Precious Little - Chapter 3

            When I got back to my flat, my neighbour Hayley was in the front garden sorting out her recycling.  Hayley lived in the first floor flat, directly below me.  She was wearing a vest and tracksuit bottoms and was in bare feet.  She saw me coming which meant I didn’t get quite as much time looking her over as I would have liked.

            ‘Hiya’ she said and beamed, her perfect teeth lining up like all the angels in heaven.

            Hayley was hot.  Beautiful.  So beautiful that it sort of hurt me to look at her and I found myself averting my gaze whenever I was around her, as if I’d caught her in the nude.  Which was something I would have loved to do.

            ‘Hi’ I said and smiled back, but only for a second before I had to look elsewhere.  ‘Sorting out the old recycling I see’ I said and wished that once in a while I could say something interesting.

            ‘Yeah.  Got to do my bit for the environment’ she said, clenching a fist in the air and frowning.

            For a second I thought she might have been an environmental extremist, the kind that scales buildings for Greenpeace.  I didn’t really know her.  But then she laughed.  So I laughed too.

            ‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked.

            ‘Just visiting the parents.’

‘Oh.  I see’ she said in a way that suggested she understood something from my tone.  ‘What did you get from Selfridges?’ she asked, pointing at the fucking bag in my hand.

‘Oh, uh, nothing’ I said.  ‘I met my ex this morning.  We’ve just split up and she wanted to give me back some of my stuff.’

‘Just split up?  Oh you poor thing’ she said and she reached up and gripped my forearm, her thumb stroking across it before letting her arm drop down again.  Even through the leather of my new jacket, I swear I felt electricity.  I suppressed a shiver. 

I couldn’t even look at her now so I looked down and ran a hand through my hair, hoping that made me look sad and thoughtful.

‘Yeah’ I said.

‘How long ago?’ she asked.

‘About a month.’

She made a noise like something gentle was hurting her.  ‘How long were you together?’

‘About six years’ I said.

She made the noise again at a higher pitch and when I looked up her face was textbook sadness – eyebrows straining up in the middle, her big blue eyes looking out from her downcast brow, pouting with the corners of her mouth turned down.

‘Do you miss her?’

‘Yeah’ I said.

She smiled at me in a way that I guessed was supposed to be comforting.  I just wanted her to stop asking me painful questions.  We had reached an impasse and stood smiling at each other.  I looked at my shoes.  I looked at Hayley’s bare feet.

‘Aren’t your feet cold?’ I said, recovering the situation with conversational expertise.

She looked at her feet as if that was going to help her work it out.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘they are a bit.  Should get back in.’

As the front door closed behind us, the door to the ground floor flat opened.  A couple, George and Eliza, lived on the ground floor and poking her fat little head out at us was Eliza.  She had closely cropped, bleach blonde hair and bad teeth.  She was as tall as she was wide, like how the Egyptians used to build.  Except she was built like a ball, not a pyramid.  In our previous encounters, she’d smelled of ham.  But standing in the doorway of her flat that night, all I could smell was the powerful, acrid, lemon smell of cleaning products.

She looked at us.

‘Hi Eliza’ said Hayley, her smile fixed.

‘Oh sorry’ said Eliza, in her voice as high as a whistle.  ‘I thought you might be George.’

‘Nope.  No, we’re not George’ said Hayley and laughed, even though nothing was funny.

‘Everything alright?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ Eliza said, ‘I’m sure he’ll be back soon.’

We all stood there for a moment, somehow embarrassed and incapable of making the next move.

‘Okay,’ said Hayley in an exhalation, slapping her hips with her hands.  ‘Well if you need anything…’

‘Thanks’ said Eliza.

We all said goodbye or good night or whatever and Eliza drew her head back into her flat like a red faced tortoise and closed the door.  On the way up the stairs, Hayley looked back at me and made a face – a grimace that said shit that was awkward.  I screwed my nose up and nodded in a face that I hoped said yeah, really weird.  Hayley smiled back at me and giggled as she turned back around.

‘Anyway,’ she said, as if Eliza was just a rude interruption, ‘how’re you settling in to Wood Green?’

Hayley’s head was cocked a little to her right and her blue eyes blinked in slow motion.  As she smiled, her pink lips glowed and I felt my heart swell.

‘It’s okay actually,’ I said, willing myself not to say anything stupid.  ‘It’s got a bad reputation but people here are actually really nice.  They say sorry if they bump into you and stuff.’

‘Yeah,’ she mused, biting her lip, ‘probably scared of getting stabbed.’

We both laughed.

‘Nah, it’s alright really.  I’ve lived here for years and never had any trouble.  Touch wood’ she said, knocking on her door and sucking air in through her teeth.  ‘Fancy coming in?’

I thought about it.  So far we’d had a good conversation.  I hadn’t said anything stupid or mean or unpleasant and we were getting on fine.  Why would I have wanted to jeopardise that by spending more time with her? 

‘That’s awfully kind of you but I’d better get home.  Got some stuff to be getting on with.’

‘No worries’ she said and she looked like she might be genuinely disappointed.              Someone beautiful was possibly, genuinely disappointed that I wasn’t coming in to her flat. 

‘Another time.  I’m right here.  Feel free to pop down’ she said.

‘Thank you’ I said.  ‘I certainly will.’

We smiled at each other one last time, then she stepped into her flat and I walked up the stairs.

            I got into my flat and straight away replayed everything I’d said.  I still hadn’t said anything ridiculous.  I hadn’t fucked anything up.  So far.  I was glad I’d got out of there when I had.

            I tipped my stuff out of the Selfridges bag onto my coffee table.  Then I took the bag, tore it into tiny pieces and threw them in the bin.

Precious Little - Chapter 2

            My mum opened the door and greeted me with the kind of sad smile people give each other at funerals.  It was the first time I’d seen her since the breakup.  She was wearing an apron and holding a wooden spoon and as she reached out to drag me into a hug, for some reason I got the idea she was going to hit me with the spoon and I winced in preparation for the pain that didn’t come.  My mother is a small, slight woman and it hurt my back to bend down to hug her.  She planted a dry kiss on my cheek, said ‘Welcome home boy’ and slapped me several times very quickly on the back with her free hand.

            ‘Thanks mum’ I said, straightening up.

            ‘What have you been buying in Selfridges?’ she said, rooting around in the bag I was still holding.

            ‘Nothing mum.’

            ‘What’s this wire?’ she said and held it up looking confused.

            ‘I don’t know mum’ I said.  Already I wanted to get out of there.

            ‘Well why have you got it?’

            I thought about not telling her but then decided I would.

            ‘I met Amber this morning.  She wanted to give me some of my stuff that she’d ended up with.’

            ‘Oh right’ said my mum and made a face.  ‘So what’s this wire?’

            ‘I don’t know!’ I said and closed my eyes.  ‘She thought it was mine but it’s not.  But I took it anyway.’

