened. ‘Not at all.’

      ‘Sometimes, after I’d seen her, I’d just sit in my car and shake. Just shake. I didn’t know how you coped with it. I still don’t. You were so young.’

      She