Reversed Forecast. Nicola Barker

cold, so she knelt down next to his head and put her ear close to his mouth. His breath touched her ear and tickled it.

      She turned her head to stare at him. His face was tense, even in sleep. He was frowning. She inspected the skin on his cheeks very closely: the pores, the paleness and the small, reddish bristles of his beard. Her eyes were drawn to the bump on his forehead which now appeared much angrier and tighter than before, and the cut, much purpler. A few of the hairs in his fringe had bent down into the mouth of the cut. She repressed the desire to move them, to pull them out, in case this should wake him.

      She moved back a fraction, still staring. He looked gruff but intelligent. He seemed troubled. She thought, I wonder what he does? She had a suspicion that he didn’t do anything.

      She frowned and then pulled the blanket up and tucked it around his chin.

      Steven had already bought her a drink.

      ‘Thanks.’

      She took it from him and sipped it. She had known him for six months. He was her oldest friend in London. He’d lived in London all his life. He was an expert at it. She’d arrived six months previously from Sheffield. They’d met at night-school on a photography course.

      ‘Would you do me some photos?’ he said.

      She grimaced.

      They’d bought a camera together, during their single month of intimacy. She’d kept it. He liked borrowing it. Borrowing her. Will he ask about Vincent? she wondered. Will he moan about Toro? Steven knew Toro of old and hated him. Not so much hates, she decided, just doesn’t have the time.

      ‘If we arrange it for Tuesday,’ he said, ‘that’d be good. Four, half-four.’

      The ceiling, she noted, was stained beige with smoke. In centuries to come, she thought, scientists will find this ceiling and they’ll have the equipment to analyse the smoke, to tell something about the lives of every single person that ever exhaled in this pub.

      Ruby. Unnatural blonde. Never wore matching underwear. A push-over.

      ‘Hang on,’ he said, ‘make it five, to be on the safe side.’

      Steven. Big hands. Nice face. Small ears. Gives Ruby a hard time.

      Steven wrote down the address. ‘They’re called Sam and Brera. Brera’s Irish. You’ll like them.’

      He handed her the slip of paper. ‘Don’t lose it.’

      She frowned at him.

      ‘Yeah, well, I know how you are.’

      She recognized several people in the pub. Punters. Where do they get their money from? she wondered. Not from me. Losing’s the whole point of a gamble.

      ‘Be professional,’ he said, slightly embarrassed to be asking. ‘Take the tripod and everything. Also, this might sound stupid, but, well, try and ignore the smell.’

      She tried to remember the last time she’d had a bath. Last night? Yesterday morning?

      ‘Did Toro go?’

      She shook her head. Here it comes, here it comes. I’m stupid, I’m useless.

      As he spoke she wove a fantasy out of different parts of the pub’s decor: the colour of the liquor in the bottles, the texture of the barman’s starched, white shirt. In this fantasy, she was very rich, she did what she liked. No one told her what to do.

      SEVEN

      Vincent opened his eyes. Black. He turned his head to try to look around him. It was then that he realized that he had no head. He didn’t attempt to confirm or deny this possibility by touching his face. He said, ‘If I have no head, how can I touch my face?’ and then, ‘God, my voice sounds strange. Where’s it coming from? My armpit? My arse?’ Wouldn’t be the first time, he thought.

      After a moment’s consideration he said, ‘Why am I talking out loud? Maybe I’m not talking at all. Maybe all this darkness is only inside me. Fuck.’

      He staggered to his feet and banged his leg against the stereo. It rattled. The room wasn’t completely dark, but even so, he still had some trouble locating objects and moving without collision.

      He veered away from the stereo and smacked into the back of the chair. He paused and stared fixedly in front of him, making out the blurred shape of the sofa and a lump on it which seemed like a sleeping figure. Slowly he recalled Toro, although he had forgotten his name. Shortly after he remembered that he was in Ruby’s flat. I did it! he thought. That was a result.

      He made his way towards the left-hand side of the sofa, moved around it and located the small kitchen work surface with his right hand. He felt blindly for the sink, turned on the tap, then fixed his lips to the bright, white stream of water that poured from it. He drank for a few seconds and felt the water rush through his mouth and throat to his stomach and then through his temples where it banged and pounded.

      His head rematerialized. It began to hurt. He touched it and it felt hot. His hand discovered the lump on his hairline and it surprised him. He touched the lump again, very gently, then muttered, ‘How come I saw the water when I couldn’t see hardly anything else? I must be able to see everything.’

      He looked around him again and immediately the room was quite clear.

      He decided to go and study his lump more closely in the bathroom, although he couldn’t remember exactly where it was. He didn’t relish the prospect of stumbling into Ruby’s bedroom.

      Luckily both doors were ajar. Vincent couldn’t resist the temptation to peer around the door into Ruby’s room, and when he did was surprised to see that it was empty.

      Suddenly he felt an intense urge to urinate. He grabbed at the buttons on his trousers and rushed to the toilet. He produced very little liquid and felt vaguely dissatisfied, but before he was able to locate this dissatisfaction, a blast of nausea hit his throat and threw him forward, towards the toilet bowl. In a matter of seconds he had reproduced mashed burger, sloshy fries, a substance not unlike popcorn - my spleen, he thought - and a mouthful of phlegm.

      He was shaking. He was desperate. He crawled into Ruby’s room and climbed on to her bed. The blankets were in a state of disarray. He forgot to remove his shoes.

      Brera ate a yoghurt in front of the television and worried about Sylvia. She had gone out a few hours earlier and had not yet returned.

      It was eight-thirty. Brera rarely went out on a Saturday night. She had rarely gone out any night before the Goldhawk Girls. Sam, however, was excessively sociable.

      When Sam was away, Sylvia and Brera would sit in front of the television and watch whatever was on in companionable silence. Sylvia didn’t actually watch. She always kept her eyes closed. Brera supposed that this was because she had no interest in television, but the truth was that Sylvia had become too sensitive. She could either listen or watch, but she couldn’t manage both. She couldn’t cope with the noise of television - the conflict of voices, music, slogans - while taking in its speedy visual menu of flashing colours, signs and faces. It overwhelmed her, but she realized that she and Brera had little else in common except the television - sitting in front of it, together.

      Brera picked a raspberry pip from between her teeth. She knew that Sylvia’s trip out was a form of protest, but she didn’t want to consider Sylvia’s motivation too fully, couldn’t risk feeling implicated.

      Instead of wondering why she’d gone, she wondered where she’d gone. This seemed an altogether simpler proposition.

      The act of walking with purpose and the elimination of her usual close environment made Sylvia’s inhalation easier and reduced her coughing. She was in the process of considering this fact when, just after six-thirty, she made her way briskly down to the canal. She intended to follow it to Victoria Park. She fancied seeing the ducks.

      On Saturday evenings the canal was usually chock-a-block with fishermen. Each sat in