Snowflake

by Heide Goody

  “Oh yeah! The riding through Asda on a unicorn dream, I have that one all the time!” I squealed. This woman was good. “Only one problem. I wasn’t asleep, I was wide awake.”

  “I have a question about that,” she said. “Was this before or after the fire that you mentioned?”

  “After.”

  “Hmmm. It is very possible that you have experienced some mild poisoning from the fumes. Melting plastic can be very toxic. These hallucinations were perhaps a side effect.”

  “How long would that last?” I asked.

  “Who knows?” he said. “We can run some blood tests to check, but I would imagine that after a day or two you should be fine.”

  “So, it could be that I was having hallucinations today as well? When I had to chase the tiny politicians?”

  She nodded. “I think that’s very much possible, Lori.”

  “Thank God!”

  “Whatever issues you might have with your family, and I’d suggest that you might benefit from working with a therapist to resolve those, I’d bet that your hallucinations are unrelated to them. We can discharge you after the blood tests, but you should take things easy for the next day or so. Rest up a little bit.”

  I beamed at the doctor. This was very good news. Not mad, just suffering from smoke damage, a bit like Adam’s flat.

  “I’ll make sure I mention the smoke hallucination thing when the police come in to chat with you.”

  “Police?”

  “The road-sweeper only hit you a glancing blow. The driver swerved and mounted the pavement.”

  “Oh, my God. Was anyone hurt?”

  Dr Jasmin smiled. “The only casualty was a tartan shopping trolley, I hear. I think you were all very lucky.”

  Chapter 10

  That evening, I let myself into the flat with a sigh of relief. I had a dressing on my head and a plaster on my arm from where they’d taken the blood. I had my clothes in a carrier bag (they’d had to cut the top off me and the jeans were fairly splattered with my blood). I was wearing a t-shirt and a pair of jogging bottoms that came from some sort of store that they have for emergencies like this. I’d asked if they took them off dead people and they’d told me no, that they were charitable donations, but I’m not so sure about that – these were definitely the sort of things that dead people might wear.

  I walked inside, preoccupied with my damaged clothes.

  “Lights Lexi,” I said.

  Sitting on the settee was the man from the previous night, no longer naked, but wearing an assortment of clothes that was almost as bizarre as mine – a Metallica t-shirt and some sort of sarong. He grinned at me. I screamed.

  “Hallucination!” I shouted, like it was a protective prayer against the devil.

  “I got the things,” he said, standing up.

  “Not real!”

  He held out a pizza box and a very thick pile of bank notes tied up with an elastic band.

  “This is just smoke inhalation,” I told myself. “My brain’s been fried by melted plastic. The doctor said so; it must be true.”

  His face fell and I felt absurdly guilty.

  “You said not to come back until I had a big pile of cash in one hand and a Quattro Formaggi in the other.” Now that he was standing up, I could see that his sarong was actually a length of AstroTurf that might once have lined a greengrocer’s market stall.

  I finally realised what was going on. My mind was constructing the entire thing. It was incredibly convincing, I could even smell the pizza. I inhaled deeply.

  “Let’s eat then!” I said. It made sense to play the scenario through before it turned into the naked unicorn ride through Asda, and I preferred this one.

  His smile returned as I accepted the pizza box. He pushed the cash into my hand as well.

  “Where did you get this?” I asked, slightly afraid of the answer.

  “I looked around until I found what you asked for,” he said, taking a slice of pizza after I’d grabbed one myself. “I had to run quite fast to keep hold of them,” he added.

  It sounded very much as if he’d managed to find and steal a pizza and a pile of cash, just because I’d asked for them. Nice one, subconscious! Not only was he gorgeous, he was also dedicated to pleasing me.

  But was I going to get into trouble for the stolen money? I reasoned it through as I settled down beside him on the settee and grabbed another slice of pizza. Either the money was real or it wasn’t. If it wasn’t, then there was no problem. If it was, then I couldn’t have stolen it because I had been in hospital much of the day. Unless…

  I patted the sofa, scrunching my fingers through the fabric of a cushion. I rapped my fingers on the fire-damaged coffee table.