            ‘Okay’ she said, smiled that smile again and turned and walked back down the hall to the kitchen and went in.

            The house smelled of chicken roasting and the musty smell of family life.  From the kitchen I could hear Radio 4 chattering away and from the living room, I could hear the crowd noises and earnest commentary of a football match or something on the TV.  It was all the same.  I could have been fifteen years old again, or ten, or five or back in the womb.

            In the hallway, the photos of me and my sisters at our First Holy Communions stared back at me with childish piety.  My big sister is a few years older than me and my little sister is five years younger.  But there we all were, all seven years old, together on the wall but years apart, hands together, all beaming next to the same mournful statue of the Virgin Mary.  Even at that age, my big sister smiled like she knew something.

            My dad stepped out of the dining room, his hands behind his back like a butler at a formal reception.  He was smiling, his face just one big crease.  There was a serenity about him like he was on something.  I smiled back.  He brought a hand up to stroke my shoulder.  Sometimes words fail my dad and half hearted physical contact is all that will do.

            ‘Hi dad’ I said.

            ‘Welcome home son’ he said and bowed his head like he’d used up all his words he had to offer.

            ‘Is Karen home?’ I stammered, struggling to kick-start the conversation.  Karen is my little sister.  She still lived at home.

            My dad’s eyebrows raised and his eyes widened and he nodded.

            ‘Mmmmm.’ he said.  ‘But she split up with her boyfriend last night.’

            ‘I didn’t know she had a boyfriend.’

            ‘Wayne’ my dad said.  ‘She’s not in the best spirits today.  So I know she’s looking forward to seeing you.’

            I smiled and nodded like the understanding big brother I am.  But really I was thinking that the idea of listening to someone else’s emotional crisis wasn’t what I wanted to be doing.  I wanted to be leaving.

            ‘What did you buy from Selfridges?’ my dad asked, looking at the bag and recoiling a little like it was something foreign and strange.

            ‘Nothing’ I said and took a deep breath.  ‘Nothing.  I met Amber this morning and she gave me some stuff she thought was mine and just happened to put it in a Selfridges bag.’

            My dad shrugged and nodded, his eyes wide and innocent.  I smiled and he smiled back and everything was okay.

            I headed to the kitchen to see if I could help.  My dad hovered just outside the door, either because those were his instructions or because he didn’t want to be too close to the action and have to help.  My mum took a long drink from a large water glass and gasped

            ‘Gin?’ she offered.

            ‘No thanks.  I’ll just have a cup of tea’ I said and made a move towards the kettle.

            ‘I’ll do that’ my dad said and dived in front of me like he was taking a bullet.  Tea was obviously something he thought he could manage.

            Karen stomped down the stairs in a big grubby hoody with the hood up.  It was clear she’d been crying because, well, she was still crying.  She walked up to me with her arms outstretched and her face contorted in a silent wail and hugged me.  I put my arms round her and could feel her sobbing and couldn’t help wondering how this was going to affect my new t-shirt.

            ‘Oh, what a pair we are’ she sniffled.

            At least I’ve got my dignity I thought.  But didn’t say it.

            ‘Hmmmmm’ I said.

            She broke off the hug and held my shoulders at arms’ length.

            ‘How are you?  How are you holding up?’ she asked, her eyes wide and sincere.

            I knew she wanted me to crack up and pour my heart out to her but that wasn’t going to happen.

            ‘I’m sorry about you and...’ I paused while I remembered, ‘Wayne.’

            She looked away and shook her head as if recalling some great tragedy.

            ‘How long were you together?’ I asked.

            ‘Just two weeks.  But it really felt like something special’ she said.

            She was still looking away and it was just as well because I could not stop my face contorting in disbelief, my mouth open, my eyes squinting.  Six years.  Six years Amber and I grew together then fell apart.  Two weeks?  Not to belittle her grief, but what a fucking charade.

            I composed myself and said, ‘Ah well.  “The course of true love never did run smooth.”’

            ‘I think it’s path.’

            ‘What?’

            ‘I think it’s “the path of true love never did run smooth”’ Karen said.

            ‘Okay’ I said and I smiled and hugged her, even though she was wrong.

            My dad handed me a cup of tea.  I took a sip and gagged a little as I swallowed it.

            ‘Has this got sugar in dad?’

            ‘Just one’ he said.  ‘Do you not take sugar?’

            ‘No.’  And I added ‘Sorry’ for some reason.

            ‘No!’ said my dad and stared at me like he was arguing.

            It seemed tea was not actually something he could manage.

            ‘Don’t worry about it’ I said and laughed a little.

            ‘Here, I’ll make you another one’ he said and reached out to take the mug.

            ‘It’s fine’ I said and moved the mug out of reach.

            ‘You sure?’

            ‘Absolutely’ I said and smiled and he seemed to relax.

            I went into the living room and sat down.  Karen came in.

            ‘What did you buy in Selfridges?’ she asked.

            After dinner we sat around in the living room, stretched out on chairs, feet crossed at the ankle.  We were all full and drowsy from too much food and we half watched something on TV.  My eyes kept closing.  Mum had cooked a ton of roast potatoes because she knew they’re my favourite and even after everybody else had finished eating, she was offering them to me for seconds, thirds and fourths.  I kept eating them because she’d made them especially and she kept offering them because I kept eating them.  I’d eaten so many potatoes I felt sick.

            Whenever my dad laughed at anything on the TV, he looked to see if my mum and my sister and I were laughing too.  I didn’t find anything funny but I smiled whenever I felt him looking over.  In response to my dad, my sister put a hand up by her face and played with her hair as if shielding herself from the eyes of someone she didn’t want to talk to.  My mum sat in an armchair on her own reading a book.  When my dad explained the jokes to her she said ‘yes dear’ and didn’t look up.  She always claimed she could concentrate equally on book and TV.  It wasn’t true.

            ‘How’s the new place?’ my dad asked, realising at last that he couldn’t force other people to derive the same pleasure from the TV as he did.

            I’d just moved into a new flat in Wood Green, North London.  It wasn’t an area I knew all that well but it was close to Crouch End where Amber and I had lived for a few years.  It was the first time I’d ever lived alone.  And all said and done, I was quite enjoying myself.

            ‘It’s fine.  It’s a nice flat’ I said.  ‘And the areas not that bad.’

            He nodded.

            ‘Oh my god,’ started Karen, ‘my friend George lived in Wood Green for a year while he was studying at Mountview, y’know, the drama school there?  Anyway, he said it was actually the worst year of his life and he absolutely hated it.  He was actually mugged by a man outside the law courts there.  I mean, can you imagine?  How awful.  And the irony of being mugged outside a court’ she said and shook her head as if cutting irony is as dreadful as street robbery.

            I wasn’t even sure if this was irony so I zoned out and thought about that while she rambled on about how terrible my new home was.

