4
The telephone only rang twice in the following two days. One was a wrong number, the other was from ‘Kickin’ FM radio who wanted to invite Curio onto one of their shows with DJ Space Hoppa. He always had guests on to answer calls from the public, interspersed with the latest chart tracks. It was basically aimed at teenagers. Hoppa’s guests were never truly famous. They were people who had made a fragment of a name for themselves locally, and saw that coming onto Hoppa’s show was an amazing career boost, even though the airwaves only covered half of the north-west. Basically, when
Hoppa announced who the guest was, it was usually a case of: ‘I’ve never heard of them’.
However, Curio’s appearance on the show was the following day. As the body was not headline news, its discovery by Curio only warranted a small section in the corner of page seven of the local free circular. They used his real name and no picture.
Today, he had to suffer the embarrassment of walking into the jobcentre and signing on. He could not yet tell them where to go, where they could stick their girocheques, but he was quite sure he wasn’t far away from doing that.
A balding man in his late forties looked at Curio across the desk as though he was wondering whether or not he was serious.
“OK, Mr Enchantment. You wish to have your name altered to Curio. Is that right? You want me to change what it says on the system”.
“I don’t want to be known as Philip anymore. Could you change it please?” The man shook his head.
“No, I can’t do that. I’ll have to book you in to see an advisor. Tell them, they’ll do it”.
Curio frowned, disbelieving.
“An appointment? Are you serious? Look, forget it. Just give me a pen”. The man did so, trying desperately not to grin. Philip signed his name and went to stand up.
“Er, hold on, Mr Enchantment. What have you been doing to look for work?”
“This and that,” he muttered. He hadn’t done a thing lately, so enamoured and convinced was he that riches were just over the horizon, that finding a job was pointless.
“What?”
“Sent some letters off to a few supermarkets”. The man nodded, and typed something on the computer.
“There’s no vacancies for psychic detectives yet, but I’ll keep you posted”, the man said, not hiding his grin.
“Glad to see you know who I am,” said Curio. He was handed his card, and got up and left. Outside in the cold air, beneath a white sky and gathering wind, Curio nodded at what he had just said in the jobcentre. The man knew who he was, it seemed outside of the records. He headed home, people around him passing by like robots, as they always did to everybody who looked normal. Soon they would recognise me, he thought. They would stop me in the street and want autographs and a chat about anything. No-one gave him a second glance, though, but they would, he guessed. Soon they would know his name.