Whispers Through a Megaphone Read Free Page A

emotions with astounding clarity. Sometimes he wanted to tell them. He wanted to say hey, do you know how astounding this is, the way you know what you want? You may have a catalogue of neuroses, you may be anxious and depressed, but you actually know what you want .
    Sadie had her own theory about his confusion. She was convinced that he hadn’t been the same since Easter, when he walked into a giant garden gnome in B&Q. Who puts an enormous gnome right at the end of an aisle? Ralph had complained to the manager, calling it a MAJOR SAFETY ISSUE. When the manager laughed, trying to hide his amusement inside an unconvincing coughing fit, Ralph threatened to call the police. Yes, he was overreacting. Yes, he should have been looking where he was going. But sometimes a gnome is not a gnome: it is a giant symbol of everything that’s wrong with your life.
    Seconds before he headbutted the gnome, he was pretending to admire a vase of plastic daffodils. Insisting that they buy six bunches, Sadie was tweeting about how authentic they looked, how satisfying it was to have flowers that never died, and why hadn’t she thought of this before? Other people, miles away,were responding to her tweet. She was reading out their comments. Ralph stormed off down the aisle, unable to tolerate the peculiar hoo-ha evoked by the plastic daffodils, and he spotted Julie Parsley. Julie Parsley? And that was when he collided with the giant garden gnome.
    Sadie held up her phone, took a picture of him rubbing his head, sprinted into the customer toilets.
    What was Julie doing here in his local B&Q? Hadn’t she moved away? He remembered her singing ‘Move Over Darling’ on stage at the King’s Head; remembered her singing Ralph you’re so lovely, you really are lovely, to a melody she made up on the spot.
    Her hair was short and wavy now, like that French actor—what was her name? Audrey Tautou. Yes, that’s the one. Ralph’s memory was still intact, despite the bump on his head, but Julie Parsley was nowhere to be seen. Her absence made him furious, even though she had been absent for much longer than the past few minutes. It made him shout. It made him complain about HEALTH and SAFETY and the BLOODY STUPIDITY of making a gnome that was as SOLID as a FUCKING WALL.
    Ralph’s confusion had nothing to do with that day in B&Q.
    It had nothing to do with Julie Parsley, his first love, aged fifteen.
    And it had nothing to do with garden gnomes.

3
BUTTONS AND BUTTONS, MOON-HIGH
    W hen the headmaster set eyes on Frances Delaney, sweeping the floor of the school corridor wearing nothing but a pair of trainer socks, he stood perfectly still and watched. He had never seen anything as strange and beautiful. His face was usually grey but not today. She had coloured him in. All around her, children were being children: wild, callous and despicable. They were like beetles, creeping bugs with hard shells. They said what they liked with vile spontaneity. Apart from little Miriam Delaney, of course. She was quiet, well behaved, positively ghostly. And with a mother like this, who could expect anything less?
    He walked towards her, flicked the children away, took off his jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. She was warm, because her sweeping had been furious. When Frances cleaned, the bugs knew she was coming. Beside her feet the floor was shining.
    “I think you should come with me,” the headmaster said, leading Frances along the corridors to his office. Her eyes were glazed, there were no words in her mouth. He pulledhis National Trust blanket from the cupboard, blue and white and scratchy, smelling of tobacco. “Here,” he said, offering it to Frances. “We’ll find your clothes and then I’ll drive you home. Does that sound like a good plan, Mrs Delaney?” His palms were wet, his breathing was quick. “Were you actually wearing any clothes when you left the house?”
    That afternoon, at the end of the school day, Miriam walked home by