            All through dinner Karen had regaled us with stories about her friends, none of whom I’d met or heard of and who sounded like the most dull, self involved people in the world.  Mum feigned interest by making all the right noises while my dad wolfed down his food like a kid who knew that the sooner he finished his dinner, the sooner he’d be allowed out to play.  I occupied a space somewhere between the two, aiming for tolerant politeness. 

            But I’d had enough.

            ‘Right’ I said, getting to my feet.  ‘I’d better be getting home.’

            From the way Karen glared at me, I could tell that I’d interrupted her.

            ‘Thanks so much for dinner.  And thanks for having me.  Lovely to see you all’ I said.

            They all followed me out to the hall and watched me put on our shoes and jacket and we all mumbled things about seeing each other more often.  We hugged and said goodbye and my dad handed me the Selfridges bag, which I was on the verge of forgetting.  I was hoping that one of them would offer me a lift to East Croydon so I could get the fast train to Victoria but nobody did.  So I trudged off in the dusk to Wallington Station to catch the slow train homewards, hoping I didn’t meet anyone I used to know along the way.

Precious Little - Chapter 1

            I leapt up the stairs at Oxford Circus and out onto the grey majesty of Regent Street.  It was 11.57 on a Sunday morning and the street was more or less empty.  The sun was high in the sky, the air was light and cool and I swore I could smell the spring scents of Regents Park, even through the exhaust fumes.  I took a deep breath and felt a surge of optimism as I walked.    

            Amber wanted to meet me. I was due at my parents’ for dinner in the afternoon but if things went the way I thought they might, I’d cancel on them in a second.  12 o’clock at Starbucks near the Church of All Souls.  I knew it well.  We knew it well.  We’d killed a lot of time there.           

12 o’clock.  And it was 11.57.  I needed to play it cooler than this.  I slowed my walk to a saunter.  I stopped to look at my reflection in the windows of Topshop and tried to figure out if I had good side.  Both sides looked the same.  I carried on.

            At 11.59, I was loitering over the road from Starbucks and realised that this was not playing it cool.  I considered walking around the block.  But what if she was in there and saw me walk past?  She would know exactly what I was doing. 

            So I stood there, waiting, getting bored.

            At 12.01 I headed inside.  I don’t suppose that constitutes fashionably late but at least I wasn’t early.

            I craned my neck and looked around as I walked in, trying to make it obvious to everyone that I was there to meet someone.  There were only about three people sitting down drinking and it was clear she wasn’t there so I breezed past the counter and headed for the stairs down to the lower floor.  At a table, three teenagers looked at me in sudden silence like I’d stumbled across their secret meeting.  I glanced round the otherwise empty floor and headed back upstairs.

            ‘I’m supposed to be meeting someone’ I said to the smiling barista.

            ‘Okay’ she said.

            ‘She’s not here yet’ I said.

            ‘Okay’ she said again and I could tell by the fact that her smile had been joined by raised eyebrows and nodding that she wasn’t all that interested.  ‘What would you like to drink?’

            I was already perusing the menu.  My usual order would have been a grande latte but coffee equals bad breath.  That could have been a problem.  Plus, it was a bit obvious.  Those iced drinks weren’t appealing yet – it was still too cold outside.  Maybe in summer.  So I opted for a chai tea latte.  It was a change.  I hadn’t had one before.  Plus, it was important to show Amber that I had changed so I decided it was an all round good choice.

            I ordered, paid and hovered at the end of the bar waiting for my drink.

            Choosing a seat, I opted for one of the high stools by the window.  Against the full length window and with the gentle yellow grey spring light shining in, I deemed it to be the ideal setting for the solemn, thoughtful pose I was going to strike.  I imagined there would be a perfect way to sit so that all my bones, organs and nerves would be aligned.  And the stars and god and whatever.  And Amber would walk in, take one look at me, throw her arms around me and say we’d made a big mistake and then we’d say how much we loved each other and then everything would be alright.  So I shifted around in my seat, trying to get it right.  I attempted to lean my head against the glass and look sad, but in leaning over the ledge on which my drink was sat, I had to arch my back to such a degree that I ended up with my face pressed up against the glass like a school kid pulling faces.  I looked tortured, but not in the way I was hoping.  So I rested an elbow on the ledge, put my head in my hand and played with my hair, hoping I could pull off the dishevelled look.  Then I remembered that it took a lot of effort to make my hair not look shit this morning and set about trying to rectify any damage done by looking at my vague reflection in the window and patting my hair back down, hoping that this wasn’t the moment she walked in.

In the end I decided that while aligning the universe through a pose was a worthy aim, it was unlikely Amber would even notice and I might have be expecting a bit much.  So I just sat, half looking out the window, half watching the door.  I sipped my drink, which tasted a little like Christmas.

            At 12.22 Amber walked in.  She was wearing a jacket that may or may not have been real fur, a pair of shorts, dark tights, boots and a long, off white vest top.  She looked around.  The coolness I had planned for the occasion evaded me as my reflexes threw a hand into the air to let her know where I was sitting.  What I would have given for her to come in and notice me staring out of the window, lost in my own deep thoughts.   She made her way over, a tolerant smile on her face, looking out the window as she walked as if she’d rather not have been there.  I stood up as she reached me like I was some kind of Victorian gentleman.  There was a moment where we were stood facing each other, shallow smiles and silence.  And that’s when I realised I was nervous.

            ‘Here’s some of your stuff that got caught up with mine’ she said and handed me a small, bright yellow paper bag. 

            ‘Oh thank you’ I said and took it.

            It was a Selfridges bag with black writing on it and black string handles. 

            ‘I’m just going to get a drink’ she said and went to the counter.

            Inside the bag was a deck of cards, a pair of sunglasses, two CDs I’d never seen before and a long black wire in a neat coil.

            I sat down.  Amber collected her drink and joined me.  She was holding a takeaway cup which meant she wasn’t planning on staying long.

            ‘What you drinking?’ I asked.

            ‘Black Americano’ she said.

            I wanted her to ask what I was drinking but she didn’t.  Nor did she notice the new t-shirt I was sporting.  Nor did she notice the new jacket draped casually over the back of my chair – the jacket that she thought I looked good in and encouraged me to buy but I didn’t at the time because I thought it was too expensive.  She was looking out the window like she would if she was on a coach trip.  I tried to think of something to say.

            ‘So, what’s this wire?’ I asked.

            ‘I don’t know.’

‘I don’t know either.’

‘I presumed it was yours.’

            ‘Don’t think so.  What does it do?’

            ‘I don’t know.  I thought you’d know.  I thought it was yours.’

            ‘No, it’s not mine.’

            ‘Well.  If you don’t want it…’ she said.

            ‘No, no.  It’s fine.  It probably is mine’ I said, even though I knew it wasn’t.

            Then there was a break in the conversation.  Or rather, the conversation was a break in the lull between us.  We were both looking around and I started to realise that I’d rather be somewhere else.  Anywhere else.  This was not what I was hoping for.

