Strawberry Tattoo by Lauren Henderson

one more high-pitched than the others. The door closed again. Such a long and terrible silence then ensued that by the end of it I felt like a helpless spectator at a slasher film, waiting for the psychopath to jump out from behind a cupboard and start stabbing away. All it needed was some slow John Carpenter music building gradually to the inevitable nerve-gutting shock. When Barbara Bilder let out a scream, I think we were all grateful for the catharsis.
    It didn’t last too long, just enough time for us to have recovered from the initial jump out of our seats. To do her justice it sounded as if she had shrieked in protest and disbelief rather than self-pity; there was an edge to her voice which made me even more grateful than I had been before that I wasn’t the one down there dealing with the situation.
    Glances of sympathy for the absent sacrificial lambs were exchanged.
    “Maybe Barbara’ll spatter some real blood on the walls,” Laurence muttered. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
    Now the voices downstairs were going at full blast. Barbara Bilder didn’t seem to be pausing for breath; maybe she could do that flute-player’s trick of simultaneously inhaling through her nostrils while keeping a continuous flow of air issuing from her lips. The feet were coming up the stairs now, but she kept on talking. Her wind must be pretty good. There was another horrible pause as they entered the upstairs gallery, this time succeeded by a long-drawn-out wail of grief. But the whole routine was speeded up by now, and shortly afterwards all the chatter resumed, the volume increasing with alarming speed. They were coming right for us.
    Laurence looked as if he wanted to hide under the table. Carol steadied herself and stood up, facing the door with her jaw set, like the captain refusing to move from the bridge while all the rats are looking around desperately for escape hatches. The only way out was the window, and it would have been more than a little undignified.
    The voices were right outside the door now. A moment later and Stanley was holding it open.
    “Barbara,” he said solicitously. “After you.”
    I heard a series of glottal stops as everyone swallowed hard and composed themselves. Laurence’s hands were working at each other so hard that Suzanne, unable to bear it, reached over and slapped at them. He looked up at her, shocked, then down at his fingers, stilling them, obviously unaware of what he had been doing.
    Barbara Bilder came through the door and paused just on the threshold. Behind her were Kevin and an older man who was presumably with Barbara. Every face swivelled towards her. We must have looked like a classroom of the Lower Fourth which has behaved so badly that the headmistress has been called in to reprove both them and the teacher.
    “Three years’ work,” she said in a small, choked voice. “Three years’ work!”
    Wordlessly, Kevin scuttled round her and retrieved a chair from the side of the room, holding it out to her as if it would console her. Slowly she sank into it.
    “Three years’ work,” she repeated. “I just can’t believe it.” She looked round us. “When I catch the person who did this,” she said furiously, “I’m going to strangle them with my bare hands!”
    And she sounded like she meant it.

Barbara Bilder was one of those rare people whose charisma is powerful enough to make you disregard the lack of distinction in their appearance. Technically she was a nonentity: small, dumpy, forgettably dressed in a big shapeless sweater and trailing skirt, her hair scraped back from her face into a tight little bun, she could have been an Eastern European housewife who spent most of her life complaining about the rising cost of potatoes. But there was something about her that drew your attention and kept it, even before she had fixed you near-hypnotically with her big, shiny brown eyes. Her voice, too, had a strange fascination. It was both high and smooth, almost like a