In the Approaches. Nicola Barker

      ‘A nice, little potato in hiz exhaust, hah?!’ Shimmy volunteers.

      Forty minutes later and I am walking Rogue on the beach (or – strictly speaking – dragging him along behind me like a giant and mutinous, heavily lactating sow) when who should I see striding towards me, at improbable speed (head down, hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets) but the man of the moment: Mr Franklin D. Huff! I observe that his footwear is completely unsuitable: black, patent-leather dress shoes clumsily kicking up giant arcs of sand and shingle! I pity him his unsuitable footwear! I do. No, no, really I do.

      I stand and await his approach (while Rogue laboriously masticates a piece of sea kale), hoping that he has settled on a date for my maintenance trip. But instead of stopping when he draws abreast of me, he just storms straight on past! No acknowledgement of any kind! None! Not even so much as a cursory nod!

      I turn, rather astonished, and call after him – ‘Have you worked out a time yet, Mr Huff? For the maintenance works?’ – and am shocked when he spins around on his name as if stung, stares at me, in complete amazement, then down at the dog, then back up at me again, his lean face contorting wildly, points an accusing finger at us both and virtually yells, ‘What on earth are you thinking, Miss Hahn? To feed a dog to that monstrous size? Whatever possessed you? It’s an act of the most extreme cruelty! An obscenity! A crime against nature! It’s a travesty, don’t you see? Call that care?! Call that love?! Shame on you, Miss Hahn! Shame on you for not knowing any better! Shame on you, Miss Hahn! And shame on your idiotic father!’

      Then off he storms.

      I can only … I can’t …

      Deep breath. Deep breath. Count backwards, slowly, from twenty to one.

      Deep breath. That’s better. Good. That’s …

      AAAARRRRGHHH! It’s virtually impossible for me to describe the violent effect Mr Huff’s insulting words have on me! How dare he? How dare he?! The initial confusion followed by the shock, followed by the embarrassment, followed by the outrage … That this man, that this … this … that this awful, arrogant … URGH! I’m just … I am just … I am shaking from head to toe. I am slightly dizzy. I blink. Everything blurs. I blink again. I feel this … this heat in my belly, in my chest. I open my mouth and I simply … I pant! I pant like a wounded beast! And then I feel something burning on my cheeks. Tears! He has made me cry! Mr Huff has made me cry! And I am so angry that Mr Huff has made me cry that I pant even harder. And my stomach is hurting. It’s hurting. (I am hit! I am stung!)

      I turn and head back in the direction from which I came. Everything is misty. I sense my feet pounding across the sand. Rogue is dragging along behind me. Several figures enter my peripheral vision but they are nothing, merely fleshy shadows. One of them speaks. It is Georgie Hulton who is digging up lugworms. I can’t answer. I just keep on walking. After about thirty or so paces I stop, with a gasp, drawn up short by the macabre sight of a small, dead sand shark, its belly split open, its guts writhing with tiny, pupating maggots. I stare at it for several minutes, and only the clarity of its predicament – the horror of its outline, the exquisite brightness of its intestines – restores me to anything remotely akin to a semblance of normality.

      Damn him! Damn Mr Huff! I hate him! I hate Mr Huff! I hate him! I hate him! I hate him!

4

       Mr Franklin D. Huff

      Kimberly Couzens is dead. Kimberly – my Kimberly – dead! Lara just rang. There was a garbled message when I got back to the cottage. ‘I’m sorry, Franklin, but Kimberly is dead. She died. Something to do with a tooth. It was very quick. I just spoke with her mother. She died on Saturday. Four, five days ago. The funeral’s on Friday. I’m really sorry. I know you might find that hard to believe after … well. Yes. No need to go back over it all again, eh? I just want you to know that I’m very sorry, Franklin. Honestly. I’m … Okay. Bye.’

      I listened to the message three times (‘Something to do with a tooth?!’) and then rapidly calculated back. I spoke to Kimberly five days ago and she was absolutely fine. Vital. Exuberant. Laughing. Mocking. Alive. So how on earth is this possible? How can she be dead? How? After everything she survived? And why do I feel so … so empty, so flat? Not angry. Not raging. Not tearful. Not …

      It almost seems – disappointing. A let-down. Laughable.

      Kimberly – snuffed out. Defunct. Dead. She hopped the twig. She popped her clogs. Stupid, hopeful, brave, indefatigable Kimberly. Dead. Dead.

      Oh God, what the hell to do now? The funeral’s on Friday, but I’m broke! Can’t even afford the plane fare. The stupid travel agent – the bastard airline won’t … ‘What?! Not even on compassionate grounds?’ I yelled.

      Oh God. She’s dead. Where to go? How to …? I’m only here because of Kimberly. I’m here for her. As a favour. Because of her dotty mother. We’d been agonizing about Trudy’s declining health for months – upwards of a year, in fact. She’d been growing increasingly confused, woolly, dithery – and Kim simply couldn’t cope. I mean Trudy was meant to be Kim’s buffer – her back-stop, her support (a rich irony!). Bottom line was, Trudy needed to go into sheltered accommodation.

      But how the heck to afford it? After much heart-searching and arguing and sulking (in equal measure, on both our parts) Kimberly Fed-Exed me the only remaining thing of any value she possessed: the negatives of those infernal photos – the ‘picture diary’ of Bran Cleary, Kalinda Allaway and their daughter, Orla, ‘in hiding’, that infamous late summer of 1972.

      I was given a brief to sell them to the highest bidder, and had agreed a good price for her – with a fair amount of wrangling – but then Kimberly underwent a sudden (not untypical) change of heart, damn her (Damn Kimberly! Damn her! Poor Kimberly. Dead Kimberly). She’d found out something unpalatable about the purchaser and had developed a whole host of last-minute ‘scruples’. We didn’t discuss the details. It was obviously a painful subject for us both. But we rose above – same as we always do. Same as we always did – Kim and me. Kim and I. We two. Us.

      The Catholic Church was interested, obviously, but Kimberly wouldn’t countenance the idea, just on the off-chance … Well, I suppose she thought they might simply get swallowed up (her gorgeous images) – subsumed – in a maelstrom of clerical bureaucracy. It was illogical. But that’s Kim for you. Or that was Kim, before …

      ‘Something to do with a tooth?’

      It was stupid. And time-consuming. And expensive. I complained about the cost (human, financial). ‘I have an import/export business to run in Monterrey,’ I grumbled, ‘and a tower of translation work to be done.’ The truth was that the photos had already disappeared – to all intents and purposes – by dint of being stuck in an old trunk at the end of Kim’s bed for the past twelve years. But that was okay, apparently. That was different. Kim wasn’t their jailer, she insisted, but a broody hen perched lightly atop. This handful of fragile spools was Kimberly’s creative and emotional legacy. She never said it, because it didn’t need saying. It was the unsayable. But I knew.

      She was highly conflicted over the whole thing. We both were. In the end she persuaded me to go to a publisher with them, to flog them (for less money) in the guise of a book, but the publisher offering the best price (and it was a good price, a great price) still wanted text – context. Who might be expected to provide that? Kim herself? No. She couldn’t – wouldn’t – trust herself. ‘I was way too close to the whole thing,’ she insisted, ‘and I’m “the bad guy”, remember? The scapegoat?’

      ‘Well maybe you should try and see this as an opportunity,’ I valiantly suggested, ‘a chance to alter those popular misconceptions …’

      ‘But