Chapter Three

"What did you make of Bracken, then," asked Adric McGuff, who was Aloysius's manager.

They were sitting in the poky staff room ingesting coffee and cake after a rough couple of hours shelving books and the like.

Aloysius tried to think of the words. Tentatively, like a mouse emerging from its house to engage in some sort of metaphor, he ventured,

"She seems a little... Spiky?"

"What, like an armadillo?"

"You mean porcupine, surely?"

"No I don't, porcupines are the feathery things aren't they? And don't call me Shirley."

"Stop trying to pad out the word count by spouting needless non sequiturs."

"Sorry," Adric said, rubbing his eyes vigorously using his hands, of which he had the usual number, "but you’ve got to admit, it's too early for this."

"It's quarter to five!"

"Yes well, I'm not a morning person."

Aloysius was puzzled, and not for the first time that day, as the more astute of you readers may recall from previous chapters. But he sucked it up and got on with it, because that’s what a manly man would do. Then he'd probably punch some guy in the face, then catch and eat some raw meat. But this isn't that kind of story. Not yet anyway.

"So you found her a wee bit defensive, then?"

"You could say that. She seemed alright, quite a strong character, but like, with issues of some kind. Is that baby hers?"

Adric looked surprised, which basically meant his eyebrows went further up his face than usual for a short period of time. This looked quite comical, and the amusing effect was heightened by the presence of a large white blob of cream above his right eyebrow.

'How did that even get there,' Aloysius wondered, by which point it was too late to say anything because Adric was talking and had been for several minutes.

"- and so me and Vhairi think it might be a ghost."

Aloysius wondered whether he would get away with it if he asked Adric to start again.

"I can see you don't believe me,” he was saying. “And why would you, it's pretty out there. But you have to admit the whole thing is pretty suspicious. And once you've eliminated the possible, the impossible becomes the most likely to be probable. Viz a Viz, QED, it's a catch 22."

"It is?"

"Glad you agree. Right, that's 5pm, let's get out of here."

Aloysius waited for his bus so deep in thought that sparrows could have collected in the furrow of his brow, but only if that hadn't been an utterly preposterous idea. He wished he hadn't offended Bracken, although he was a bit irritated with her for jumping to the conclusion he had been deliberately offensive rather than just confused about what to say. There again, Adric had implied she had some pretty heavy stuff going on. Or at least he thought that's what he had been saying. But he couldn't seriously be entertaining the notion that her baby was a ghost, could he? People with views like that don't scale the dizzying heights of middle management; they stay on the bottom rung, googling conspiracy theories.

It wasn’t that Aloysius was not open minded about matters supernatural - he had met several ghosts in his time, and even seen an elephant fly. That’s a fly that looks like an elephant, not an enormous mammal with wings. But his openness was precisely why the concept of a ghoul inhabiting the body of a baby made no sense to him - that's just not how people roll in the afterlife. Well, would you? And anyway, the baby had seemed pretty corporeal as it sat there sucking its pie. Kind of soggy and gross, but definitely real.

His musings were momentarily interrupted as the bus arrived, in an atmospheric swirl of fumes and spray from the road. Aloysius boarded as if in a dream, and the driver exhaled slowly but threateningly as he fumbled in his pockets for change. One of them had the beginnings of a hole in it, and he had already lost a few 5ps as a result.

And what had those guys in the black cars been about, he wondered, mechanically putting £1.20’s worth of coppers into the box thing that you put bus fares in when you get on the bus (assuming you don’t have a concessionary pass, day ticket, etc). From the look on her face when they pulled up she didn't seem to know them. But she didn’t seem to react well to whatever they’d said to her, so it was unlikely to be the postcode lottery or Jimmy Saville fixing it for her to go on Broadway, or whatever it was girls wanted to do.

Maybe she'd borrowed some money she couldn’t pay back and now she was being threatened? He felt a metaphorical chink appear in his otherwise impervious suit of musty man armour. Bracken being kneecapped by the mafia didn't bear thinking about.

Or was it to do with the uncle, perhaps? Hadn’t she described him as nice but a bit of a soft touch? These sorts of people didn't suffer fools gladly, Aloysius knew - he'd seen gangster movies. He’d seen The Godfather (I, II and III), Goodfellas, Casino, that other one with the guy…. The expensive suits were a dead giveaway (as far as Hollywood was concerned) that these guys were up to no good, but trying to mask it by looking outwardly respectable.

