And I’m so busy, I haven’t had time to try and write it again. But I will do - even if I don’t get round to it till the summer.

The lonely 40-year-old ‘singleton’ had become a seasoned apologist for his sad, single fate; he’d often liken his status to a single dealing of the devil’s pack. Of cards, he’d explain. (Sometimes he’d use ‘pack’ as well, in the context of hunting wolves, because that’s how it always felt as he prowled around the singles bars of Southern England.)

‘Perhaps I’d be better off dead,’ he once admitted to Sandra, his long-suffering old school friend.

Everyone else in his Christian family disapproved of such ingratitude to their god.

They included:

Two successful, heterosexual brothers who were both the same age as him.

One glad-to-be-gay kid sister.

And Marge and Derek – the straight-out-of-a-Seventies-sitcom parents.

A clan of Christian-cardigan cut-outs if ever there was such a thing.

‘Argh!!’ he’d go, whenever he had a moment to think about it – which, as has already been hinted at, was very often indeed.

Actually, Peter and Clive weren’t really Craig’s brothers – or even each other’s brothers. But Marge and Derek were keener than most to hide their charges’ adoptive status on the grounds that if they didn’t then people would do the maths. Yes, their real offspring was 50% gay.

In the early Sixties, the enthusiastic Christians had been married for, well, rather a long time without conceiving. So, when net curtains had begun to twitch, Derek had gone for a sperm test and the nurse had said:

‘You’ve got balls the size of Everest, containing enough ammunition to blow up Vietnam. Only you think too much. You’re not making war – you’re making love. Now go away and have some fun!’

Which is what he did, once Marge had actually recovered from the torment of having her own ammunition being given the all-clear by an emotionless man with a collection of cold metal machinery.

And shoot me down with a spark flying off a pair of badly-connected jump leads but six months after signing the adoption papers babies Peter and his Clive were joined by geeky, gawky Craig.

And then, five years later, Lena had come along.

Craig’s little sis would reject every attempt to feminize her inherent boyishness - from burning her Barbie dolls well before they could turn into static objects of teenage hatred, to refusing to wear a dress when she was a bridesmaid on Marge’s sister Sharon’s wedding day.

‘Maybe all the angst that led to Derek’s impotency was God’s way of preventing you from shitting out that little lesbian,’ Lena had overheard Sharon saying.

She never spoke to her aunt again.   

So life for Marge had been terrible ever since. And Sharon, Lena, Peter and Clive were four good reasons – five, if you include Clive - why Marge secretly admitted that she wished that she and/or Derek had been infertile after all.

‘We’ve produced a cuckoo and a geek and hired two freaks,’ Marge’s husband had once actually said to the vicar one Sunday morning, on their way out of church.

When they’d arrived home his wife had silently consoled him with a reassuring massage that was about as erotic as any fundamental Christian could bring herself to provide.

It nearly provided them with another child, but Marge lost it.

Sharon had subsequently sent a ‘congratulations’ card instead of a ‘condolence’ one – ‘by mistake,’ Derek reassured his wife. Marge wasn’t convinced.

                                           ————————————-

All the above happened in the Sixties and Seventies, though, and now it was time for Craig to face the most beautiful face he’d ever been alone with; he was accepting Sandra’s invitation to the Viaduct Working Men’s Club Annual Halloween Dance.

Yes, he thought, his old mate Sandra was looking particularly fetching tonight (though he wasn’t about to take advantage of the fact by consummating his appreciation of her as he’d done back in 1992).

‘A really good friend of the opposite sex will always sleep with you once in a while,’ she’d said to him, the morning after.

At which point Craig cried.

Sandra had thought she’d been letting him down gently with her plausible explanation, back then. But because of his tears, before they both went to work she let him do it again.

They hadn’t done it since. 

But here the desperate pair still were, after a long walk from the next town – together, platonically, on Halloween night, 2005, almost blissfully resigned to early middle-aged reject-heaven. Cushioning each other from the ever-decreasing likelihood that any interested party might sweep either of them off of their single, stick-in-the-mud feet.      

‘Viaduct Working Men’s Club – why is it that shit holes are always near the station?’ Craig asked Sandra, not unreasonably.

She didn’t answer back, didn’t need to; a rhetorical question involving disused railway lines and beer that’s as well past its sell-by date as the customers is an exact science.

His escort spluttered some speculation into the cold October air instead: ‘D’you suppose Lena’s in there with her latest lesbian lover?’

‘You mean, because it’s a men’s club, Sand? Nah, they’re all homophobes, the lot of them.’ Sandra paused for a moment, attempting to eavesdrop on some high-pitched banter. ‘And all the women are wives.’

‘So what are we doing here, then?’

‘You’re the one with the tickets.’ 

She scowled at his annoying shrug and held the tickets defensively to her chest.

‘The new office manager at work’s a member,’ Sandra began to explain.

‘A right member,’ he said back, so quickly that he thought it funny.

‘He claims he couldn’t rustle up a ghouls costume quick enough,’ Sandra went on, ignoring the joke. ‘But we know different. His new wife can’t stand the place. She’s only twenty-six!’

‘So what has he got that I haven’t?’ Craig teased – hoping, perhaps, for a sexual hat trick. The pair did seem to be getting quite frisky now. Surely he was in with a chance?

‘An allergy to Vincent Price,’ she quipped, and Craig unsuccessfully stifled a laugh.

Why is this girl wittier than I am?

Aren’t men supposed to woo women with wit, not wizard outfits?

Aw, what-the-Hell.

It’s working anyway.

She’s rubbing my thighs with her slinky, kinky black boots and that Cat Woman headgear is to die for!

Seconds later, the doorman tore their tickets in half but still stamped their hands.

‘I feel like I’m being branded,’ Craig protested to the bouncer. He didn’t bite back.

‘As a criminal?’

‘No, Sandra darling. As a member of the Working Class.’

‘Don’t be such a snob, love.’

Don’t be so ungrateful, he thought. Even if the disco’s crap I might win the raffle.

Three hours and two spontaneous (or perhaps contrived) power failures later, the Committee Chairman leapt to his feet.

‘Someone’s nicked all the raffle prizes,’ he grunted. ‘Now, as all of you who are on the Committee will know, we often have power cuts here but nothing has ever gone missing. Not until now, that is - our first Guest Night of the new Millennium.

So Ricardo the Bouncer is going to come round and have a word in all the members’ ears and if no one owns up – well, we’re just going to have to strip-search all the unregistered ladies – er, and the gentleman there - and see if they’re hiding the… ’

The lights flickered again, then went off and Craig whispered the name of a likely suspect in Sandra’s ear, unwittingly timing his accusation to end just as they came back on again.

‘Ten out of ten for the suspect,’ said Sandra a bit too loudly, ‘But our girl isn’t really Superwoman. Look a little closer: you can’t act out that level of butchness unless you’re a real actress.’

‘Lena,’ said Craig and Sandra, in chorus.

‘Leeeena?’ went most of the crowd.

