The Biggerers

by Amy Lilwall

  She laughed. ‘From my notebook.’

  ‘You’ve got a whole book of these?’

  ‘My dear… I’ve got a whole cupboard full of boxes, all packed to the brim with notebooks.’ She let one arm fan out a veritable plethora in front of her.

  ‘Shhh!’ he hissed, looking left and right to make her laugh again.

  She did laugh. Then she put one of her hands over his and squeezed it. ‘When you come back, I’ll have one waiting for you.’

  Hamish held his breath and let his hand be touched by this person who he didn’t really know.

  She quickly withdrew her hand and folded her arms.

  ‘I could never accept a… I mean… Do you know how rare this is?’ He looked down at the sheet of paper while she waved his protests away. ‘Seriously, do you know how rare…’ He stopped and read. Fig jam, unsalted butter, skimmed milk, egg noodles, mature cheddar, carrots… ‘Who wrote this?’

  ‘Who wrote what?’ She looked confused.

  ‘This writing.’ He indicated towards the paper with his right hand as he cradled it in his left. Black loops and angles, thick and thin in different places, grew across the page like an old vine curling up the side of a house.

  ‘I did,’ she said. No longer confused. ‘But, you know how to write, don’t you?’

  ‘Not like this.’ He shook his head, one finger curled over his lips as he contemplated the evenness of the black shapes.

  Sometimes he practised writing when he had the time for hobbies. He had an app that would trace out a letter and then he had to write over it using the same method; then he had to have a go on his own. It was a bit tricky, but he was fairly confident with about twelve letters now. ‘Did… did this take you a very long time?’

  ‘Ha!’ she scoffed. ‘You saw me do it!’

  ‘Just then? In the porch?’

  ‘Yes!’ she nodded. ‘You can keep it if you like.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course.’

  As he told the WayToGo to take him to Shepherd’s, he vowed that he would, he absolutely must, learn to write. Shepherd’s was open and busy. They had even sent out their parking attendant today. Because it was Sunday, it was only a machine. As he advanced and indicated right, the HelpaBot pointed towards the left. No! He didn’t want to go that way. He wanted to turn right. Paying no attention to the machine, he turned right and drove on to the area where she usually parked. It was unlikely he’d bump into her; he’d never seen her here on a Sunday… Oh! Sunday samples; he craned to see what the machines were handing out at the entrance to Shepherd’s. Small plastic packets of yellow. Hmmm… Probably cheese. A white car caught his eye. Nope. Too square. He continued past the others, all parked neatly in their bays. Red, blue, silver… white! Too big. Red, red, black, pink, black, white! No, a van. White again! Was that it? No, too many accessories.

  He sighed; only a little bit. It wasn’t just because it was Sunday; he didn’t really see her here at all any more. In fact, the sighs got smaller and smaller each time he came. And today lots of other things swam in his head, like jellyfish kisses, loopy letters, sex and sushi. She only occupied a small part of it, maybe a square centimetre, and that was only because he was here.

  Then again, he had wanted to see her enough to turn right.

  It wasn’t healthy, this spying. But really, how could it hurt anyone? He was only looking out for her car.

  Association, he reasoned as he pressed the ‘park’ button and the car started to reverse into a bay. Conditioning. He had learned to associate that right turn with past feelings of excitement, rather than the act of discovering her. Now, where had he put that list? Top pocket. Wonderful! Fancy pulling a sheet of paper from your top pocket! No. Fancy pulling a piece of paper from one’s top pocket!

  He got out of the car and headed towards the entrance, the thought of cheddar moistening his mouth. Mmm… ‘Welcome to Shepherd’s! Please help yourself to one of our free samples.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, I’ll take one from you,’ he turned to the other machine, ‘and one from you, Sir, and…’ He turned back to the first machine.

  ‘Welcome to Shepherd’s! Please…’

  ‘And another one from you. Ha ha!’ He flicked the plastic-covered rectangle up in the air and caught it on the back of his hand. Red red hair and bangles stopped at the opposite machine and slipped two bags of shopping onto one wrist before helping herself to a sample.

