The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart Page 0,48

present for someone who has become a great singer. I won’t just give her the key this time, I’ll give her the whole heart too, in the hope that she might once again decide to tinker at love with me.

I walk down the main avenue in the Extraordinarium, like someone condemned to die. I cross paths with Joe, and our eyes meet as if we’re fighting a duel in a western, in slow motion.

But I’m not afraid any more. For the first time in my life, I imagine what it must be like to be in his shoes. Today I’m in a position to win back Miss Acacia, just as he was when he took on the job at the Ghost Train. I think about how much he must have hated me at school when I couldn’t stop talking about her, not realising that he was in agony because she’d gone away and never come back. This great tall fellow and I almost have something in common. I watch him stride off until he disappears out of sight.

Up on the Ghost Train walkway, Brigitte Heim appears. When I catch sight of her hairstyle, identical to the bristles on a broom, I turn back. She’s like a sallow witch who reeks of loneliness; and as unhappy as those piles of old stones she collects. I could have tried talking calmly to her, now that she no longer recognises me. But just the idea of her spitting spiteful remarks makes me feel tired.

Miss Acacia, or the gift of ensuring things never work out quite as they were planned . . .

‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘Me too.’

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to carry on . . . Oh, you’ve got a present for me? What’s inside the box?’

‘A heart in a thousand pieces. Mine . . .’

‘You’re pretty single-minded, for somebody who’s not meant to be flirting with me.’

‘Forget about the impostor you saw yesterday. I want to tell you the whole truth now.’

‘The truth is you never stop trying to flirt, with your unkempt appearance and that suit you wear. And I’ll admit it works for me . . . a tiny bit.’

I grab her cheeks between my fingers. They’ve lost none of their glow. I place my lips on hers without saying a word. The softness of her lips makes me momentarily forget my best intentions. I wonder if I didn’t just hear a clickety-clack from inside the box. The kiss leaves me with an aftertaste of red peppers. A second kiss takes over from the first. We press harder this time, plugging back into electric memories, reconnecting with treasures buried deep beneath the skin. Robber! Impostor! hisses the right side of my brain. Wait! Let’s talk about it later, my body answers. My heart is being tugged in opposite directions; it beats wildly with all its might. I’m intoxicated by the pure and simple joy of rediscovering her, despite the nasty feeling that I’m also cuckolding myself. This kind of simultaneous happiness and suffering is too much. I’m used to rain after fine weather. But right now, flashes of lightning are streaking across the bluest sky in the world.

‘I asked to speak first . . .’ she tells me sadly, extricating herself from my embrace. ‘I don’t want to carry on seeing you. I know we’ve been circling around each other for months now, but I’m in love with someone else, and have been for a long time. It would be crazy to start a new relationship, I’m really sorry. But I’m still in love . . .’

‘With Joe, I know.’

‘No, with Jack, the old lover I told you about, the one you remind me of sometimes.’

A big bang of sensations wreaks havoc with my emotional connections. Tears come without warning, hot and long, impossible to hold back.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want to hurt you, but I’ve already married someone I’m not in love with. I can’t start all over again,’ she says, putting her slim arms around me.

My eyelashes must be spitting rainbows.

‘I can’t accept a present from you. I’m really sorry. Don’t make things any more complicated than they already are.’

I take my courage in both hands as I grab hold of the parcel containing my clockwork heart. ‘Open it anyway, it’s a present intended for you alone. If you don’t take it, nobody else can use it.’

She accepts, visibly embarrassed. Her carefully painted pretty little fingers tear off the paper. She feigns