Natural History by Neil Cross Page B

hold of the story, just like modern newspapers latch on to health scares, or Satanic abuse. What they didn’t print is what the astronomers said, that the tail was too vaporous to be harmful. So newspapers got sold and conmen sold anti-comet pills. People boarded up doors and windows.’
    â€˜People are silly, though.’
    â€˜Well, yes. But at the same time, every few million years a comet actually does hit the Earth. Perhaps it was a comet that brought us water. No water, no life. Or maybe a comet brought life in the first place. And maybe it was a comet that wiped out the dinosaurs.’
    Jo screwed up her eye, even tighter. It helped her to concentrate. Hyakutake was very bright, and moving so quickly. It was so close. It would never be closer.
    Mr Nately said, ‘I think our fear of them is coded right down in our DNA. Just like the fear of serpents.’
    Later, she dozed on Mr Nately’s sofa. He laid a scratchy, clean blanket over her—it smelled faintly of lavender. Almost asleep, she listened as he pottered around, locking and double-locking the windows and doors, hiding the keys from sight in drawers and cupboards.
    Perhaps, she thought, Mr Nately was protecting her from the werewolves and witches that nightly sprang up like mushrooms in the ripe darkness of the forest.
    Perhaps it was simply a habit, because he lived alone, far from anybody, overlooking a creepy orchard on one side and a lonely lane on the other. Perhaps he did it every night; locking the doors against the woods. And perhaps he slept safely under wool and lavender blankets, overlooked by his ranked and silent books—his histories, his textbooks, his science.
    Jo was asleep when Patrick came to collect her. He lifted her, still asleep, into his arms and carried her to the Land-Rover. She had half a memory of it, a broken dream of being taken from the cottage in the arms of a great, slow giant, and carried to the thin, cold air at the top of a distant mountain. And that was Jo’s best day, ever.

6
    Jane wasn’t good in the morning. She was furiously disorganized and irritable—and every day, being late took her by surprise.
    She stomped round the house, turning off or re-tuning or stealing radios. When it was Charlie’s turn in the shower, she hogged the bathroom mirror, scowling, yanking her hair into a pony tail. When Patrick needed his morning dump, she sat on the closed lavatory, tweezing ingrown hairs from the blade of her shin. When Jo wanted to make muesli and yoghurt, she used up the entire kitchen, trying to find a clean butter-knife to excavate her burned toast from the toaster.
    And every morning she stood, exasperated, at the door, yelling for them to for God’s sake hurry up.
    And then, as they filed out, she remembered something she’d forgotten—her keys, her wallet—and ran inside to find them.
    Patrick and Jo and Charlie waited in the car in defeated silence, knowing she was ransacking the already ransacked house, cursing whatever eluded her and knowing that, whatever it was, it was probably in her bag or on top of the fridge.
    Eventually, Patrick said, ‘Look. I’ve been thinking. It might be easier if you took the VW in the mornings.’
    She frowned at him over her reading spectacles. ‘Why? Don’t you want me with you?’
    â€˜Of course I do.’
    â€˜It’s time together.’
    â€˜I know.’
    But she kept frowning and he grew uncomfortable. So he said, ‘It’s just that, sometimes, I get the impression we’re in the way. That we’re—you know—annoying you.’
    She put down her book. ‘What do you mean, annoying me?’
    â€˜Well. You’re busy. In the morning. You’ve got—y’know—a lot on your plate at the moment.’
    She removed her spectacles and placed them, upended, on the book. ‘Jesus Christ, Patrick.’
    He thought she was about to cry, and he didn’t