  ‘Cheddar… Yum,’ said Emma.

  Or was it Emma? He had seen that back walk away from him so many times, why couldn’t he remember it? He blinked. Was it her? He couldn’t be sure… Yes, yes, it was! Or, was it… Damn! If only she would turn around. If only he could see a little bit around the side of her…

  ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Oops! I am sorry.’ He was blocking the entrance and he still had the cheese on the back of one hand and the list in the other. Stuffing both items in his pockets, he turned back around to watch her again, but she was gone. He stood on tiptoes for, well, whatever reason, then walked towards the car park, his head owling this way and that, but no – shit – he’d let himself go. Damn! This wasn’t the reason he’d wanted to see her. There was no reason. He couldn’t see her… He had only ever wanted to glimpse her, and now he was chasing after her…

  He turned quickly, shoved his hands in his pockets and went back to the entrance.

  ‘Welcome to Shepherd’s! Please help yourself to one of our…’

  Through the doors and he was in. He wouldn’t look back. Not even to check if he should have held the door for the person behind. Not even to wonder if it was actually a sliding door and so there would’ve been no reason to hold it. Not even to see if he’d dropped anything when he pulled his hands back out of his pockets.

  He retrieved the list. Well, at least he was sure that he hadn’t dropped that. The same feeling, only a little diluted, the burnt jar of ants, filled him up again as he straightened the list out and re-read it. The spaces in his head that had reopened, the Emma spaces, cavities that yawned empty and dead now crawled with busy burnt ants.

  ‘Fig jam,’ he said to himself. ‘Unsalted butter. Egg noodles. Carrots…’

  ‘They used to call me Carrot-head.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I think they meant “Carrot-top”. I never really hear anyone say that any more… Do you?’

  ‘I don’t know what it means.’ He kept his hands clasped in front of him, the lenses of his glasses well and truly displaying his whole eyes.

  ‘Really? Well, it’s because of my red hair.’

  ‘Right.’ A line of carrots rose out of her head; one by one they collapsed, sighing, and dangled at the side of her face. He wanted to grab up handfuls of her carrot hair and bite it. ‘How did that make you feel?’ careful to keep his tone neutral; not to show the fact that he already knew the answer. He already knew that she would laugh because she didn’t care…

  She laughed. ‘I didn’t care. I was… What? Seven?’

  ‘Nothing else?’ he said, to stop himself from saying something like of course you didn’t care!

  She thought for a moment, taken in by this false importance he had built up around her hair.

  ‘It’s funny. I’ve always behaved a bit differently to other people, and I tend to blame it on my hair.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well… The cliché goes that redheads have fiery characters… So… Um…’ She smirked at her knee. ‘I don’t actually know what I’m trying to say.’

  He smirked with her. Damn! Casting his eyes down, he pinched his nostrils and made his face all serious again. Damn, damn, damn.

  She hadn’t noticed. ‘I’ve always dressed differently, always. I mean, even at school I’d do silly things like, oh I don’t know… Like one time I sewed wings onto my coat. Gosh, I did, didn’t I? I’d completely forgotten about that… And another time I wore odd shoes – one green and one black. I remember, yes… There was always something: a flower in my hair, or lac
e gloves or… or sometimes I’d wear two ties, with two knots, side by side… I’ve always been a bit… quirky.’

  ‘Right.’ She sat before him, with wings, and a flower in her hair, a peony, he decided was the most appropriate, lacy gloves that tattooed their way up her arms to her elbows, and not much else… The ties spilled over her chest, their pointed tips lapping at her belly button.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘Quirky.’

  Bugger. He’d drifted. He had to stop bloody drifting. He nodded and stayed silent for a minute. This was useless, but it made the whole ‘drifted’ silence look intentional. He mentally added a minute to their session and hoped that she would feel pressured into saying something else.

  ‘You think that I have a rebellious streak, don’t you? I know where this is going.’

  ‘Do you think that?’ he batted back.

