Real v fake…

my father’s dog began to bark. She was barking because there was somebody shouting outside the house. I came out of the studio through the house to the front. I looked out the window.

It was one of the Pelf twins.

A HOME WRECKER LIVES HERE, the twin was shouting.

I opened the door. It was the CELINE one, I was pretty sure. Eden.

What are you doing? I said.

I’m telling all the people unfortunate enough to live near you what you really are, she said.

She turned back to the street and she shouted: THE PERSON WHO LIVES HERE IS A

WOKE DELUDED DEGENERATE USING THE PANDEMIC AS

AN EXCUSE FOR DEBAUCHERY.

A small group of my neighbours had gathered outside their houses on the other side of the street. Steve was there, and Carlo, and Marie and Jaharanah, and Madison and Ashley. I waved to them. They waved back.

You okay, Sand? Jaharanah called over.

So far, I said.

Then I started shouting too.

THIS PERSON SHOUTING OUTSIDE MY HOUSE IS A

PITTIKINS.

What did you just call me? Eden Pelf said.

SHE’S A CULVER, I shouted. A HEART’S ROOT. A CRYSTAL

BUTTON.

Stop calling me those names! she said.

She started to cry.

What does pittikin mean? she asked. How dare you say you pity me.

Look. Do you want a cup of tea? I said. Stay here. I’ll bring you one.

I WANT YOU TO DIE, she shouted in tears.

She was sobbing now.

What’ve you done with my mother? she said through the sobs.

Is your mother still missing? I said.

No, Eden said. She’s home. But it’s like. It’s like even though she’s there she’s no one we know any more.

Before I could step away from her she’d collapsed against me in tears and was holding on to me.

Oh Christ, I said. Oh no.

I held my arms out away from her.

I really need to sit down, she said. I think I’m going to faint.

I opened the front windows wide and sat her down in the front room. I went to wash my hands. When I came back and stood in the doorway she was looking round at the shelves.

So many books, she said.

A lot less than there were, I said. I’m slowly whittling them down.

Why? she said.

I’m getting older, I said.

That’s a weird thing to say, she said.

Thanks, I said.

Do you double-you eff aitch? she said. I do.

I don’t know. Do I? I said.

It means work from home, she said.

Ah. Yes, I said. I’ve a workshop in the studio in the garden.

What, that old shed? she said.

That old shed, I said.

What do you do? she said.

I’m a painter, I said.

And decorator?

No, I said. The other kind.

Are you on furlough from that job? she said.

No, I said. I’m on emergency rations.

I was, at first, she said. But then last year we got a big new contract so admin went crazy and we had to organize things we’d no idea how to do and we kept getting it wrong.

Right. How do you take your tea? I said.

I don’t want tea, she said. I don’t want anything. Everything tastes horrible.

Ah, I said. Uh oh.

Like something’s rotten, she said. I’ve got this burning feeling and this smell at the back of my nose that makes everything the same. I’ve had it for

two months. It makes me not want to eat anything ever again.

Were you ill for long? I said.

I wasn’t ill at all, she said. I don’t get ill. One day for some reason I just stopped being able to taste like I used to be able to. And now I can’t even taste things that have a lot of taste in them like spicy things. Never mind just enjoy a piece of bread any more.

It’ll heal, I said. Apparently it does, in time, the taste and smell thing.

But what if it doesn’t? she said.

You’ll maybe have to live with that possibility for a while, I said.

Her face went all despair.

I hate it, she said. I want how I taste things to go back to how it was before. I want everything to go back to how it was before.

I sat down on the arm of the furthest-away chair at the other side of the room.

You’re going to make some joke about me being tasteless now, like Lea does, she said.

I think we’re all under quite a lot of pressure, I said. I think there’s a lot of raw feeling in the air, and not just because there’s been so much illness. I think there’s a great deal of despair around, and even more anger than there was before.

Eff wy eye I’m not angry, she said drying her tears on a sleeve.

She said it angrily.

I think we’ve been taking in anger like sponges for half a decade now, I said. This isn’t the first time that someone’s stood outside my house shouting.

Wreck their fam dynamic too, did you? she said.

I was sitting in that chair you’re in now, one day a couple of years BC, before covid, I was just sitting there reading a book, I said. And a woman and a man I didn’t know and have never seen again started yelling outside. I realized after a minute they were yelling at my front room window. At me.

So I opened the window. I asked them what the matter was. The woman told me my front room had made her feel really angry. Then the man said I was lazy. I had no idea what they were talking about. Then I realized they were angry at my books.

