Meanwhile…

  A few miles away…

  The countryside, near Thrimp

  Wiltshire

  United Kingdom

  Earth

  -Amanda-

  Amanda stood, absorbing the sun, the breeze, and an after-lunch cigarette, failing to enjoy any of them.

  Her mind was still in a state of meltdown. She knew it would stay that way until she had time to sit down somewhere quiet and turn it off and on again.

  Until then, soft and well-intentioned as it was, Kylie’s voice was nothing but a constant stream of demands for reactions that she didn’t have the machinery to generate. It irritated her.

  ‘I mean, like who does he even think he is?’ She had been talking for some time. Amanda wasn’t taking any of it in. She supposed Kylie would effect an appropriate degree of ‘how dare he’-themed outrage, for an appropriate length of time, before doing some quiet sums and realising that the idea of her future handed to her on a silver platter wasn’t quite so disagreeable.

  And then she would be his.

  How had he worked it out? She hadn’t thought he knew gay women were real. in her parents’ world they were the sort of thing you saw on television, and possibly in the more eccentric parts of London, but certainly not in the countryside. She had always assumed that the idea of their daughter being a homosexual would be as absurd to them as when she had insisted she would grow up to be a pterodactyl. Clearly, she had placed too much faith in their old-fasionedness. Been careless…

  ‘Like, why would you reveal that at lunch, in front of everybody? Why not just sit down with you one-on-one, and…’

  Kylie didn’t know her father.

  ‘Because that wouldn’t have been him winning,’ she said absently.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Mr. Darcy, Heathcliff, and Ronaldo lumbered, walked, and trotted over, respectively. Mr. Darcy lay on the ground at Amanda’s feet; Heathcliff wandered over to Kylie and briefly snuffed at her but as she reached out to stroke him, he turned and left. Ronaldo paced irritably in the long grass, baring her teeth at it and puffing out little half-formed barks as a general statement of menace, as Dachshunds do.

  She needed to be by herself, to process and analyse, to work out how to deal with the problem. She needed peace while the mushroom cloud in her mind settled. Her mental machinery was a disordered mess and disordered people made mistakes.

  There was, however, one thing that was perfectly clear to her.

  ‘I mean, it’s not that I’m not grateful or anything…’

  Of course she was grateful. They were now officially ‘out’. Amanda Poffingsworth, lesbian, and her girlfriend Kylie, free to hold hands and kiss each other on the mouth in public. Amanda shuddered involuntarily. This was what Kylie had wanted from the start—now she had it, and with a golden handshake to boot. This was probably the best day of her life.

  ‘Like, it’s really generous, obviously. Really generous…’

  There it was: the pause at the end. Waiting for a reaction. She didn’t need to look over to know that Kylie’s eyes would be glancing sidelong at her, subtly looking for a cue. What are we going to do, Amanda? Agree, or disagree, Amanda? Furiously condemn her father outright, or acknowledge the outrageousness but sagaciously consider the proposal, Amanda? That was what Kylie did: hover and dither non-committally, broaching the subject and then hesitating, waiting for Amanda to choose a direction for them both. Decide for me, Amanda. She loved it when someone else took control. It was why they worked.

  And, Amanda realised bitterly, it was also why her father’s strategy had been so effective.

  The clever bastard had done it again: walked past her defences, reached out a fat, sweaty paw, and wrapped it around her favourite toy.

  ‘But, you know… I’ve just never felt so violated. No one’s ever spoken to me like that, ever.’

  Oh, shut up, thought Amanda. You love it. Look at you.

  ‘I mean, imagine being in debt to him! A man like that!’

  ‘Mmm.’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  ‘What? What do you mean, go? Go where?’

  ‘I need to go into town and you need to go home. I’ll give you a lift.’

  ‘Oh. I mean, now?’

  ‘Mm-hm.’

  Amanda turned and walked towards the car.

  ‘Can’t we- I mean, aren’t we talking?’ Kylie called after her.

  Amanda didn’t reply. She unlocked the front door, sat in the driver’s seat and started the engine. Seconds later, the passenger door opened and Kylie sat, fastening her seatbelt as she talked.

  ‘I mean, I know it’s a shock and everything, like it’s so, so rude, but you know how there’s always part of me that, like, tries to to look on the bright side?’

  ‘Listen,’ said Amanda. She had to do it now, and she had to do it without emotion. ‘We’re going to have to cool things off.’

  ‘What?’

  Amanda didn’t repeat herself.

  Kylie was quiet as Amanda pulled out of the drive. Amanda wondered whether she had been expecting this.

  When she spoke, her tone was level, as though she’d planned and rehearsed the question in her head before asking it.

  ‘Can you explain specifically what you mean by “cool things off”?’

  Better to just make her cry now than leave her unsure whether to cry indefinitely.

  ‘Break up.’

