Reversed Forecast / Small Holdings. Nicola Barker

Sam could answer, Brera had pushed open the door and had carried in a tray with two cups of tea and a plate of sandwiches. She said, ‘It’s Laverne Baker. Jackie Wilson’s in the background. I hope you like garlic cheese.’

      Connor was too surprised to respond. Sam looked unruffled. She put out her hands to take the tray.

      Brera walked back towards the door. ‘Steven phoned. He said he’d lined up a photographer for Tuesday.’

      Sam offered Connor his mug of tea. ‘That was quick.’

      Brera nodded and closed the door behind her.

      ‘Who’s Steven?’

      Sam picked up one of the sandwiches. ‘Our new manager. We only met him yesterday.’

      ‘You didn’t tell me you were getting a manager.’

      ‘Mum likes him. He’s OK.’

      Connor put down his mug and lay back on the bed. He stared up at the ceiling. She’s so bloody secretive, he thought. Saves secrets like sweets. Eats them in private.

      Sam moved to the end of the bed and pulled off his boots. He looked around the room again from his new vantage point and then held out his arms to her. ‘Let’s get this over with before your mother comes back in with lemonade and biscuits.’

      Brera knocked on Sylvia’s door and waited for her to answer. After a minute or so and a certain amount of scuffling and fluttering, Sylvia opened the door several inches and peered out.

      ‘What?’

      Brera offered her a mug of tea and a plate of sandwiches. Sylvia slid her hand through the crack and took the tea. ‘I’m not hungry.’

      ‘You should eat. I haven’t even seen you since yesterday night when you went out. Where did you go?’

      ‘Nowhere.’

      Brera resisted the temptation to shove her foot into the crack in the door. Instead she said quickly, ‘Sam’s got her new friend around. Did you hear them come in?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘He’s in a band too. They’ve been on television. He’s called Connor. Sounds a bit American.’

      Sylvia’s face disappeared for a moment and then returned. ‘I’ll have a sandwich. Only one, though. Thanks.’

      Her hand darted out and took a sandwich. Brera smiled. Sylvia nodded and then closed the door. Brera swallowed down her irritation. She went into the living-room, picked up her guitar and started to sing ‘A Pair of Brown Eyes’, strumming along in time.

      Connor was mid-way through removing his trousers when he heard the conversation commence between Brera and Sylvia. He thought, I can’t sustain an erection with those two chatting away like they’re in the same room.

      He pulled his trousers back on and did up the buttons. Sam groaned, exasperated, from her position on the bed and grabbed hold of her T-shirt. ‘Why don’t we go back to your flat? It was you who wanted to come here in the first place.’

      Connor had half an ear on the conversation in the hallway. He turned down the music on the tape recorder and said, ‘I didn’t mean for us to come here for sex. I just wanted to meet everybody.’

      He listened to their voices again. ‘Your sister’s voice is so hoarse. She sounds like Rod Stewart. Does she sing?’

      Sam laughed. ‘What do you think? She writes a weird kind of music. Like jazz but less tuneful. That’s her contribution to things. She likes doing it. It’s kind of methodical. She’s hardly even got a speaking voice, though, let alone a singing one.’

      As she spoke, Sam put on her T-shirt and picked up a book from her bedside table.

      Connor moved a few steps closer to the door. He heard Brera mention his name.

      Sam said tiredly, ‘It’s her allergy. If she tries to sing or shout her voice disappears altogether.’

      ‘It sounds amazing, though, really distinctive.’

      Sam looked up at him. ‘The only reason she talks that way is because she’s gradually choking herself. It’s a slow process of strangulation.’

      Connor felt foolish for being so enthusiastic. He turned towards her and changed the subject. ‘What’s that you’re reading?’

      She turned the page. ‘Something about Hélène Cixous. She’s this brilliant French intellectual. I’ve read all her stuff, but it’s difficult. She’s very controversial. She won’t even call herself a feminist because feminism’s too bourgeois.’

      Connor looked down at the plate on the floor. ‘What sort of cheese did your mother say this was?’

      Sylvia sat on the end of her bed and drank her tea. The weather was turning. The day had started off warm and sticky. Now the sky was clouding over, was grey, heavy, lowering. The birds – at least a hundred or so – had flown inside as a consequence, in anticipation of the storm to come. They lined the walls of Sylvia’s room, chattering and bickering. Several bounced to and fro across the carpet, scratching, preening and flapping their wings.

      Sylvia thought, Above the bird noise I can hear Sam talking with that man. What are they discussing? What are they doing?

      Sometimes she imagined what it would be like to have a male companion, but she couldn’t really conceive of herself doing the things that normal women did. She couldn’t imagine herself wanting the things that normal women wanted. She tried to feel pride in her abnormality, but she often felt as though her abnormality had become the only normal thing about her, the only relevant thing.

      She sat on the end of her bed and drained the cup of its last few drops of tea. As she swallowed her tea, the incident in the park popped into her mind. The tea turned into dirty water in her mouth. She tried to swallow in air as the tea went down but she could not. She gagged on the liquid and it choked her. She imagined herself in the lake, with the mud and the slime and the tin cans. She imagined that she was the young girl and that she could not swim. She did not feel remorse, just fear. She wished that she could tie a tourniquet around her imagination, a piece of strong rope or cloth that could effectively cut off all dangerous ideas and fanciful notions, stop the flow of her thoughts from streaming, frothing, flooding and overwhelming her.

      She could hear Brera singing in the living-room with her guitar. She tried to concentrate on this sound and to block out everything else. Then she heard Sam’s voice. Sam had been laughing and talking before, but now she too had started to sing. Her voice toned in with Brera’s perfectly. Brera sang in a higher register with a Celtic twang. Sam sounded very low and clear, like a soft, brown thrush – intense and lyrical.

      She heard Sam emerge from her room and walk towards Brera’s voice, still singing herself. She rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. They infuriated her. She found them unbearably smug and confident, like nuns or traffic wardens – self-assured and immensely self-motivated. Pure.

      She inspected the eczema on her hands and wrists. The skin here was bumpy and itchy, some of it moist and shiny. She pulled off a scab which covered the tender flesh that linked the space between her finger and thumb. Her eyes watered. She enjoyed this strum of pain, lost herself in it and savoured its tone.

      Suddenly she saw the little girl’s face in the chafed and pinky pattern of her flesh, imagined for a second how the cold water would have felt entering her nose and throat, covering her eyes.

      The sound of Connor’s hesitant tread in the hallway distracted her. She stopped breathing for a moment and listened out for the slight noises he made, her head to one side, eyes closed. He had a light tread. Must be thin, she thought. His step seemed tentative, well-meaning, self-conscious. She heard him enter the living-room and began breathing again. The air she drew into her lungs felt dry and coarse. It rattled in her throat. She coughed for a short while then swallowed down a mouthful of phlegm.

      Connor was singing now too. He was