amwriting – Stefanie Moore

A Woman Builds A Man

Transcript from opening remarks by our keynote speaker, Professor Juniper Thrust

And now the question will always be – where to start – you see, you see? Never easy is it. Like sponge cakes, homemade aphrodisiacs and garden furniture, it looks a doddle.

But let’s take garden furniture. Where would you start? No, nothing in front of you. No blueprint, no manual. You’d know you’d need to arrive at a table and chairs but the proportions and dimensions and the joints and the adhesives don’t come quick, do they? No, what I mean is the difference with garden furniture and homemade aphrodisiacs and whatever else I said, was it an egg sandwich? No with these things, you start with the base materials and a recipe, or an idea of a recipe at the very least to get you where you are going.

But man is the double bluff. We think we know everything but we start with nothing. And we know nothing. So really, the process is about how we deal with the experience of nothing or the realisation at the start of knowing nothing when we thought we knew everything. And that is what proves the undoing of an erstwhile creative force. It overwhelms. Belittles. Taunts. Denies.

We’re not in egg sandwich territory anymore!

It was Tribbet who made a first attempt to delineate all the qualities of a man and the concomitant methodology for his creation.

I see you have your Tribbet with you. Nice and new. An unbent spine. Good! An unbent spine is how it should be with Tribbet. Do not read. Tribbet makes a valiant attempt to control and objectify what we are doing here but we, we are straddling the line between art and science and we will not be textbooked!

So I’m sorry if you got it for the course. The Tribbet. Do you have the receipt still?

Please do not buy the textbooks. For there is no methodology when making a man, there is only instinct and trust and perseverance. Write that down instead, if you must.

While Tribbet arguably excelled at proportion and mental dimension (the garden furniture again), she utterly failed in the consideration and inclusion of the one of the principles of my pedagogy – you must have quirks in the organic material.

Show of hands – does your man have blue eyes? Dark brown hair, a Celtic brogue – a good 12 of you, fans of a certain Irish Romance Writer, I presume. Lovely stuff. But how about wrinkles? Acne scars? Triangulated moles? A birthmark that comes out in the sun? I implore you to think beyond the obvious, the perfect in your incantations. Perfection is bland.

Quirks in the organic material. The last time I made a man, I gave him three fingers on one hand and we had a wild time coming up with the reason why, he and me together.

Which brings me to synchronicity. The first time I made a man was when I found a driver’s licence in the back garden of my little crofter’s cottage in Devon. My son immediately assumed it was an intruder – how else could it be there – and demanded that I call the police. I nodded, promised to do as he suggested and scurried that little card away from his purview into my private place, a turn of the century jewellery box that I’d hidden beneath the floorboards.

The man in question – and I shall protect his identity for he is now a mixologist of some note in the province of Bolton – rather the licence of the man in question was a provisional licence. Immediately a brain honed in book clubs and writer’s groups sprang into action. A man – from the photo in his forties – intense and expressive with a side cocked nose and one continuous eyebrow – why would he only have a provisional license? I grew up in a nuclear family which went well, nuclear – but I hold onto a lot of those conditioned beliefs. The woman cooks. The man drives. So what caused the anomaly here?

New to this country? Perhaps in reality an accomplished motorist at home but thwarted by his provisionality here – or riches to rags? Always previously had a driver? I would spend hours, speculating on this with the peonies, or in bed, my fat feet in the air and my throat in my ears just singing of him.

Never once did I think of investigating his whereabouts. Yes, I have the internet, but no. To jump into my imagination felt like diving into a deep blue infinity pool, untarnished by the turds and tourists of fact and obligation.

Regarding the licence my son asked but once, and then muttered and shuttered himself in his bedroom with the bluelight; just so I began to sequester myself. Regarding my sanity, he commented but once that I had ‘lost my mind’. Work had called about my absence and he didn’t see why he had to make excuses. ‘After all’ he said. ‘I’m not dad, am I?’. Thank god I thought to myself. ‘Thank God’ I said aloud and he shuttered and muttered himself into the blue light again.

I first noticed the milk – his milk – curdled in the fridge, untouched. No note.

And it was while I was looking at the curdled milk in the fridge that I began to think about turning and changing and about the man on the driver’s licence and how to make him mine or real or both. I looked around my kitchen – the large oak table, the aga, the pantry that I kept stocked with all the chemicals and biological components specific to my profession. And I thought – now is the time to make him, the man on the licence, mine and real and both.

