*
Belly stuffed, Danny heads off. He told Mum that Baggy was too full of apple to eat the biscuit, and ate it himself. It was a Jammy Dodger, Baggy’s favourite, which proves he was not hungry.
Danny doesn’t feel like running so walks back through the village, observing the feather is still where he put it, and that little Jimmy Walker has left his go-cart in the street again. He thinks about taking it for a ride, forcing ten-year old legs into a space meant for a toddler. He asks Baggy what he thinks, and then decides to take his friend’s advice and leave it. Last time he got into terrible trouble for just sitting in it. Part of it had cracked. Clearly it was rubbish.
Danny met Baggy for the first time last week, while chalking rude words on the wall outside the Walker’s house. Jimmy’s big sister, Lily, is a pain. Lily always keeps a place in the dinner queue for her friends and pushes in during PE and tells on people so much that even the teacher rolls her eyes. Danny had been caught chalking by the permanently cross Mrs Walker, and was forced to think on his feet. Cleverly, he said it was an anagram, part of a game he was playing with some other children. It was a clue. A clue? she had repeated. Yes, he had said. What is it an anagram of? she’d enquired, her usual ready-to-kill expression firmly fixed. London, he answered, triumphantly. Only after walking away did Danny think about it, only then did he realise that smelly cow and London didn’t really match. It was immediately after all this that Baggy had appeared beside him and said hello, although since then has said very little, seeming happy to follow.
But this afternoon Baggy is different. This afternoon he is taking charge. He says they are no longer going to the woods, where only last week Danny wore a tiger mask and terrified three teenage girls who were smoking. This afternoon they are going to the quarry.
The quarry is out of bounds, but such things don’t bother Danny because his new friend Baggy says they will be fine, and Baggy knows everything. He says they will take a quick dip near the rocky path, where it is shallow. Shallower than everywhere else, anyway, Baggy assures.
When they arrive, it is Baggy that checks no one else is present. It is Baggy that points to the best spot. It is Baggy that leads the way. It is Baggy that climbs up onto a high rock gripped by young saplings and weed. It is Baggy that hurls himself into the freezing black water. It is Baggy that watches as Danny does the same. By the time they leave, Danny thinks he has had the most amazing time.
Walking home, they pass through the village. The go-cart is gone, feather too. The light is off in the cottage. Danny looks about, hoping to see the feather so he can jam it in Mrs Bailey’s letterbox, but it is nowhere to be seen.
By the time Danny reaches the street where he lives, the muted shades of evening are beginning to form. Lights are on in the kitchen and even before he opens the front door, he can smell baking; the enticing warm aroma everything a home should be. With his mouth watering, Danny walks into the kitchen and speaks, but Mum doesn’t turn. She is making cupcakes, all to be decorated with the white icing she has made in a bowl, and topped with tiny pieces of homemade fudge. Danny knows some of the little cakes will be chocolate, and some vanilla, because they always are. Mum’s smooth hair is long and flat down her back, her head bent over the sink where she is washing baking pans. He leans over the rack on the table and pokes his nose as close to one cooling cake as he dare, sniffing at it quietly. But still Mum says nothing. All she does is check her watch.
So he spins on his heels and runs upstairs. Baggy is close behind. Laughing, they start sorting through Danny’s favourite things, proper things he has collected over his few short years. A catapult; a bow and arrow, sucker removed from the now-sharpened arrow tip; an empty coffee bean tin; a camouflaged water bottle; a pocket book on survival; a set of interesting stones. As they squat and sort, so the smell of baking becomes too much to resist. Baggy has an idea, and Danny thinks it is brilliant.
Silently, they descend the stairs, before sneaking into the kitchen. Mum’s back is still turned and the cakes are still cooling. Danny again leans close to a cake, and this time, sliding out his tongue, he licks it. The taste is sweet and delicious. But the icing looks very dented and wet. With his fingers, he tries to make it right, gently pushing and pressing, trying to remould that which only moments before had been perfect. But it looks worse than ever. He scrapes the icing off entirely, hoping Mum might think she has forgotten to do it, even though he knows it doesn’t look quite like an un-iced cake, and that she will not fall for it.
Danny straightens as Mum turns around, again looking at her watch. Her eyes dart to the table, to the naked cupcake. Danny prepares to run.
But Mum merely frowns as if puzzled, and, walking past Danny, goes to the front door. She opens it and calls his name. Danny can’t tell if she is joking. But she calls again, even though he answers her.
She calls again. Now he can’t tell if she is cross, or worried, or both. Often, she is both.
Danny turns to Baggy, seated on the bottom stair in the hallway. He is smiling and Danny realises he has not seen Baggy smile before.
‘Now we’re the best of friends,’ Baggy says, ‘you and me. We’re just the same.’
###
About the author
Life has so many possible outcomes. From the simple question what if? a thousand stories can evolve. This is how novelist, Barbara Jaques, finds inspiration, through questions of coincidence, uncertainty, superstition and faith.
Born in a tiny town in Alberta to wandering parents before their return to Bristol, Barbara has also wandered a little, although is now settled in Wiltshire with her family, close to her childhood home.
The Last Tiger (Novel)
The Cult of Following (Novel)
Nathaniel's Waiting Room (Novel)
Love of Grace & Angels (Novel)
The Front Door (Short Story)
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