Read Online Behindlings by Nicola Barker - Free Book Online Page B

her shoulder. And while she could barely stand to drag her eyes away from Dewi –his sandy brows, his smooth voice, his magnificent fingers –Patty seemed hardly to have noticed the intense altercation between the two other men.
    ‘What’s that?’ he repeated. ‘Is it food?’
    Jo looked down. In her right hand she still held the grease-stained paper bag from the bakery. ‘It’s a doughnut,’ she stammered. ‘Hand it over,’ the boy ordered.
    She passed it to him, silently. Patty snatched the bag and rammed his fist inside of it. He was hungry.
    Dewi, meanwhile, in that slightest –that shortest –that
briefest
of interludes, had swiftly taken his leave of them. Jo turned and stared after him, her whole heart scythed. Beautiful,
beautiful
Dewi, she murmured, her chin lifting, her pupils dilating; beautiful,
beautiful
Dewi, standing right there, just in front of me, and as the cruel winter sky above is my witness, he didn’t even
know.
    ‘If you love to sew so much, why are you working as an estate agent?’
    ‘
What?
’ Ted did a double-take.
    They were crossing the road together, strolling directly towards the four people on the opposite pavement.
    A fifth was just joining them. Another man, grossly overweight and wearing thin, green, tie-dyed trousers with a black and red striped mohair
Dennis the Menace
jumper. His name was Shoes. Wesley knew him well, but as he approached, his face showed no inkling of recognition. Not for Shoes. Not for Doc. Not for any of them.
    His eyes hiccoughed slightly, however, at the sight of Hooch’shat; the incongruously cuddly logo, then they focussed straight in on the girl. He stepped up onto the kerb.
    ‘Who said anything about sewing?’ Ted asked quietly. Wesley didn’t answer. He was standing directly in front of Josephine.
    ‘Someone must be paying you,’ he murmured silkily, inspecting her face which was plain –like he’d imagined –but with something about the mouth, the chin, that seemed oddly exceptional. A firmness. A roundness. She was a Jersey Royal, he decided. Not your average potato. She was small and smooth and seasonal. Her hazel eyes were liquid, like a glass of good cask whisky mixed with water.
    ‘Pardon?’ She looked quite astonished to see him. So close.
    ‘Someone must be paying you. You don’t look like the others. You aren’t like them.’
    ‘I’m Jo from Southend,’ Jo found herself saying.
    ‘
I
don’t care where you live,’ Wesley said, ‘you’re wasting your time here. You won’t find what you’re looking for. Go back to Southend…’ his voice dropped, unexpectedly, ‘
while you still can.
D’you hear?’
    He turned –not even waiting for an answer –then he paused, ‘You have jam,’ he said, ‘on your sweatshirt.’
    Jo looked down. ‘I was eating a doughnut,’ she muttered, trying to lift off the worst of it with her thumb.
    Wesley was already walking.
    ‘How did you know?’ Ted asked, quickly catching up, ‘about the sewing?’
    ‘Ah,’ Wesley touched the tip of his nose mysteriously with his glossy stump. ‘You
smelled
it?’
    ‘When I picked up your jacket,’ Wesley demurred, ‘I noticed the handmade label. Beautifully finished. Just like the original. And you were comforting yourself,’ he continued, ‘earlier, when we were walking, by rattling that bunch of keys. It reminded me of the sound of a machine…’ he paused, ‘and I couldn’t help noticing how you felt the curtain fabric in Katherine’s house. Almost without thinking. And the material on the cushion covers. Plus you havetwo strange calluses on your index fingers. It all seemed pretty… well, pretty conclusive, really.’
    ‘Nobody knows that I sew,’ Ted whispered, at once amazed and conspiratorial, ‘except my Great Aunt who taught me. You’re the first. You must promise not to tell.’
    ‘Tell?’ Wesley chuckled. ‘Who would I tell? More to the point,
why
would I tell them?’
    Ted held on tight to his briefcase, saying