  ‘Hmmm.’ She narrowed her eyes and looked past him towards the window. Then turned her head ever so slightly, squeezed her lips so they became one plump strawberry, looked right at him and purred. ‘Sometimes.’ She raised an eyebrow.

  It was as if someone had flicked the space between his eyes; thwack! That was foul play. That was for him, that look. She was flirting with him. He knew it. He knew that all this hadn’t been one-sided; there was something. He checked himself – he was holding his breath. Breathe! But how could he breathe after a look like that?

  She was flirting.

  Or…

  But…

  No…

  Actually…

  She wasn’t. She was continuing with her explanation; the flirty look hadn’t been a flirty look, it had only been the trigger for what was coming next. It wasn’t meant for him at all. She was telling it now, her story of rebellion; of sucking on helium balloons in the bus shelter… No! That was lame! It was a ‘between-professionals’ story. It was something she could tell her boss to lift the mood without saying anything compromising. That story didn’t warrant such a look. Oh… Disappointment made his ears thud, fading out her voice. She had wanted to give a cheeky, well-wait-until-you-hear-this look; not throw her expression from her face and use it to lick his inner thigh.

  ‘Interesting.’ He reeled himself back in. ‘What are you not telling me?’

  ‘What?’ she half-laughed.

  ‘Do you consider that to be the most rebellious thing you’ve ever done?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You know I don’t.’

  ‘Mmm-hmm… Go on.’

  But she wouldn’t. She looked at the space between them. The words were obviously there, just squashed into a ball in her throat.

  ‘This is all in confidence.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘This is a safe space. This is your safe space.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. Then closed up again, as if she needed time to peel another word from the ball.

  ‘Try starting from the beginning.’

  ‘—.’

  He allowed a minute to pass before asking another question. ‘Do you feel guilty about everything you tell me? Is that, in itself, a rebellious act?’

  She replied while he was still saying ‘rebellious act’.

  ‘It all started with a notebook that I acquired,’ she said. Then: ‘Oh sorry, you were saying?’ She cocked an ear and waited for him to finish what he was saying.

  ‘No. Please. A notebook?’

  ‘Yes. Well, it was more like a diary, really. It was given to me when I was little – although it was top secret,’ she whispered, grinning. ‘It inspired me so much that I decided to go into that line of work, only my brother died while I was still studying and… changed how I saw my future profession. Which was probably stupid.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I helped many families,’ she had raised her voice without meaning to, ‘because of that book.’

  Agitation, he thought. He decided to lean forward, narrow the distance; shrink the room for judgement. They were on the same level; they were equal… Two humans having a conversation.

  ‘The bereaved families; tell me about what that means,’ he said in a voice that he lilted in all the right places, as if he were asking a baby to smile for him.

  ‘I helped families for my job. But I wasn’t meant to. It’s something that is considered bad practice, God…’ She shook her head, her knees rising as her feet pushed themselves onto wincing tiptoes. ‘But I always thought it was right. I think there’s no wrong in reuniting people who love each other…’ almost panting, ‘loved each other.’ She stopped for breath. ‘You know, death is the only thing that stands in our way now, isn’t it?’ Her eyes jumped from the corner of the table to the middle, to the wall and back again. ‘There was no harm in it to start with but then it felt like, like… I was playing God. One time a woman approached me in the street with a box of toenail clippings, crying: “Can you bring him back?” and I was frightened that people knew what I did, and she was coming to me with an order. I thought I’d have to go into hiding or something… But she didn’t know who I was; she was just another person, crazed by this one thing, you know… that can really take us away. Really.’

  Hamish’s eyes danced. She wasn’t making any sense. ‘Talk to me about these families, who are they?’

  ‘I don’t know… Me?’ She snorted out a laugh, then her eyes wrinkled over and she looked like she was about to cry.

  ‘You?’

  ‘—.’

  ‘Emma?’

