Little Fingers! by Tim Roux

of the world.
     
    * *
*
     
    I keep looking
at the floors. I need to get rid of that stuff. It isn't even
modern laminate - it is parquet, old, bobbly and, if anyone trips
over it, they could sue me.
    No-one has
really been here yet, except Tom and Mary, and they have not been
for a while. I am embedded in my isolation, in my superfluity of
rooms, and my bars of chocolate, and acres of time. I feel
luxuriant, sleepy, honest. There is nothing to lie about when I am
lying about these rooms.
    The fireplace
in this room is tiled. Fifties, I would think. A rather mean
fireplace. An ugly surround. Convenient to clean.
    There is a
ring at the door, then a knock. Maybe it is Mary. I jump up and
bound down the stairs to the front door, frightened to miss
her.
    It is somebody
I don't know. She smiles at me. “Sam James,” she says. “From next
door. Up the hill.” The “up” appears to have social
significance.
    I point
towards the little hallway behind me. “You live there, do you?” It
is a ridiculous statement. No-one lives in my little hallway, among
the coats, in front of the basin, and next to the toilet.
Nonetheless, Sam responds to what I mean.
    “ Well, not
any more,” she corrects me and herself. “I used to live up there at
the Hall. I was born there. Now I live up in the dale. Top of the
hill, turn left, one mile on your right.”
    “ I
see.”
    “ Have you
been there yet?”
    “ Yes. There
is a nice view of the river.”
    “ That is the
other way. Straight on.”
    “ I
know.”
    Sam appears
strangely disconcerted, given that she is the local and I am the
intruder. Even more surprisingly, I actually want to unsettle her.
I don't want to speak. There is a power in silence that I often
use, even when I have no purpose for using it.
    “ Come
in.”
    “ Thank you,”
Sam smiles, “but I must be going. I jut dropped round to say hello,
and to invite you to one of our coffee mornings, well
get-togethers.” My expression must have dipped at the mention of a
coffee morning. “A few of my girlfriends.”
    Being rather
fond of girlfriends, I accept. Then I remember that Sam could be
very useful to me. I hope that Mary will be there.
“When?”
    “ Tomorrow?”
    “ OK. That
would be nice. Thank you.”
    “ It would be
really good to get to know each other.”
    Why is she
saying this? I search her face, without gaining an answer. It is
friendly but the expression is blank. What makes me someone that
she would want to get to know?
    “ After all,
we are sort of neighbours,” she adds.
    For the
present, the fact that she hates Mary Knightly is enough for me.
Perhaps we can be allies and, failing that, I will almost certainly
learn something. I am about to fight a war. I need to recce for
intelligence.
    “ See you
tomorrow then. 11:00.”
    “ Thank
you.”
    We are not
fooling each other. We will not be friends.
     
    * *
*
     
    The girls are
flopped where they are. I like that in girls. It is aggressive in
boys.
    Melody and
Julie were on the town last night, trying out a new restaurant
belonging to a friend of theirs. Mich (short for Michelle) stayed
in and watched a horror movie in which everyone ended up down a
well, menaced by a fiend with a contorted face and an enormous
knife he was not afraid to use.
    There is only
sporadic conversation.
    Everyone is
expecting me to speak, and even keen for me to do so. I don't. I
smile and say nothing. It is the sphinx in me that controls Sam,
but visibly irritates Melody, who is not naturally harmonious, I
would suspect.
    “ I have just
seen everyone traipsing into Mary Knightly's house,” says Julie. “I
bet that is a wild party.”
    “ She is
organising the festival again,” says Sam.
    “ Are you
going?”
    “ I would not
miss it for the world. Let Mary have her day of glory. She can be
relied on to spoil it by insisting on taking all the credit.” Her
eyes open and glow maliciously.
    “ Is Brian
singing again this year?”
    “ I would
think so. If they