He sat down next to an old woman who appeared to be asleep. The whole bus smelt of wet dog and leeks, but he soon came to the conclusion that most of it was emanating from her. Bracken would never smell like that, he found himself thinking. Then he thought, ‘damn, why am I still thinking about her?’ and he balled his hands into angsty fists. After years of seeing things through a prism of his own problems and discontent, it was both odd and upsetting that she should keep cropping up in his brain.

"I don't even know what she really looks like under all that makeup," he said out loud.

The man in front turned round, and slowly examined the old woman Aloysius was sitting next to. The one who smelled of wet dog and leeks, and probably gin.

"If that's makeup, I dread to think mate,” he quipped. “I'd let her keep wearing it if I were you."

Later on that day, the man was to develop an unusual rash on the backs of his knees. He didn't connect this with insulting the old lady on the bus, having forgotten all about that as he went about his daily routine, in which she did not feature. However, there are some folks round the estate who think that said lady is a witch, with a penchant for inflicting people with upsetting rashes for their misdemeanors. And if I were Sherlock Holmes, I might notice that these two things make for a strange coincidence.

Aloysius rolled his eyes, and said

"Oh leave her alone mate. It’s pretty unfair to start on her when she's sleeping and can't defend herself." This chivalrous defense could be what saved him from his own hex. Unfortunately it also made him miss his stop.

"Bollocks," he said vehemently, pressing the stop button without due care and attention. The driver screeched to a halt, and then put on the brakes to stop the bus. It was pissing with rain as well.

"Cheers," Aloysius said to the bus driver, because good manners cost nothing, and he took off towards the flat in an awkward, loping run.

"You're late," his mother informed him as soon as he opened the door, "I thought something had happened!"

He glanced at the clock.

"How do you know I'm late," he asked in a measured tone. "This was my first day, we didn’t know how long I'd be."

"I had to take my medication on my own," she said, wheeling through to the next room.

"It's only Vitamin C," he said, following reluctantly.

"I know," she said, "I'm just a bit on edge is all. Was it alright?"

"Yeah, fine I guess."

"None of those jakey types have a pop at you?"

"Mother, please."

"Alright, alright. Its just that I never envisioned this as a career for you, my boy."

"I know. I didn't exactly plan it myself… But it'll do for now. We need the money, after all. What with your legs and-"

"We're probably eligible for some sort of help, though," she cut in.

"We’re not going on benefits, mother. That all goes on file you know. They aren't having any private information about me."

"Don't be so paranoid, dear."

"Maybe you'd be paranoid too, if everybody was out to get you."

"That's a touch melodramatic, even for you."

"Well it's true."

"If you say so. Cup of tea?"

He shook his head.

"No thanks. I need to go and brood awhile."

"Really? So soon? I thought we moved away from the moors because you were ready to live again?"

"I thought I was, but now... Now I'm not so sure."

"Was there a girl at your new job?"

"There were several. But I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"Well that’s because you are being willfully obtuse,” she observed wryly. “Off you go then, brood away. Do a bit of pacing for me, I can't do it like I used to."

"I find that in very poor taste."

"Why? I'm the one in the chair."

Aloysius took this opportunity to exeunt stage left, out of the back door and into their poky shared garden. A cat gazed balefully at him from the wall. He ignored it, and began to pace up and down.

It only took him four steps to navigate the entire length of the place, so after a while he stopped and sat down next to the cat.

"Am I ready to love again?"

The cat looked noncommittal.

"I've been to hell and back in the name of that saucy emotion," he expanded, "but some time has elapsed since then. Almost a year, in fact."

"Miaow," said the cat, which didn't really want to get involved but felt like there wasn't really a lot of choice in the matter.

"Oh no," said Aloysius, laughing nervously, "there's nobody else. No mad wives hidden away in the tower to set Bracken alight during the night."

The cat said nothing, having spotted a rodent in the grass a few yards away.

“I think maybe I’ll ask her to come out with me,” he said, more to himself than the cat (which was just as well, because by this point it was half way home with a gory present for its owner).

“Yes,” he told the moon, “I will. I am ready to move on.”

“Guess who,” came a sultry voice from behind him, and his heart dropped down to his toes and dribbled out the ends in a terrified puddle.

There was only one woman in the world whose voice had the power to do that to him.