The club chairman cleared his throat and snatched the microphone back from the DJ.

‘Gentlemen - and Ladies. As you can see, the stage is somewhat lacking in conventional raffle prizes now – whether or not our mysterious ‘Lena’ is to blame!

But thanks to our friends at Plant, Grass and Carpenter we have for you tonight just one major ‘offering’ – and I use that word advisedly. This prize will be hotly contested!’

The Chairman broke off for a few seconds to sup beer, during which a heckler shouted:

‘Plant, Grass and Carpenter? The funeral directors?’

 ‘The very same.’ He spat out a mouthful of his beer with his laughter as Mr. Carpenter himself strutted on to the stage in a convincing Grim Reaper outfit. ‘And the winner is…

Oh, it’s not one of our members. Anyway, the winner is: Number 666. Craig who?’

‘What have I won?’ Craig was too gob-smacked to provide his own surname.

‘Here’s a clue, then, especially for you, Mister Craig Somebody-or-Other,’ the club Chairman boomed back. ‘I think the Grim Reaper has come a bit early for, er, the winner of Prize no. 666. Don’t you?’

Those members who were in on the joke laughed heartily.

As the penny dropped, Lena, Craig, Sandra and other guests willed their jaws to defy gravity.

‘And by the way, you can take your partner along for the ride, if you like.’

By now, most of the crowd was openly laughing off its collective ghoulish head.

‘You see, our undertaker friends have, er, undertaken to provide a joint ticket. So what’s your surname, Craig? I’m waiting!’

‘Malone - Sir!’

‘Congratulations then, Craig Malone. You’ve won a free funeral. You going with him, love?’

Sandra didn’t answer.   

‘Mum and Dad will be pleased,’ said Lena from underneath her thick, black Lois Lane lipstick.

She pulled out the club’s official trophy shotgun from her holster; the weapon from the glass case that guests assume is a fake.

Then she shot her brother Craig dead, before turning the gun on herself.

‘And now a word from our sponsor,’ announced the Chairman, as if nothing had happened.

Now the secret pistol (and the secret dead member) had both been revealed, the crowd demographic was beginning to change.

Instead of the room being divided between members and non-members, half the crowd had now reached the conclusion that tonight’s Halloween bash was actually a mini-murder weekend.

The other half was using its mobiles to call the police.

‘Mr. Plant, Mr. Grass and I have been partners for some thirty years.’ Mr. Carpenter was struggling to make himself heard over the club’s PA system which by now was being drowned by police sirens. ‘So we would like to congratulate our absent members, our very good friends Derek and Marge.’

‘To absent friends,’ murmured most of the crowd.

The Chairman continued with his speech.

‘It would seem that, with the lesbian and the alleged queer now safely out of the way, they now have the heterosexual family they always hoped for. So I would like to reassure the Committee that when brother and sister are due for cremation we promise to honour their prize.’      

This should be an easy job she’d thought three months ago when she started. She didn’t think too differently now, only she’d come to believe it was only people that made it, oh, let’s see: frustrating, contentious… impossible, on a bad day. Well, some people, anyway. A steady trickling of obstinate ones. The public.    

Today, there were a few too many trickles and she’d run out of tricks.

So Kerry took another deep breath. It made her dizzy and she nearly fell over.

“You all right?”

“I’m sorry?”

Kerry wasn’t used to other people kick-starting the questions.

“You nearly keeled over, there!”

The confident, quite-pretty girl was holding out a friendly hand. It was reciprocated, so the girl said, “Sam! Samantha Pines. And please don’t say she does, or I’ll take my hand away!”

Sam’s threat came without any malice. Kerry knew Sam wasn’t a ‘trickle’. Her questions should flow like a rocky stream with this one. Difficult, but interesting.

“Well, Sam,” she said, filling in the first answer, “This is a first! People never volunteer their names. What we’re doing here is asking you a little about your life. It’s… “

“Market Research, you’re going to say?”

“Yes. For an exciting new on-line shopping company. We’d just like to know a little about your life. For Life.”

“Well, let me see, er…” Sam was pointing to Kerry.

“It’s Kerry – there, we’ve introduced ourselves properly, now.”

“Well, let me see Kerry: I’m too busy actually having that life to hang around a shopping precinct. No offence!” (Kerry wasn’t offended because she could see Sam’s point.) “But there’s always Dave here. He’s my boyfriend and he’s got plenty of time to answer your questions. Only trouble is he doesn’t actually have a life. I do, but as I say I don’t have the time. I guess that’s, er – life! Ha ha!”

Kerry took another deep breath. She quite liked Sam, but life - real life - was getting in the way of Life, the On-line Shopping Club.

“Name please?”

“Dave Robbins.”

“Who’s the breadwinner in your family?”

“My partner Sam is. You’ve got her name already.”

“Yes, but unfortunately I don’t have any other information about her. Oh cheers, Sam. Nice to have met you, see you soon. Byeeee! Now, where were we?” 

“Sam being the breadwinner.”

“Oh, yes. Now where does Sam shop… no, that’s no good. It’s you I’m interviewing. Where do you shop?”

“I don’t. I haven’t got a job.”

Kerry had endured so many answers like this in her short career and right now Dave’s default despondency was making her feel like becoming jobless herself. That’s it; she’d hotfoot it down to the local job centre in her lunch break.

“Okay, Dave, no more questions. I’ll put you down as a ‘maybe’.”

“A maybe what?”

“Someone who might log on to Life.”

“I haven’t got a computer.”      

“I’m not surprised.”

A car full of loud lads honked by, obliterating her insult.

“What?”

“I said ‘Thanks for your time’. That lot aren’t your friends, by the way?”

“What if they are? You gonna write that down?”

“No, as I say I’ve finished.”

“Good!”

Kerry looked at her watch and remembered it didn’t work and that this job didn’t pay enough to buy a new one. Then she looked up at the town hall clock. Only five minutes to go. Why not go now? Yeah, why not. Soddit.

When Kerry arrived at the job centre she was greeted by a familiar-looking young woman but she couldn’t quite place her because she was in a different environment. She knew enough about the human mind to understand that it always took the juxtaposing of two events to kick-start that magical thing called Recognition.

“Where have I seen you before?” Kerry asked, when it was her turn at the desk.      

For Sam, Juxtaposed Event Number Two had just happened.

“Answering questions in the street.”

“Of course!”

Kerry read the nameplate on Sam’s desk and felt stupid.

“I apologize for Dave. He’s a real git.”

“Why do you stay with him, Samantha?”

“It’s more a question of How do you get out?”

“Well… “ she lowered her voice.

The job centre wasn’t a great place for private conversations. Deliberately so, she thought. It was all part of the humiliation process, she reasoned.

“The dumping bit’s easy if you have reasons,” Kerry continued. “If you can find a good reason and stick to it then it’s not so hard as all that.” 

Perhaps I could be a counsellor, Kerry thought. I’m enjoying this. Maybe Sam could set me up with a course?

“I already have a reason. It’s because Dave’s a complete git.”

