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I don’t go in bins as a rule. I have my pride, after all; even so, you do spot things from time to time that it’d be a sin to waste. When I was doing my rounds yesterday I did find a real treasure, or that was how it looked. I’d been doing a spot of tidying up before the light went; found a really nice trolley in the Safeway car park. Its wheels were good; that’s the main thing with trolleys. Some kids had already prised out the pound coin, but it had a separate compartment where you can put your valuables and things.

There wasn’t anyone around, so I pushed it round the back, all casual like, and when I’d hidden it up nicely I went to get my old trolley. There was a dirty great seagull sitting in it when I came over, picking with his great big beak at all my lovely things. They’re born thieves, birds: crows are always after my tinfoil and the golden paper from Benson and Hedges boxes, and the gulls are forever trying to rob away my dinner. I shooed him off, but he’d already nabbed a slice of bread out of my Homepride bag.

I love tidying up. In half an hour I had all my treasures organised in layers with plastic bags in between. I had thirteen Coke cans that had been squashed by cars; they’re beautiful when they’re flat; I could run my hands over their contours for a month. I had more then twenty blue things, including one baby shoe that had been lost by someone and found by someone else. When I came across it, it was spiked up in the rain on a black set of railings, blue and wet and gorgeous.
 
 

By the back doors of the supermarket, where the bakery is and they put out the rubbish, there’s always bin bags, lovely strong black ones. My plastic top sheet was a bit tatty, so I went to get some from him who works in the storeroom. He’s a good boy, calls me Miss, he does, and he gives me my bags, and sometimes stuff that’s going out of date. Not that I beg, you understand; I am not a case for anyone’s charity. I thanked him very gravely with a slight bow, and I’m just tucking them over the top of my trolley when I spot something shiny on top of a heaped up wheelie-bin.

There wasn’t anyone to see, so I went to have a proper look. It was a half-bottle of whisky, that’s what I thought at first glance, anyway, so I tucked it into my big coat pocket, and pushed my lovely new, tidy trolley up towards the high street. It was a lucky day for sure, because I found two ice lolly sticks with jokes on them (different ones), and it turned out that my nice alcove was empty.

Recently, my alcove has been stolen sometimes, by nasty swearing kids with scabby arms, who sit and whine for spare change from anyone walking past and shout at each other. They sneer and call me grandma. No respect. It’s a lovely alcove, raised up on a step, with its own street lamp, nicely out of the wind and with a pretty view of the jeweller’s.

 

After I’d settled myself with my blankets and my Bible, I took the bottle out to have a proper look. The seal was still intact, and it was full right up with something golden, like whisky or brandy, or maybe rum. It was one of those that’s got two flat sides, and there was no label, which was odd.

Now I’m no drinker, you understand, not with how it ruined my old mum, but it was a pretty thing, this bottle. Its shape made me think of a round bottle that’s got left in the sun and gone gooey, 'til the sides sank flat. There was something though, like a tangle of threads within the liquid, that gave me a pause. I found my glasses inside my bag of things made of glass, and I held it up to the streetlight.

At the centre of a fragile web of blood vessels was a tiny knot of something living, something that had a huge blue eye and a little throbbing heart in its middle. I was surprised, in a way, but then I thought, well everything has got a life of a sort, hasn’t it?

I watched it for ages, pulsing in its network of bubbles and nerves; after half an hour I realised that it was growing, slow but visible like the minute hand on a clock. Delicate mauve buds developed and began to become limbs, and a tiny squashy face began to pick itself out of the softness.
 
 
Before I knew it, it was kicking out time at the pub over the road, so I thought I had better keep myself a low profile. It was getting a bit on the nippy side, and I was worried about the baby, so I put the bottle inside my clothes and pretended to be asleep until all the laughter and shouts had died away.

There’s a sound to the night, the proper night, between the last of the drunks and the security guards walking home at five with sleep in their eyes. In the proper night it’s so quiet you can hear the wind stirring litter and the creaking of the hanging signs of shops. In the proper night, tomcats maraud in the gardens and people have their throats cut whilst they’re sleeping.

I dozed a bit, until the proper night woke me up. Inside my cardigan there were two rhythms now: the stubborn beat of my chest and the hopeful flutter of the baby. When I took the bottle out, it occupied half of the space inside; it had developed stubby wings, studded with the itchy points of sprouting feathers. When it saw me, it began to drum its little hooves. I put my thumb against the glass, and it trailed its miniature fingers against the inside of the bottle where I had touched.

I ate some of my bread whilst I watched the baby forming. It grew, quicker and more quickly now; its eyes darkened to a chocolate brown, and it learned to blink at half past three. Sunlight was straining the dark by a quarter to five as the baby heaved its wings against the sides of the bottle; by now they were longer than its body and stuck at a painful angle against the corner. Next page >>