Three Button Trick and Other Stories (29 page)

She stood up.

It was late and Parker was pulling on his coat. She had given him the key to the side gate.

‘I'd give you the house keys,' she said, ‘only I've not got an extra set.'

He smiled at her. He found it strange that she'd have sex with him, let him inside her, but the keys to her home she couldn't quite trust him with.

‘I wish you could bring the duck along while you're fixing up the filter,' she said, out of the blue, as he was walking through her front door.

‘What?'

‘The duck. He'd do well on my two ponds but I don't think the fish would like it.'

Parker laughed. ‘There is no duck,' he said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘No duck. I made it up.'

She stared at him, her mouth open, barely comprehending. Eventually she said, ‘But the duck … that was the best part of it.'

‘Of what?'

‘The story. The duck …' She looked flabbergasted.

Parker put his head to one side, still smiling. ‘While I was filling out that quiz you brought me in a cup of tea, remember?'

She nodded.

‘And I saw the bangle you were wearing, full of fish and birds and stuff. I thought the duck story would appeal to you. That was all.'

‘So you lied on your application form?'

‘Doesn't everybody? Didn't you?' Somehow, though, he thought he already knew the answer to this question. ‘It doesn't matter,' he said. ‘It's only a question of telling the right kind of lies.'

‘Doesn't matter? Of course it matters.'

‘You really want the full picture?'

His smile was strange, suddenly, and full of pain. ‘You don't want the full picture,' he said, answering his own question. ‘You wouldn't recognize the full picture if someone sat down and painted every tiny stroke of it straight on to your pretty hands and your silly face.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘You didn't know I was disabled but you came to certain conclusions about me because of my writing, you read into what I'd written things I hadn't said. It was kind of …' he paused and considered for a moment, ‘kind of despicable.'

“Was it all lies?'

‘Only the duck.'

‘So you are a liar. I was right. I was right about you.'

He ignored this. ‘Was I a liar,' he asked, ‘before I filled in your stupid quiz form?'

She stared at him in silence for a while and then she put out her hand. ‘Can I have my key back?'

‘Why?'

‘I don't want you fitting my filter any more. I feel weird about this now.'

‘Don't be foolish. I'll fix the filter.'

‘Give me the key.'

He laughed and handed her the key. She closed the door on his smiling face. She wrapped her arms around her breasts and shuddered.

It took almost an hour for the police to arrive. The constable who finally turned up was thickset and blond-haired and held his hat under his arm like it was a baby. He had a habit, Bethan noticed, of wiping his palms on the side of his thighs. She invited him in.

He took out his notebook and waited for her to say something.

‘I came home from work,' she said, ‘to discover that someone had broken into my property, through the back gate …'

‘Did they force the lock?'

‘No. I think they broke the lock and then replaced it. I found some new keys posted through my letterbox.'

‘Someone changed the locks and then posted the new keys through your letterbox?'

‘Yes.'

‘Do you happen to know who might have done such a thing?'

‘Yes. I know who did it. He's called Parker Swells.'

Bethan spelled Parker's name out loud and checked as the constable wrote it on his pad.

‘I have his address and all the details you could want about him, only everything's still at work …'

The policeman nodded. ‘And what, exactly,' he said, ‘apart from changing the lock on your back gate, did he actually do?'

‘Come outside.'

Bethan took the police officer into her back garden. She pointed. He looked around him. There was little to see. A neat lawn, flowerbeds, nothing amiss.

‘He stole my ponds,' she said, her voice cracking.

‘Your what?'

She pointed. He saw five, large, beautiful fish in a curious selection of small, clear-glass containers.

‘He stole my ponds.'

Ponds, the policeman wrote down in his book. Stolen.

Bethan watched as he wrote this. His writing, she saw, was round and girlish and immature. She wished they'd sent someone else. He clearly wasn't going to prove competent.

‘And why do you think he did this? Why did he steal your ponds?'

Bethan didn't know. She couldn't answer. She felt so ridiculous.

‘He had a duck, a pet duck,' she said, eventually. ‘Maybe he stole them for his duck.'

She glanced up and saw the policeman was smiling at her. She looked away.

‘Those are beautiful,' he said, indicating towards the fish. She nodded. Her fish hung, suspended, in their small, plain glass bowls; tight and bright and golden. Their gills moved; in and out, in and out. Bethan could clearly see every tiny little detail now.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1993, 1996, 1999 by Nicola Barker

cover design by Connie Gabbert

978-1-4532-8826-9

This edition published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media

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