“You’ve already said that. The git bit, I mean.”

“I know. But he is. When we met we were both students but now, well; I know I’m only a lowly civil servant but at least I’ve got a job. I don’t hang around the flat with my mates all day and night, drinking and farting and watching Sky TV. On somebody else’s subscription.”

“Tell him you’re a lesbian!” 

“WHAT?”

“I’m serious. You’ve got the bottle to dump him but not enough of it to face the consequences. Think it through. If you just tell him you’re leaving because he’s a boring, disappointing slob then how do you think he will he respond?”

“He’ll accuse me of having someone else.”

“Exactly. Men can’t ever believe they’re surplus to requirements because their ego always gets in the way. So they assume there’s someone else. And when there eventually is, even though it’s afterwards, they often go up to that person just when you least need it. There you are, in a pub or club with your new man, eager to make a new start, prove you haven’t got baggage. And then up comes the bloody baggage that still hasn’t unpacked its suitcase and says, So you were the one? You’re the bloke she was seeing when she was still living with me – well I hope you’re bloody happy together. And then your new bloke says Why do I always pick ‘em? and buggers off.”

“You know something, you couldn’t be more right. So what do I tell him, Kerry? What’s the new excuse?”

“I’ve already told you. You tell him that there is someone else but it’s not a man. Their ego can’t handle that. They tend to be out of your life sharp-ish.”

“Because they can’t make a scene, you mean?”

“Exactly. If anything, Sam, they wanna keep it a secret more than you do. If it was true, I mean. Now, if you don’t mind can we dispense with the questioning because this time it’s my turn to be busy. Got any openings for trainee social workers?”

That evening there were big crowds filling up the Watering Hole so Kerry pushed past sensitively. Tentatively, even. If I never need a man for any other purpose than pushing, she was thinking, well I could do with one right now. Blokes can push people out of the way. But girls? We all know the question that comes before the answer that goes, Why, love? What have you done?

“Excuse me,” she whined.

“Why, love… “ Kerry pretended not to listen. No, hang on: This was a woman’s voice she was hearing behind her. 

“Why bother, love? Why waste your effort pushing past all those bozo-boys just to get yourself to the bar,” the woman said as she turned around, “and then get so sozzled that you’re in danger of asking one of them out? In any place other than this, I mean.”

Kerry wasn’t sure what Sam meant by ‘place other than this’. “Good to see you!” was all she said. Then: “How many more places can we meet in a day?”

“After that advice this afternoon, Kerry, I’m surprised you don’t have a boyfriend.”

“How do you know I haven’t?”

“I just know. Like when someone comes in to the job centre and I just know they don’t stand a chance in Hell of getting one. You look like you have to do this every time. Saw you come through the door. Saw you apologizing your way in. Saw the whole bloody sad, single picture!”

“I could get a boyfriend if I wanted to, Sam. I could. Yes, I could!”

“Could you? You’re sounding like a kid whose parents won’t buy her an ice cream so she wants different parents. I’m not even sure you’ve reached puberty.” 

“Have you dumped your bloke yet, Samantha?”

“Yes!”

“Well what’s he doing over there, then?”

“Shit!”

“Didn’t expect to see you back in here so soon,” Sam said, when Kerry turned up at the job centre again the next morning. “Why did you disappear all of a sudden like that? Good job you’re not my friend yet!”

The two women seemed to have a rapport with each other.

“I see you’re still speaking to me. Look, Sam, I’m really sorry but the last thing I wanted to do was intrude upon someone else’s grief. I suppose you’re going to tell me you made it up with Dave after he’d made his unwelcome appearance propping up the bar?”

“As a matter of fact it’s quite the opposite. You don’t get out much, do you?”

“Sadly not. I’m too busy doing surveys for bloody Life. And they don’t pay that much. It was supposed to be a gap-year filler. Only there was nothing the other side of the gap.”

“You didn’t go to Uni?”

“Place I wanted didn’t accept me in the end. After that it was a toss-up between Stoke and Sunderland.”

“Know what you mean. Anyway, when I met you again last night I was about to tell you that I’d already acted on your advice. Already told Dave there was someone else. And that it was a woman. And fair play to you, you were partly right because he just went. But before you walked in to the Hole he must’ve been hiding in there, between a couple of queens.”

“Are you telling me the Watering Hole is a gay bar?”

“It is now. I don’t think there’s been a straight punter in there since it was the Flirty Duck. Apart from me, that is. Why d’you think it’s called the Hole? Anyway, so much for my quiet, hassle-free drink!”

This was a lot for Kerry to take in.

“I’m not about to become a real lesbian if that’s what you’re thinking! But after your advice I thought the Hole was the safest place I could go to avoid stumbling across my nasty recent past. So how was I to know that Dave would be there, hiding behind some bloke’s skirt? Anyway, social work was what you were interested in, right? I’ll try and get you on a placement where they can arrange day release. Area?”

“Sorry?”

“Any preferences, I mean.”

“Anywhere except Stoke. Or Sunderland. Or here!”

Kerry walked out of the job centre in a bit of a daze. She was dreading the rest of the afternoon. The area supervisor from Quantum Research was in town, a nauseating woman with a nasal voice who would stare over your shoulder as you asked the questions, then sneer at you in front of the respondent. It always made her feel three feet tall. And here her boss was now, sauntering up to her clipboard in her floral neckerchief, looking like a cross between a hippie and Hyacinth Bucket.

“Hello, Sweetie!”

“Hello Miss Q!”

They were always ‘Miss Q’, these people, to their junior researchers.

Quantum Research was secretive and anonymous - like the recruitment officer at the Samaritans Kerry had finally been put through to last night after the incident at the Hole, once she’d managed to convince the volunteer answering the phone that she wasn’t depressed. Well, not so depressed that she couldn’t manage light-hearted remarks about one-way bungee jumps and that odd joke about her brother being the Birdman of Bognor.

“How are we doing, Sweetie? Oh, why are you scowling? We don’t want to look miserable in front of the respondents, do we? Look out, I think you’ve got a bite… treat this one gently! “

“Not him. Please, please, please. Anybody but HIM!” Kerry’s shouty whisper was so close to Q’s eardrum that the old cow turned around sharply to avoid the debris from Kerry’s throat.

And in that second, Kerry thought she had time to usher the ‘respondent’ away and so she gave it a go. Only he didn’t go.

“Conflict of interest,” she said weakly to Q. “I can’t interview this man. It wouldn’t be, er… wouldn’t be professional. Anyway, I’ve done him before… ”

“Look young lady, if you don’t do your job properly with this nice young man then I’ll have no choice but to do it for you. And if I have to do that then, trust me, it will be the last time you ever get to say Thank you for giving up a little of your time for Life. Do I make myself crystal?”

“Abundantly!”

“What are you doing now, girl?”

“I’m throwing down my clipboard Miss Q. Throwing in the towel.”

“Then why are you still here? Why are you still hanging around?”

