The Peacock Cloak

it’s like. It’d do my fucking head in. Just tonight. Please, Angus!”
    He swallowed. He was just like that social worker Peter, Tammy thought, the one who kids would sometimes come up to and poke with the tips of burning cigarettes. The kids would laugh, and he’d laugh too because he couldn’t think how else to handle it.
    “Okay,” Angus said. “But, Tammy, it really has got to be just for one night.”
    They were getting quite near to where he lived.
    “You’d better get your head down,” he muttered.
    “What? Are you ashamed of me?” asked Tammy, for the devilment of it, like when they had poked poor Peter with cigarettes.
    “No, no!” he protested. “Why would I be ashamed? But you said yourself people might lock you up.”
    “Yeah but…”
    “Just get your head down all right?” snapped Angus, fear finally overcoming his other feelings, and he turned into the housing estate where he and Judy lived.
    He nearly didn’t get round the corner. His hands were so slippery that he could hardly grip the wheel.

    Tiny as Angus’ and Judy’s little box of a house might be, it still had en-suite off both its bedrooms and it still had an integral garage with remote controlled doors. Angus drove right in and made sure the door was fully shut behind them before he let Tammy out, safe from the gaze of neighbours in the enclosed space of his garage.
    “Wait a minute,” he snapped, as she made to follow him into the house. “I’ll go and draw the front curtains first.”
    Tammy waited, lighting up a cigarette.
    “Oh, um, we don’t actually allow smoking in the house,” said Angus, coming back from closing the curtains. “Perhaps you could just finish that out here before you…”
    She crushed the half-smoked cigarette under her heel with a small cold shrug, so unlike the frightened tearful waif that he had seen beside the gate in Poppyfields that Angus found it hard to believe she was the same person.
    “Do you want something to eat?” Angus said, avoiding her eyes. “Or the bathroom? I expect there’s lots you want to know about…you know… this world. But perhaps that’s for later, yes?”
    “I could use a cup of tea. And a shower.”

    Tammy made herself at home. When she came down after her shower she had done up her hair, put on some of Judy’s make-up and borrowed one of her tee-shirts to wear as a dress. She was, without doubt, the prettiest girl that Angus had ever been alone with, the prettiest and the youngest and the most obviously available.
    “Um, listen,” Angus said. “I’ve been thinking. I promised I wouldn’t report you to the authorities Tammy, and I won’t if you really don’t want me to, but don’t you think it might be the best thing? I mean I believe there are agencies now to help people like you, help you find a new life and all that. I mean you are welcome to stay here tonight but obviously I can’t keep your existence a secret forever.”
    Tammy knew just how to deal with this.
    “I thought you said you wanted to help me, Angus. But if you don’t, well fine, I’ll just walk right out of the door and you won’t never see me again. Is that what you want?”
    “No. No Tammy!” Angus cried out. “Don’t get me wrong. I do want to help you. I really do.”
    “So where do you want me to sleep?”
    “We’ve got a spare room. I’ll show you. The bed’s already made up.”
    “Are you sure you don’t want me to sleep with you?”
    Angus’ face flamed. He tried to laugh in the loud cheerful way that he imagined a man of the world would laugh in such a situation, to show that he knew that she was only joking and that of course he didn’t have the slightest interest in her in that way. But he was convincing on neither count.
    “I’ll… um… show you the spare room.”
    Just like that social worker Peter, thought Tammy. He’d go red too if anyone said anything that might be to do with sex. Why? Because sex was something he’d never mastered, any more than he’d mastered how to deal with children burning him with cigarettes.

    Tammy couldn’t sleep. The slip, the shifting drug, was in her veins. She was in this world, but only on the very edge of it, with the precipice right beside her. She kept feeling that she was falling and kept grabbing involuntarily for a handhold. Vivid images and sounds rushed through her mind, of the world she had come from, the world she had arrived in, the worlds she had glimpsed in between. She saw a thicket of