            ‘I’m not sure these CDs are mine either…’

            ‘Oh for fuck’s sake’ she said and looked angry. 

            We sat not looking at each other for a little while longer.

‘I’d better get going’ she said.  ‘I’m running a bit late.’

            ‘Yeah me too.  Where you off to?’

            ‘South Bank.  Meeting up with some friends.’

            ‘Oh, who?’ I enquired.

            ‘Just Zo and Ben.  And I think Ian, Jess and Sue are going to be there too.’

            These were all mutual friends.  All of them had sent me sad texts saying things like ‘So sorry to hear’ and ‘Chin up mate’ and ‘You know where I am if you need me’ on the day we broke up.  Nothing since.  Partly my fault I suppose.  I hadn’t exactly made an effort.

            ‘Oh and John said he’d be there and Mel.  And I think Charlie?’

            Her face became a questioning grimace as she said the name.  Fucking Charlie.  Every story about work had involved the wonderful Charlie and his great sense of humour and how he said this and how actually he’s quite good looking but don’t worry.  I was convinced Charlie was in no small way responsible for our breakup.

            ‘Charlie?’ I repeated.

            ‘Yeah.  I’m sure I’ve mentioned Charlie.  From the firm?’

            The firm.  Amber trained as a solicitor and couldn’t refer to work simply as work.
            I stuck out my bottom lip and shook my head.

            ‘Nope.  Don’t remember a Charlie.’

            ‘Oh.  Well, he’ll be there.’

            ‘Right.’

            ‘Oh and Tristan.  From the firm.’

            ‘Right.’

            ‘Where you off to then?’ she asked.

            ‘Sorry?’

            ‘You said you had to go too?’

            ‘Oh.  Just up to Camden to meet a couple of friends’ I said.  I couldn’t possibly have told her I was off for dinner with my parents.

            ‘Oh who?’ she asked.

            ‘Oh just…’ I clutched around in my head for names and in an instant I decided it had to be a girl’s name.  I looked out at the church and the first name I got to was ‘Mary.  Aaand…’ I paused, trying to think of another name.  ‘Magdalene’ I said.  Then I wasn’t sure if that was actually a name so I said ‘Madeline’, as if correcting myself.

            Amber stared at me.

            I couldn’t think what people did when they were telling the truth so I stared back, my gaze not wavering from hers. 

            ‘Mary and Madeline?’

            ‘Mmm-hmm.’

            ‘Who are they?’

            ‘Just a couple of friends.  From work’ I said and nodded, hoping that nodding would encourage her to believe me and move on. 

            We both knew I was lying.  I just wanted to drop it.

            ‘Okay’ she sighed with a shrug and got down off her stool, dextrously looping the strap of her vintage handbag over her head.

            I stood too and holding my Selfridges bag we headed outside. 

It was colder than I’d remembered.  Optimism, it seemed, could make you warm.

‘You’re going to Camden, yeah?’ Amber said.

‘Yup.  Yeah that’s right.’

‘Well you can catch the C2 from over there’ she said, pointing across the road.  ‘It’s easily the fastest way from here.  And if you hurry, you can catch this one.’

Sure enough, one of the bastard buses was making its way through the junction at Oxford Circus and crawling up the street towards us.

‘Righty-ho’ I said, never ever having said it before in my life.  ‘Well.  Have a nice day.  See you soon.’

I nodded to Amber and she winced more than smiled and she waved at me from all of two feet away, a small wave that kept her elbow joined to her hip.  I wanted nothing more than to hug her, to throw my arms all the way around her thin frame and hold her and sniff her hair.  But the idea of us touching was not on the cards.  So I turned and stepped into the road, just as a cyclist came hurtling past, millimetres away from taking my face off.

‘Watch it you fucking moron!’ he shouted, swerving to avoid me and zooming off down the street.

I considered shouting something after him but didn’t have the strength.  I didn’t turn back to Amber.  I just plodded across the road, my shoulders sinking, my head down, and reached the bus stop just as the bus was pulling in.  I stepped on.

As the bus lurched away, I looked out of the window to wave to Amber.  But she was already halfway down the street with her back to me.  I stayed on the bus for one stop before I got off, walked back to Oxford Circus and caught the tube to Victoria.

Education part 4 - Junior School (first year)

            In the summer between infant and junior school I broke my arm.  It happened in Buncrana, Ireland where I spent every summer holiday visiting my gran and my cousins and my aunt and uncle.  I jumped off Paul Tierney’s wall.  Paul Tierney and I had been jumping off walls all afternoon.  For what was to be my final leap, I had decided to spin around in the air.  I landed on my left elbow.  Paul Tierney, his wall and his garden dissolved away and I ran screaming across the road and into my gran’s house.

            In the car on the way back from the hospital, I asked my dad if I would be on the news.  He said he didn’t think so.  I couldn’t believe that something so momentous wouldn’t make the news.  But true enough, it didn’t.  I realised that the world must be pretty big and that I must be pretty small.

            Nonetheless, I returned to school with my arm in a sling anticipating a degree of celebrity.  But kids are stupid and fickle and any interest in my stricken limb was both little and fleeting.  Of course it was.  I was now in a class with Shane Hurley.  Shane Hurley had no legs.

           

            I was in Mrs Anderson’s class now.  Mrs Anderson was alright.  She had a high voice and sang very loud in assembly.  She had a pronounced vibrato when she sang which made her warble.  Kind of like a wood pigeon.

            The junior school was joined to the infant school only through the kitchens so that the dinner ladies could serve both schools at once when they came in at lunch.  To all intents and purposes it was a different building and a different world.  In junior school we had houses and team points.  You acquired team points for your house and whichever house had the most points at the end of the year got to put their colour ribbon on the shield.  It was a big deal.  I was in Dunstan house which was blue and my big sister – who was in the top year – was house captain.  I was keen to do my best.

            In junior school we also had times tables.  These were tricky.  Mrs Anderson taught us the 2s.  When they finally clicked with me, I felt like a genius.

With our respective conditions making us ineligible for PE or for tearing around the playground at break time, Shane Hurley and I were forced to hang out and became friends for a while.  We bonded over our lack of agility and a love of the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.  Plus Shane had a Nintendo which was a fine catalyst for any friendship. 

            We became such good friends that I even braved my fears and stayed the night at his house once.  But then his mum moved to Harrow and he left school.  I visited him once but he had new friends and they talked different and liked different things and I never saw him again.

I had a thing for older women and was often in love with girls in my big sister’s year so it was handy having her there to pass on my messages of love.  These normally constituted a reluctant ‘my brother fancies you’ combined with an eye roll at which my big sister was pretty adept.  But that didn’t matter.  I didn’t even need a response.  I just needed to get my feelings out there.  It was a weight off.