Aloysius turned around in slow motion, hoping it wasn’t so. But there, larger than life and leaning over his garden gate, was the strapping figure of the only woman he had ever loved, who had jilted him at the alter for his best friend Kyle.

“Hello, spunkface,” she said cheerily.

“Esmerelda,” he replied…

Chapter Two

Bracken flounced down the road at speed, her head and elbows dizzy in a whirl of complex feminine emotions and that. How could he, a library assistant, make the same kind of negative appearance bases assumptions as ignorant old ladies with net curtains and cyanide hearts? He worked in an information service for crying out loud! And, she thought wistfully, he had seemed so liberal...

She snorted then, hit across the eyes by a stark moment of self-awareness. Why had she thought he was liberal? Because of his appearance. Slightly too long hair, an alliterative smattering of stubble, jeans frayed at the bottoms, intelligent nose…

"How ironic," she gently told the baby, and some of the anger went out of her then.

"He might be a judgmental arse, but I’m guilty as him... Judging on appearance indeed. Since when did I start doing that again? I’m just as bad as he is."

"Bibble," said the baby, drooling slightly.

"You're right, that does sound like a cop out. But resent the implication that I’m renouncing my feminist principles. Sure, the conclusion he jumped to was worse than mine. But I have to consider both sides and make a reasoned argument, or I'm no better than he is."

The baby snored gently.

She gazed at it kindly.

"Never mind sleepybaws, we're almost home."

Bracken lived in an unattractive block of council owned flats, out of necessity rather than choice. The sad little patch of grass outside it was littered with rubbish – beer cans, broken glass, an old nappy, and the remains of a bonfire.

'Why do we never have neighbourhood clean ups anymore,' she wondered to herself like a talking head in a local authority sanctioned publicity video. 'We used to do stuff like that all the time. It was good for the community, giving us all a sense of ownership and reducing the amount of vandalism significantly.’

Little did she know that the main organiser of these sorts of operations, a forthright woman in her late forties who went by the name of Mary-Doll Mahoney, had been kidnapped on holiday by Bulgarian terrorists. They were demanding a ransom of £809 to pay a few outstanding bills, but they hadn’t done their research properly and were asking for money from the wrong channels.

The family of a totally different Mary Mahoney had initially been perplexed by the many phone calls demanding cash for the safe release of the bed bound OAP asleep in the next room. Her daughter wondered whether mother had some sort of secret past that was finally catching up with her, whilst the son in law thought it might be the work of old army mates. After a while they had got angry about it, then bored, then angry again. Now it was getting to be a bit of a running joke.

The whole mess had been going on for about 18 months without anybody informing police in either country, and the real Mary-Doll had engaged herself in persuading the terrorists to work on various Bulgarian community projects. Most of them were enjoying the new found sense of purpose so much that they had forgotten all about the ransom, and indeed one had come into a bit of cash and had actually paid it off. Only the newest recruit, Timothy Kojack, kept up the threatening phone calls. They had been part of his initiation to the group, which he had never really finished properly on account of all the fundraising car washes and litter picking events.

Anyway, Bracken knew none of this, which was just as well because she was a nice soul and would have worried unnecessarily for Mary-Doll's welfare.

She picked her way across the severed limbs of a barbie doll, pausing on the way to extricate an arm from the wheel of the buggy. It looked like it had been chewed off, although she didn’t like to speculate what by.

A sign hastily scrawled in felt tip informed her that the lift was still out of order, and she sighed as she removed the baby from the buggy, put him over her shoulder, and embarked upon the climb to her top floor flat, bumping the buggy up behind her with one hand.

'Bet that library guy doesn't have to put up with this sort of thing every day,' she thought to herself. 'Born with a silver spoon in every orifice judging by that plummy voice of his. Probably got a stair lift so he doesn't have to use his sanctimonious legs too much.'

As it happened, Aloysius did not have a stair lift, because he too lived in a poky flat – albeit a rather nicer one than Bracken’s, and situated on the ground floor. But this was by the by.

“Uncle Nicky,” she called, opening the front door with some difficulty as the baby chose that moment to be slightly sick, “I’m home!”

There was no response.

“Nicky! I need you to look after the wean for a few hoors while ah’m at work!”

She was met once more with silence.

“Sake.”

Bracken strapped the baby back in to the buggy, promising it was only for a minute, and banged on her uncle’s bedroom door. It swung open with a well-oiled creak.

“Nicky come on, you said you’d look after him and I’m already late as it is-”

But the room was empty.