  The following silence was longer. Hedges rolled past the windows. The engine quieted at the approach to each turn, allowing the sounds of tyres on the stony roads to rise up through the floor of the car. Then the engine would rev again as Amanda accelerated away.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  ‘I know there’s no point arguing with you,’ said Kylie eventually, through a faceful of tears that Amanda was glad the act of driving gave her an excuse not to look at. ‘Just…you have to promise to do one thing, okay?’

  Amanda drove.

  ‘You have to write me a letter. I won’t ask you to explain it now because I know you can’t and I understand that, and I know you feel like you have to do this and I know better than to try and fight you over it now. Because I understand you, and that’s what loving someone means. But you owe me an explanation. Not an explanation like you have to justify yourself, just an explanation so that I can understand what you’re thinking, and what you’re feeling, and why you feel like you have to do this. I need you to do that. Okay?’

  Amanda nodded. Kylie was being admirably stoic. Perhaps she had learned something from her. Or perhaps she was just trying not to irritate her. It didn’t matter.

  ‘Can you drop me off at Tesco, please?’

  And then, on the ‘please’, the dam burst. Kylie shook, emitted a little high-pitched noise, then began to cry like a child.

  Amanda pulled the car neatly into a space. As soon as she lifted the handbrake Kylie opened the door and ran off towards the shop.

  Amanda lit a cigarette—her last one.

  She would have to go in and buy more.

  -Lee-

  As with every day, his mother coming home from work broke his reverie, throwing his actions over the previous hours into sharp relief, illuminated no longer by the soft yellow glow of his own feelings but by the Megawatt surgical lamp of external observation.

  ‘Bradley! Come here please!’

  ‘Wait...’

  ‘Now, please.’

  ‘Wait, just let me kill this-’

  ‘Now please Bradley!’

  ‘Can’t you wait two minutes??’

  ‘Bradley!’

  He paused his game resentfully, certain that on his return he wouldn’t be able to remember what he was about to do and would probably either die or have to run away as a result, undoing almost an hour of careful battle preparation.

  ‘What?’ he shouted indignantly as he ran up the stairs to the kitchen.

  Entering, he was faced with a sight more ferocious than an army of giant warcrabs: his mother’s teeth. They looked angry. They were surrounded by her angry face atop her angry body, which was angrily indicating a washing machine with its door standing open.

  ‘What did I ask you to do this morning?’

  Lee didn’t like the way she stood protectively over the washing whilst attacking him, and knew a strange moment’s jealousy. He cursed his traitorous, forgetful mind.

  ‘Oh,’ he replied. ‘Sorry. I’ll do it now.’

  ‘It needed to be done this morning, which is why I asked you to do it this morning,’ she said in a deflated voice, sitting down and throwing back into the washing machine drum a wet pair of her own underwear that she’d been brandishing for emphasis.

  ‘Sorry, I’ll-’

  ‘It’s not good enough, Bradley. This is not good enough. How could you forget the washing when you even made a stupid bloody song about it?’

  ‘I’ll do it now.’

  ‘What is the point of me doing the washing is if you’re going to just leave it lying around like a pile of rubbish?!’

  He would have done anything to be allowed to go back and hang out the washing when he was supposed to, and not appear to his mother as this selfish, useless, parasitic creature. But what she saw, Lee knew, was what was in front of her. It upset him deeply to think what she must think of him.

  Distressed by these emotions, and under attack, he responded the way most mammals do when distressed and under attack.

  ‘I said I’m sorry, I didn’t do it on purpose, did I?’

  ‘I’ve really had it with this Bradley, it’s not like these are other people’s clothes I’m asking you to hang up. They’re your clothes, which you wear and spill food down and dribble on and get heaven knows what on and expect to show up clean for you to wear again.’

  ‘Yeah but I didn’t do it on purpose, did I?’

  ‘And there are my clothes in there, which I need for work.’

  ‘Yeah but I didn’t do it on purpose though, did I?’

  ‘It’s not whether you did it on purpose or not Bradley, it’s that you thought that messing around playing wizards and silly-buggers with Mr. bloody Upstairs was more important than doing what I asked you to do.’

  ‘No, I don’t think it’s more important, I just forgot. Do you think I forgot on purpose, is that why you’re shouting at me?’

  ‘No, I think you forgot because you didn’t make an effort to remember.’

  ‘Yeah well-’

  ‘No, Bradley. If I ask you to do something I expect it to take priority over your personal projects. How is it fair when there are two of us living here that one of us earns all the money, pays the rent, and has to do all the housework as well?.’

  ‘I did all the other housework! Look, I washed the dishes.’

  ‘Is that what that mess in the sink is? You’ve washed the dishes?’

  ‘No, they’re soaking, they’ve got stuck bits on.’

  ‘They didn’t have stuck bits on this morning’

  ‘No, because I cooked something after I did the washing up’

  ‘Oh. And what did you cook, may I ask?’