Much of my first year I was in love with a girl called Natalia.  She was tall and very Italian looking and even though I probably saw her every day and my sister assured me she had passed on my message, she never looked at me once.

My arm had healed by Christmas and that year, my parents bought me a basketball.  It was a move inspired by mine and Daniel Ascough’s love of Teen Wolf which had come out and appealed to us greatly.  If Thriller had made us fear werewolves, Teen Wolf had made us want to be them.  And to play basketball.  And to listen to The Beach Boys and dance on top of moving vans.  There was only so much we could achieve as seven year olds at school so we satisfied ourselves with playing basket ball at the one rusty, netless netball hoop in our playground and howling as we did so.  It wasn’t just us.  Other kids joined in too.

            Mine was the only basketball in a playground of footballs so it attracted a fair bit of attention.  Occasionally bigger kids would want to play too.  And then one day I found myself playing basketball with Natalia, who was still – thus far – the love of my life.  Here I was, close to her, playing a game with her.  There was electricity in the air – I could feel it.  She passed the ball to me.  And there I was holding a ball that Natalia had held.  My basketball had been touched by tall, Italian looking Natalia.  I couldn’t speak.  This was special.  Keep your cool man, keep your cool.  I passed it back to her.  And from then on, whenever I got the ball I passed it straight to Natalia.  It was the most generous, loving thing I could think to do at the time.  And maybe I overplayed that card.

            ‘I KNOOOOW YOU FANCY ME!’ she declared, almost singing the words after I had passed the ball to her for about the hundredth time.

            She laughed.  The other players giggled.  There was the red rush of embarrassment and continued speechlessness from me and the game fizzled out awkwardly. 

How could I fancy a girl who’d shame me like that?  I couldn’t.  Natalia had burst the bubble and I didn’t fancy her any more.  But that wasn’t a problem.  Now I was free to fancy whoever I liked.

Black Market Prosthetics

When I woke up, I found myself with one foot inside my wardrobe.  On the other side of the room, the alarm was beeping.  It enraged me and I wondered what I was doing.  I had had a restless night.  

Pretty soon, my nose began to bleed.  I could feel its cold descent long before I watched with satisfaction the vibrant colour stagger down my filtrum and splash into the sink, dappling the white porcelain with its healthy rouge.  I was positioned in front of the mirror: partly so that my blood fell into the sink, partly so that I could watch my life essence fall out of my face.  I tired of this after a time and, leaning forward, pinched the cartilage in my nose.  This did nothing but block the blood flow, only unleashing a greater flow when I released my grip.  In the end I stuffed some tissue up there and hoped that it would dry up before I had to leave the flat.  It did, and I washed the brown speckles from my nostril and flushed the tissue down the toilet.

It was raining.  Heavily.  Big droplets like icy needles being plunged into skin that wasn’t ready for them.  God was a mean acupuncturist.  So I gritted my teeth and pulled up my collar.  A sheet of purple slate had enshrouded the world and the sun shone vaguely through it.  As I walked, the puddles merged into great, unavoidable lakes and I became more aware of the hole in the sole of my shoe with every step.  I imagined it getting bigger and bigger, exposing my frail sock to the elements.  My foot felt wet.  Traffic hissed by me, filling the air with biting moisture.

The bus was full of the same dour faces, of every day wishing their lives away working day by working day.  I occupied one of the dirty, unnecessarily psychedelic seats and tried to give off an antisocial air while staring out of the window at the grey, splashing world.  Nobody took the place next to me until there was no other option.  My neighbour became a gangly youth who had poured himself into an ill fitting suit for what was probably his first office job.  He was unfortunate looking, his mouth agog, his sable hair shaved and fluffy.  From his turkey neck protruded an Adam’s apple that looked painful and gulped helplessly as I stared at him, putting him into words.  The stigmatism of his nervous gaze never wavered from whatever was dead ahead.

*

Around the back of King’s Cross Station are a series of large, unremarkable buildings, one of which is the prosthetics factory I call work.  Steam ballooned out of a drain grate like picture house New York.  A door buzzed and I was in.

The factory I work in is a loud confusion, the colour of dirty metal and imitation skin, the smell of industrial grease and tanning leather.  The people who work there are stupid, unambitious and miserable.  Like me.  Joking.  I speak to nobody unless it is necessary.  Most people don’t waste their time embarking on relationships there.  It is enough to work there, to switch off, to get the job done and leave it all behind at the end of the day.  Only, I don’t leave it all behind.

At 4.30, I ambled past the uninterested security desk, my hold all by my side, and clocked out.  The sky was only marginally darker than it had been in the morning.  It had stopped raining but great puddles remained strained across the ground.  The smell of static sat heavy in the oppressive air and infuriated the looming clouds.  There would be a storm.

The bus weaved a random course through a tangle of traffic.  By the time it had negotiated its path to Edgware Road the sky was a black that cloaked the world and hid so much from view.  My first step off the bus was greeted by a long flash of lightning, a momentary pause, then an explosive roar of thunder that sounded like London crashing to the ground under the weight of the falling sky.  The rain began again: big, slow, sparse droplets, that fell with increasing regularity and hurried me on my way.

*

The Beirut Express is a restaurant.  It is always busy.  Its vibrancy and luminescence hum into the night like laughter at a funeral: out of place in this area, but welcome all the same.  People wait in the wings for a seat and passers-by dart fleeting glances in through the window and want to be inside.  The flats next door to The Beirut Express are its reverse.  A hooded figure drifted out of the building as I approached.  I breezed past him, through the open door into the ramshackle lobby.  The figure turned and grunted at me before he swaggered into the night rain.  The heavy door slammed shut and I made my way up the creaking, groaning stairs.

The door to flat 4 had been replaced many times, having been kicked in by police, thugs, dealers, whoever.  The door itself had changed since I had seen it last.  It was a heavy blue fire door, probably from a school.  There was a framed hole just below head height, where a pane of safety glass would have been.  Instead, a piece of wood prevented anyone from looking into the flat.  I knocked: three loud, slow knocks.  I heard the muffled panic of an unprepared home.  The wood slid away from the window.  A single bloodshot eye stared out of the darkness.

“Devil.”

I looked down at the floor and then straight at the eye again.

“Are you going to let me in?”

“Devil.”

Spat the voice again.  I turned to walk away.  As I did so, the door creaked open and I turned back, smiling as I did so.  Linus stood in the doorway, steeped in aggression.  Crack had drained the Caribbean from his face so that he was a deep shade of jaundice.  He hissed at me as I walked in to the flat.  I ignored him.  He was not a threat.