“Weird… Come on Nicky, I’m really in a hurry!”

Although he was slightly eccentric, her uncle was usually pretty reliable, so she was just about to start panicking when,

“ARETHEYGONEYET?” bellowed a voice from behind her, making her jump and pee a little bit at the same time (these things can happen after you’ve had a bairn, not that anyone tells you that till it’s too late).

She turned to see her uncle emerging fearfully from the airing cupboard in the hall, and took a moment to wonder how he’d possibly managed to fold himself small enough to fit inside it. He was wearing two of his patented tinfoil hats, designed to protect him from aliens, microwaves and, so he claimed, werewolves. Nobody had ever been able to convince him of the silver bullet argument.

“There’s nobody here,” she told him patiently, “you’re safe. I need you to look after the wee one for a couple of hours while I go to work.”

“Can we not come with you?”

“Nah but.”

“Whyyyy?”

“Because it looks like rain, and I don’t want you getting a cold,” she replied, mentally adding, ‘and because I’ve been telt that if I let you come wi me again they’ll find someone else.’

Just like that Uncle Nicky snapped out of teenage mode as quickly as was his wont, removing one of the tin foil hats as he did so.

“OK,” he said, we’ll do painting till you come back.”

“Don’t you think he’s a bit wee for painting?”

“Nope, we’ll use our hands. It’ll be fun. Extra sensory activity is good for your child’s cognitive development.”

He puffed out his chest proudly.

“I read that in a pamphlet that I got at the library.”

“Ugh,” she said, stomping into her room to get ready.

“What’s her beef, junior?”

But asking the baby questions about other people was pointless. It was very self involved, concerned only with where its next meal was coming from, and merely burped in reply.

Meanwhile Bracken surveyed herself in the mirror, critically, like a TV style guru would do. She wasn’t bad looking, she thought. Sometimes she had been accused of wearing too much make-up, but at least she generally remembered to blend it down past the chin. And she wasn’t a heef or anything.

Surely it wasn’t it the tracksuit that had made him judge her a benefit-cheating child mum? It was her best one! Although to be fair, she had seen working mums collecting kids after school who dressed only in pinstripe for their jobs. They probably even wore formal pinstripe undies, not nice diamante thongs like Bracken had. But she didn’t need to look all dapper for work, she had a uniform.

She now pulled this out of the wardrobe. The fluorescent yellow gleamed provocatively at her, ready to protect her from the elements whilst simultaneously making her visible to oncoming traffic in the dark. Pulling it on, she noticed the colour reflected under her chin, like when you put a buttercup there to determine whether people prefer butter or margarine.

“You look jaundiced,” Uncle Nicky pronounced helpfully from the doorway. “Yeh’ll never get a felly wearin’ that. And you’d better get your skates on or you’ll be late.”

Swearing loudly, she charged past him and down the many flights of stairs.

It was just as well she didn’t smoke, she thought, the amount of times her daily commute ended in a mad dash along the road. Couldnae dae that in pinstriped flummery.

Fortunately, her work wasn’t too far from the flats.

“Afternoon, Jean,” she whispered breathlessly as she stuck her head round the door of reception.

“Bracken,” the secretary nodded coolly, with a cacophonous clunk of her Pat Butcher earrings. “Cutting it a bit fine today are we not?”

“Aye, sorry… family stuff.”

“And the rest. It’s always something with you, isn’t it.”

“I don’t have time for this Jean, the bell’s away to go,” she said, tightening her pole.

Jean sniffed in acquiescence, which Bracken took as a sign she was free to go back out into the rain to wait by the side of the road.

“I hate Mondays,” she muttered to herself.

It wasn’t long before a car appeared, slowing down when it saw her. The driver, a teenage boy, leered suggestively. She rolled her eyes at him.

“I’m too tall for this stupid game,” said a voice, followed by a thump on her lollipop.

Turning, she saw it belonged to a disgruntled ten year old, who didn’t have to jump up to hit her lollipop like all the other kids did.

“You don’t have to play it, pal,” she pointed out to him.

“Yeah I do.”

“Why?”

“Everyone else does it. If I stop I’ll look like a tramp.”

“That’s peer pressure,” she notified him.

“Ah what do you know about it?”

“Mair than you by the sounds of it. I was your age once, y’know.”

“Yeah like fifty years ago. And now you’re just a lollipop lady.”