“Because I CAN, Ker-yew. It’s a free country! And this is a public shopping precinct, albeit a heck of a snooty one now you’re here. So whether you like it or not I’m going to stick around and watch your technique.”    

“Very well. Name?”

“Dave.”

“FULL name!”

“Dave Robbins.”

“Occupation?”

“Barman.”

“Employer’s name?”

“Mister Pink.”

“Employer’s REAL name?”

“Never gives his real name.”

“Place of work?”

“The Watering Hole.”

“Partner?”

“Mister Pink.”

“How ludicr… Sorry, I mean, how long have you been together?”

“Oh, about two years. Had this girlfriend called Sam. Just didn’t know how to tell her I wanted to end it. Needed a reason. Then, one night… “

“Yes, yes, yes. I get the picture. Spare me the incidentals.“

Kerry was still hanging around. She picked up her phone and scrolled through her recent outgoing calls. She hit Redial.

“Thank you for calling the Samaritans.”

“It’s Kerry. I called last night.”

“Oh, yeah, I recognize you. You’re the one who’s having a bit of trouble with life. How are you spelling life? With a capital ‘L’?” 

“Not this time.”

At first she didn’t reply.
Jo hadn’t been to the doctor for years and hearing her name like that – first name and surname together – reminded her of the register at school and so she sat there, for a moment, frozen in time.
For a full minute, it seemed.
But during that minute, the rest of the surgery was far from silent.
A baby cried, kick-starting the whine from her older brother.
Mum ignored the three-year-old and so the boy kicked his sister.
More crying – and then the older children joined in.
Joanne had all that to look forward to.
 
“Joanne HIRZCHEMAKER!”

Jo had never liked that name.
No, let’s be honest. She liked the name, but she detested her lazy teachers for not doing their homework.
“It’s HirzcheMAKER,” she’d tell them. ‘Mack’ as in mackerel, not ‘make’ as in ‘make it up’.
Her classmates were cruel, but Mr. English the English teacher was the worst offender.
Jo believed that English had started it all by mispronouncing the first part of her surname as well.
He’d called her ‘Hearse-maker’ and the pupils had followed suit.
Now that she was about to have children of her own, Hirzchemaker understood that English hated the Germans.
She wasn’t German anyway.
But she was going to have a German baby.

Jo followed the dapper doctor into his room.
He was about to do his stuff – no, she was about to do her stuff.
He wasn’t going to do anything.
She closed the book she was reading, slammed it shut, as if to make the words go away.
The doctor broke the ice by asking her if she was trying to squash a fly.  

“As I was leaving the pub with my mate Sarah one Thursday night, she got into her new boyfriends car and they headed home to Pontardawe.
Dai offered me a lift but I said ‘No’ because I’d heard all about his driving and I’d had a nice night, and I wanted a nice life. It was dark, but I only lived up the road at The Hafod. So I decided to walk.”

The words that were trapped inside the book were still jumping all over Jo’s consciousness when Doctor Sherman, who was wearing a bow tie that looked so out of place in the morning that she expected it to twirl of its own accord and then light up, coughed.
Then he said, “I’ll need a urine sample”.
Jo went into the tiny cubicle and did her stuff.
Quickly making her entrance again, she experienced another childhood regression:
“Full bottle. First time!”
These were unnecessary words and the doctor looked slightly embarrassed.
Jo didn’t know it but her gawky, giggly persona had set the precedent for this role-play between the young medical school post-grad and herself.
As the appointment went on he treated her more and more like a child.
“Are you sure you’ve read the instructions on the packet?”
“’Course I’m sure. Absolutely-bloody-certain!”
Sherman gave her a look that suggested she wasn’t.
They carried on with this yes-I-am-no-you’re-not dialogue for a while and Jo’s mind drifted back to her book. 

“The plan had been to go to a club afterwards. So me and Sarah were all dressed up and Dai was supposed to be working late as a barman and then getting up early in the morning to do his building job. Burning the candle at both ends, as my mother always put it.
But the pub wasn’t busy that night and there wasn’t that much work on in the day job anyway, which probably explains why Dai’s always boracic. I mean, two part-time jobs don’t pay the mortgage, do they? Which is just as well, because Dai wasn’t ready to settle down yet and neither am I.
So, that night, he’d decided to come and pick my friend Sarah up from the pub where we’d been drinking and, I s’pose, they were going back to his place for a bit of…”

Jo contemplated the activities between Sarah and skint, skinny Dai and decided that Dr. Sherman had enough money to pay for at least three mortgages and as many babies – including this one, if necessary.
Yes she could, with him, because he was a doctor.
In a few years, Sherman could buy the bump a silly tie and no one would be any wiser.
“Talk me through it,” demanded the doc.
“It’s got to be…”
In a moment of madness, she nearly said “a registry office wedding”. The doctor remained silent for a while, just staring at the sample bottle.
Finally, she came to her senses.
The, er, penny had dropped.
“Oh, that!” she said, letting out a huge sigh of relief.
For one mad moment she’d really believed that the doctor was referring to their fantasy marriage.
It was a huge sigh. Like one of those moments when someone asks you to blow up a child’s balloon and you think you’re doing so well until, say, your mobile phone rings and distracts you, or you simply run out of puff.
Then the balloon collapses and you have to start all over again.
Joanne was certainly breathless now.
“Let’s start at the beginning. Describe it to me – the whole kit and caboodle,” said the condescending Dr. S.
Jo tried to draw a deep breath.
“Well, the kit – it was a sort of flattened tube with an oval cut-out,”
she said, taking the doctor literally.
(Someone - another professional person, a solicitor - had once pointed out to Joanne that the Welsh are not know for their irony. She’d checked her creases and, with a face straighter than her jumper, had replied: “I don’t even have an ironing board”.)   
“Rectangular, not oval -” corrected the doctor, playing along with it.
“All right, rec-bloody-tangular!”
She was even less sure about where to insert the swear word in that sentence than she had been about the mechanics of the kit.
“Anyway, it contained a piece of special paper and I had to wee on it,” she said, staring hard at the sample bottle as if she were willing it to levitate, or something.
It nearly did.
“Plenty of target practise, then!” joked the doc, tossing the bottle into the air with his right hand and just about catching it with his left.

Jo began to have thoughts about why it is that men can aim easily and properly into precise areas - no, ha ha, that’s a laugh. But they could, if they put their minds to it. Women? That’s a different story. Oh, they can have babies, and pregnancy tests and things, but this one stupidly simple skill completely eludes them.
 
“So there I was, in my clubbing gear, walking home, when a really good-looking boy with dark hair appeared from a bush and said ‘Hello’.
He was frightening the shit out of me, but we got chatting anyway and he seemed nice and so I let him persuade me to go back into town with him. I said yes because I was all psyched up and dressed up. I was thinking, ‘What the hell?’

Having spent the rest of the night at Barons, Robert told me that he only lived up the road and could we walk home together?
At the nightclub he’d seemed a bit odd - a real gentleman, but he obviously didn’t know the music. He’d questioned the price of the drinks. And, even on the dance floor, he hadn’t removed his old-fashioned jacket but he still felt cold to the touch.
And come to think of it, outside in the cold air again he’d displayed no sign of actual sweat.
Weird.
 