Ad this is where synchronicity led me – the discovery of the driver’s licence when I was at what my sister called my ‘lowest ebb’, my general malaise with the industry’s refusal to embrace my views on the potential of science, art and witchcraft, plus the abandonment of my adult son, these conditions gave up the terrain and desire for my experimentation.

Does that sound callous about my son? Well you’re here and you wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t made the choice to be societally a ‘terrible mother’. So how do you feel about yourself now?

Right. So we have quirks in the organic material, synchronicity and lastly and briefly, mystery. As you will know, there is a fairly sizeable chunk in all of my collected works which is just blank pages. Deliberate – you need to accept the unknowable. Granted, you need to have a very clear backstory for your man as gaps are terribly embarrassing later when you are attempting to pass at a party. Please ladies – decide in advance if he understands Scrabble! But beyond that – I cannot teach you – you have to trust in the alchemy, be of university standard across all three academic sciences and have an openness to the fourth science, a woman’s wisdom.

And access to fresh meat. Lots of it. More than you think. Befriend your butcher.

I thank you for your time and interest and open the floor to questions.

Trina Belmont Takes a Break

Dr Bart floats past, two nurses in pursuit.

Mother is reading Photoplay and wants me to know this; she sniffs and shifts in her seat. Then I see why – it has Ava on the cover in mink, meaning that I’m p.32, one column including headshot: ‘Trina Belmont Takes a Break’, between adverts for Drano and Mandel’s stilettos.

Stilettos. I think about borrowed heels. My first audition.

‘We need to see your upper torso,’ said the man behind his paper behind the bar.

‘Why?’

‘So we know you’re not cheating us.’

Dr Bart reappears. I think about Ava in mink and part my lips, lift an eyebrow. A nurse sees me and gives a little heart shaped gasp; she looks better for it, as do I.

‘Would you come through?’ she says.

I smile the smile I honed in ‘Evergreen’ and follow her.

‘Lie down, Miss.’

I do as I’m told. Mother is talking but it’s two jigsaws at once –her voice and then that make-up girl on set that time, who’d talked about pomades and hair- loss. Why do I remember? I don’t know. I was tired then, too; I’d been stood on a plinth and given roller-skates to hold. Without a thought for why, I bared my teeth and plumped my lips. Then I was holding a cheetah cub, and the very liveness of this thing slapped me round – I didn’t knowwhat to do, to be with it – but I bared my teeth and plumped my lips. The photographer nodded, set up.

I never saw that photo and I doubt that it’s anywhere now.

Dr Bart arrives. He whispers to me from somewhere down his throat, about rest and dressings, dressings and rest. I’ve seen him before, buying groceries, with his wife, who was round and ashen and looked forgotten. I was unpacking the eggs when the studio called: Mr Braunstein was unhappy. ‘Stars don’t buy tuna-fish, not in slacks’, apparently. So Dr Bart had seen me, too.

Still, we all serve a purpose, don’t we? Years later, I’m in the chair, getting made up to be ‘Mother’ in ‘Fireside’. I remember Bart’s wife and her twilit eyes. But when I’m tilted upright, it’s not Mrs Bart that I see in the mirror. It’s Trina Belmont, who took a break – and still got old.

Sunday, 1st January, 1978

This time 44 years ago, my mum was very pregnant and probably annoyed with all of that kind of stuff. She would still look immaculate, mind – she would have shot herself rather than give in to the spread of me across her hips and round her middle – I imagine her in a belted, sunchair-patterned jumpsuit, spraying her hair up and slicking it on, whatever it is. What were they told to eat and not eat back then? Were they told anything? Did she ignore? Or follow strictly? And herein lies a big cavity in our relationship – she never said, perhaps out of guilt. I think she drank a bit, smoked a bit, and none of these things would have bothered her until the day that I, aged 5, came into her room and told her that my breathing was funny and all the subsequent days spent in hospitals with a plastic mask on my face, staring at the kind of psychotic bunny-rabbit murals that were a speciality of Children’s Wards in the 80s. I think she always blamed herself a little bit after that.

The nearest my mum would get to admitting to a fault would be a kind of sarcastic, righteous indignation, a sort of ‘how could you even think of that?’ attitude upgraded with an imperious eyebrow and sucked in cheeks, loaded with so many layers of connotations that I was never sure what I actually felt, what she actually felt, what actually happened or how I was supposed to actually respond.

