All Bones and Lies by Anne Fine

pretend to be a person’ –
kaput!
It was over.
    He never wanted that again. No. Better to stick with the daydreams. Then all that happened when the bubble burst was that he had to risk the council van’s suspension along a half a mile of rutted track and pick his way past hosts of scavengers, to see what some anti-social chicken dumper had left to fester in a rancid pit.
    The stench was awful, but it hadn’t deterred the real professionals, two of whom seemed to be making a valiant job of lifting a full-sized wardrobe out of the stinking heaps of feathered corpses. He couldn’t bring himself to offer help, although he knew that, in his virulent yellow plastic safety jacket and tough rubber boots, he was far better equipped than either of them to paddle in drifts of rotting carrion. But guilt, as ever, told on him, to the extent that, on his way back up the dirt track, he stopped to purchase a rather fine brass umbrella holder from a man with a heap of
trouvailles
at the entrance.
    He might have known his mother wouldn’t like it. ‘Why should I want that?’
    â€˜It’s just like yours. But better.’
    She stepped back smartly. ‘I like mine.’
    He twisted the patterned brass cylinder full circle, to show her. ‘But, look. Rust-free!’
    She played the old card. ‘No, thanks. It was your father who bought me mine.’
    He dumped his on the doorstep and, scraping the last of the chicken bones off his boots onto her lobelias, went for revenge. ‘Have you thought any more about replacing that cable?’
    â€˜If you’ve come to torment me, then you can turn straight round and go back to your rats and your rubbish.’
    â€˜I was just passing by.’
    â€˜Go on, then.
Do
that.’
    Honours now even, he felt free to ask, ‘Well, aren’t you even going to give me a cup of tea?’
    She looked a bit shifty. Then, ‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘But since you’re in those workboots, could you just take a peek at that dratted drain?’
    It was the conciliatory tone that made him suspicious. He set off back down the path, but the moment he sensed she’d vanished he turned and kicked off his council footwear. Chasing her silently across the stone hall into the kitchen, he caught her clearing the table of a huge swathe of paperwork.
    â€˜So,’ he confronted her sternly. ‘What’s all this?’
    The look she gave him would have cracked a stone. ‘None of your business, Mr Nosy Parker.’
    But he had read the words Tor Grand Insurance upside down. ‘You’re never switching companies
again
.’
    â€˜I’ll do what I like,’ she said, disappearing into the larder with her arms full of papers.
    â€˜But there’s no
point,
’ he wailed after her. ‘Wherever one lot goes on this sort of safety certificate business, the others always end up following.’ Though he was speaking to the larder door, he still kept on. ‘You’ll change, then, in a month or so, exactly the same thing will happen. You’ll get another letter.’ Out she came, glowering horribly. But he was determined to finish. ‘You might just as well give in now and let Mr Herbert’s men do their worst and give you your signed piece of paper.’
    She started the tuneless hum that meant, ‘Don’t for a moment think I might be listening.’ Should he play one last dirty card and remind her that Dilys now worked for the great octopus of Tor? No. Simply couldn’t face it. Turning to Floss, he said, exasperated, ‘Walkies?’ But she just spread her body flatter on the floor. Even more irritated, he strode back across the hall and snatched up his umbrella holder. ‘I’ll put this in the dustbin.’ Out of sheer spite, on his way down the side path he reached up to give the windchimes a hefty smack and set the war between his mother and next door straight back on