  “Is this real life?” I asked.

  “Is it just fantasy?” said Ashbert.

  “Pinch me. Ow!”

  “Why did you want me to pinch you?”

  “I was just thinking. Maybe I’m still in hospital, in a coma or something, and all this is an illusion.”

  “How would you know?” he asked.

  “I wouldn’t,” I said.

  “Then it doesn’t matter, does it?” he said.

  He might be a hallucination but he was chomping down a fair amount of pretend pizza. After we made short work of the pizza I felt good.

  “I don’t have any wine or beer, I’m afraid,” I said to him.

  “I can go and get some wine and beer,” he said, standing up.

  “No, maybe we’re better off staying sober,” I said, thinking of whatever toxins were coursing through my veins. “Tell you what, have you got any idea how to work a washing machine?”

  “No, but I would be happy to try,” he said.

  We went into the kitchen and took a long hard look at the appliances.

  “Why are there two of them?” he asked.

  “Well, I guess one’s a washer and one’s a dryer,” I said. “Not sure which one’s which though.”

  I opened both doors and discovered that each machine had a unique smell. One was a bit damp and unpleasant, and the other was very familiar.

  “This one’s the dryer,” I said triumphantly. “It smells like my clothes when my mom gives them back to me.”

  We turned our attention to the washer. I put my bloody jeans inside the drum as a first step. I looked at the confusing array of buttons and dials. There was a little drawer as well. I pulled it out and looked inside. It had gungy deposits of something soapy.

  “Washing powder?” I mused.

  Ashbert looked in cupboards and handed me a box of little tablets. I read what it said, but mostly it said things like 3 in 1, XXL and non-bio. It was like another language. I took out a tablet, put it in the compartment that had the right coloured sludge and shut the drawer. I then scanned the buttons for one that looked as though it made things happen. I tried on/off but all it did was make a little light come on. I looked again and pressed start and this time there was noise and movement.

  “Bingo!” I crowed, and high-fived Ashbert. Our eyes met and I wondered why I was wasting this awesome hallucination on such tedious domestic chores. “So, what would you like to do now?” I asked.

  He moved closer. “Whatever you’d like to do,” he said and took my face tenderly in his hands. I looked up at his face. On paper, he was drop-dead gorgeous. Here in the flesh, looking at me as if I was everything he ever wanted it was almost more than a girl could handle. Almost. His eyes locked onto mine, gentle brown pools but with a breathtaking intensity. Whose eyes had I based this fantasy on? I couldn’t remember. I didn’t care. All I cared was that his breathing was coming faster now as he leaned in for a kiss. Our lips met and I moved forward to mould my body more closely into his. I trod on his AstroTurf sarong as I did so and it fell away. I wasn’t even sorry.

  Chapter 11

  I woke up early, which saved me from Lexi’s nerve-jangling alarm. The memories of the previous night crowded into my mind. I very nearly blushed at what my imagination had conjured
for me, but it had been delicious, and I lay in bed replaying the highlights. I rolled over.

  “You’re still here,” I said.

  “Do you want me to go?” said Ashbert, who was propped up on one elbow, gazing at me.

  “I didn’t say that,” I said.

  Surely, he should have gone by now? The toxic plastic fumes must have worked their way out of my system by now. The flat didn’t even smell of the melted fireplace any more. There was a faint, lingering aroma of pizza and the godawful smell of that sausage. I perked up at the thought that if evidence of the pizza was still around then maybe that pile of cash was still here too. The doorbell rang, interrupting thoughts of where I might buy some breakfast.

  “Good morning,” said the woman at the door. I had only opened the door a crack, so that it wasn’t obvious that I was wearing only a pillow.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Can I speak to Adam?” she said. She was around my mom’s age, but where my mom was always smiling, this woman looked as though she could smell something really horrible. I thought of the sausage in the bin and decided that maybe she could.

