Free Natural Flights of the Human Mind by Clare Morrall Page B

something that’s going to drain her limited money supply? What’s the point?
    She hobbles around the house irritably, frustrated by her limitations. She’s been to the hospital and had her foot X-rayed, but it’s not broken, just sprained. It still hurts, though, and she left the car in Hillingham, so she can’t go out much. Normally at half-term she goes round the second-hand bookshops, looking for first editions. She’s wasting all her free time—
    She’s concerned about the car. Did she lock it securely? There’ll be vandals in Hillingham—people aren’t more honest because they live in the country. She spends time with her Biggles collection, taking the books out and dusting them, holding them, reading random sections. It’s so much easier to like an unreal person than a real one. There’s no mess. You can be sure that he won’t just disappear when you’re not looking.
    She concentrates on her writing. By now, Mandles has crashed into the sea and swum to a deserted beach, somewhere on the Devon coast. He is limping badly, having sprained his ankle in the wreckage.
    The sun was at its yenith, a brilliant, pulsating art of suffocating heat—
    Outside, it’s grey and windy, thick clouds lowering over the school, the poplar trees on the edge of the playground twisting furiously in the gale. She worries about the rain coming into her cottage through the holes in the roof.
    Every now and again, tiny traces of doubt tiptoe into her mind. Should she be doing something more useful with her time? But she loves the way her mind works when she writes—clearly, logically—and that she can organise everything. People do what she wants them to do. It gives her a control that she has never managed to master in her own life, however hard she tries, or angry she gets. Surely writing children’s books is a legitimate occupation.
    Philip Hollyhead, the headmaster, eventually comes to see her. He hovers on the doorstep. ‘Just came to see how you are, Doody.’
    Instant caring. It’s taken him nearly a week to walk the hundred yards from his house to hers. ‘Come in,’ she says, and hobbles into the kitchen ahead of him. ‘I’ll make you some tea.’
    ‘It’s not necessary.’ He talks to her with a detached indifference, as if she doesn’t matter.
    ‘What’s that got to do with it? Just sit down.’
    He sits down. She should have been a teacher. She likes telling people what to do—especially if they obey—and Philip is usually compliant because he’s used to it. His wife, Doris the Lion Tamer, gives orders all the time, and he slips easily into a nonchalant resignation to her demands. It infuriates Doody and makes her more determined to annoy him.
    ‘So, how’s the leg?’
    ‘It hurts,’ she says. ‘That’s why I’m limping.’
    He pauses, but she won’t say any more if he doesn’t ask.
    He looks uncomfortable at the kitchen table. He rarely comes into her house, and she knows how much he would like to examine the evidence of her existence, but she won’t let him. She watches him steadily, and he’s nervous about letting his eyes wander while he is being watched. He’s about fifty-five, and probably contemplating an early retirement. His hair is receding towards its own retirement, and the strands left at the back are an unrealistic solid brown. He probably gives it a rinse once a week, somehow avoiding dyeing the bald bits.
    ‘I’ve inherited a cottage,’ Doody says, as she plugs in the kettle.
    He looks pleased to have something to talk about. ‘What good news. Where is it?’
    ‘In Devon, on the coast, near the village of Hillingham. I expect you know it.’
    He doesn’t, of course, but she likes to make him feelignorant. ‘How exciting. Will you move down there?’ He lays his hands in front of him on the table and examines his fingernails. She can see that he’s wondering if she’ll give up her job.
    ‘No,’ she says. ‘I’ll sell it.’
    ‘Oh.’
    They’ve worked together