Chapter Five

The first time he saw her, Tristan was shovelling pig s**t.

It was Thursday, which meant that it was his turn to take the wheelbarrow into the pen and clean up after the three Tamworths currently residing at the park. He didn’t begrudge this job too much. The pigs were good company, all incredibly funny. He could only talk to them in snatches lest someone saw him snorting like a lunatic and he got fired, but whenever there was no one else around he’d take the opportunity to have a quick chat with his porcine friends.

On this particular Thursday, he was just about to wheel the pig muck out to the manure pile when he spotted her. The park was relatively empty. It was a school day and the weather wasn’t great, the ground still wet from the previous night’s rain and freezing cold. She was leaning against the fence of the Highland Cow enclosure, her elbows resting on the top bar of the gate.

She looked young, Tristan guessed her in her late teens or early twenties, an unusual type to be visiting an animal park on a dreary Thursday morning. Her hair was straight and auburn with a neat Jane Birkin fringe, and she wore a dark grey duffel coat with rain boots, which were thick in mud up to the ankle. One of the bulls had approached her and was trying to lick her hands. Laughing, she reached into her pocket and took out an apple. Biting off a chunk, she placed it on the animal’s lolling pink tongue, and giggled as the animal chewed on it happily. Tristan placed the wheelbarrow down and approached her.

“Um, excuse me…”

“Mhmm?” she turned on her heel to face him. Her features had an ethereal, almost elfin look about them, but her eyes were so deadly intense that Tristan was a little unnerved, and it took him a second to reply.

“Er, yeah, sorry, but you’re not actually allowed to feed the animals.”

The bull (whose name was Nelson) mooed “oh, sod off, Tristan.” Tristan gave him a warning look.

“S**t, sorry,” the girl smiled apologetically, breaking the initial severity of her look. “Just thought he might be hungry.”

Nelson interjected with an irritable “yeah, I was, actually,” which only Tristan could hear. Tristan quietly told him to shut up. He apparently wasn’t quiet enough, because the girl furrowed her eyebrows at him.

“Did you just moo at that cow?” she asked, taking a bite out of her apple.

“Yeah, you work here long enough and it becomes a habit,” he grinned weakly.

She narrowed her killer eyes with a look that said ‘I’m not convinced’, but she didn’t pursue the matter further. Instead, she swallowed and said, “So, how long have you worked here then?”

“Coming up for six years now actually.”

“Wow. That’s a long time to be carting faeces around, isn’t it?” she nodded over to where he’d left his wheelbarrow.

“Contrary to what you may think, there are other, more rewarding aspects of this job.” Tristan was surprising himself. Talking to humans had never been his strong point. He was quite proud that he was managing to maintain a conversation with a girl, and a pretty one to boot.

Unfortunately, at that point his manager shouted over at him to stop taking and get on with his work. Disappointed, he apologised to the girls and started back over to the pigpen.

“Hey,” she called after him. “What’s your name?”

“Milo,” he shouted back, grinning.

“Alright Milo, I might see you round,” she threw her apple core into a nearby bin and left.

When he got back to the pigs, they teased him mercilessly until the end of his shift.

When he got home that night, Tristan told Dave about the girl.

Dave was Tristan’s housemate of three years. They had met shortly after Tristan first moved to Sheffield, when they both worked as waiters at an Italian restaurant in Hunter’s Bar. It wasn’t a great job, but both of them needed the money- Tristan to top up his ever-decreasing funds, and Dave to tide him through his last year of University. Even though Dave was a couple of years older than Tristan they got on well, and often went out for drinks after their shifts had finished. They remained in touch after they both moved on to better jobs, still meeting up when they could for a catch up.

Dave had a broad rugby-player chest, expensive, spotless trainers, and an unflinching devotion to Liverpool Football Club. Tristan, wiry, bearded, cardigan-clad, had read the collected works of William Golding but never been to a sporting event in his entire life. They were not the most obvious pairing, but somehow, through certain parallels in their personality traits and a shared passion for the music of David Bowie, they managed to forge a strong friendship.

For most of the time Tristan had known him, Dave had been living with his girlfriend, Chrissie, but early in 2005 he had announced over a pint one evening that they had decided to split up.

“Jesus,” Tristan had said. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” said Dave, sipping at his Guinness. “I know it sounds like a total cliché, but it was a very mutual thing. The only problem really is finding a new place.”