  “Adam’s away at the moment,” I said.

  “Then who are you?”

  “I’m his sister.”

  “I’m Bernadette Brampton, head of the residents’ association.”

  “I didn’t know that was a thing.”

  “I was hoping you could tell me why your rubbish is not being sorted correctly?” said Bernadette Brampton, head of the residents’ association. Her eyebrows rose, as if I was supposed to have an answer.

  “Eh?”

  She indicated a box at her feet. It was the Amazon delivery box that I’d taken downstairs yesterday. Of course, it had Adam’s name and address on it. “I found a box of fossils in the household waste,” she said.

  “Fossils?”

  “It’s very clear that this is not household waste. You need to consult the residents’ handbook to ensure that you understand how waste should be sorted.”

  “Does the handbook mention fossils?”

  “They’re certainly not household waste.”

  “I mean, any residents’ handbook with a section on fossils is worth reading.”

  “I’ll leave them with you. Some of us have jobs to get to.”

  She turned and went. I was glad that she didn’t stay around to watch as I shuffled backwards with the box of rocks, the edge of the pillow gripped between my teeth to provide some degree of modesty to the outside world. Meanwhile, I’d forgotten about the inside world. A hand caressing my bare bottom was enough to make me drop the pillow in shock. Luckily, I was inside by then. I shut the door and turned to see Ashbert grinning at me. I whacked him with the pillow. “You made me jump! Can’t you see that I’m naked and vulnerable?”

  He waggled his eyebrows and nodded. “You’re not naked, you’re wearing a pendant,” he said.

  My hand went to my neck and I ran my fingers across the stone. “Oh yeah! That’s all right then. I wondered yesterday if it was a lucky pendant. I’m beginning to think it might be.” I gestured at the box of rocks. “Let’s put these somewhere and we can go and see how lucky I can get before I go to work.”

  He peered at the rocks. “They are fossils. That woman was right.”

  I looked. Those things that look like squished beetles with loads of legs. “Maybe there’s a special recycling bin for fossils,” I said. “I must look in the residents’ handbook at the first opportunity.”

  “Do you want to do that now?” he asked.

  I reached out for the smoothness of his shoulders. “No, not just now.”

  I caught up with Cookie at break time at work. She took a long draw on her joint and gazed up at the sky. “The sky looks the same as our break yesterday. If nothing changes, can we be sure that time passes?” she asked.

  “Blimey, you have no idea how many things have changed since yesterday. I can confirm that time has definitely passed. Hard to believe it’s only a day,” I said.

  “You’ve hurt your head,” she said.

  Of all the things that had happened, that one seemed relatively insignificant, but I put my hand to the bruise. “Yes, I got run over by a street-sweeper and that wasn’t the weirdest part.”

  Cookie nodded her casual acceptance of this.

  “So, a guy from my past appeared over the last couple of days,” I said.

  I was feeling my way around the subject, trying to find a way to talk to Cookie about the whole Ashbert thing, when I had absolutely zero understanding of it myself.

  “Would I know him?” she asked.

  “Maybe I showed you a picture I did of him years ago,” I said. “I made it out of magazine images, but it’s just like him. Exactly like him. Weirdly like him.”

  “Well, you’re a great artist, we know this,” said Cookie.

  I nodded. Was it possible that he really was someone I met, someone I knew and then I had made a picture of him? No. I remembered clearly the afternoon I created that picture. I must have been fifteen. I’d been bored and a bit fed up after colouring my hair with a dye called ‘Copper Goddess’ that should have been called ‘Ginger Cake Mix With Weird Orangey Bits’. I can remember poring over Mom’s magazines harvesting body parts for the ideal man.