I’m surprised that more women didn’t explode in the 70s. The combination of nylon and polyester fabrics to be worn, sat upon, walked upon and laid under, combined with flammable cosmetics and electric heaters, must have made them as hot as the sun . Especially pregnant women, carrying little heatsacks within them, generating the kind of heat only rivalled by an oven baked cherry tomato.

But still, despite the smoking, drinking and combustible elements that she surrounded herself with, she’d made it this far. To Sunday, the 1st January 1978.

I hope she was putting her feet up. I doubt it. My dad was not the most attentive soul – though I hope that he had at least noticed that she was pregnant by then. I’ll never know – my mum died in September and with her went a wealth of details and memories that even the most talkative and generous relationship (which is what we had) doesn’t always yield up. This is something that I’m realising now, almost every day as my mind pelts me with trivia questions that I have no way of answering. What was her nursery teacher called? Her favourite skirt? How did my mum feel that first morning in 1978?

These are not the worst things of living without my mum.

But I suppose, the best I can do, as a writer, is to change the tone at the start of this New Year for both her and me, 44 years apart.

I’m going to write her in a moment of peace. Sunday, 1st January 1978. She’s up, she’s dressed, my sister is playing with a doll, or eating a sugar sandwich in another room. And my mum is sitting on our flower-patterned settee with a cup of tea in her hand. Her other hand strays onto her bump and rests there. It’s the first time that she’s thought about the reality of me and not the laundry or the Tan-Sad or the Sunday Dinner. It’s one of those insignificant moments, a flashpoint – the settee, the tea, the bump and her – and it stays with her for years afterwards, forever in fact. It’s a moment of contentedness, of stillness, of not trying and she thinks about the me in her womb and what I’ll become. I flicker then, a tail across the ocean.

And she smiles.

Vol-Au-Vents

We were right about the seesaw. The bolts holding the plank in place on top had turned scab orange with rust and the paint, light sky blue, had been driven off by the rain and hale, only residue trails left behind in curls..

I pushed back on my stiletto heels, sending the big ache up my calves and into my thighs. Jamie flung a stone at the seesaw and missed. The seesaw bobbed.

‘Time to go’ I said as statement-ly as I could.

‘We should try it.’ Said Jamie. ‘Jim Snr wanted us to try it.’

‘Get on it then’ I said and then I turned my back on the seesaw and looked over at the swings and the roundabout and the climbing frame, all of which were rusty but not warped and split and splintered like the seesaw.

When I turned back, Jamie was crouching over the seat of the seesaw, his white knees shining up past his elbows, his feet splayed and rolling inwards with the effort. His eye was trained on the seat opposite and he looked like nothing more than a dog, shamed and dignified, avoiding my eye.

‘I will not sit with you, Jamie’ I said.

I moved towards the other end of the seesaw and the plastic green panel that served as a seat. I sat abruptly, side-saddle, dumping Jamie lightly into the blue air above.

We settled at the midpoint. My knees gripped on to nothing. Jamie said nothing for the longest time. Two minutes we sat there. I was thinking almost the whole time about the vol-au-vents they’d served, the ones with the chicken and mushroom filling and how special a vol-au-vent always made me feel. And then I thought about eating more vol-au-vents, on a regular basis, because what’s to stop me? Why are they seen as something for a special day only? I think vol-au-vents would be excellent at breakfast, especially. I would fill my vol-au -vents with creamy, creamy is best. And prawns. Why shouldn’t I have prawns in vol-au-vents? At breakfast? I will have prawns in vol-au-vents at breakfast.

‘Thank you’ said Jamie, who had been crying. He started to rise up. I sunk deeper and the ache moved from my knees to my calves again, like lava lamps filled with big pain bubbles.

Jamie held out his hand.

‘I mean it. Thank you for coming to Jim Snr’s Seesaw with me.’

I took hold of his hand, let him lead me away from the park; I would have vol-au-vents everyday, if I kept this up.

Like Busses

I have a strange approach to memory. I mean, I don’t know because I don’t really know how anyone else’s memory works, even when they say ‘oh my memory is terrible’. It’s all approximation, baby. But I’m going to go ahead and presume that mine is neither orthodox or particularly good.

I can’t remember dates, years, locations, events or even humans very well, but if I try to remember a very particular thing, like, when did I first hear the phrase, ‘Like busses, there’ll be two along at the same time’, what I see in my head is a wind swept playground in front of a low red brick primary school. I don’t know if there’s any correlation between this phrase and the place, but it’s what I see in my head.

