Weird Sister by Kate Pullinger Page A

as Agnes would say – a single red cent, except the charity box with its pennies. So they have taken their tithe in destruction instead and the Black Hat looks like a wild army of drunken soldiers has vented its war rage on it. Little of its pub beauty survives, the windows, the front door, that’s it.
    Jim is so heartbroken he is unable to cry.
    Lolita becomes a dervish. She fetches the black bin liners from out back and begins to clear the debris.
    ‘Stop,’ says Jim, his voice dry and sticky in his throat, ‘stop it. We’ve got to call the police.’
    ‘And let them see the place in this state? No,’ she shakes her head.
    ‘I’ve got to call someone,’ says Jim, ‘I’ll call Robert and Agnes.’
    ‘You will not,’ says Lolita, ‘and spoil their wedding night?’ And with that they hear a noise. They both stiffen and look around. But it is only the cat coming out from where she has been hiding.
    ‘This village,’ mutters Lolita, as she bends to her task. And now Jim knows exactly what she means. It is a quiet village, Warboys, they know each other by name, they have flowers in their gardens and there are birds in the trees. It is an oasis of warm people in the cold grey fenland. And if it wasn’t for the burglars, it would be perfect. And if it hadn’t been for the joy-riders a few years back, it would have been perfect then as well – Jim and Lolita didn’t lose their car, but plenty of other people did. You could hardly step out the front door and into the high street without fear of being mowed down. And if it hadn’t been for the tricksters and graffitos and those boys who did over the church, and the shop, and the houses along the back.
    ‘This country,’ mutters Lolita, as she rights a table, as Jim picks up the dustpan and brush.
    In the morning light, Robert wakes. He is very cold, and gripped by an inexplicable fear. He thinks he sees Agnes standing at the end of the bed, dressed in black with a severe black hat, staring at him, her face white with rage. With a sharp movement he turns away from what he sees and finds his wife, Agnes, naked and warm, breathing deeply beside him.

Karen belongs in Warboys
    Karen knows she belongs in Warboys. She lies in bed next to Graeme and thinks about the conversation she had with her mother at the wedding. Warboys is Karen’s village. She grew up here. This is where she married Graeme, at nineteen. She worked in Peterborough for a while but she knew that was temporary. She didn’t much like Peterborough. An in-between kind of place, a too-small city, a too-big village. She was glad when she gave up the commute and took up housekeeping.
    Karen couldn’t believe it when her parents decided to move back to Leicester. They were in-comers in Warboys, they’d both grown up in the Midlands, and for them the village was temporary. They sold the house where Karen grew up. It was their business, not Karen’s – she no longer lived there – but still, it shocked her. Even now when she walks by her old house she has to stop herself from going up the footpath to the front door and walking straight in. And if she did, it wouldn’t really matter. Marlene and Geoff Henderson own the house now. Marlene would make Karen a cup of tea and show her around the renovations.
    Karen loves the Throckmorton house, with its scabby cracked walls and its broken guttering. She loves it because it is Throckmorton, always has been; they have lived here forever, they are not about to sell up and move away. When things are bad between Karen and Graeme, and things do get bad, the house consoles her. She cleans and scrubs and the house welcomes her ministrations, much like Graeme’s father Martin silently accepts her care. The house absorbs her, like it absorbs the noise and thunder of the two little boys. Sometimes she thinks, oh yes, I really am a housewife, the house is my husband, not Graeme, and this thought makes her feel giddy.
    Agnes is new to Warboys, Karen reflects on this