Of Things Gone Astray

And then he didn’t. He himself didn’t realise that he’d lost it. But all of a sudden people were slower to make way for him in the street. His success rate at hailing cabs went down by 40 per cent overnight. The board of directors took no note of his opinions. His staff started whispering behind his back, nothing he wanted done got done.

A few months later he would retire and move to Cornwall. He would get a cat on the misplaced assumption that it, at least, would show him some respect.

The Fight.

WILL GOWAN AND JEFF BROWN lost a fight. Both boys knew where it was when they left their respective houses. They walked confidently towards it, flanked by their gangs. They met a block away from the fight’s last known location, but pretended not to notice each other. Their gangs didn’t pretend not to notice each other, they scowled and glowered for all they were worth.

Two crowds of boys headed down opposite sides of the street until they reached the same corner, the corner around which the fight was.

It wasn’t there.

For the first time, the leaders looked at each other.

‘Where is it?’ said Will.

‘Have we lost it?’ said Jeff.

‘We can’t both have lost it,’ said Will.

But they had.

The Looks.

WINIFRED GRAHAM LOST HER LOOKS. She hunted for them carefully and methodically, but they were all gone. It seemed remarkable for them to have all disappeared at once, but although she tried, she could not find a single one.

Her looks had been so many. So many looks, and they were glorious: a look to show a secret, a look to freeze blood, one to curdle milk, a look of longing, a look of rejection, a look of despair. A look of love.

It would be several weeks before she managed to leave her house. To confront a world in which she would now have to rely on words.

The Heart.

AND BARNABY JONES LOST HIS heart. He was fifty-seven years old and had kept a good handle on it until that day. He’d never had to question its whereabouts at school or university, even when his friends were finding theirs so hard to keep track of. He’d checked for its presence as he left the house each morning, along with his keys and wallet. There was a brief moment in his mid-thirties when he couldn’t remember where he’d left it, but a quick search revealed not far from its usual place.

Then this day, seven weeks before his 58th birthday, it was gone. After searching his house thoroughly and to no avail, he retraced his steps, eventually coming across the finder of his heart. Unfortunately he would be unable to get it back from her, and before he would have time to think of staying near her, just so as to always be near his heart, she would not have it anymore.

From then, Barnaby’s heart would change hands with dizzying frequency. He would do his best to keep up with it, but it would show itself determined to evade him. Try as he might to get it back, in the end he would have to learn to do without it.

Jake.

Jake stands on the footpath facing his house. The street is quiet, because it is not Saturday. Even though it’s Tuesday, Jake is not wearing his uniform. Not wearing his school uniform on a Tuesday that’s not in the holidays makes Jake feel like he’s breaking the rules. But he can’t get into trouble because his mum is the one who’s told him not to wear it.

Jake doesn’t want to go to the doctor. The doctor is boring and he doesn’t like someone looking at his feet that closely. He doesn’t want to go to the doctor, but he does want to go to McDonald’s.

He is not wearing a jersey, but he should be. The day is cold; the first cold day in ages and Jake isn’t prepared for it. His mum said that he should put on a jumper, but he didn’t. He looks down at the goosebumps on his arm and wishes his mum would hurry up.

She’s gone back into the house because she forgot to bring a recipe she’d promised to drop off to the smiling lady that sometimes comes over with her friend Mel. Jake knows his mum doesn’t like the smiling lady, because she never uses her name. She always just calls her Goldilocks, which is not a real name at all. Jake doesn’t know what the smiling lady’s real name is.

Jake can tell his mum is really grumpy because she’s already dropped her keys on the floor three times. Jake’s mum is always clumsy when she’s cross. When she’d turned to go back into the house, Jake had started to go with her and she’d snapped at him to stay where he was and wait for her. Jake’s mum hardly ever snaps.

Jake has been waiting for a long time.

The ground moves like it does a lot. Like it never used to. It started happening a few months ago, after that one big time when buildings came down. Jake was scared when it started, when it happened months ago, but he isn’t anymore. It doesn’t really make anything happen.

This time, though, something does. This time something awful happens.

Jake looked down at his arm. There were goosebumps on it now. Had there been that day? He didn’t think so. He couldn’t remember feeling cold, but he couldn’t remember not feeling cold either. He couldn’t be sure.

He so wanted to be sure.

He trudged slowly along the road towards his house. Without really planning to, he kept walking past it and around the corner. He wandered until he was on a street he didn’t know, walking along a row of shops. Also without planning to, Jake stopped walking. He looked around himself, up and down the quiet street.

The shop he was standing outside didn’t seem to have a name. He stood looking for several minutes but there wasn’t one anywhere. There was the street number, hand-painted in pea green, and that was all except for a small blackboard hanging on the door which read, ‘Nothing can be found that is not lost’. Jake wasn’t sure he knew what that meant.

