Esther Chilton

If you’d like to be included in this slot, please get in touch: estherchilton@gmail.com. Poems can be up to 60 lines and prose 2000 words. If you’d like to add a short bio and photo, then great. All I ask is that there’s nothing offensive.

This week’s guest is Nicola Daly, who has appeared in this slot before and she also entertains us with her responses to my writing challenges. Today, she has a short story for us. Enjoy!

Fantastic Fakes and Fortunes

By

Nicola Daly

The beam of sunlight bouncing off the steel girder blinds him. Blinking, he pauses and waits for his vision to clear. The sounds of the city press in; a constant rumble of traffic, screaming sirens, honking horns, clanking cranes, and more screaming sirens. Keeping his eyes down he hurries past the gaudy fashion boutique with the brash shop assistant and her low-cut tops, husky voice and tantalising aroma of desperation. But as he’s never really gone for women like that, why start now? Her shop bell jingle jangles and he hears his name on her lips, but he’s already moved past and has arrived at the gallery. Safe.

He smooths a hand over his long, sleek black hair checking no loose tendrils have escaped the leather tie and removes a minute piece of fluff clinging to his coat sleeve. He shudders. Why does London have to be so dirty and dusty? Peering through the smoky-grey glass door, he spots a flicker of movement and shadowy shapes flitting across the foyer. That’s… unusual. What’s going on? He hesitates; suddenly conscious the screaming sirens have halted behind him.

He drags his phone from his pocket and pretends to check it. Chewing on his top lip, he stares at the flashing blue lights reflected in the glass door, worry gnawing at his gut. He then spots the sign on the door still flicked to ‘closed’. And that’s when he remembers.

Time to call in Code Red.

Shrinking into his coat, he turns and shuffles back the way he came, remembering to drag his left foot, like he’s been doing for the past six weeks since he started working at the gallery. He doesn’t hear the jingle jangle of the gaudy boutique’s door and the assistant calling him, doesn’t hear the hubbub of the city with its honking horns and clanking cranes, and he doesn’t hear the newsstand seller’s cry of: ‘Breaking News…’.

He slithers onto the bus just as the door hisses to a close.

‘Watch-it,’ the driver says as the bus starts with a jerk. ‘No wonder you got a gammy leg doin’ tricks like that.’

The man nods and salutes the driver, before pressing into the mass of tutting passengers. He takes out his phone and taps a text message before hitting ‘send’. The bus jitters and jolts, stopping every hundred metres or so for straggles of passengers to get on and off. A throng surges forwards at the stop for the underground station and the man joins them, taking care to drop the phone in front of the bus wheel. Bending down to tie a shoelace he whips a cap from his pocket and puts it on, pulls his collar up to cover his ponytail and, coat flapping like batwings, swaggers towards the station entrance before disappearing into its dark, yawning jaws and the labyrinth of tunnels beyond.

***

‘Earlier today the mauled body of a young woman was found in the foyer of the exclusive Bond Street gallery and auction house, Henrietta’s.’  Images of the building façade with white-suited forensics crawling behind crime tape flicker across the screen. ‘Henrietta’s is one of London’s premier auction houses for fine art. Police are currently looking for the whereabouts of Ignatius de Ponsonby, who has been working there for six weeks and was last seen this morning on CCTV arriving at his usual time without going in. Instead, he turned around, walked back the way he came and hasn’t been seen since…’  The screen pans to grainy images of a young man with a limp in a long black coat approaching the gallery. He pauses, checks his hair, peers through the glass door, looks at his phone before turning on his heel and retracing his steps. ‘The victim was in her early twenties. PC Andrea Bell was one of the first responders …’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ sobsa blotchy-faced woman. ‘It’s like some beast had attacked her. Her throat was all ripped out, and yet she was totally drained of blood…’

A white-haired, frail figure sitting in an over-sized squashy armchair digs the remote from the cracks between the cushions, mutes the sound and sighs.

‘Oh, son,’ she says. ‘What have I told you about playing with your food?’

Ignatius shuffles into the room and slumps into the armchair across from his mother. He hangs his head. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I lost control.’

‘And I suppose you forgot to clean up afterwards? Hence your Code Red getaway.’

Ignatius nods. ‘Too much sunlight. It’s been getting to me, and I keep forgetting to take my meds.  It won’t happen again.’

‘That’s what you said last century, and the century before that…How many times have I told you that if you’re going to go out in daylight then you must remember to take your meds?’ She leans forwards. ‘Please tell me after all that, you at least got it….?’

‘Yes, yes, I got it,’ he says, pulling a long tube from the inside of his coat and handing it to her. ‘Been hiding it in the tunnels. There’s a Gainsborough there for you too.’

‘Lovely,’ she says unrolling the canvas. ‘I’ve been wanting a Gainsborough to put at the top of the stairs.’ She picks up a silver goblet from the side-table next to her.‘And nobody can tell there’s been a switch?’

‘Not a clue,’ says Ignatius, puffing out his chest. ‘You know I’m the best in the business.’

‘Hmm.’ She swirls the red liquid in the goblet and takes a sip. ‘Let’s hope so.’

‘So,’ Ignatius says. ‘Is Fangs’ Forgeries still in business?’

‘Perhaps.’ She peers over the top of her pince-nez. ‘I’ve heard the National Gallery are going to have a special Van Gogh exhibition. They’re looking for security guards. Are you up for it?’

‘Sounds good to me. I like painting sunflowers.’ Ignatius flashes his fangs. ‘And I promise I won’t forget to take my meds.’

–

Bio:

Mum to two student daughters and an aging black lab, Nicola lives in north Cumbria close to Hadrian’s Wall and the Scottish borderlands. Mentored by Esther with the Writer’s Bureau, she is working on her first novel, a teen coming-of-age with a mix of murder, intrigue and betrayal set on a 1920s archaeological dig on Hadrian’s Wall.