*

Linus lived with Albert.  A couple of years ago, Albert bought some particularly brown smack from a relative he no longer trusts.  Only half an hour before he began cooking up, the pair had been all smiles and jokes before he ran home with the excitement of an adolescent boy with pornography.  He cooked up a large dose.  As his hungry vein twitched and swelled, he shuddered and breathed deeply, almost erotically, in anticipation of what he was about to do to himself.  With gentle pressure the jagged needle penetrated the soft skin of the aching vein.  Perhaps it was because his heartbeat was a galloping horse, or perhaps it was due to the potency of the poison he had just brought into himself, but Albert was gripped by the power of the drug before he could remove the needle from his arm.  Consciousness was replaced with insuppressable physical ecstasy.  Within minutes he began fitting violently, his pathetic body thrashing around the floor like a shark in the throes of a kill.  The needle thrust deeper into the frail arm until it had disappeared from view.  Then somehow, the plastic of the syringe began to enter the body as well.  As the limbs flailed, the syringe tore through the arm, rupturing veins and muscles, and the arm became more and more mangled.  Above his blue lipped foaming mouth his eyes were wide and glazed and his pupils, pleading pin pricks.  Then he lay still and began to breathe.

It was twenty hours before Linus returned home, enraged with the come down of a massive crack binge.  He found his friend lying almost dead on the living room floor, his tattered arm contorted beneath him.  In what he saw as a logical expression of his affection and concern for his only friend, Linus thrust his balled fist into Albert’s face.  His nose oozed thick dark blood and his eyelids opened to reveal unseeing eyes that had rolled far back in his head.  Linus grabbed him by the collar and, shaking him, began to shout:

“Wake up!  Wake up you fuck!”

Then he noticed Albert’s ravaged arm.  Linus slapped him across his ghostly face and shouted louder:

“You fuck!  I can smell almonds!  You hear?!  I can smell fucking almonds!  It will have to go.”

This last he said with cold authority.  He released Albert’s collar and his lolling head clunked to the floor.  In the kitchen drawer Linus found a breadknife and returned to Albert’s withered body.  Using a knife and a loose tile from the fireplace, he hacked and grinded imprecise surgery at the point just below where Albert’s shoulder became his arm.  I don’t know how that mess healed, but the severed arm went out with an old chicken carcass, newspaper and cigarette ash.

Linus kept Albert almost as a prisoner from then.  He was convinced that were he to go to a hospital, the authorities would become involved and would take away the lifestyle they so loved.  He wouldn’t allow him out of their flat.  At the vegetable distribution plant where Linus’s successful brother had given both of them menial but decently waged jobs, Linus protested of Albert’s long term illness.  Sensing his brother’s growing impatience with Albert, Linus sought me out, judging Black Market Prosthetics the solution to his dilemma.  He was just there one day, snivelling in the rain.  I don’t know how many of my colleagues had ignored him and dismissed his pleas, but the desperation that partners recurrent rejection possessed him like a consuming aura.  Detecting an opportunity for exploitation I accompanied Linus back to his desolate flat.  Upon inspection, Albert’s left arm was nothing more than a scabby stump.  I laughed when I saw him: this miserable, desperate, old, balding, one armed junky whose addiction was so resolute he had resorted to injecting his crotch.  But I saw my opportunity.  I stole a prosthetic arm from work and charged Albert a thousand pounds for it.  He winced as he handed over the cash.  

The arm itself was faulty.  I had seen to this by loosening a bolt and removing a crucial washer in the complicated wrist joint.  It was a couple of months before I was called upon again following an embarrassing incident at work that almost caused Albert to lose his job.  He called me himself to make his request.  His voice shook with emotion, full of the embarrassment and indignity of his predicament.  Then he began to cry, his tears taking over his words with erratic breathing and incomprehensible babbling.  I couldn’t help but laugh.  So I brought him a new arm, making sure that this time, the joint around his stump was a little too big.  He bore it with remarkable stoicism for, again, no more than a couple of months before I received another call.  And this is how the cycle continued: their desperation causing me to make defects in my own product causing their desperation and so on.  Tonight I bring Albert his ninth prosthetic arm.

“The last one was too big.  It was about six inches longer than my right arm.”

Said Albert with a snigger, trying to lighten the mood and raise an amicable reaction from me.

“It was all I could get” I muttered.  It was a lie.

“I’ve got a good mind not to pay you for this one” he said, sniggering again.  

I stopped fitting the new arm and stared into his shallow yellow eyes.  The smile left his drooping face and he looked down and nodded.  My mind laughed and I continued to fit the arm which had, incidentally, a small cube of broken glass under the material of the socket fitting into which Albert’s stump slotted.  After, say, a couple of months this would irritate so much that I would be receiving another call.

The index and middle fingers on Albert’s right hand were yellow, an indication of yet another vice.  They clutched the wad of cash as my own hand rose to meet it.  Then we were both holding it.  Albert wouldn’t let go.  I looked at Albert’s face; at his weary eyes where tears formed in gaping pink ducts.  I was suddenly reminded of summer holidays when my grandfather would give me money for sweets.  Albert continued his silent plea.  I snatched the money from his frail hand and turned towards the door.

“Devil” spat Linus one last time as he opened the door for me.

“Fuck off” I said and marched out of the flat, the door echoing an aggressive slam behind me.

*

Finding a body isn’t the shock I expected it to be.  I was on the flaking groaning stairs that led me up to my flat when I saw the protruding foot and immediately resigned myself to having happened upon a corpse.  I was not disturbed and intrigue had vanquished any murmurs of fear – murmurs I thought I should have had, but murmurs I, in reflection, did not for an instant feel.  The foot itself was connected to a trousered shin.  But that was all.  Before the shin had a chance to stretch into a knee, it dribbled into a shimmering pool of deep cherry blood.  A very clean cut, the leg had been severed without complication or hindrance, like the deft slice of a butcher’s cleaver through a bleeding raw ox tail.  It lay on the floor like a stick of rock, the bone and the marrow on full display.  I kicked the leg down the stairs I had just ascended, enjoying the comedy and complex irony of kicking such a dismembered limb down a flight of stairs.  I stepped over the rippling puddle rouge and opened the door to my flat. 

Crossing the threshold it occurred to me that somewhere, somebody was missing a significant portion of a leg.  If I could find this somebody, I stood to make money by finding them a false limb.  Unless of course, this was the kind of person who would visit a hospital for such an injury.  I hoped that it was a junky or a lunatic and that I could find whoever it was.  But as I shut the door behind me, it started to eat at me.  Why should I rely on anybody else to drum up business for me; why should I rely on anybody else to lop the stricken limbs off hapless heroin addicts?  I had stumbled upon a wealth of opportunity.  I would create my own clients for Black Market Prosthetics.  I smiled.  I would buy a machete.

A Christmas Story

This is life on the edge.  I take two identical Christmas cards from the sharp edged plastic packet and write them.  In one I write, To Maria.  The card itself deals with the pleasantries.  It says, Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! in swirly grey letters laden with serifs.  Every time I write a card, a pang of anxiety shoots through me at the sight of the exclamation mark and the sporadic capitalisation.  I should be used to it by now.  I’ve written cards to everyone on my team.  And then I write, from Adam.  Like I have in all the others.