I am envious, in awe and suspicious of people who can recall moments with ease. How the fuck does anyone write an autobriography? ‘I first met Joaquin at a drinks party given by Sooki. We were at a bar in Mayfair, The Chiselled Chimp’. He was wearing a blue cashmere rollneck and initiated conversation by enquiring after my Chagalls. We drank ‘Noisy Williams’ till dawn ..’ (Yes, this is my idea of glamour. No apologies.)

How do people remember to remember this detail? Or do people who write autobiographies have the self belief to think ‘I should probably note all this down because I’m the kind of important person who will have to write an autobiography one day’? Which is how and why they end up writing an autobiography.

So this is why I can pin down (or think I can pin down, in some way) the phrase, ‘Like Busses’ but not where I spent Christmas two years ago. Oh and if you’re not familiar with the phrase, “Like Busses’, it basically refers to the idea that nothing will come along for ages and then two will come along at the same time and can refer to anything; job interviews, lottery wins, unsolicited travelling salespeople. It’s kind of rueful and carries that sort of pissy British way of downplaying the hand of fate with it. I recall hearing it a few times in it’s full form ‘Like Busses, you want it for ages and then two come along at once’) until finally I must have given off the air of being someone who understood the phrase at which point it was shortened to ‘Like Busses, isn’t it?’ With whom I shared this landmark moment remains a mystery of course, but when I think of this particular ‘Like Busses’ I see the shop front of a butchers in my hometown. Memory, huh.

And I also wonder if the phrase ‘like busses’ is in itself, a bit ‘like busses’, because, after a long drought, I heard it twice yesterday in entirely separate contexts; I said it at exactly the same time as another woman in the post office queue and then we’d laughed at the very ‘like bussiness’ of it. The second time was later, and with thanks, in my own head, when I opened my email to see that two piece of flash fiction had been accepted after a long and stomach churning silence. Like Busses, I tell you.

Quick – Before the Monkeys Get Me!

It has been a while, hasn’t it? And honestly, if I had to compile a ‘greatest hits of 2018’, even if i combined it with ‘wackiest nights out’ and the ‘memorable moments’ package, there wouldn’t be enough to fill an ad break. For clarity, I should add that no one has actually approached me to put this together, so don’t worry, you won’t have to watch it.

So what happened this year? Not a lot that is not solely attached to motherhood and while this is, yes, a big part of me and what I do, it is not the entirety of me. And now, as we shudder and jolt into December, one eye glued to the screen for news of Britain’s impending Brexit shaped implosion, the other scoping out black Friday deals, is there time for all this distraction to get a good thing going?

And it would appear, yes. I have momentum! I am writing again, not as part of Nanowrimo (although I salute all brave souls who are) but I just picked up a pen, chose a title, thought ‘this will probably be a bit shit’ and started writing! And you know what, it was a bit shit! But it was writing! And I have kept this going for the past two weeks. I’ve submitted some flash and I’m working on an application for a mentoring programme. I’ve become much less precious about what I’m working on. Lightness of touch is everything, although a creeping doubt has started to set in . My brain is run by a panel of monkeys in lab coats who throw out suggestions, instructions or queries at random – most often ‘You suck!’ ‘What even is this?’, ‘Why?’ or ‘Your kid hates you’. Which I, for reasons unbeknownst, then take as gospel. So, I am fully expecting the panel of monkeys in lab coats to wake up soon – I’ve never had such a long run without their toxic input – and my question is – how do I keep going? I can’t get rid of them, so how can I circumvent their meddling and keep the pen on the page? Writers, please let me know how you do this because I am sure that I’m not the only one out there. All suggestions taken very seriously and will be followed to the tee.

Stag Party

I returned the handset to its brass cradle and looked at the man, who hovered near the only open doorway in a rectangle of yellow light.

‘Thank you.’

He shrugged. It’s a good job it happened when it did. There’s nothing for quite some way. “

‘I know.’

“How long did they say?’

“The standard. Within four hours.’ I rolled my eyes, but he just nodded. Of course – an old man in a castle had probably never needed the AA.

‘Do come through – keep warm.’ He’d already turned away and headed out of view.

Well, that was settled, then. I licked something from my lip into my mouth. It had a mealy texture – a small fly? Too late: I’d swallowed it, so I grimaced to myself and headed across the flagged floor tiles towards the yellow rectangle.