He pushed open the door and walked in. The shop was dark inside, and dusty, and full of second-hand things. There was a shelf of old typewriters by the door, and a pile of battered books stacked precariously on top of a rusty umbrella stand.

‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’ said a voice from the ether.

‘Yes.’ Jake blinked and peered around the shop, trying to locate the speaker.

The Voice was sitting in an armchair in the corner. She had her legs slung over one arm of the chair and a book in her lap. She watched Jake for a while as he looked around.

‘Well?’ she said eventually. ‘Buying or selling?’

‘What?’

The Voice got up from her armchair and leaned over the shop counter towards Jake.

‘Are you buying or are you selling?’

‘I don’t have anything to sell.’

‘Well, wouldn’t you suppose that that means you’re buying?’

Jake fingered the money in his pocket. His dad had left it on the table and probably forgotten about it. They had run out of milk and bread. His dad had probably forgotten about that too.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m buying.’

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Something interesting.’

‘Everything’s interesting.’

Jake’s wandering gaze fell on a small, silvery, old mirror.

‘Who’s was that?’

The Voice followed Jake’s eyes, shook her head and leaned further forward, with a conspiratorial air. ‘That,’ she began dramatically, ‘belonged to a war heroine. She came from a small village near Cambridge, and when things started to turn to custard over the way, she ran off to Paris and joined the French Resistance. She carried that mirror with her always, to make sure her hair was in place while she fought the Nazis. Then, when she died, her granddaughter, who is the kind of person who is Not Interested, inherited it. She brought it here to sell because she thought it was tacky.’

Jake picked up a pair of cufflinks from a shelf.

‘Those,’ said The Voice, ‘were sold to me by the new husband of their owner’s wife. She had asked him to return them to her ex-husband, but he was so jealous he couldn’t stand to see him. So he brought them to me instead.’

Jake put the cufflinks back and turned to a pile of books. The one on the top was small and red and faded. He opened the cover and read the inscription: ‘You are the reason I’m glad there are words.’

‘Who’s was this?’ he asked The Voice.

‘Oh, I don’t actually know about that. Some woman found it when she moved into a new house. It had fallen behind a radiator or something.’

‘I’ll buy this, I think,’ said Jake. ‘What was the woman like?’ he asked as The Voice counted out his change. ‘Tall. A bit chub. Had a baby. Very, very long hair. Blonde.’

‘When did she sell you the book?’

‘Holy hell, I don’t know. A month ago maybe. Maybe two.’

‘Great,’ said Jake. ‘Thanks. I’ll see you.’

Jake could feel The Voice staring after him as he left the shop.

He walked the three blocks to his house as quickly as he could. He was feeling sort of fevered, but he didn’t know why. He let himself into the house. The door to his dad’s office was open, and Jake could tell he was in there, but he didn’t go in, nor did his dad come out to see who had come in, or to ask Jake why he wasn’t at school.

Jake climbed the stairs to his room and shut the door behind him. It was no good. There was too much stuff, too much clutter. His mum used to make him tidy his room all the time but now no one did. Jake hadn’t noticed how messy it had become. He put the small red book carefully on his pillow and began to tidy. He folded his clothes and put them in his drawers. He slipped his books neatly onto their shelves.

When everything had been put away and the floor was clear, he took the red book and placed it in the middle of the floor. He took a piece of paper and wrote, ‘Book. Gift. Behind radiator.’ He put the paper beside the book. He leaned back against his bed and looked at it.

Delia.

THERE WAS A ROOM IN Delia’s house that Delia never went into. It had been her room when she was a child, and for all her trips home after she moved away to study.

It was still decorated in the style she’d chosen when she was thirteen. Redecoration had been her birthday present that year and she’d spent hours deciding on and second-guessing colour choices. Three of the walls (luscious cherry 037) were almost entirely obscured by posters of pop singers and movie stars, many of which had come unstuck in key top corners. The fourth wall (bruised concrete 109) had a series of doodles in white paint that had started as a rebellion and grown into a meandering, wordless story. The curtains (dark purple brocade) had been closed for years. The bed (single, patchwork mainly in pink) was unmade. The last time Delia had slept in it had been the Easter holidays, a few weeks before the accident that would bring her home for good. She was supposed to wash the sheets and remake the bed herself, having never officially lifted the Keep Out Agreement of 97, but she’d been late for her train and had left them.

But it wasn’t the garishly twee decor or the depressing insight into adolescent Delia’s psyche that kept grown-up Delia out of the room.

When Delia had moved back home, she’d taken the seven boxes marked ‘Master’s Degree’ and stacked them in the middle of the room. She’d piled sketches and paintings on the bed, she’d dumped her easel, her box of paints and brushes, and her blank canvases on the floor and closed the door on them. She’d taken over the room that her mother would no longer be able to use.

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