purely because he knew it disturbed her. ‘Excuse me, I have to help get ready for the reopening. We’ve only got a couple of months. Don’t you have somewhere to be?’
‘Doesn’t it bother you? Touching dead stuff all day?’ He sucked on his bottom lip slowly and stared at her mouth.
‘Not really.’ She tried again to move around him but this time he just moved closer. She could smell cigarettes and alcohol on his breath as he stood almost toe to toe with her. It’s just a game, he doesn’t know anything, she repeated to herself over and over. She had to decide between looking him in the eyes or shifting her gaze and staring down at her feet. She wanted to do the latter but that’s what he wanted too. So she would stare him down, hoping to God he couldn’t see the darkness behind her eyes. She knew all he wanted was to make her feel uncomfortable. To exercise the tiny bit of power he had in this world over someone he knew he could get a reaction from. He liked to play this game with someone who was easily flustered.
His eyes dropped to her chest, hidden beneath the olive green blouse. She tried not to breathe hard as she didn’t want to give him any more food for thought. She could feel her lungs tightening and her mouth desperate to suck in more air. She would rather pass out than give him the satisfaction. Instead he backed away, eyes still fixed on her body.
‘Have a good one then.’ He smiled, his hand firmly on his baton, finger circling the tip. She slowly exhaled as invisibly as possible. He was such a creep, but at least he was honest about it. Before she had fully filled her lungs again he was gone. She scuttled back to her darkened corner of the museum. That was enough social interaction for one morning.
Abbey went to the museum canteen at noon, as always, to pick up her lunch, which she ate at the same table every day. Routine was everything, right down to the brown corduroy skirt she wore at the end of every week. It didn’t take much to bring on her anxieties. Luckily this was not a popular or busy museum, if people were curious about anything these days they would just look it up on the internet, this suited Abbey just fine. Today she had a tuna sandwich; Friday was fish day at the museum, Mr Lowestoft insisted on this throwback to a more religious time, when people had values.
Abbey genuinely loved her job, she could not imagine doing anything else. She liked the familiarity of working with the same people every day, good people, and aside from Shane they were mostly sensible people. Abbey also liked that she got to spend most of her days alone, with only the dead for company.
‘Is this seat taken?’
Abbey looked up at the stranger, her mouth full of food, she chewed quickly to reply. The canteen was empty and she couldn’t say it was taken. Did he just want the chair? Was he going to sit with her?
‘No,’ she finally managed.
He put his tray down opposite her and sat down, smiling. He took his coat off and hung it on the back of the chair, making himself comfortable. He was a young, slender man with black floppy hair. Although definitely older than her, she couldn’t quite place his age. He looked eccentric, different. The most remarkable thing about him though were his eyes, they were cold and grey like cut glass, Abbey had to force herself not to stare.
‘I’m Parker, Parker West.’ He held his hand out to her over the table. She rubbed her palm on her skirt to remove any traces of tuna mayonnaise and then shook his hand.
‘Hello.’
‘You’re Abigail Lucas?’ He smiled again, she could not hide her surprise – how did he know her name?
‘Who—’
‘Oh, they didn’t tell you? I’m going to be helping you with the archives. I have a masters in zoological archaeology and I’m working towards my PhD,’ he said, almost embarrassed.
‘Oh, yes, Mr Lowestoft did mention it. I didn’t realise it would be today.’
She had already worked her way through Australasia and Southern America on her own, cataloguing every single animal, noting down its region and its place on the food chain. Up till now she alone had the power to decide the fate of these creatures. She could mark the animal for restoration or for destruction. Where possible she was to save the animals, although it felt so futile – so far she had condemned over two hundred animals to the incinerator, their final resting place. The worst cases were in the northeast corner of the building where there had been a leak in the roof that had gone unnoticed for far too long. She hadn’t been able to save any of those, the mould and rot had set in so much that their deterioration had sealed the deal. She wasn’t sure if she trusted a stranger with this responsibility.
‘He just said you could probably do with a hand. This museum has a particularly quantitative supply of species and sub-species; it’s a lot for one person to get through … in two months, is it?’
‘I can manage it,’ she said apologetically, internally scolding herself for apologising at the same time.
‘Oh, no one said you can’t. To be honest with you, I volunteered, no one is paying me. I’m writing a paper for my PhD, you see, well I won’t bore you with the details of it but you would be doing me a huge favour if you would allow me to tag along, I might even be able to offer you my expertise with the identifications at least; you would obviously have to handle the actual restorations.’
‘If you think …’
‘The final decision is yours, my fate is in your hands.’ He had a soft, pleading but mischievous look in his eyes, she wanted to smile at him, she wouldn’t because that’s not who she was. People, she knew, are rarely who they show themselves to be. There is always a lie, always a mask.
‘Hello, Parker, you can call me Abbey,’ she said after a pause. She would just have to deal with it.
‘Nice to meet you, Abbey.’ He half smiled. His anticipation was evident as he ploughed his way through his lunch, raring to go, eager to meet her dead little friends.
She thought of all the animals she had already worked through alone and decided maybe this wasn’t the end of the world, it didn’t mean that Mr Lowestoft didn’t trust her, it just meant she could take her time and not worry so much about the self-imposed deadlines she had assigned. The hardest decision she had made on her own so far was on a small creature whose identification numbers had been ruined by water and damp, she did not recognise the animal and could not find it in any of the encyclopaedias. Maybe it was stored in the wrong part of the world, but there was no saving her – she knew the creature was a female, her teats were still enlarged from recent motherhood. Abbey wondered what had happened to this little beast. Her cheeks had been ravaged by termites but her black eyes were so calm. As Abbey had fingered the tiny bullet hole in the animal’s chest, a spider had crawled out and she dropped the animal in shock, smashing what was left of her face. Abbey could not stop the tears as she placed the red sticker on the small animal, wondering if her children had befallen the same fate or if they had made it, at least for a little while. She wondered if they had got the chance to have children of their own; she liked to think they had.
When she took Parker through to the floor where all of the Asian cadavers were kept she saw how exhilarated he was, his eyes transfixed and wide, like a child on their first trip to a toy shop, not knowing where to start, unsure what to break first.
‘Follow me.’ She led him to the far end of the room, her voice echoed as did her footsteps when her shoes thumped against the polished wooden floors. The room itself was lit from a double row of green glass bricks slotted in above where the original windows had been, long since boarded up to accommodate the large metal shelving units