Pleasebeahouse pleasebeahouse pleasebeahouse: I’d belted it out all the way down that gravel path, mainly to drown the rasps of a dying engine but also in to summon up whatever gods or demons might exist in the nether regions of this nethery land. Serendipity (the goddess of shouty singing it would appear) repaid me with a country estate slap bang at the end of the driveway, one which had broad steps tapering to a mahogany door, a façade like a wedding cake and a curly crest embedded in stone above the first-floor windows. Two wings either side retreated into darkness, like stepsons, knowing their place. It was in to one of these wings that I now headed, along a narrow stone corridor, feeling like Scooby Doo and thrilling at the reality in which I now found myself.

‘This is a beautiful house.’ I whispered. ‘Do you live here?’

‘Yes. It’s been in the family since the 17^th Century.’ His voice was soft, a low blend of highland burr with a drawl inherited from a public schooling south of the border. I’d seen it in his face when he opened the door; the soft chin, the downturned mouth, satisfied as if savouring a good vintage. Be-yond posh. So, when he stopped short ahead of me I dropped a curtsey, a girlish maid in a mansion.

He flicked a light switch and turned to face me. ‘Here we are!’ A lupine smile before he retreated into a small room, a room dominated by the smell of damp digestive biscuit and bum-worn horse saddles. It took me a while to adjust to the dim wattage, but even when I did, the room stayed murky and brown and orange, so stuffed with belongings that I was thrown back through the years to desultory days with my grandad, mooching around on the outskirts of cobbled towns looking at bric a brac in fading shops, German exchange trip weather purging all vitality out through the ends of my fingers.

In light of what happened afterwards, the details are hard to recall, but I remember seeing the man with his back to me, hands plunged into a white plastic bookcase, fiddling between a food processor and an old Encyclopaedia. Next to the bookcase there was a pan of congealed baked beans on top of a small camping stove which was slumped across some floral photo albums. Other details swam up through the soup; a brood of blown glass piggies on a rusty dumb bell doorstop, a badger’s head on the wall wearing a purple baseball cap which bore the logo: ‘Dunny Construction’; plates and paintings of horses, fruit bowls, country cottages, all hung too low to be anything but in the way. Tin huntsmen rode a disconnected car radio. Doilies! On the other side of the room, almost hidden beneath piles of newspapers and sleeping bags, was a camp bed. There was a pottery pug on the floor beside it, its concave belly filled with dark yellow piss. I noticed it just as the man turned, holding a silver tray, a crystal decanter and glasses which he placed on a scuffed tapestry footstool. What had happened here?

He swept a pile of papers from a camping chair on to what may have been a piece of gym equipment and gestured for me to sit. ‘There – whiskey – no ice, I’m afraid.’ He poured the drinks, then, pulling up the knees on his rust brown cords, settled back into the deck chair opposite. He beamed at me, then remembered why I was there and shifted down a gear to serious-face. ‘Four hours, you say?’

‘Could be.’ I raised my glass and we drank.

‘Where are you headed?’

‘Inverness. I’m interviewing a band up there.’ His eyes followed the movement of my face, his mouth open. He licked the creases at the corners of his lips before he spoke. ‘Music?’

‘Yes.’

‘What sort of music?’

‘All kinds’. This wasn’t true, but experience told me that explaining would force us down a strange route.

‘Aha’.

We drank again. The window rattled. And then I remembered what I’d heard.

‘Do you live here alone?’ It was the only way I could think to raise it. He looked frail; I could feel his bones lurking, pressed up close to the skin’s surface, waiting to break through.

‘Yes’.

‘And – do you own the – whole bit? I mean the land?’

‘Up to the high road.’

‘Okay’ I puffed out my cheeks, but had to hold back a smile at the sheer camp of it all – in a creepy mansion with an old posh man – I thought of Scooby Doo again, then straightened my face. ‘I think there’s someone out there.’

He kept smiling, so I kept going. ‘When I came up the track, I mean I was singing to myself but still – I heard something – from the thicket on the left. It was quite close to the house. And it sounded like laughing. Like men laughing.’

‘Right.’ His voice was clipped, no inflection to suggest concern or alarm. It was a cautionary full stop and it irritated me; I like to supply my own punctuation.

‘Was it an animal?’

‘No, no, probably not an animal.’

‘Well – what was it? ‘

‘We have guests at the moment.’

‘Right. Is it an event or something?’

