All Bones and Lies by Anne Fine Page B

class. Even playing the Old Lady card, that was impressive.
    She’d only filled in one. Tor Grand. He ran his eyes over the printed name that, in as much as it mirrored his own, still echoed of catcalls down drab school corridors. He almost heard the snort she’d have given as her pen sailed over the contemptible Ms to circle the full-bodied Mrs. He read the old address that still, at heart, he felt belonged to him as well. If there had been a section labelled Medical, he probably would have read that too, but Tor Grand’s only interest was in the house: its age, its size, proximity to the neighbours. On it went, all filled in perfectly, over the page to details of claims under previous dispensations, where she gave the lie to his fears of her gathering vagueness by recalling some pre-neolithic disaster with the boiler. Here, in fact, was the ideal application form. No sections hopelessly left blank. No crossings-out. No claggy contoured heaps of whitener over which the poorly schooled likes of Clarrie hauled their pens time and again, leaving errors like spoor. If only all those halfwits in Personnel – whoops! ‘Human Resources’ – had had the sense to let department heads like his own recruit from the elderly, then his out-tray would be empty now, not threatening avalanche.
    And then he saw it, nestling so innocently amongst the Have You Evers:
Have special conditions of any sort, or any form of specific certification, ever been requested in respect of insurance for this property?
    She’d answered,
No
.
    No need to panic. Maybe she wouldn’t even send the application in. After all, unless Frampton Commercialshared her first company’s easy-going attitude towards the refund, she might decide she’d prefer to get the cable entry done.
    Then, fat chance, he told himself, and sank, exhausted, on the breadbin. Ranked jars of pickled onions eyed him mournfully. What should he do? Carry on battling? Or simply let the whole thing go, and pray that, out of the gamut of ills a house was heir to, it was a jet plane through the roof that got it first. Anything else would almost certainly provoke the usual suspicious investigation of a Johnny-come-lately. One routine phone call to the last insurer and, sure as he never saw a banker on a bike, her claim would come back stamped ‘Invalid’.
    So it was into battle. Christ! Old people were
exhausting.
Look at him. This visit alone he’d played four roles already – recycler, spurned benefactor, sorcerer, spy. And now he had to turn insurance adviser yet again. Sighing, he slid the application form back in its envelope and dropped it into its hiding place, along with the others. Then he climbed out of the window, and, slapping the windchimes again purely for the hell of it, walked in to accuse her of concealment and criminal misrepresentation.
    She slipped her own attack in first. ‘You’ve got a ghost up every sleeve. Where have you been?’
    He lost his nerve. ‘I was just looking for a bradawl in the woodshed.’
    â€˜Don’t you go stealing my tools, or I’ll soon have your name crossed off my Christmas card list.’
    He took the tray she was carrying, and though she hardly went up the stairs like a spring lamb, he could tellshe was finding it harder and harder to pretend she was limping. ‘Is your leg better?’ he asked, with deep suspicion. Affecting not to hear him, she fought back. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I feel limp as a piece of chewed string.’ He plunged in as close to the business worrying him as he dared. ‘Listen,’ he lied. ‘I don’t know what all those papers lying on the table were, but really, you’d be mad to switch companies a second time and have to go through this whole performance again in a few months.’ He laid his precious September fortnight on the line. ‘I could take time off work and be around while