“What do you mean, ‘just’ a lollipop lady? It’s thanks to me none of you lot gets killed crossing this road before and after school!”

“It’s not though, is it,” he said with all the annoying self-assurance of a kid that age, right before puberty comes along and totally screws them up. “It’s like, the quietest road in the actual world. Like right now, we’re standing right in the middle of it and having this big long conversation, and it’s not because you’re holding that lollipop, is it? No. It’s because there are no cars.”

She looked about her. The kid was right.

“Aye, well,” she said, searching her mind for a comeback, “your maw.”

“Fit aboot his maw?” a voice boomed from the other side of the road. It appeared to be coming from an angry swarm of pitbulls, but on closer inspection there was a small, heavily tattooed man amidst the throng.

“Hi dad,” said the boy, “what are you doing here?”

“Dug walkin,” the man replied, “it’s ma new joab.”

“Minted.”

The boy made to leave with his terrifying owner, just as a fleet of three black cars with tinted windows pulled up.

“Ha, in your face!” Bracken shouted after the boy, “get back here and let me help you cross the road safely!”

“Nah mate,” he called back.

“When we first saw her she was shouting abuse at a kid on the street,” said a woman in a pinstripe suit as she got out of the first car.

“Great stuff,” said a reedy young man with a clipboard, scribbling notes, “Jez’ll love that. She’s probably drunk too.”

“OI,” Bracken said, indignant.

“Ach, calm yer spam,” the woman replied.

She was about to retort in a none-too-polite sort of a way, when a third body appeared from a the second car and wordlessly presented her with a velveteen cushion, upon which there lay a scroll wrapped in scarlet ribbon.

“You can read, I take it?” This was from the pinstripe woman.

“Get lost,” Bracken replied, too surprised to curse.

Apparently taking this as a no, the woman removed the scroll, opened it, and read,

“You are officially summoned to appear on The Jeremy Kyle show at the end of this month of November 2010. Should you fail to do so, Lord Kyle reserves the right to say anything he likes about you on national television, to the detriment of your character, which is probably not even as clean as his sister’s uncle’s girlfriend’s junkie neighbour who he met once and was disgusted by. If you comply, you will discover the paternity of your child with a free DNA test.”

“I ken who the dad is,” Bracken said.

“Do you?”

“Well aye, it’s…”

She stopped, puzzled.

“I’ve only ever slept wi one felly,” she said, confused. “But… who was it?”

“Nah mate,” pinstripe countered, “that’s lies. Look at you. See you on the 29^th.”

With that she thrust the scroll into Bracken’s hands, and they all hoofed it into their fleet of fancy cars and vanished. She gazed after them, befuddled. How could she not remember who the father of her child was? He had been such an important part of her life, and now his face was a blank. No wonder people thought badly of her, she thought, it didn’t sound great…

‘Oh well,’ she thought, ‘at least the fit but annoyingly conservative library assistant didn’t see any of that.’

At which point she turned, to see Aloysius Hunkington-Smythe silhouetted in the door of the bakery. He must have seen and heard everything.

Bracken turned on her heel, and ran home.

Chapter One

Remember NaNoWriMo? I'm having another bash this year. And with no Beatblogger interviews pending, I might even have time to get it done. Here is chapter the first. 1828 words so far, hooray!

"Nah, that's lies," Bracken McCracken told the man behind the counter with certainty.

His sandy sideburns glistened uncertainly. He was quite attractive, she noticed then. He had all his own hair and limbs, two eyes, comparatively clean clothes… the whole package.

"Sorry Ms McCracken," he began stiffly, "I have to ask you - it’s my job.”

“Right,” she begrudged, grudgingly. She didn’t want him to know she had been swayed by his physical charms. After all this was 2010, when women had the vote, and rights to education and the like.

“The computer thinks you owe us £39,” he continued. “So I let’s see… If I read them out can you tell me if any of the titles ring a bell?”

She glared at him, in what she hoped was a vampish way. He cleared his throat nervously.

“'The Hispanic Trillionaire's Cruise Ship Baby', perhaps?”

Bracken folded her arms, showing off her signet rings to their full advantage.

“OK, I can see that’s a no go. How about 'Her Inexperienced Sugar Daddy'?”

Slowly and deliberately, she shook her head. Her hair, scraped back by a daring array of polyester scrunchies, cracked about her face like a cat o’ nine tails. Somehow though, he remained impervious.

