Black Swan Green: List 5

Clem Ostler solemnly presented Maxine with a shiny windmill.

“Many?” His sarcasm's thick as toilet bleach. “Any.”
“No, I've got enough.”
“Oh, yeah,” snided Ant Little, “like who exactly? Apart from Moron Bum-Chum?”

“I seen you an' that lanky git from Birtsmorton one evenin' two weeks ago, sittin' in the hayloft above the Herefordshire milkers—”

You can only change superficial features.

“What’s all this,” asked Moran, “about a portable TV?”
“It only works if you hold its aerial, which means you’re too close to watch it..."

A song that went, "Hey! (HEY!) You! (YOU!) Get off of my cloud!” blasted out and hydraulic tentacles lifted our giant teacups higher than houses.

Dean Moran, opposite, eyes clenched, lips valving open as a cobra slithers out, a shiny cobra of half-digested toffee apple, candy floss, and three of Fryer Tuck's All-American Taste-Tastic Hot Dogs, highly recommended, writhing longer.

She's the one who knelt down by Ross Wilcox to see if he was dead or alive, the one who heard him grunt, "I think I lost a trainer," sputter out a bagful of blood and teeth, and garble, "Make sure no one nicks my trainer."

I put Neal Brose's calculator into the vise. Leon Cutler noticed too but just stared, not believing it. Blank out the consequences. I gave the rod-handle-thing a strong turn.

Greenland Supermarkets sacked Dad 'cause an expense account was £20 short. After eleven years. This way, Mum'd told Aunt Alice on the phone, they don't have to pay Dad a penny in redundancy money.

“You’re saying”—Mr. Kempsey's temperature rose nicely—“that Neal Brose is running some sort of extortion racket? Under my very nose?”
“Does 'extortion' mean,” I asked, although I knew perfectly well, “beating someone up if they don't give you money, sir?”

“Casting aspersions on a boy's character is a very serious act, Taylor.”

“Now I strongly disapprove of how Taylor brought this woeful business to my attention, but at least he did. Less impressive are Chaceley, Pike, and Briar, who only spoke up under duress. What is to your collective shame is that it took Taylor's rash act this morning to force events to a head."

“Feigned incomprehension is the last resort of the fool, Drake.”

“Sit down, 3KM. Pencil cases out, please. Today, we'll exercise our supple young minds with a composition, on this theme..."

“I'd phone Little Malvern Loonybin, miss. Book you a room with a nice mattress. On all the walls.” Duncan Priest's small fan club laughed. “That’s not a secret, miss! It's just the gibberish of an utter nutter.”

“A pithy and rhyming assessment, thank you..."

As Duncan says, so-called secrets that are palpably false cannot be considered as secrets.

If enough people believed I was Nancy Reagan, that might cause me problems, but we still couldn't really think of it as a 'secret,' could we? More of a mass delusion. Can anyone tell me what a mass delusion is?

“How topical. Well, why not share this secret with us? Now. In a nice loud voice.”

I’d looked “ethics” up once. It crops up in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant books. It means Morality.

Most of the decorations are older than me. Even the tissue paper they're wrapped in's ancient. Frosted baubles Mum and Dad bought for their first (and last) Christmas alone together, without Julia or me.

Phone home immediately, it said. But our avuncular super-efficient porter—in our dreams—didn't write the time of the call.

Anyway, who used to play your Christmas L.P.s in November and make me stand sentry in case they came back from shopping?

I'd always worried but kissing's not so tricky. Your lips know what to do, just like sea anemones know what to do.

“Hang on to those. Some craftsmen might be able to graft parts of another Seamaster into Granddad's. You never know. When you're running thousand-acre nature reserves in the Loire Valley.”

They committed their first...indiscretion years ago. He confessed to Helena at the time and swore to cut her off. Helena forgave him. For the sake of the family.

Perhaps they didn't meet in the intervening years, perhaps they did.

When her business foundered last year—shortly after her husband'd upped sticks and left her with their baby—doubtless having scented something rotten in the state of Sweden, as it were—she turned to her former beau.

When her business foundered last year—shortly after her husband'd upped sticks and left her with their baby—doubtless having scented something rotten in the state of Sweden, as it were—she turned to her former beau.

So, he borrowed a hill of money without so much as breathing a word to his own wife, using her family home as collateral.

Mum’d rather do business with a friend than with some outsider she wouldn’t know from Adam. Remember those ghastly Crommelynck characters who foisted themselves onto us?

Hugo’s smarmy as ever.

"Uncle Brian...” Finishing the sentence about Uncle Brian was hard work.
“...got drunk as a lord and prattled on about me?”

The horriblest part was, being friendly to Dad makes me feel disloyal to Mum. However much they say, “We both still love you,” you do have to choose. Words like “maintenance” and “best interests” don't leave you alone.

She's frumpier than Mum, any day, and mousier. Brown hair in a bob, brown eyes. She doesn't look a thing like a stepmother.

An ambulence siren's wail bagatelled through the bare wood.

How Grant Burch pushed docile Philip Phelps over the edge, I'll never learn.

“Difficult to imagine anything ever petrifying you.”
“Well, behind my fearless facade, little brother, I am regularly scared witless by all manner of things..."

This divorce's like in a disaster film when a crack zigzags along the street and a chasm opens up under someone’s feet.