Free Half-Sick of Shadows by David Logan Page A

china! You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble for wee old me.’ The Devil tempted Jesus in the desert. Don’t do it, Mother. Resist. ‘I think I made your wee boy jump clean out of his skin. Is he your youngest?’
    ‘That’ll be Edward.’
    Unfamiliar laughter followed. Horrible laughter. Laughter like the baying of a madwoman. Laughter without sincerity, high-pitched, with each ha distinct and a garden fence between it and its neighbour: ha/ha/ha, ha/ha/ha.
    ‘Edward! Get your sorry backside in here.’
    I advanced and peered into the room.
    She had a breathtaking ginger head. Without having seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed that ginger could be so ginger. Her head extended beyond her shoulders and made her seven feet tall.
    I entered the room. My sorry backside followed.
    The woman had taken a seat and Mother was pouring the tea.
    The woman spotted me, and I almost bolted again, but her words – ‘Hello, Edward’ – accompanied by a smile like the smiles of madmen who die laughing and crying at the same time glued me to the spot, and I could only move when Mother broke the spell by telling me to come in.
    This was my first experience of ‘a visitor’.
    Invited to take a seat, I took one on the battered sofa, as far away as I could get from the scary woman. Mother handed me the plate and I took a slice of shortbread. I sat on the edge of the cushion because if I sat back my feet dangled.
    ‘This is Mrs Wipple, Edward. She’s here to cut my hair.’
    But Mother cut her own hair! She kept the fringe out of her eyes with scissors and a mirror. The back grew largely unattended, although I did see her once clipping the tail end. If she hadn’t clipped the tail end now and then it would have trailed behind her on the ground. She cut Sophia’s hair too, and mine. And Father’s, Gregory’s and Edgar’s. When Granny Hazel was alive, Mother cut her hair too. Perhaps Mother and her scissors is why we all looked half baked.
    Things became pleasant as we ate the shortbread, Mother and Mrs Wipple chattering and me listening. Mother took the tray and empty cups away, with me hanging on to her tail, and returned with a hard chair from the kitchen – and me still hanging on to her tail. She placed the hard chair in the middle of the floor facing the fire. Mrs Wipple opened her large bag and took out various hair-cutting tools. She pointed a tin of beans at Mother’s head and the tin hissed. Not beans but a fine mist came out. She sprayed Mother’s hair so much I thought she would empty the can. Mother did have an awful lot of hair. Then Mrs Wipple combed Mother’s hair until it looked as if she had been out in the rain without her hat. As a final preparation before the cutting, she fitted a sort of towel with a hole in the middle over Mother’s head. Fascinating. I stayed to see the show.
    When Mother’s hair had been cut, dried and brushed, Mrs Wipple turned her horrendous, toothy grin on me. I panicked as if pressurized to say something in response to a question I hadn’t heard. Before I could think of anything, she asked, ‘What about you, Edward? Would you like your hair trimmed?’ Seeing panic greater than my own on Mother’s face, she added, ‘… at no extra cost, of course. After all, I’m here, and you’ve been kind enough to provide refreshment. Come and have your hair tidied for school, Edward.’
    Because Mother simply chopped at my hair when it got too long, I must have resembled a sea anemone removed from its habitat to Mrs Wipple. I sat on the chair. She put the hair-catching thing over my head before tilting it this way and that, frowning at it, and muttering about salvage operations. As she snipped, ruffled and combed she asked me if I thought I would like school.
    ‘Yes,’ I said, meaning no.
    What did I want to be when I grew up, she asked.
    ‘A spaceman,’ I replied, meaning an astronaut but unable to remember the word. The encyclopedia had a spaceman from