“Uh, the next one is 'The Lady Pirate's Navy Tryst'?"

She flushed with embarrassment and anger.

"Do I look like the type of person that would read any of that stuff?"

He raised an eyebrow, taking in her velour tracksuit, silver puffa jacket and gold plated accessories. The buggy beside her contained a baby of indeterminate age, which was holding a pasty from Gregg’s.

'Dextrous,' he thought to himself, before replying as politely as he knew how,

"I'm sure I don't know madam. All sorts of people read those books and I wouldn't dare to presume anything about anyone’s reading habits. I can’t, ever since we assumed one old chap who takes twelve of these romances at a time got them for his wife, then he told us he’s never been married.”

Bracken was interested in spite of herself.

"You can get 12 books at a time?"

"Oh yes, for three weeks at first, and then you can renew them by phone or online if you need them longer."

"Michty me."

"Quite."

They paused awkwardly for a moment. She tried to remain defiant, but forgot herself when she looked into his eyes, which were like deep bubbling pools of blackberry jam. Bracken was rather partial to jam, particularly blackberry flavour.

"Delicious," she said out loud.

"What?"

"Sorry," she replied, visibly reddening even under a thick layer of itchy but affordable foundation, "I was thinking about scones."

He smiled warmly for the first time, and the jam eyes crinkled a little bit at the edges.

"My mother makes lovely scones. Or at least she did, before-"

He stopped dead, a frown passing over his manly jaw.

"Before what?"

"Before... The accident."

A dramatic chord sounded.

"Sorry, forgot to put my phone off," said an old man who was sitting on the sofa reading the Daily Record whilst he waited for the rain to go off.

Bracken gave him one of her patented scowls, before venturing, "Is she...?"

"…Paralysed from the waist down," he responded, heavily. "She can't reach the kitchen work top to use the mixer anymore." He closed his eyes, overwhelmed for a moment by some terrible kind of mental anguish. "Damn tiny wheelchair."

"I'm so sorry for your loss," Bracken said sincerely.

"Thank you," he replied, and lo, it was as if some sort of spark exchanged between them. It was invisible though, not like an actual spark. Sort of just like a feeling you get sometimes when you click with someone. You know the one.

"Oh," he said, in a sudden moment of clarity, "Speaking of mothers - does yours have the same name as you? Perhaps she took those books out!"

Bracken frowned deeply, the hood of her puffa crinkling with the effort, before stropping,

"My maw ran off wi some bawjaws nae guid drug dealer when I was a bairn. I dinnae ken anyhin about her and I dinnae want tae."

She tended to enunciate less when upset.

"Sorry," he said, "I didn't know. Were you raised by your dad then?"

"Who d'ye hink the nae guid bawjaws was?!"

"Oh."

She shrugged. He might be beautiful, but seemingly he wasn’t the brightest.

"Ah was brought up by my gran, which is pretty normal round here. But she kicked me out over the bairn-" she gestured in the direction of the buggy - "so I live wi Uncle Nicky the now. He’s a bit o’ a soft touch, but his hearts in the right place."

Aloysius Hunkington-Smythe – for this was the strapping library assistant’s name - looked back over some of his own life’s tragedies, of which there were many. They were, he reflected somewhat pretentiously, the sorts of things that might come to light if he were a character in a novel. In real life, though, they would never be known to another living soul. He had often wished there was someone he might share his pain with, but he had always thought it hopeless. Who could ever understand the effect of such trauma? Who would want to look far enough beyond his averagely dashing good looks to even try? But now, as he compared his darkest times with the experiences of this orange faced girl, he wondered whether Bracken's pain and suffering might rival even his own…

There again no, he thought, how could her pain be anything in comparison to his? Here she was, getting on with her life, feistily arguing the toss over what were quite clearly her library fines, as a queue of irate locals gathered behind her. Would she be able to do that if her past was full of secrets, hanging over her like fat, juicy ghosts?

Maybe she would, a voice in his subconscious pointed out, making him feel a little schizophrenic. He had heard tell in the past that women were different from men in some ways. Was this one of them? Aloysius sighed demonstratively, and his strong shoulders wobbled with the cyan coloured jelly of mixed emotions. How he wished he was able to pack all his sorrows in his old kit bag like that. Perhaps if he had a baby, like Bracken did, he would be able to be strong for it…

“So,” she said, interrupting his reverie, “are ye gonnae take they fines aff ma caird?”