  She cast her eyes down. ‘Forget that,’ she mumbled, then started again in a new, clear voice. ‘I got carried away, I suppose; with being a do-gooder. I read in the news about this tragic man who lost his wife – she died – in a car accident. He was so unhappy that he went, well, a little crazy and had to be taken away… I felt so sad for him.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Anyway, I sent her to live next door… When he was well enough to come home, of course.’

  ‘You sent who to live next door?’ he couldn’t help.

  ‘He already had one and there was no reason to target him with a second… But I just thought that if they could be near each other…’

  Who? Hamish wanted to ask; two what? Two wives? Instead he swallowed and said: ‘Go on.’

  She smirked. ‘I must have been mad.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’ He waited for her to continue but she didn’t. Soothing, he thought. He had the urge to soothe and get rid of this agitation. That was a normal urge. Maybe he could try his nice baby voice again, muffle the stimuli a bit… Mustn’t let too much through, though; she’s a patient like any other, he told himself. Like a child; it was all counter-transference, pressing his paternal buttons. Just imagine she is a child.

  ‘Look,’ he said.

  She didn’t look.

  ‘Look at me!’

  She looked up.

  He planned to say: ‘The only difference is that what is inside will be out, which is what we are working to achieve. Nothing bad is going to happen to you.’ Instead he said, in the softest, tiniest, almost-whisper: ‘The only difference is that what is inside will be out, which is what we are working to achieve. I’m never going to let anything happen to you.’

  She stared at him.

  The reflex to scrunch up his face, the hands that wanted to stuff the words back into his mouth, the cry that spiralled up from his belly, the teeth that wanted to clench, the lips that wanted to spit, the shoulders that wanted to hunch – he had to fight all of them; keep them in place because she was looking towards the back of his eyes; and she had read every scrap of meaning in that last sentence. He held the stare. ‘Trust me,’ he said to her from the inside of his head. ‘Trust everything you knew about me up to that point, and let it all swallow up that stupid sentence.’

  ‘Are you ready to go on?’ he had to say.

  She squinted and blinked a little, and for a moment he thought she would ask him what on Earth he’d meant. He curled his index finger over his top lip and watched for the first word to emerge. She took a deep breath. ‘When the cells we
re taken, I would find the original families. I sought them out; they make out it’s impossible but of course it’s not! Everything’s coded, labelled, recorded – everything has traceability. Except at my level. My level shouldn’t have any want or need to be poking into the traceability of a product – that’s how I pulled it off. I’d just follow the cell’s progression, at the same time targeting the family with whatever techniques I could get away with. It gave me such a buzz. It was as if I were cheating death, like a sheepdog of souls.’ She smiled. ‘I’d turn herds of them around and guide them home. It was honestly that easy. As long as I got the families through the showroom door, as long as they set eyes on the product, they were always drawn to it… Even when there were several to choose from, they almost always chose the one that… Am I making any sense?’

  Hamish started. ‘Yes!’ he said unconvincingly. She had taken him by surprise. ‘I think the important thing here is to just get it all out; then we can attach some sort of narrative.’ Bloody hell. That was lame. ‘When exactly did you stop?’ Good save. An obvious question.

  Her eyes wandered over him and suddenly she looked panicked. ‘Is that the time?’ She consulted the clock projection on the surface of the desk.

  ‘What? Oh, no… Don’t worry about that. We can run over a little. It’s fine.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’m actually telling you about all of this.’

  ‘You’re doing well, Emma. It’s alright, you can go on.’

  She paused for a moment, as if trying to find her place in the story. ‘I…’ Then: ‘Actually. I think I would rather continue this next session.’

  Hamish swallowed. He would have given her his entire collection of books if she’d have stayed with him for one more minute. But he had to let her go. ‘Right. So… Thank you, Emma. You’ll see Sandra to book your next appointment?’ He gestured towards the end of the corridor where Sandra’s desk was hidden in an alcove.

  ‘Yes.’ She got up. ‘Thank you.’

  He nodded, trying to work out from her face if his error-sentence had been forgotten.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll see each other soon.’ And she swished out.

  Sure we’ll see each other soon? Sure. We. Will. See. Each. Other. Soon.