It turned out that his house was the one with the bush at the front, the one where he’d been hiding.
Now, I have to say here that I’m not a tart, but he did seem nice. I fancied him. So when Robert invited me in I said yes.
But once inside the house, something seemed strange. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Ah, a light switch.
I tried to put my finger on it, because I, well - I like having sex with strangers, yes, but not in the dark.
I think I’ve been like that ever since American Werewolf in London.
Or Paris. Must’ve been Paris. I was too young to have sex at the time of the American one.
Anyway, there wasn’t a light switch. This was an original Period house and there didn’t even seem to be any lights.”

“And you haven’t had a period since - ” said the doctor.
“What do you mean ‘since’, now?”
“Since the time when you believe you conceived?”
“No.”
“And you definitely saw a pink line?”
“YES!”

“Robert told me there was a power cut and I didn’t believe him because the house looked sort of unwired – kind of derelict. But he got a dusty old box of candles out of the kitchen. That seemed to do the trick.
The dust made me cough and Robert gave me a kiss.
That seemed to do the trick too.
The house actually looked like it hadn’t been lived in for years, but I hadn’t had sex for months and so I let Robert lead me up to the bedroom.
By now I was sure it wasn’t his house, but he seemed to know where he was going and what he was doing and that was good enough for me.
I asked him if he had any condoms and he replied that he didn’t know what condoms were.
There was more coughing, and then we had sex on an old-fashioned bed that had no sheets or duvet but a big brass knob at each corner.”

“Okay. Good.” said Sherman, tossing the full bottle of wee around but not so vigorously this time, though by employing this empty gesture he was making it quite clear that it was Jo’s time to go and his time to say “Next!”
Jo didn’t take the hint.
She wanted some advice about committing herself to bringing up babies. Legal stuff, financial stuff, emotional stuff.
Sherman suddenly came over all world-weary at the mention of all this but, as a new practitioner in a high-density population area of South Wales, the doctor knew his social responsibilities.
He’d read all the books.
So he began to dish out ‘Speech A’ – without a script, although Jo was certain that, every so often, he was refreshing himself from the screen of his inherited, antiquated computer. The monitor was out of focus, its text as illegible as a doctor’s handwriting.  

“‘ Did you inherit this house - from your gran, or something?’ I said to Robert, confidently.
He’d just had a little piece of me and so I felt as if I had the right to know.
Robert remained silent and went down to the loo.
I didn’t hear him flush, but then I wasn’t surprised.
Knowing the state of the house, it was unlikely that the water supply was still connected.   
After a couple more minutes, I went down to see if Robert was all right but it was too late.
Robert was gone.”

“The first thing you must remember, Jo – can I call you Jo?”
“You’ve been calling me ‘Jo’ ever since I walked in!”
“Sorry – anyway, the first thing is that we have to send the sample to the hospital.” The doctor rubbed his hands briskly as he said this – the final hint, perhaps, that she should leave. 
“It’ll take about two weeks…”
Jo yawned, and her mind wandered back again to her book.

“When I went upstairs to check that the candle hadn’t tipped over I suddenly started to shiver.
I instinctively reached for the light switch, forgetting for a moment that there wasn’t one.
Then the shiver turned to a sort of intense freeze – the same feeling I’d once had in the storeroom at Iceland.
Mum used to work there when I was a kid and sometimes she’d leave me to play among the chickens when I was only five or so.
 Once there was a power cut and I actually believed that if the ice melted then the birds would come alive and so I’d started screaming, hysterically.
Anyway, here I was now, definitely inside the right bedroom. I could even smell Robert’s funny hair gel - Brylcreem, I think he said. I seem to remember my Grandad using something like that.
But there was no candle, or any sign of wax, even. Or smoke.
I felt like screaming now.”

“I know they say ‘there’s no smoke without fire’,” the Doc carried on.
Jo thought Sherman to be a caricature from a ‘Carry On’ movie and she intended telling him so, only she didn’t.
“But when a do-it-yourself pregnancy test is positive and then you don’t have a period, well the lack of that period can often be put down to worry.
Very often, with a lot of girls…”
Joanne coughed and the doctor paused.
“Very often, with a lot of women…”
Jo hadn’t coughed for that reason.
The doctor’s first placing as a practitioner had been in London and, as such, he was mindful of a type of political correctness that was largely unheard of among the working population of Swansea.
“With a lot of women, the moment they hear from the hospital that they aren’t actually pregnant - that the pregnancy is a false alarm, so as to speak - their period starts up straight away.”
The doctor drew his speech to an end prematurely because he couldn’t be heard above the terrible din.
Without making her excuses, she rushed to the toilet again, only this time without a bottle.
He could hear her spluttering echoing around the loo. He didn’t usher in the next patient.

“I was too scared to leave the house so I tried to sleep in the old four poster but I couldn’t even manage to close my eyes.
When daylight came, instead of feeling safer I began to panic.
No sign of Robert, and definitely no candle.
I threw open the draws in the old chest in front of the four poster, scattering smelly old clothes all over the floor.
Then I came across a pile of old photos.
I decided to go through the packets after opening the brown album first. Robert, I remember, had said that his surname began with an ‘S’ – something German, I think.
I flicked through boring photos of Christmas parties, weddings, christenings –  funerals, even.
Until:
There, in the line-up at a New-Years eve party in 1959, was a dark-haired boy who looked just like Robert.
His family was standing in front of a house that looked just like this one.
I hadn’t been able to see it properly last night, and anyway I was far too interested in Robert.
My thoughts and suspicions were already forming as I ran hysterically outside, clutching the photo.
That’s it: the house in the photo.
 It was THIS house.
I ran back inside, up the wooden stairs, and grabbed my shoes.
As I hurried back down again, the dust that had settled on my feet on the way up puffed up through the holes in the sides of the flimsy night club shoes before mingling with even more dust that I’d kicked up with my three inch heels.
Coughing hysterically, I grabbed the album and ran home against the tide of shop workers walking towards me on their way to work.
Even by their standards I felt overdressed.
These clothes had appeared glamorous last night but this morning I felt like a tart.

Once safety inside my house in the Hafod, I turned on the lights so quickly I nearly blew a fuse.
I knew exactly what I was about to witness but I needed to prepare for the moment. I went to the kitchen cupboard and began knocking back neat Vodka, straight from the bottle - the first time I’d ever drank alcohol before lunch.”

Joanne threw up in the toilet but it wasn’t morning sickness.
Her coughing fit had curtailed her air supply.
She reached for her handbag and frantically opened a brand-new pack of Always. 
Within seconds she was back in the doctor’s surgery and Sherman was giving her a look which said ‘I told you so’ but she knew better.
She opened her book again, only this time she read the last line of her diary out loud to the doctor, in the style (she thought) of a female Dylan Thomas:

“Vodka in hand, I stared at the writing.
The inscription was written in fountain pen, underneath the family photo that was black and white but yellowing at the borders.
Underneath the photo there was an arrow, pointing upwards to the dark-haired boy. Someone had drawn a circle around a bush.
The caption read:
Robert Senheiser, aged 20, 1959.
Killed here, in a road accident, by an English teacher.”

