Cambrians: Hometime for Mags

(This is a continuation of the post “The Fenlands.” I quite liked the established characters, and I think they may become a regular part of my writing.)

Mags considered it a badge of honour that her trainers were scuffed. Scuffed trainers said a lot about a person; they implied a joie de vivre, a willingness to approach life without stringent preparation and with ten toes firmly forward. The right pair, marked indelibly with the stuff of nonchalance; well, they evoked that grist to the mill spirit, a pro-active sort of friction, a positive abrasion.

They also implied a dwindling bank account.

A small part of Mags supposed she couldn’t really blame her life that much for her current state of relative poverty. She lived in Europe, continent of the slightly haughty and well-governmentally-catered-for. Even if she broke her face and couldn’t be an astronaut or a supervillain any more, she’d still have disability benefits and jobcentre and telemarketing. But humans are slaves to relativity and mostly, she was lamenting at her lack of ability to blow a part-time-earned £150 on box sets of old TV shows and still have money to troll Nike.  

“At least”, her brain said to itself, crossing with her body across a narrow rivulet of the Ouse, “there’s still loitering.” There was nothing Mags liked better than a bit of loitering. She predicted that her epitaph would read “Loiter with direction”, for that was Mags’ highest calling. Unexceptional in dress or intelligence, she made up for her ordinariness with her air of astonishment. Mags surprised people, elicited things from them, made them feel almost imperceptibly as if they had crossed over into a film, and their life was being narrated – but her greatest quality was in pulling them into a film where she was the protagonist. This had won her a seat on the school council and easy friendships.

She walked alongside the river for a while, then climbed through a fence up onto the pavement and coursed across the road, threading her way into her house like one continuously edited shot. When she dropped down onto a decrepit sofa (emblazoned on one arm with the claw-induced debris of at least two cats) it was an event for only a little girl, equal occupant of the sofa and (in theory) of their parent’s inheritance.

“You’re late.” Nina was ten, also adopted, and also possessed of this photographic charm. Mags shrugged.
“Arthur can wait.”
“Maybe for you.”
“Alright, alright, I’m told. Get on with it.”

Nina’s hand went swiftly to the TV remote, and her book (a Jacqueline Wilson, which she called “lighter fare”) to the coffee table. The ritual of Arthur was one deeply entrenched. It had begun with Mags’ insistence eight years ago and continued mostly out of their shared belief that anything with anthropomorphic animals which rode bikes must be fundamentally A Good Thing. It was yet another manifestation of their quieter, stronger belief; that though they shared no genes, they had been born sisters. It was as simple as that.