  ‘A peanut sauce.’

  ‘Peanut sauce?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That’s a lot of washing up for a peanut sauce.’

  ‘Yeah well there was my lunch as well.’

  ‘I-’ She took a long deep breath, and exhaled. ‘Well tell me about this peanut sauce. What’s it for having with?’

  ‘Anything. It’s lovely, it can go on anything.’

  ‘So you didn’t make it for anything, you just… made it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, why are you asking me that? Why does anyone do anything? It’s peanut sauce.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that, please.’

  ‘Sorry. But it is actually nice.’

  She inhaled deeply. ‘Good, well… that’s nice. Well done, I’m glad you did that. You’ve made a contribution. Let’s have it for dinner then.’

  ‘Alright.’

  ‘What can we have it with?’

  ‘What? I don’t know, it’s lovely, it goes on anything.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Anything!’

  ‘For example?’

  ‘I don’t know, everything! How can I give you an example when it goes on everything?’

  ‘Does it go on steak, for example?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Fish?’

  ‘No, that would be disgusting.’

  ‘Oh. How about eggs?’

  ‘Well no obviously it can’t go on fish and eggs, it’s peanut flavour, who would put peanut sauce on fish and eggs?’

  ‘So it doesn’t go on everything?’

  ‘Yeah everything except things that it would obviously be disgusting on.’

  ‘So if it doesn’t go on everything then I’d like to know exactly what it goes on please. As it’s the sum of your entire day’s worth of input towards the upkeep of the family, I think we should make the most of it, so hurry up and decide what we’ll be having it on please.’

  ‘I don’t know do I, I’m not a Michelin star chef, it goes on everything except fish and eggs!’

  ‘Does it go on carrots?’

  ‘Er… maybe. No.’

  ‘Does it go on bananas?’

  ‘Bananas? What, why would you put it on bananas?’

  ‘It’s an example, Bradley! Would it go on bananas?!’

  ‘Yeah, probably. Well, no. It’s spicy. And oniony. And garlicky.’

  ‘And peanutty?’

  ‘Yeah, a bit.’

  ‘It sounds a bit… horrible, Bradley. Are you sure it’s not horrible?’

  ‘I said it’s lovely, didn’t I? And if you want a pudding sauce there’s still some of my burnt caramel left.’

  ‘Oh have you kept that? I thought it was burnt.’

  ‘Yeah it’s supposed to be burnt.’

  ‘It wasn’t supposed to taste of ash though, was it?’

  ‘It doesn’t taste of ash, it tastes of caramel and a bit of burntness.’

  ‘Well I’m sure it will have gone off by now anyway.’

  ‘No, it keeps forever.’

  ‘Oh. Good. Well… let’s think about dinner before we focus on pudding. What else can we have with steak and peanut sauce?’

  ‘Er… potatoes.’

  ‘Well then that’s settled. We can have steak and potatoes with peanut sauce for dinner, and bananas with optional burnt caramel for pudding, can’t we?’

  It was hard for Lee to willingly subject his mother to what he knew would be an awful dinner when she was making such an effort to give him a chance to prove himself… but therein lay the problem: the peanut sauce was his only chance at redemption, the only card left in his hand, and so he had to play it.

  ‘Yeah, good, that will be lovely, probably.’

  ‘So you can go to the shop and buy some potatoes then, please.’

  ‘We’ve got potatoes.’

  ‘No, we haven’t.’

  ‘Yes we have.’

  ‘No, we haven’t.’

  ‘Yes we have, I saw them.’

  ‘No, Bradley.’

  ‘Yes we have, how can you say there are no potatoes when I saw them with my own eyes?’

  ‘Go and look in the fridge, and I will give you a hundred pounds for every potato you find.’

  ‘Alright, fine I’ll go and buy some potatoes.,’ he said, storming over to the corner where his coat lived on the floor. ‘God,’ he added, to claw back some dignity.

  ‘Don’t you want to check the fridge?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You might win hundreds of pounds.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘And hang the washing out before you go please. If you’re lucky it’ll dry before it gets dark, and if it doesn’t you can finish it off in the airing cupboard.’

  ‘Alright!’

  ‘And if they smell you will wash them again and dry them properly!’

  They smelled of washing, he couldn’t tell if it was the right smell or not, and he didn’t think it was the right time to ask his mum to come and smell them for him. So he bundled the stiffly cold-and-half-sodden garments into their plastic basket, carried them into the garden, and began to peg them onto the washing line.

  He took care to do it properly, because being told off again wouldn’t be worth the minor relief of venting his frustration by doing it badly. As he pegged, taking care to space the garments effectively for maximum surface area exposure and air circulation, he silently wished for the warm summer evening to undo what his cursed negligence had wrought.

  He reflected that it would save the two of them a great deal of stress and misery if his mum would find a way of making him listen to her properly.