The thing about big families is that they get, well, bigger.

I often think about this as I’m peering dreamily through one of my customer’s windows. One time, I nearly fell off my ladder.

An old lady on the twelfth floor once said to me ‘Idris, you’re family can’t be bigger than mine. I had twelve siblings – the first died when I was two, the last last week’.

I told her that my family could give the whole tower block a run for its money.

With big families, the entire brood has a take on death and, in my case, on my chosen profession.

Dad’s word (when he was alive) is ‘dangerous’ (probably even now he’s dead).

And Aunt Lucy, together with her estimated seven children, appeared to find me ‘useful’, especially when she was ‘getting on a bit, see?’ Actually, ‘Idris the odd job man’ is nearly as old as Lucy was herself when she died. 

Death-inducing places, motorways. I mean, look at that bloke in front! He looks a bit like Jimmy. He could be my son, only he’s a hippy and he’s got a model of Beckham in the back - the new Millennium equivalent of the nodding dog.

Jimmy is probably at the Millennium stadium right now, playing the real game, instead of wasting time and money on the husband of an ex-Spice Girl who gets red-carded and then sent off in the middle of England’s second big battle with Argentina – you know, the famous ‘Beckham Kick’.

I still say ‘Football is for poofs’. 

But, wait a minute.

He’s slowing down.

Come to think of it, he’s been slowing down since England – the other side of the Severn Bridge, not the team.

Beep! Beeeep! ‘You’re in Wales now!’ I’m telling him.

Play and drive like a man!

And look - now I can see through my rear-view mirror that he’s pulled up on the hard shoulder, there’s steam pouring out of the bonnet and he’s trying to call the AA!

Only the bloody poof can’t open the door of that stupid box.

I reckon they’re like speed cameras, those AA things.

Nothing in them, see!

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes. Lucy, as it happens, did, in the dim and distant past, take on another ‘odd job man’. A man, it seems, who fulfilled the very strange role of siring her extended family – quantity unknown. Not very professional, is it? I mean, what good’s a quantity surveyor who can’t accurately estimate the number of his own children. Anyway, that’s why, to me, they’re her children, not my cousins.

They can’t all be cousins, can they? I mean, two of them have birthdays that are three days apart!

So it saves a lot of energy (and presents) just to refer to the unknown as ‘Aunt L’s children’.

One time, the friendly neighbourhood posh policeman put a ‘haitch’ in front of her initial. She came out sounding like ‘Aunt Hell’.

And after she’d gone to heaven, Auntie Hell left me this old hatchback in her will. She’d told the executor that I’d spent so much time crawling underneath it that I had shares in it and, therefore, I should own it - once God had finally decided she couldn’t take it to heaven, that is. And I was pretty chuffed, I can tell you, until I discovered that she had some real shares and that she’d left them to every other relative but not to me. That’s because I’m just a stupid window cleaner, I suppose – well, I’ll show her, see? 

I hate executors, anyway. Don’t trust them.

And mind how you’re reading that word; change the emphasis on the syllables in the ‘e’ word and it comes out sounding like the person who does the shooting, not the looting.

People from big families also accumulate other people’s holidays and other people’s problems, other people’s junk, other people’s cars.

‘This old Austin’s just like you’ I can hear Aunt Lucy saying, from beyond the grave. ‘It’s too useful to die alongside its equally ancient ex-owner’.

So you know all about Lucy – all I can tell you, anyway.

She’s given herself enough rope to hang herself, as they say.

Which reminds me; someone in the family once gave me one of those little rope ladders you hang in the bath -‘not suitable for those aged under three’, according to the label. Over three, it should’ve said! I mean, nobody aged four and above would actually believe that you’d ever get rid of spiders from the bath by giving them something to climb on!

And then another someone (I forget who - big family, too many names) thought it amusing to find a little figure from the local toy shop who looks a bit like me and then glue it to the bottom rung.

So I yanked it out of the bath and now I keep it in the car. Along with –

A dirty, dog-infested rug.

Bertie the bloodhound died on that rug twenty years ago, just after the birth of my son, Jimmy.

Just before Social Services took him away.

And it’s been sitting in the boot ever since, waiting for a cold day and a faulty carburettor to collide, co-incidence-wise, here on the M4.

Sweet wrappers of varying vintage.

A box full of yesterday’s embarrassing fads (fluffy dice, a real nodding dog, a bloodhound, in actual fact. Don’t ask!)

All spilling out, again embarrassingly, are a few:

Tools I don’t need.

Because, when this car finally meets its ex-owner (together with its ex-four-legged inhabitant) in heaven, the trilogy will then be complete. Oh, and finally -

Letters. Yes, letters.

Well, postcards, mainly – from my big and extended (but now diminishing) family.

I bet the woman who was in the fast lane, the woman who keeps overtaking me, hasn’t got so much baggage, so much junk - Christ! The stupid cow’s only pulled in on the hard shoulder, hasn’t she! She’s several yards ahead of the hippie guy now, but only a few ladder-lengths behind me.

And she’s –

Bloody women drivers!

She’s only reversing back towards the AA box and now

she’s stopped,  and she’s winding down her electric window and handing the hippie a mobile phone.

And - typical!

I’m the one with a police car up my arse because I’m watching all this through the rear-view mirror and noticeably swerving a bit, instead of concentrating on the road ahead. And doing –

‘Please step out of the car, Sir!’

And doing –

‘Are you aware you were doing thirty miles per hour on a motorway, Sir? Have you been drinking?’

And doing time, probably.
 
 Two – Midi.
 
