In the lounge Lawrence pushed his finger through the chewed hole under the sweater’s arm. It had all felt so artificial. The out-of-date fruitcake that was ‘still OK’, the fig rolls the Scanlans brought and Gordon Lomas’ hyah-hyah laugh and bald fucking head. Everyone wore pastel or beige, the women criticised Princess Diana and the blokes gathered in ribald groups. The afternoon peaked when Lawrence went to the kitchen to fetch more pop and caught his parents in there, touching one another.
But what alternative? Protest and cry fake? His mam would kill him. This was Yorkshire. Far better to keep quiet than be thought soft. Far better to sit back and enjoy the sausage rolls.
The sweater’s tear was now so much bigger that he might as well have done with it. He tugged at its edges until he’d ripped the garment apart completely.
Satisfying to at least ruin something.
Another moth flew past. Lawrence tried to get it, missed. He tried again and slapped the coffee table where it landed, the impact rattling the windowpane.
He looked around the room. On the armchair were moths. The electric fireplace, moths. On the ornaments, the TV and the lampshade.
He went upstairs to check his wardrobe and found more holes in the clothes hanging in there. The culprits crawled over the desk and all four walls. Lawrence swatted all of those that he could see then carried his clothes outdoors, slinging them over the washing line by the brazier Arthur used to burn the litter people threw over their fence, and the leaves shed by the sycamores stooping over their yard. Lawrence would light a fire to smoke the bastards out. Bonfires did for midges; he’d fumigate the moths from his clothes the same way.
But not before he combed the rest of his room, checking under the single bed pushed against the wall, vacuuming the steps of floor space then changing the bedding. Still no nest. Just crawling or flying insects that were crushed as fast as he came across them.
Next he tackled his parents’ room. This was not a place to be entered lightly, not because his parents were especially private people, but because being in their personal space made you feel like you had somehow wandered into their brains. This room was where Mam and Dad became Shell and Arthur, the parts of them Lawrence knew nothing of, ever so close to being revealed. Medicine, lingerie, letters, receipts, private heirlooms, belly-button fluff and toenail clippings. All of it told their secret, human story.
Lawrence only dared search their wardrobe, although it was the same state of affairs in there as in his. He left every item hanging◦– Mam would hit the roof if she knew he’d been touching their stuff◦– taking the trouble to vacuum the carpet then the landing, spraying enough air freshener in the bathroom to choke any living thing to death.
Downstairs he took out more moths and cleaned the stains they’d left on the walls by spitting on the hem of his t-shirt and using it as a makeshift cloth. The kitchen was all round edges, vinyl floor and Formica surfaces, its cupboards so packed and regularly used that the chances of a hidden nest were slim. Lawrence went to the living room to check in there instead.
The rug was like a stagnant sea. Lawrence vacuumed its exposed sections until he reached the settee with its fringe that tickled the floor. He lifted the heavy piece of furniture with one hand and went to push the vacuum underneath it with the other, but as he bent to see what he was doing, he noticed a papery movement lurking within the shadows.
The settee thunked to the floor. Lawrence stumbled onto his arse, the vacuum sucking a few rug tassels up and making a desperate noise. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Lawrence lifted the settee again and saw the hysterical gathering beneath it. The congregation and the shift. The antennae and the wing.
He dragged the settee into the middle of the room. Revealed where he’d shifted it were thousands of moths, writhing and crawling over one another. ‘He slid the armchair out and found a lot more where that had been, then lifting the rug he found maggots: cream-coloured puddles of insects squirming in the dust, half-caught by the clumps of hair and the dirt and…
“Kiddo?”
Some voices could cut through anything. Lawrence switched the vacuum off, not daring to turn as he heard his mother’s keys clattering on the floor. His belly was after gold in the gymnastics and still he had the rug’s corner in his hand.
“Mam.”
The lines of Shell’s face were tight, her mouth an O-shape. She let out a moan of disgust, so soft it could almost have been a squeal.
It made Lawrence let go of the rug, which slapped to the ground, its force creating a ripple that sent a plague of moths flickering into the air. The insects rose and engulfed the living room. They glittered like dust motes in the sunshine streaming through the big window.
“Jesus!” Shell cried, slamming the door to protect the upstairs and swiping at Lawrence. Her nails caught his nape hair as he tried to escape, as she dragged him into the yard along with a wooden chair from the kitchen. Lawrence kept trying to speak. He kept saying her name.
Mam.
Mam.
“Get your clothes off and sit on that bloody chair!” Shell shrieked.
Lawrence did as he was told while his mam removed her denim jacket and wrapped it around her face, tying the arms at the rear of her head. She marched back into the house and opened a window, a plume of moths erupting from the gap as Lawrence listened to her talking to someone on the front desk at Brantford.
“Tell him his wife’s on t’phone,” said Shell, “and I don’t care if shift’s about to wash, I want him home, A-S-A-bloody-P!”
Soon Arthur returned, stepping from a taxi in his boiler suit and boots. Lawrence had stripped to his Y-fronts by then. He squinted towards the unbearable sun as his father took one look at the rug, rolled up and smoking in the brazier, spread each hand and said, “Well, obviously. Obviously…”
Mam’s chin was tucked into her throat.
“She knows, Dad,” blurted Lawrence.
Arthur stared.
“I said she knows.”
“You told her?”
“I had to.”
“You told her.”
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“You never think, do you? About anything.”
Lawrence wiped his streaming eyes. He’d slipped his trainers back on because his feet were cold. He liked the way the maroon laces weaved in and out through their dirty eyelets: interlinked and criss-crossed; over and under; the over and the under and the…
“Jesus, Shell, I got it… I got in a deal!”
That dull sound again.
“The truth, Arthur. For once the bloody truth.”
Lawrence’s father looked like he might bolt, but he was cowed by the faces in the neighbouring windows, which were themselves bloated and paled by the glass. There were no escapes in knotty little working communities like Litten.
“All right,” he said.
“Did you not hear her, Dad? If you just say what happened…”
Arthur pinched the bridge of his nose. “Lawrence,” he said. “I’m tired of hearing your voice.”
He sat on the ground.
“It were all from skip.”
Mam’s chin lifted. Her chest heaved. “How do you mean skip?”
“Frigging bin, all right! From nice place, Threndle House.”
“Rug?”
“Course rug.”
“Clock too?”
Arthur nodded. The rug had really taken. Its busy flames sounded almost like water running into a bathtub. They licked the air, noxious and declarative, the burned fabric terribly sour-smelling.
“They were both in good nick, like. I mean you saw ’em, Shell.”