Reasons to be Cheerful

by Nina Stibbe

Over the weeks I began to piece together Andy’s life. I tried to put the rumours out of my mind: that he lived in a bus, that his brother faked their parents’ suicide (to inherit a bus?), that they lived on roadkill and beechnuts, that they forcibly tattooed people to initiate them into a bird-worshipping cult, that his brother was really his father. His parents had gassed themselves, drowned themselves off Loxton Locks, taken cyanide tablets left over from their spying days, been pushed over the edge after having a letter published in the Leicester Mercury which contained a disastrous grammatical error.

There was a certain look that I liked, which fitted with the attractive but not-too-keen; this was ‘busy city woman’, dashing around in coloured trousers and chunky but short sweaters (mustard, burgundy and dark green) and leather boots, carrying things, lots of things, bags and picture frames, and almost dropping them but laughing as if slightly shocked and so forth, and wearing hats, floppy hats, caps, trilbies etc. ‘Yes,’ I told Melody. ‘I’ll go shopping, I’ll buy a hat.’ ‘Hats are good but not a trilby or other women will hate you,’ she said, and we said goodbye.

We’d not seen eye to eye on a few things recently, especially after the cheese-knife incident. Now she was being subtle and supportive in the way formidable people sometimes are when it really matters. Towards the end of the afternoon,