  I caught movement from the corner of my eye. Cookie and I were in this quiet corner in a courtyard between the museum and the university chancellor’s building. The only access to the courtyard was a tall gate. I could have sworn that someone peeked over the top, but all I caught was a flash of pea green, as if they were wearing a hoodie. I stared for a moment more, but they didn’t reappear. I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched though. I was properly on edge! I got back to telling Cookie about Ashbert.

  “He appeared after you’d baked that bread, when you were having a nap. He came back again last night.”

  “Cool!” said Cookie. “You’ve been spending some quality time with him from the look of your face as well. Your cheeks are quite flushed,” she added with a wink.

  She knows me too well. I put a hand to my face, imagining that a night (and a morning) of mind-blowing sex was written all over it.

  “The thing is,” I said, taking the plunge, “I think I made him with the power of my mind or something.”

  Cookie nodded. “Don’t all women recreate men with our wills? Without us they are nothing.”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly. I needed to penetrate the veil of Cookie’s world view and make her realise that I was talking literally. “It could be that, but I also animated some people out of the newspaper yesterday. Brought them to life and then chased them.”

  “Wow. Where are they now?” asked Cookie.

  “No idea. I got hit by the street-sweeper while chasing them,” I said miserably, realising that I sounded like every kid ever who’d failed to do their homework. Lying or mad, take your pick.

  Cookie took the joint out of her mouth and stared at it for a long moment. “When I talk to the trees, they sometimes talk back,” she said, “and that’s cool. I tend to cut back on the weed, though, if it happens a lot.”

  “The doctor said it could be hallucinations, caused by the melted plastic from the fire we had,” I said miserably.

  “Could be,” she said. “Maybe you could talk to Rex, have a couple of shifts off and rest up.”

  “God, no,” I said. “I’m in enough trouble already. I forgot to tell you about James, the Greek antiquities guy.”

  “James Reynolds. I know him. He does the gallery stuff here and teaches at the uni as well, I think. Is he a doctor?”

  “He’s doing his doctorate. He got really mad because I touched some of the exhibits. He was going to call the police.”

  Cookie laughed. “He won’t do that. He’s a softy really. He’s like one of them, people, whatchacallems? Like Alan Bennett and Stephen Fry.”

  “Gay?”

  “No,” she said, flapping a hand at me. “I mean he belongs to a bygone age. All tweedy jackets
and tobacco pipes.”

  “I don’t think he smokes a pipe,” I said.

  “But he looks like he might. No, it’s a bluff exterior but he’s just a little boy on the inside. Anyway, he left the cases open, yeah?”

  “He did,” I said.

  “QED, Baby Belkin, he’s the one who has responsibility for the exhibits, so he’d take the fall, not you. One of the paintings went missing years ago.”

  “Right. The one of Zeus by somebody Spaghetti or Tagliatelle or something.”

  “Yeah. The number of people who got in deep doo-doo for that was amazing. Plenty of us, including Rex and myself, only got our jobs because of the people who got fired over that one. James will keep schtum if he values his job. Anyway, I had a family ask me for directions to the Roman and Greek stuff yesterday because they’d heard about the funny speech bubbles. Kudos.”

  I had been very careful to avoid James, feeling sure that the sight of me would remind him to bring in the SWAT team or whatever, but if Cookie was right then maybe I could breathe easy again.

  “Want to hang out this evening?” Cookie asked as she stubbed out her joint and turned to go back inside.

  “I can’t. Ashbert’s planning a romantic meal for two,” I said. “He’s cooking sausages with onion gravy.”

  “Is that a romantic meal?” asked Cookie, looking sceptical.

  “It’s my all-time favourite thing,” I explained. “He knew that already, like he could read my mind. It’s amazing.”

  “Well, enjoy your evening of sausage,” said Cookie with a rude laugh as we went back inside.

  After work, I returned to the flat, wondering if Ashbert would still be there. My hand went to my pocket where I had some of the cash that he’d given to me. It was definitely real, as I’d used some to buy a pasty at lunch time.

  I saw a notice taped to the wall at the bottom of the stairs up to Adam’s flat. I stopped to read it.