“Well I don’t actually know how,” he admitted, “This is only my first day on the job.”

Bracken knew this already, because she was in the library every day. It was nice here, she thought. The flat was cold because they couldn’t really afford to heat it, and Uncle Nicky was a little bit wrong in the head and kept making hats out of tin foil to protect them from UFOs. But in here they had internet access, and daily papers, and lots of activities with kids, like storytelling and rhyme sessions and craft activities.

“Could you not ask someone else to show you?” she asked him.

“Well, they’re having a meeting,” he began apologetically, “and I don’t really know if I should interrupt.”

‘Who knew customer service would be so complex,’ he added to himself. Before working in this place, he had never had to deal with members of the public in his life.

Behind her in the queue, a middle-aged man with no front teeth tutted melodramatically.

“Ach, nevermind,” she snapped suddenly in exasperation, “I need tae get tae work anyway.”

“Work?” he replied, in that way you do when you can’t really think of anything to say.

She narrowed her eyes, about to completely misinterpret his meaning with potentially disastrous results.

“What, you don’t think a schemie single mum like me would bother holding down a job?”

“No-"

“Hink ah had the wean just so I could get a free hoose, is that it?”

“That’s not what I-"

“You dinnae ken ANYHIN about me and don’t even pretend you do, ya pompous, self satisfied, ‘oooh, when they made us read Shakespeare in school I actually enjoyed it’ piece e good for nothing, up your own arse, TRAMP.”

“Bracken – Ms McCracken – I –"

But she was gone, in a bittersweet cloud of hormones and Impulse body spray.

“Women, eh,” the toothless man from the queue intoned sagely.

Aloysius sighed once more, and the knees of a nearby schoolgirl who was skiving off to check her bebo went weak.

“Can I help you?” he asked the man, without really meaning it.

“Aye. Ah’ll have twenty lammy bammies please lad.”

“You’ll have what?”

“Lammy bammies. Fags! Chop chop, we huvnae got aw day. Specially after waiting on you and your bird sortin’ oot yer wee lovers tiff.”

“We’re not… she’s not… fags?”

The toothless man nodded, expectant.

“But… This is the library, though.”

The toothless man blinked and looked about him.

“Whaddya know,” he laughed phlegmily. “So it is as well. Ah’ve no been in here for aboot twenty years. It’s aw changed since then!”

“Ha, yeah.”

Not into a shop, though, he thought.

“Still dinnae sell fags though eh?”

Apparently this toothless wonder was something of a mind reader, even if his standards of dental hygiene left something to be desired.

“I’m afraid not,” Aloysius replied graciously. “I could do you a book with Audrey Hepburn smoking on the cover though?”

“Naw laddie, dinnae hink so. Audrey Hepburn? She was a man. Heard it on the Discovery Channel. Or was it a dream? I have dreams like that sometimes.”

“Oh right.”

“The libray though eh. What a pranny I am! Looks different than when I was a bairn. That a telly ower there?”

Aloysius smiled politely.

“Yes,” he replied, “we do a lot of youth work in here these days.”

“Oh aye?”

“Yes. I mean aye.”

“Rather youse than mese, heh heh heh. A telly eh. No like when I was a bairn. Librarian’d gie us a clip round the ear and send us on our way.”

“Well sir, the times they are a changing.”

“They are that. And ah’m only 32! Heh heh.”

“Ha ha.”

“OK well, I’ll see you when I need ma bus pass renewed,” the man coughed.

With that, he slouched off out into the rain and Aloysius, aside from stamping the due date on to a few Joan Jonker classics and exchanging weather-related pleasantries with the remaining people in the queue, was left alone with his thoughts.

He was surprised and slightly disconcerted to find that for the first time in several years, all of said thoughts were not of his dark past, but of a shapely young mum clad in a bright pink velour tracksuit set off by camel coloured ugg boots.

“I promised myself I’d never love again,” he muttered.

But if he was to keep that vow, he would have to stop thinking about Bracken McCracken’s heavily kohled eyes, which he had noticed were just the colour of gooseberry jam.

“Delicious,” he said.

Whale Shark Learns About Feminism

Whale Shark Gets Political

Charlie Brooker wrote an article here in which he described Clegg as "a universal disappointment sponge for disenchanted voters," a phrase so apt that even the whale shark agrees.

Return Of The Whale Shark

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Sounded Better In My Head

This is pretty much just a picture of a conversation that happened in my flat today.