“Seriously? Because I’ve been thinking about moving, maybe getting a house, and I was wondering about lodgers...”

They talked out the semantics of the arrangement for the rest of the night, and by the time they left the pub they had decided to look at houses the next weekend.

Dave was sprawled out on the sofa when Tristan arrived home. He was watching Jerry Springer repeats and eating chocolate digestives, still in his work clothes. Dave was an IT consultant for some solicitors company, and, despite the undeniably dull nature of his work, he resolutely insisted that he was a ‘maverick’.

“Alright, Lola,” said Dave when Tristan shut the door, not looking up from the television.

“Hello David.”

“Put the kettle on.”

“I will if you give me one of those.”

Dave wordlessly held out the packet, eyes still glued to the screen. Tristan took three and went to the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with two steaming mugs of tea.

For a house shared by two men it was remarkably tidy, (mostly thanks to Tristan), and, save for the constantly overflowing washing up bowl and a few dead pot plants, was even bordering on aesthetically pleasing. The living room was small, the mismatched sofas squashed almost at a right angle so that you had to climb over the top of one to sit down. In one corner was a cabinet that boasted an impressive DVD collection, and in the other, their excessively large TV. On the mantelpiece over the disused fire was a disgusting array of tacky little knick-knacks, which Tristan and Dave had got into the habit of buying whenever they walked past a charity shop.

Tristan clambered onto the other sofa and handed Dave his tea. They both took a slurp, reached into their pockets for their tobacco pouches and began rolling cigarettes. Dave always said that this synchronicity was their equivalent of women who get their periods at the same time.

“Met a girl today,” Tristan said, lighting his cigarette.

“You met a what?” Dave said, sitting up.

“A girl. At the park.”

“Wonders will never cease.”

“Thanks.”

“So what’s she like? Glossy coat, wet nose?”

“Gorgeous, actually,” Tristan said, ignoring his friend’s jibe. “Funny, too.”

“So what’s her name?”

Tristan shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Dave took his cigarette out of his mouth and his eyes widened into an expression of horror. “What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’?”

“What? What’s wrong with that?”

Dave sighed, massaging his temples. “That’s not meeting a girl, Milo. That’s speaking to a girl. It’s a very different thing.”

“No it’s not!” Tristan was put out that his valiant attempt at interpersonal relations was being so devalued.

“Meeting a girl suggests that you’re probably going to see her again. You will never see this girl again.”

“Get buggered, Dave.” Angrily stubbing out his cigarette in the willow pattern teacup they used as an ashtray, Tristan climbed awkwardly over the back of his sofa in a parody of dramatic exit and retreated up to his room.

Jasper was asleep when he came in, so Tristan changed out of his dirty clothes into a fresh pair of jeans and a Smiths t-shirt, then slumped down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, kicking himself for his incapacity to behave like a normal human being. He rolled over and retrieved the book he was reading from the side of his bed, and opened it to the lad page he’d dog-eared. He read for a while, until he heard a small yawn from the cage on top of his dresser.

“Afternoon,” Tristan said, marking his page and slinging the paperback on the floor.

“Afternoon,” a sleepy voice replied. Tristan got up and opened the little wire door of the cage, letting Jasper run up his arm and onto his shoulders. He wrapped his thick pink tail around Tristan’s neck in greeting and began sniffing at the air.

“Did you get them?” Jasper asked.

“Of course,” Tristan stooped down to the pile of clothes on the floor and fished around in the pocket of his work shirt, and from it produced a small plastic bag of banana chips. He opened it and gave one to Jasper, who took it in his mouth and hopped onto the top of Tristan’s bookshelf, where he sat and nibbled at it eagerly, eyes vibrating with pleasure.

“Cheers, Tristan,” he said through a mouthful.

“Any time,” Tristan replied, kicking back on his bed again.

“What’s up with you, pinky?” Jasper asked, cleaning his whiskers.

So Tristan related, in chirps and squeaks, the apparently disastrous events of the morning. Jasper climbed carefully over the piles of books and CDs that filled the room until he was perched on the headboard of Tristan’s bed.

“Much as I hate to concur with our good friend Dave, I’m afraid to say that in this case he’s right. You are never going to see her again, Tristan.”

Irritated, Tristan put the banana chips back in his pocket and Jasper back in his cage, unaware that in a few days both rat and housemate would be proven wrong.

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