They were shouting at your books? Eden Pelf said.

Funny, I said. When I was a kid I used to think lining a room with books was one of the most exciting things anyone could do to a room.

What did you say to them? she said.

I told them I thought books were important, I said.

Why? Eden said.

Uh, I said. Well. Because I think they are. And they told me I was scum, a waste of space, and I told them space was never wasted, and the man told me to shut my face and the woman told me to stop aggressing him by answering back, then they went away. And I went back to my book.

No, I meant why are books important? she said.

Apart from that they’re a pleasure? I said. Because, uh, because they’re one of the ways we can imagine ourselves otherwise.

Why would we ever want to do that? Eden said.

Why wouldn’t we? I said.

Is that what you’ve done to our mother? she said.

Pff, I said.

Eden was glancing round the room now as if for clues, up at the ceiling, at the doors leading through to the back, as if to deduce whether I had several people’s mothers locked in the house somewhere. But then –

Oh! she said.

She took a book off the shelf next to her.

The Cottingley Fairies! she said. How do you know about the Cottingley Fairies?

Hundred-year-old fake news, I said.

I can’t believe it, she said.

She sat and flicked through it.

I loved these, she said. I did a project about them, a dissertation. It was all tied up with the aftermath of a war. All the people dead, and people wanting to believe that fairies were real. I haven’t thought about them for years.

She put the book on her knee.

What’s amazing, she said, is that nobody could prove they were faked for so long including the guy who wrote Sherlock Holmes, I mean the books not the TV series, and he said that looking at these pictures got the British people out of a muddy rut. Well. He didn’t want them to be faked.

He believed in ghosts and all that rubbish.

She opened the book again.

I love how the fairies in the pictures had really modern, I mean for the time, hairstyles, look –

She bent it wide open and held it up towards me.

– and how it looks in this one like the fairy the girl’s looking at, I can’t remember which girl she is, Emily or the other one, is offering her a flower and it looks so real, the whole thing, how clever they were. I mean they were just little kids with nothing else to do one summer. And they fooled the whole world. Imagine you having a book. About them. When I was small, I mean Amelie’s age, I really believed in them, not just these ones in the photos, I believed in them generally. When I think of how much I believed in them. I used to think that when leaves rustled in bushes in the breeze, that that’s what it would sound like when they talked to each other.

But obviously I also knew it wasn’t true at the same time. I really enjoyed doing that dissertation about them, I did it in art, at schoo –

She had cracked its spine too far and the book split in two in her hands.

Oh no. Oh. I’m really sorry.

No matter, I said. Really don’t worry, don’t worry at all.

I’m so embarrassed. I’ve ruined it. I’ll get you another one, she said.

No need, I said. In fact, you can have it, if you like. Both of it. I don’t need to read it again.

She stared at me.

What, to keep?

Yes, I said.

I couldn’t possibly, she said.

Up to you, I said. If you’d like it. Otherwise it’ll go in the recycling.

She started to cry again.

I’m sorry, she said. It’s the thought of fairies, even if they’re not real, in the recycling. And those girls from a hundred years ago. Real girls once.

In the recycling.

She put her hand in her CELINE bag and took her phone out at the same time as a handful of tissues.

Oh. Oh no. Oh, what? That’s really weird, she said.

She looked at her phone, swiped at it.

It’s dead, she said.

She pressed it. Nothing. She pressed it again.

It’s weird. It’s just completely dead, she said. Look. What’s wrong with it?

Panic went all through her.

Flat battery, I said.

I charged it this morning, she said. This shouldn’t be happening, it just shouldn’t be happening, it can’t happen, it’s wrong, it’s really wrong.

She shook it. She pressed it again.

Oh God, she said. Oh no.

Probably just rebooting, I said.

It won’t, she said. I can’t get it to.

She pressed something. She shook it. She pressed it again.

Let me try, I said.

I came across the room, stretched my own hand as far away from myself as I could. I took the phone, held the on button down and counted to fifteen. The phone lit up.

No way! she said. How did you get it to do that? Oh thank God.

Just keep this button here pressed down for longer if it happens again, I said.

She put the broken book in her bag and stood up.

Gee tee gee, she said. That’s got to go.

Whatever you say, I said.

Gee tee ar, she said. That’s got to run.

At the front door she turned.

Thanks. For sorting my phone, she said.

Nothing to do with me, I said. It was the fairies.

She looked startled. Then she gave me a huge grin.

I watched her go down to the bottom of the street and get into a car and shut the door, I watched her drive off. Then I shut my own door, disinfected my hands and went to have a bath.