The Repossession Read Free

days she lost all faith, all confidence, and knew he was kissing someone else and had completely forgotten her.
    These were the days and hours when she wanted to kill herself. They occurred more often now. Time in this house moved in slow motion. Ice Ages could come and go and she would still be in this room waiting for the devil to show up. She would be the winner of Spurlake’s Young Miss Havisham award for patience.
    Somewhere outside she could hear a young girl was laughing, riding a bike up and down the street, like she was just learning to ride and couldn’t get enough of ringing that bell. A dog was barking some place further up the road. Wind rustled through the fir trees in the backyard. Somewhere out there, people were alive.

2
Bunk Science
    Rian passed the salad and tore off a piece of the French breadstick to eat. He wasn’t hungry but had to make like he was. At his mother’s insistence the Tulanes ate together at the table. The last family in Spurlake that still communicated, his mother often boasted, even though it was just the circumstance that forced the issue. Her being in a wheelchair following the road accident. There was no Mr Tulane at the table since last winter. His father had been driving fully loaded when he was hit by another vehicle on the highway in snow. He’d walked out of the wreck unscathed. His mother broke both her legs and was still in a wheelchair most of the day. The insurance paid out. By sheer luck his father never got tested for booze – at least not within forty-eight hours, as he had wandered off and found a doctor who said he’d had amnesia caused by the crash. By the time he showed up he was sober and clean and no one was any the wiser, except Rian’s mother who blamed him entirely.
    They had moved to a better, more suitable house where
    his mother could run her life and her insurance business without feeling anyone had to help. Mr Tulane was not needed on voyage and he’d gone. Rian wasn’t sure he missed him, or his drinking. The house was quieter without the shouting. Mr Yates was his father’s replacement. He was there for dinner Monday to Friday, some nights too. He was an accountant, and quite what his mother saw in him, with his red face and weight problem, Rian wasn’t sure. He had contrary opinions about everything, but his mother needed him and his ‘many kindnesses’. Few other men, she told him, would have such patience with her in this situation, so Rian accepted that he was a fixture. At least he didn’t drink.
    But he always had to have the last word.
    ‘All I’m saying, Rian, is that just because someone thought of it, it doesn’t mean it will come true. Teleportation is bunk. Pure bunk. No one will ever beam up Scotty. It’s impossible. The future never happened. There are no aliens and we don’t commute in flying cars. Star Trek is rubbish science. Bunk.’
    The usual dinner conversation. Rian would say something and Mr Yates MBA would pounce on it, try to make himself look clever, and his mother would eat it up.
    Nevertheless, Rian defended his position.
    ‘I’m just saying that if we accept climate change as
    inevitable then teleportation would eliminate air travel and that’s a whole lot of pollution that goes with it. We could save the polar ice caps and the bears.’
    Mr Yates stared at Rian a moment and Rian could see the muscles in his thick red neck pulsating as he sought to deliver a withering reply.
    ‘You shouldn’t bait Mr Yates, Rian,’ his mother said.
    ‘You know science fiction is just that – fiction.’
    ‘The problem with science fiction,’ Mr Yates finally barked, ‘is that it makes people believe that there are solutions for everything. There aren’t. Take teleportation.
    What you envisage is just magic. It can’t happen. The amount of energy needed to deconstruct a human made up of trillions upon trillions of atoms would be equivalent to the energy output of ten nuclear reactors, at least. Plus, reassembling