In the second card I write, To Maria, I fucking hate you.  I hate working with you.  I wish I’d never known you.  I just fucking hate you.  If you could find it within yourself to die over the holidays, that would be the greatest Christmas present anyone could get me.  I never want to see you again.  Go fucking kill yourself, Adam.  I scribble all over the Christmas message.

Then, I take both cards in one hand and throw them over my shoulder.  They land, their spines sticking in the air like two little mountains.  I pick up the one nearest me and without reading it, put it straight into the envelope marked Maria and seal it in there.  I pick up the second card and hold it shut while I tear it to pieces over the bin, my face turned away in case I see anything that might ruin the surprise.  I make myself a cup of coffee.

Maria hates me.  She hates me in a way so obvious and objectionable that I hate her in return.  She hates me at work of all places, somewhere our lives and actions take on the boring, insignificant, inconsequential characteristics of administrative processes: I am a databank, I can interpret this information for you, I am every email I send, devoid of my character.  Work is a series of personality sapping processes.  Of all the places, of all the contexts in which to hate me, I find it unreasonable that she hates me in the place where I am least myself.  Not that she’d like me outside of work.

I understand.  I took her job.  Maria was there when I started.  She wasn’t lovely, but she wasn’t unpleasant.  In another life, she could be considered attractive, even if the sum of her willow thin frame plus her relentless eating habits equals extreme bulimia.  Suspected.  She got on with whatever the fuck it is that she does while I learned the ropes.  A year later and I’m promoted to her equal but she doesn’t flinch – that prozac smile etched on her pock marked face while she rocks hypnotically back and forth in her chair, mouth open just a touch, headphones in, one hand on the mouse, the other resting in her lap like it’s crippled, working so slowly, with such a lack of urgency that I want to slap her and scream in her face: What are you doing?  Don’t you realise how easy this all is?  If you just pulled your fucking weight around here everyone else’s jobs would be better.  How can you bear it, taking forever over your pathetic workload?  How can you not try?  But she has her job and I have mine.

And then our boss, our nice, stupid, inept boss dies, his eyes staring accusingly up at me from the bottom of the fourth floor stairwell, his head coming to rest on the faux marble floor as the shiny dark pool eeks out from under him.  When they find him, I am back at my desk and I am as shocked as anyone as the news spreads.  When the police come in for an informal one on one with each of us in a closed office, they seem satisfied that I was in a toilet on the first floor.  Yes I have witnesses.  No I cannot tell you who because I don’t know everyone in the building and I didn’t take note of the people I passed.  As far as I was concerned, it was just another visit to the toilet and not an alibi.  I don’t see them again.  It blows over.  Just another tragedy.  Just another misnomer.

So all of a sudden there’s this job available and I’m glad handing my dead boss’s boss and stepping up.  It’s not that I care.  It’s not that I’m driven.  It’s just that this could be fun.  We’re laughing, we’re getting things done that my dead boss wasn’t capable of, we’re informing each others’ opinions in hushed voices in his office with the door closed.  And Maria sits there rocking gently, looking round her like she’s lost in a storm.  Our once scant interaction has become nothing but a seething contempt from a few desks away.  For my part, I couldn’t give a fuck.

Of her interview, my dead boss’s boss tells me Maria was an embarrassment.  She failed to answer questions, she refused to answer others.  In the several impossibly long silences, Maria rocked back and forth as if she was alone in a cell, mouth agog, eyes ceilingward.  The word my dead boss’s boss uses is painful.  Another word he uses is excruciating.  I wear a Ted Baker suit and shirt and gamble with the absence of a tie.  A tie, I feel, would detract from the elegant and elaborately stitched detail of the shirt which I am certain will draw comment from the panel.  And indeed it does.  Despite almost zero preparation, my answers are thoughtful and considered, delivered articulately with subtle emphasis placed on eye contact and appropriate hand gestures aimed at all members of the panel who nod and write each time I finish speaking.  When I deliver a point that my dead boss’s boss has primed me on, he nods emphatically, looking side to side at the other panel members, encouraging their nods to become all the more animated.

My dead boss’s boss delivers the good news.  And now he is no longer my dead boss’s boss.  He is my boss.  And I am Maria’s boss.  Maria asks him what qualifies me to get the job over her.  My boss says he’s not going to talk about any other candidates with her.  I would have screamed, PEOPLE SKILLS BITCH.  Plus an eye for an opportunity. 

And now it is nearly Christmas, I am several months into the job and I do not want Maria around any more.  It’s a difficult job.  Lots to learn, lots to try and change.  Lots of meetings where nothing is decided apart from the date of the next meeting.  Maria communicates mostly through tightly worded emails.  Face to face conversation is limited to exchanges in which she questions my every decision, declines my every request, picks me up on every error, the whole time looking me like every word I say is inappropriate for the workplace.  I feel small and inept.  She hides her workload so no one quite knows what she does and refuses to let me know what she’s working on.  She blanks me in the corridor.  She does it in front of other people and I am tired.

There is blood on the tissue.  There always is these days and I am convinced I’m dying.  I blot another Japanese flag onto a sheet and look down between my legs into the bowl.  It looks like a scene from Jaws.  I drop the tissue in.  I pad my fingers around my puckered arsehole and in my mind I am picturing the Tudor Rose.  My finger slides in the slick of blood when it reaches the cut.  I dab again and hold the tissue there.  When I drop the tissue and feel again, the blood is still coming.  I ignore the literature that has told me a painful bowel movement and vibrant red blood are indicators of anal fissures and slash or haemorrhoids.  I ignore the fact that both of my parents have been openly beset by haemorrhoids their entire adult lives.  I ignore the friends who’ve said Yeah, me too.  I ignore the fact that I can feel exactly where this blood is coming from and the fact that no, it is not a cancerous growth.  Instead I allow myself to become terrified and desperate.  I am dying.  I don’t have to take any shit from anyone.  And I won’t have to live with the consequences of my actions for very long.

The day of the office Christmas party, no one does any work.  Later this afternoon, colleagues will begin to drink themselves blind in honour of the birth of Christ or the Winter Solstice or Father Christmas or whatever people choose to believe.  This year, again, the head of IT will be escorted from the premises after drinking too much and proceeding to grope everyone and anyone he comes into contact with.  When the building closes tonight, it won’t reopen again until the new year.  Outside it is snowing but it doesn’t settle.  Snow never settles in Central London.

I hand out my cards.  A rush of nerves surges through me as I hand Maria her card.  She says a hushed thank you and looks as though she is preparing to snigger as she takes it.  The snigger never emerges but incrementally, this is one down from her rolling her eyes at me.

I am rooted to the spot.  I can’t help but watch her open it.  I am standing over her and yes, this must seem weird to her and look weird to anyone else but I can not go anywhere.  There is a heartbeat in my head.  My eyes feel like they are opening wider and wider.  They are stinging but I can not blink.    I am breathing heavily, my chest heaving, and I hold my breath for a moment to calm it down because this should not look like arousal.