Just look at that poor man – the one in that old Austin.
Some people, I feel, are born to be dealt life’s unkind card – a yellow card, if you like.  And others – they’re born winners. Take the famous ‘Beckham Kick’. One free kick in the final minute and England qualifies for the World Cup.
His testicles - sorry, his testosterone - must’ve been showing that day because, shortly afterwards, he married Posh.
There was never anything ‘posh’ about Victoria, of course – in fact, she reminds me of a girl in my class whose Dad’s been banned from driving. And because I only live two doors down (and because I’ve got a people carrier) it’s only fair that I help that poor family out and give the girl a lift to my school – give the girl a lift in life, if you like. A chance - one chance - that could turn her from a, er, I can’t bring myself to say it….into a winner.  Besides, this thing’s big enough to take the whole class, but imagine if I spun off the road like that poor guy in front was nearly doing just now?
I mean to say, royalty never travels on the same plane, does it? (And, besides, that would be the end of my career – sorry, was I putting myself first for a moment, there?).
Am I good person? Well, good enough to help this hippie- type in the Mini. But the bloke in front? We’ll let the law take its course, shall we – oh look, the copper’s got his book out and he’s giving the man in the Austin Maxi a piece of paper.
Too late –
‘How did you get on, er -’
I’m trying to ask the hippy bloke in the mini whether he managed to get through to the AA. 
He’s already interrupting me, not arrogantly, but in a nervous kind of way because - because he’s a hippie.
‘It’s Donovan! Well, David, really. But teachers at school used to shorten it to ‘Dai’. Makes me sound too, well, Welsh – not that I’m not proud of being Welsh. But I don’t carry my culture on the sleeve of my -’
‘Granddad shirt?’
‘What’s a Granddad shirt?’
‘Never mind. I thought all hippies wore them – in the Seventies -’
I’m sounding desperate, now.
I’m sounding like his mother.
‘I’m not a hippie. I was born in 1981!’
I don’t tell him I feel as if I am his mother. Instead, I say:
‘I’m a teacher! Oh, there’s no need to jump. I don’t bite! Oh, you nearly dropped the phone!’
‘Your phone. I’m sorry!’
‘No need to be – not for something you haven’t actually done.
‘Then let me say sorry for jumping down your throat. You’re right. In a way. I am a bit of a hippie, I suppose. Only in the sense that I used to go on marches. Protests. We’d establish nuclear-free zones. But now I’m less naïve. I mean, you can put bomb-proof barriers up on every side but you can’t block out an attack from the sky, can you? So, nuclear-free areas – they’re no-go, if you see what I mean -’
‘I do! You can’t block the entrance to the sky. It’s God’s roof!’
‘Are you religious, Miss?’
‘Lord no!’
I’m laughing, now – recklessly, helplessly, at I’m-not-sure-what. And he’s laughing, too. At me, not with me, I think. But I don’t mind. Rather one hippie rip the piss out of me than the whole class. And I wouldn’t use that kind of language in the classroom, oh no. And - oh-my-gawd - there I go again! But I mean, really! He may not have actually dropped the phone but it might just as well have fallen in that big puddle on the hard shoulder it’s so damn wet with his sweat. It’s like the handshake he gave me when he was showing his gratitude for lending him the phone in the first place.
By the way, I’ve just watched that policeman finish his business with the man in the Maxi, watched him slam his book shut.
Now I’m watching him approach me.
‘It’s times like these, David – I mean Donovan – that I especially don’t believe in God.’
 
 
 
Three - Mini.
 
‘I know what you mean, Miss!’
I’m calling her ‘Miss’ because she is, well - well, she seems -  you know. Not married. Quite Beautiful, really, in a mumsy sort of way.
‘Oh, for goodness sake, Donovan. You’re not at school, now. I’m not your teacher. It’s Kate.’
She’s shaking my hand now. It’s as if she’s introducing herself all over again, as someone new.
And, last time, she shook my hand she seemed to dry it against her dress. And I seem to remember it was no longer raining. I’ll have to do something about that sweaty handshake people tell me I have – there, she’s doing it again. 
‘Can I see your license, Sir? And Miss?’ the copper’s saying.
Funny how she doesn’t seem to be telling him off – all that ‘Missing’ I mean…..
‘Look, Officer, I can explain’.
Just listen to her begging. Has she no dignity at all?
She didn’t get a handshake from him, either. Not even a clammy one! It was quite comic, man, you should’ve seen it - Miss Katie-Goody-Two-Shoes holding out her hand and getting knocked right back!
 ‘I was only trying to help Mr. Donovan, here. His Mini is nearly forty years old, you know – nearly as old as I am!’
Blimey! She’s almost twice my age and I fancy her – oh look! Here comes the breakdown truck.
‘I’m afraid I don’t keep my license in the car, officer -’
I can’t imagine ‘Miss’ being afraid of anything. Especially me. And I’m not afraid of her, no of course I’m not. But my hand was clammy just now, on the second handshake, especially, because I’d sneakily gone through her phone menu and pressed ‘home’. Made a note of the number, see? Believe it or not, I was going to pluck up the courage to call her sometime but now it looks as if I won’t have to.
‘I’m formally cautioning you, Madam.’
Funny, that. Only a moment ago, it was Miss - just now, before the policeman really meant business.
‘You must never, under any circumstances, reverse along the hard shoulder of a motorway, Madam’ the policeman is saying, ‘Even if you are being a good Samaritan -’
Policemen and teachers: Masters (and Misses) of sarcasm.
Mind you, I don’t like the pitying, condescending way the officer is looking at me as he warns her. He’s holding up an invisible placard that reads ‘urchin’. But I’m not going to arrange a protest march about that. He isn’t arresting me, after all, although in a funny kind of way I think that’s unfair and I actually want him to.
‘Please take your licence, together with your insurance certificate, into Newport police station, Miss Crawford.’
‘Yes, Officer. Of course!’
‘It’s “Sergeant”, by the way!’
‘Okay, Sergeant!’
The grovelling has turned into more teacher-type sarcasm, now – now he’s powerless to do anything more, now that she’s been nicked.
Oh, and she really is a Miss – fancy that!
And I do.
‘I’ll be there at around nine-thirty tomorrow morning, Sergeant.’
So will I.
 
Mini, Midi, Maxi.
 
