Behindlings. Nicola Barker

      

      NICOLA BARKER

       Behindlings

       For dear Charles Edward Johnson, who slammed his way out of that damn velvet factory – smashing the glass door behind him – never, ever to look back again. And for his beautiful, blue-eyed wife, Betty, who, at the grand old age of 84, discovered that the pylons could love one another.

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

       Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

       Twelve

       Thirteen

       Fourteen

       Fifteen

       Sixteen

       Seventeen

       Eighteen

       Ninteen

       Twenty

       Twenty-one

       Twenty-two

       Twenty-three

       Twenty-four

       Twenty-five

       Twenty-six

       Twenty-seven

       Twenty-eight

       Twenty-nine

       Thirty

       Thirty-one

       Thirty-two

       Thirty-three

       Thirty-four

       Thirty-five

       Thirty-six

       Thirty-seven

       Thirty-eight

       Thirty-nine

       Forty

       Forty-one

       Forty-two

       Forty-three

       Forty-four

       Forty-five

       Forty-six

       Forty-seven

       Forty-eight

       Forty-nine

       Fifty

       By the same author

       About the Author

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       One

      Wesley glanced behind him. Two people followed, but at a sensible distance. The first was familiar; an old man whose name he knew to be Murdoch. Murdoch, Wesley remembered, had been robust, once. He’d been grizzled. Huge. Frosty. A magnificent, clambering, prickly pear of a man. He’d been firm and strong and resolute. Planted; a man-tree, if ever there was one.

      Recently, however, Murdoch’s body had begun to curve, to arc (they all called him Doc, although he hadn’t even seen the inside of a hospital until his sixty-third year –he was a home birth, people invariably were, back then –when necessity dictated that a small reddish hillock, a mole, on his right shoulder blade, should be surgically removed. He was a scaffolder, by trade).

      But the curving was nothing medical. It went deeper. And along with this