Free Little People by Tom Holt Page A

directly in my path like essential carriageway maintenance on a busy summer motorway. For someone who didn’t want me around, she was making it pretty hard to get away.
    â€˜Listen,’ I said. ‘Would it help if I was to say I’m sorry?’
    She frowned. ‘But you say it so often,’ she sighed. ‘All the bloody time, it’s like Pavlov’s dogs. I don’t suppose you even know you’re doing it, it’s so instinctive. Have you the faintest idea how annoying that gets, after a while?’
    I nodded. ‘It must be,’ I said, wondering what the hell she was going on about. ‘I don’t mean anything by it, if that’s any consolation.’
    Another sigh. ‘No, probably you don’t,’ she said. ‘You know what your problem is?’
    Well, talk about your no-brainers. Seeing elves, obviously. ‘Um,’ I replied.
    â€˜Your problem is,’ Cru went on, ‘you just don’t stop and think about other people. Ever. As far as you’re concerned, the world consists of you right there in the middle, and a lot of little flat cut-outs spinning round you, like one of those mobile things we had when we were kids. You—’
    â€˜You had one of them as well, did you?’
    â€˜What?’ She blinked at me, as if she hadn’t been expecting any input from my direction at that particular juncture. ‘Look, do you mind not interrupting when I’m telling you something really important? Thank you. Oh hell, where’d I got to?’
    â€˜Mobiles,’ I replied. ‘I had one hanging off my ceiling, with Father Christmas and his reindeer. We made it at play school out of cardboard and silver paper.’
    â€˜Will you shut up about stupid bloody mobiles? Thank you,’ she continued, breathing out through her nose. ‘Where we’d actually got to, before you started drivelling about cardboard silver reindeer, was chronic egocentricity and total lack of regard for other people. Would you like to talk about that for a minute or so?’
    Not particularly; but it had to be better than not talking at all. Besides, buried deep in the male survival kit of instinctive abilities there’s an amazingly useful little function that allows you to look attentively serious, nod your head and grunt ‘Mphm’ in all the right places whenever the significant female in your life launches into a monologue prefaced by ‘We really have got to talk this through’, leaving the conscious mind at liberty to drift off and amuse itself with imaginary football matches, car-engine fault diagnosis, quadric equations and other more congenial stuff. I put the facility on standby, relaxed the muscles of my back and shoulders, and replied, ‘All right.’
    She sighed. ‘What’d be the point?’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t understand, it’d just be a waste of time and breath.’
    I managed to keep myself from saying, Oh good, that’s all right, then , and restricted myself to a contrite stare at my toecaps. False modesty apart, I’m good at that particular stare, probably because I’ve had so much practice. One of the few benefits of having spent so much time in the wrong I could claim it as my domicile for tax purposes.
    â€˜Anyway,’ she said. ‘We won’t discuss that any more. I forgive you, even if you are a shallow, self-centred insensitive bastard.’
    â€˜Thank you,’ I replied.
    â€˜Don’t mention it.’
    â€˜So.’ Cru fidgeted with her hands, like Lady Macbeth with a hangnail. ‘You have a good Christmas, then?’
    â€˜No, not really.’
    â€˜Neither did I.’ Her lower lip quivered – a warning to sensible men to remember appointments in distant cities. ‘I had a thoroughly rotten Christmas, if you must know. Shall I tell you why?’
    Though I’d spent most of my English grammar lessons drawing Klingon