‘Yes. They’ve rented the house for a stag party.’ He smiled. ‘Would you like some more whiskey? Ah no! You have your concert. What sort of music is it this time?’

‘I don’t know.’ I was exasperated by his politesse; I meant to offend, yet he showed no sign of withering. He drank. We both drank. We both looked at our glasses, and then the party came to us.

I think I heard it first. Maybe he dozed off, though in light of what he was expecting to happen, it seems unlikely. But I heard it: a bundle of man-noise, rasping and burbling with alcohol, most of it shouts and hoots, but assembling sometimes to produce a surprising melody in a way that only random mob sounds and a fertile imagination can. Bloody men. My ear traced their movement across the lawn, then the gravel and then the final act: a strong slam on the front door. At this, the man pitched forward. ‘Do excuse me.’ He left and shut the door behind him.

I put down my glass. There was an egg stain on the corner of the footrest and this, of all things, made me uneasy, so I looked at the bookcase, which is when the funny thing caught my eye. Up close, I could see what it was: a pair of antlers, shaved down, the edges exposed and sharp, to about half a metre in height. They were glued and then stitched on to a red woollen beret, which had little bells hanging from its brim. It was beautiful and strange and the fabric felt soft and the antlers cool and clean.

The man returned. ‘There we are – all sorted’

‘I was looking at your hat.’ I said brightly.

‘Sorry?’

‘Your hat – are they real antlers?’ I held it out in front of me.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

He moved closer to me then. He was actually very tall when he stood close. He crooned in my ear. ‘It’s a silly thing, isn’t it? We played with it as children. It made us feel like clowns.’ He tipped his head to one side in a coy gesture of curiosity. ‘Do you like it?’

‘Ha. Yes. Yes, I do.’ I turned it around in my hands, but kept one eye on the man’s face, which had grown large next to my shoulder. His breath was shallow and rapid against my collarbone.

‘Well– would you like to try it on? There’s no one else to – see – you know.’ His voice was a thin needle of a whine, a man child, pleading with nanny. I should have gone then, right then, but a combination of things was acting upon my will; the whiskey, the hat, that crusted yellow egg and finally, the need for something to happen in this house. I probably wouldn’t make the gig, but I would have a terrific bit on the crazy upper classes for the website.

So I put on the hat and felt its weight.

Reader, there was no thunderbolt; I didn’t vaporise into blue smoke and return as Artemis – I remained a woman in a shitty room, just with antlers on her head. But the man took a step back and clapped his hands together, once. From man child to boy child, he was transformed.

‘You look majestic!’

‘Yes, I feel noble.’ I did not feel noble.

He brightened. ‘I know – would you like to see a painting of my father with the stag. With – your stag?’

Not really, I thought. ‘Ooh yes!’ I said.

He guided me by the elbow out of the doorway and back down the corridor, hunching his shoulders and ducking his head as he walked before me. I realise now that I had, in that moment, become his queen, he a gleeful supplicant. But I was the one with the bells, which leapt and danced and made merry about my head –was I a jester? I’d decided to definitely leave by the time that we arrived in the hallway, where he led me to the painting. He stepped back.

‘My father – with your antlers.’

The painting was hard to see, because the gloss of the oil bounced back the light and obscured the surface. But there he was. The stag, my stag, was eye height, his head, poor slack eyed thing, slung back over a small mound on the sandy earth beneath him. The hunter, wearing tweed and a familiar dreary expression, stood alongside his quarry, thinking about teacups and velcro for all I could surmise from his expression.

‘Those are my antlers?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Oh’. And suddenly I didn’t want a dead animal on my head. And I didn’t want to be in the house at all. I moved to take the hat off. He put a hand on my shoulder to stop me and shook his head. I had to leave.

‘I should call to see about the car people.’

‘But it could take four hours, couldn’t it?’ A glint of the tooth in his voice.

‘I might peep out and see if everything is okay’. A whisper.

He unbolted the door.

‘Good idea, my lady. You might get it going again, might you?’ His voice grew to a cackle from a bubble, the manchild – boychild – devilchild – his full form revealed. I was just too late to see his face.

He opened the front door and thrust me through with such force that I stumbled, the antlers pulling me forwards down the steps. I yanked the hat and threw it, poor thing, away from me – again too late – I’d been marked. Torchlight blinded. I turned to see the man, but he was mahogany again. Incantations rose out of the dark and antlers or not, I knew that I would have to run and soon.