The following is a sample story from Lovelace Flats by Jupiter Jones, available to buy from our online bookshop.
‘‘So, Would You Rather…’ asks Woody, and the Game Begins’ by Jupiter Jones
Petra, Woody, and Stan, with the keys in his pocket, caught the bus from the city centre out to Lovelace Flats. That first time, the journey was epic. The luggage rack was piled with rucksacks and art folders; Woody’s saxophone and typewriter were taking up seat space.
It was bitterly cold. A freeze had gripped the East Midlands for weeks. Roads were treacherous with black ice, small birds perished in the trees, rough sleepers died in doorways. Petra was anxious about her coat. It was new, an impulse buy, and she was not sure she liked it as much as she had first thought. She sniffed the topaz silk lining, twirled her mouse-brown hair around her finger, and dreamed. Woody, a latter-day beatnik of unfocussed talent and cruel beauty, was smoking a Black Sobranie and scribbling in his notebook. Stan stared vacantly out of the window. Beyond the scratched and fogged glass, the amenities of city life, banks, nightclubs, taxis, bookshops, off-licences, health centres, takeaways, launderettes and even greengrocers were left behind as the bus stop-start growled in low gear up the Wells Road and into the badlands.
‘My friend Louisa says we can have her old vacuum cleaner.’
Stan and Woody raised their eyebrows at Petra’s unexpected token of domesticity.
Their destination, 40 Faraday Walk, Lovelace Flats, was vacant, unfurnished, and cheap. It was a long way from everything they thought mattered, but the underfloor heating was included in the rent, and that winter, it was so cold that Petra would gladly have bunked up with Lucifer himself. The night before, in the student union bar, the three of them had drunk to their new venture and agreed house rules.
‘I don’t want to have to see your scanty panties drying over the bath,’ said Stan.
‘You won’t ever be that lucky,’ said Petra. ‘And no leaving your dirty books next to the loo.’
‘Bog,’ said Stan.
‘Or lavatory, lav if you must—’
‘Crapper.’
‘I don’t care what you call it so long as you don’t expect me to clean it.’
‘Alright, cut it out, you two,’ said Woody. ‘I’ve got a serious question. Would you rather… be totally safe or totally free?’
It was a question they were singularly ill-equipped to answer. Freedom or safety?
A choice between two abstract concepts they only half understood, and the antithesis of each, they hardly knew at all. Certainly not beyond the usual irksome restraints the middle classes imposed on their feckless offspring to curb their liberties, or in the case of danger, the lurking menace of men with sweets in their pockets. Nevertheless, they thought they knew.
‘Free.’
‘Free.’
‘Yes! At last, we agree on something. Another one: Would you rather… be famous only during your lifetime, or only after you are dead? Come on, snap decision, what’s it to be?’
‘I’m going to say famous while I’m alive,’ said Petra.
‘And then forgotten when you’re dead?’ asked Woody, shrewishly, as if she had it wrong.
‘Yeah, what will I care when I’m gone?’
‘Stan, are you with her on this?’
Stanley looked from one to the other. ‘Nope. I’d be happy to live in total obscurity so long as I can be massively famous when I’m dead – for my remarkable artwork, of course. More famous even than Le Corbusier or Cézanne.’
‘Mmm, me too,’ said Woody. ‘I want to know I’ve left something behind, something permanent, a monument to my craft or sullen art. Otherwise, what’s the point?’
‘Well, live for now, have fun, isn’t that the point?’ said Petra.
‘Carpe diem?’
‘Ha! You’re a bird in the hand, alright,’ said Stan. ‘Go on then, Slap, your turn.’
By Jupiter Jones from Lovelace Flats (£10.99)
