A is for Angelica Read Online Free PDF Page A

waiting for owners, like dogs tied to lampposts.

Disguise
    I’m standing in front of the mirror in the bedroom. Georgina is lying on the bed behind me. Her pillows are plumped and her face is pale. She is dead to the world.
I’m wearing a balaclava and staring at myself through the tiny holes where my eyes fit. I’m wearing black shoes, black trousers, and a black jumper underneath a black coat. Black
fingerless gloves. I look like someone about to reconstruct a burglary for the television, not a man in his fifties. I shake the ends of my fingers and move my neck from side to side. I bend down
to stretch my hamstrings. Then I stand again, take up some kind of boxing stance, throw a few jabs. Come on Gordon, I say to myself. Come on old timer, you can do it. Ten minutes and it’ll
all be over. No-one will notice. If they do, they’ll probably thank you. You’ll get cards through the letterbox. Nice one Gordon, they’ll say. You did the right thing. I take a
deep breath and blink a few times. I walk downstairs, open the front door and step outside.
    It’s half past four in the morning. Benny’s light went out two hours ago. There are clouds in the sky, dark grey and navy. They sit like a child sits at the top of the stairs,
listening to parents arguing. Aware of everything. I hear a crack, a nothing sound. It’s absolutely nothing. Pull yourself together. Then again, think of the logic. Someone will always
notice. No they won’t. There’s no-one around. I walk slowly across the street with my knees bent, as quietly as possible. I hold my arms out to the sides, palms flat for balance.
It’s a new walk. If I saw someone doing this, I’d file it under ‘Suspicious behaviour’.
    Now I’m in Don Donald’s back garden. I climbed over the fence and landed in his compost heap, which is mostly made up of decaying food. There’s a stray
sausage on the lawn. It must have rolled off, or he’s left it there on purpose for the birds. Frost is forming on the grass. It’s beginning to go hard and crunches under my feet as I
walk carefully to the shed. I open the door and step inside, closing it behind me.
    There’s a window with a crack in it. The moonlight shines through and illuminates the wooden walls. I look around me. I’ve not been in here for years. A dartboard hangs on the back
of the door. It has two pictures on it. The queen mother pinned to the double top. And a blonde girl in her twenties. She has sweet blue eyes and a dart through her forehead. There’s a wooden
desk under the window. It has nails, screws, nuts, bolts, drill bits and pornography on it. A magazine opened at the centre. Black, finger-shaped grease marks smeared along the edges. There’s
a puddle on the floor and a hole in the roof. The wood is rotting and coated with moss. Along the wall is a line of nails. Some have tools hanging from them, others just shapes of tools drawn round
with a felt tip pen. There’s a hammer where a spanner should be. Useless nails holding imaginary pliers. In one corner of the shed, there’s a lawn mower. An old petrol mower from the
1970s. It looks like a tank. And in another corner a bucket, full to the brim with scrunched up balls of tissue paper. There’s one on the floor next to my foot. I try to kick it towards the
bin but it sticks to the floor. I open drawers. Start looking for my hedge trimmers.
    There’s a tree opposite my house, on the other side of the road. It’s the smallest tree on the street. It was planted by a group of children as part of a school
project. They came marching down the road, holding hands and pulling faces. The mayor came and posed for pictures. It seems that’s all she ever does. Hangs chains around her neck and grins.
Her teeth shining like she’s got a torch in her mouth. They stood in a circle round the tree. The mayor, the children, and a man from the council. He did the planting. I remember his face,
all out of shape, trying to smile.
    The tree’s