I didn’t come here with a plan.  I am relying on the hope that I will know what to do if Maria opens the right slash wrong (delete as appropriate) card.  If she picks the card professing my hatred, I will be forced to react.  I’m dying and I’m taking her with me.  If she opens the other card, nothing needs to happen and I’ll see how that makes me feel.  The decision is out of my hands.  I grip the heavy duty hole punch on the desk in front of me.  I see myself smashing it into Maria’s temple, shattering her eye socket and whatever else is in there.  After that, I don’t know.  I’ll see what happens.  One step at a time.

Her frail hands fumble with the envelope like its heavy and she opens it like the effort is exhausting her, like she’s tearing sheet metal.  I want to rip the card out of her hands and open it myself, just to satisfy my raging curiosity.  But instead I close my eyes and count slowly, fingering the hole punch.

Thank you says Maria.

I open my eyes.

Her mouth stretches in an elastic band smile that snaps back to its shapeless lipstick mess when the moment passes and she stands the card with the others on her desk.

That’s okay I say and I’m trying to understand if the feeling that’s settled in me is relief or disappointment.  Either way, I stay standing a minute longer, just holding the arm of the hole punch, thinking about what might have been.

At the Christmas party, we hang around the darkened conference room in little huddles, catching up with colleagues we like but never see, force mingling with others, joking awkwardly with superiors and the ones we don’t understand and do our best to ignore the ones we hate.  For some reason, wherever I stand, I can see Maria and over the course of an hour or so, I catch her eye three or four times.  I start to wonder if this is down to a decision I’ve made on some subconscious level.

The music is being played through speakers that aren’t powerful enough to handle it so we’re blasted with the treble of a treasure trove of Christmas standards at full volume.  But I seem to be the only one who notices and while people chatter happily and lean into each other so they can be heard, I am developing a headache.  So far I have avoided the hot cider, mulled wine and assorted warm bottled beers that are being distributed by catering staff who refuse to make eye contact with anyone.  In my experience, alcohol is best  avoided when consorting with colleagues.  So it can’t be to blame for the pulse behind my eyes.  It must be the music.  As the shrill, scratchy sound of Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree tears into my skull, I make my excuses.  On the other side of the room, I see Maria doing the same thing.

I follow her.  This is not something I’ve done before but I think I make a pretty good job of it, striking the correct balance between maintaining an inconspicuous distance and staying close enough not to lose her.  It helps of course that she moves so slowly – like every step is a work of art – and is so self absorbed that she never looks around.

I follow her off the tube and out of the station.  So this is Highgate.  I’ve never been here before.  Up here, the snow has settled and as Maria leaves the main road and walks up the slight incline of a residential street, I’m charmed and impressed by our surroundings: the bare, snow laden trees; the tall, homely looking houses with decorations in the windows; the peace of the place uncommon to London.

Ahead, I watch Maria, her progress even slower in the snow.  There’s nobody else around.  This is it.  This is what I fucking want.  I am going to grab that bitch and punch her to the ground.  I am going to punch her in the face until her lips are mashed and I can see broken teeth and gums marbled with blood; until her mouth is so full of blood that she can’t make a fucking sound.  Then I am going to snap those stick thin wrists of hers and wrestle her arms from their sockets.  I am going to rip her apart, wrench the hair from her head, kick her in the face until her features invert and her neck snaps backwards ending it all.  I’ll take her purse so that the police think it’s a robbery gone horribly wrong.  Only I won’t throw it away and get caught by my fingerprints or whatever.  I’ll keep it.  I’ll keep it as a fucking trophy in my home forever and whenever I want to remind myself of my great credentials as a problem solver, I’ll take our her driving licence or any other photos in there and chuckle to myself.

I’m picking up speed.  My heart is racing.  This, now this is life on the edge.  I feel so alive.  Rush after rush of adrenaline and I am ecstatic.  Fuck the blood on the tissue.  If I was dying, I could never feel this alive.  I am fine.  I am alive.

I pull my scarf up over my nose and mouth.  I am nearing her and she must sense something, hear my footsteps or my breathing because she starts to look around like a little bird, not quite able to bring herself to stop and look at me.  She quickens her step and just as I reach out to grab her, she changes direction sharply and steps into the road between two parked cars and starts to cross.  She catches me off guard and my momentum carries me past her along the pavement.

Perhaps it’s because she’s too concerned with what’s behind her but she doesn’t seem to see the headlights or hear the car as it comes flying round the corner.  It hits her just before she reaches the opposite kerb and I see her feet leave the floor as she flies backwards and comes to rest in the twisted shape of a squashed mosquito on the snowy road.

The car spins so it is side on in the road and comes to a stop.  The driver and passenger doors open and the driver, a young man, runs towards Maria and kneels beside her, his hands at the ready to do whatever.  Except he doesn’t know what to do.

Hello?  Hello? he says.  Miss?

The street lights glint off Maria’s open eyes but she isn’t moving.  She’s just lying there, her body impossibly contorted.

The passenger, a blonde woman in a woolly hat, stands behind her open door like it’s a shield.

Oh god.  Is she breathing? she asks and holds a gloved hand to her throat.

The driver puts his head close to Maria’s, wincing as he does it.

Is she breathing? the passenger asks again.

I don’t know! shouts the driver.  I don’t know!  Call an ambulance.

Check her pulse.

Call an ambulance!

The passenger reaches into the cat and takes out a phone.

Check her pulse she says again.

The man takes off his gloves.  Maria hasn’t blinked and I’m guessing Maria doesn’t have a pulse any more.  This is exam results or medical test results or last minute of the cup final or whatever it is that matters.  The driver winces and gags as he moves a tentative hand into Maria’s neck, probing, searching for any indication of life continuing.  He looks up and sees me watching.

I can’t find one he says and waits for a reaction.  I shrug.  I just lost control he says.  The snow.

He stands up.

I can hear the passenger still on the phone to the ambulance people.

Can you feel a pulse? she calls to the driver.  He shakes his head.  Can you feel a pulse? she asks again, more firmly.

No! he shouts.

Okay okay she says and listens to the phone.  Is there any sign of breathing?

No he whimpers. 

In the sick yellow of the street lights I see movement in the glaze of his eyes.

The passenger passes the message down the phone and hangs up.

They’ll be here as soon as they can she says.

She walks over and looks down at Maria and shivers from something other than the cold.  Then she starts to cry and driver and passenger embrace, visibly shuddering with sobs while on the floor beneath them, the eyes of the lifeless Maria stare out at me.  I give her a wink and walk on.  I don’t want to be here when the ambulance arrives.

The stars flutter behind a thin veil of cloud.  What a beautiful evening.  What a gift – Christmas and birthday combined.