Fifty years old and still a desk-sergeant. Well, I was a high-flier in the CID. Once. Seems like a different life, that.
And in that other, earlier life, the officers on the beat used to call me ‘Todd’ – after the Sweeney.
Until I had a fling, that is, with one of the snouts. Disciplinary action followed – ‘Your behaviour compromises our integrity’ the Chief Super I said; not the exact wording in the report, but it’s what he said out loud. I remember, you see. Still got a policeman’s memory. Still a good copper at heart, underneath it all – all the scandal and that.
So, anyway, after the scandal, I was back on the beat before you could say ‘Dixon of Dock Green’.
Then here.
Oh, and I nearly forgot – I tried civilian life, for what seemed like a lifetime, though it was actually just three months, sitting there behind a desk at the local van-hire outfit.
‘Vans of all sizes’ went the ad. (I can remember that, too).
‘Minis, Midis, Maxis’.
Boring as hell. Then an old colleague suggested I did the same sort of thing behind a similar desk here – at Newport police station. So, in a way, I’m like the criminals; waiting to get back on track with my career, desperate to be let out on to the street again, doing my time… 
‘Better pay – and it’s what I know’ said my mate.
It’s Okay, I s’pose. You see all sorts, of course.
Take this bloke, for instance – rushing in here with a huge bunch of roses, like there’s no tomorrow. There’s still most of today left – it’s only half-past nine.
You’ve got to laugh. People like him are usually only seen running when they see the drug squad, not an ageing ex-member of the flying squad.
Eh, up. Who’s this?
‘Kate Crawford, Sergeant’. She’s holding out her hand.
‘It is ‘Sergeant’, isn’t it?’
Why is she so concerned about my status?
Then again, I’m quite curious about hers. I wonder if she’s married?
She’s looking round now –
‘My God’ she’s saying.
‘It’s Donovan, isn’t it?’
Does she actually know this hippie?
‘Didn’t we meet on the hard shoulder – yesterday evening, on the M4?’
Funny how people play out their sordid little affairs in such public places.
‘What brings you here?’
‘These!’ the hippy-bloke is saying.
He’s thrusting the bunch of flowers into the shapely hand that’s just shaken mine - some people get all the luck.
‘It’s not necessary – I mean, it’s a very nice gesture, but not necessary. All I did was lend you my mobile phone.’
‘Dai’ the man is saying. ‘You can call me “Dai”. If you agree to have dinner with me tonight, that is’.
Blimey! He’s only been here for a few seconds.
That’s quick work.
I’ve been here three years.
I must be losing my technique.
‘Why do you call yourself Donovan, anyway?’ she’s saying.
‘Is it after that singer, England’s answer to Bob Dylan? You do look a bit like him.’
‘Britain’s answer, you mean. Bob took his name from Dylan Thomas.’
‘He didn’t sound Welsh, did he?’ the woman’s saying.
‘I don’t think he was. Never heard him talk, really.’
I think the hippie’s got the wrong end of the stick.
‘Oh, that’s one of literature’s great mysteries. I once took a class on an outing to the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea. They’ve got a tape archive running, there. You should go – but not on your own. It’s kind of spooky when it’s just you and the ghost of an English-sounding Welsh poet -’
‘I was referring to the singer. He’s not Welsh -’
‘Oh, I see -’
And what’s happening now?
After this misunderstanding, the older bloke’s getting in on the act, seizing his chance, perhaps. He seems more than a bit familiar with her:
‘Kate!’ he’s saying, to the attractive woman who’s now holding the flowers.
‘It is Kate, isn’t it?’
‘Idris – you’ve hardly changed. I mean, you’re a lot – a bit -’
‘No, a lot. Be honest, I’m a bit older, but I’ve aged a lot -’
‘What are you doing here, Kate?’
‘Oh, they need to see my papers – driving licence, that sort of thing. Didn’t have them yesterday, when they caught me reversing back on the hard shoulder to help -’
‘You mean, that was you, yesterday evening in that people carrier? I thought you looked familiar, even from a distance, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, you know. You were always one to do a good turn. You were helping out that hippie -’
‘Donovan. Pleased to meet you! I’m that “hippie guy”, I think you were about to say’.
God, it’s good, this.
Better than one of the soaps.
Maybe this job isn’t so dull after all.
And anyway, I thought I recognised that older bloke and now she’s said his name that confirms it.
Used to know his old man’s sister.
And we used to call her ‘Aunt Hell’, those of us patrolling the village beat. I often spoke to Lucy. She was a bit, er, promising. And promiscuous. A bit like me.
I’d been demoted. She’d been de-flowered. Well, the last bit’s not strictly true – it’s the word they use for breaking in virgins, isn’t it. But you know what I mean.
Lucy had at least seven children by different partners. We had something in common – it passed the time of day, and that was that.    
‘And you are?’
‘Idris’.
The hippie guy is staring right into Idris’s eyes, now.
‘Did – you – say – your – name – is - Donovan?’
 His reply is taking on a measured tone now, as if it’s somehow frozen by the young guy’s stare.
‘Donovan’s taking me to dinner!’
The sexy teacher-woman is sounding like she’s proud of her conquest, but it makes me sick. She needs to be with someone older. She needs to be with me.
‘Idris, why don’t you tell him? It’s all water under the bridge now!’
‘Oh, all right.’
I do believe the older guy’s gone a bit red.
Blokes like that – suspects – used to look like that when I’d finally cornered them, in the old ‘Sweeney’ days.
‘We had a brief affair, your new friend and I -’
The hippie’s not really taking it all in. His eyes are fixed – frozen, even, only this time for a different reason.
‘She used to joke that she was only like that because she’d learned it off her mum -’
Idris is delighting in all this, now – almost enjoying it, as it were.
‘Idris,you’re a disgusting old fart -’ the hippie finally says.
‘Lucy wasn’t like that!’
The teacher’s definitely on the ropes.
‘Not really. It’s just that -’
Idris won’t let her finish.
‘Lucy? Did you say Lucy?’
‘Yes, Idris. It’s a little known fact, but my mum’s name was ‘Lucy’. I never mentioned that to you. I only call her that now she’s dead. It’s how I deal with all that Catholic guilt – a way of accepting my inheritance, if you like, how I take the money.  Anyway, Donovan -’
She’s turning to the hippie, now.
‘I finally split up with old Idris here -’
‘Hey, less of the “old!”’
‘As I was saying, Donovan, I left this man because he made me pregnant -’
She’s whispering that last word. Can’t quite hear it. But I think she said ‘pregnant’. 
‘Anyway, I had to go through with it. I’m sort of religious, you see. So I gave the baby away for adoption and that was that.
Donald, I think he was called.’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’
Oh dear. The young hippie is questioning her quite aggressively, now. In fact, he’s being as aggressive as a hippie ever gets.
‘Because it’s true. And after hearing all that, you still want a date, Don -’
She’s stopping in mid sentence, now.
‘Don – Don! OH MY GOD!’
She’s backtracking.
‘Donovan isn’t your surname, is it?’
‘No!’
In fact, if she were driving a car right now, I’d say she’s just reversed several yards down the hard shoulder.
And the young guy with the flowers is now giving her the cold shoulder and thrusting them right in her face and saying:
‘Belated Mother’s Day present!’
The sexy teacher’s running out of the station, as fast as the youth ran in.
Where’s my radio?
We must go after her.
Someone already has.
‘DAD!’
The older guy’s run back in again now. He’s already given up the chase.
Blimey, the old bloke’s actually hugging the hippie - that’s a pretty swift conversion to ‘love and peace’!
‘What were you going to say, son?’

 
Words: 3,800.  
 
 

  ******

“Sue and Mark Carter. Pleased to meet you.”
“Jonathan Belling. So you’re here about the house. Shall we look around?”
“Thanks. But before we do there’s one question my husband would like to ask you.”
“Don’t tell me, Mr. Carter - if we decide we like South Africa, like we said on the phone, and one of us - I mean both of us - never come back, then you’d like the option to buy, wouldn’t you? Well, fine. But just don’t ask us to refund the rent.”
“We wouldn’t dream of doing that.”
“It was only a joke.”
“Fair enough. But seeing as how you’ve mentioned, er, selling things…”
“Yes?”
“Look, there’s no easy way to put this. What Sue and I are trying to ask is this: Was the other advertisement yours as well? You know, the one for the cooker?”
“The one in the yellow handwriting? The one that says: ‘Baby Belling for sale’? Yes. It is. And before you ask, Sue, you’re both right to be cautious. You smelt a rat - a great big baby-sized rodent. Spot-on, Sue. Right on Mark! And you know why? Because this Belling isn’t your small, conventional old-fashioned stove. Baby Belling is - well, she’s a baby.”

******

Am I happy, you ask. Are you blissfully in love with life, Rick? You see - silence! Actually, it was silence all around, because you didn’t even ask me the question. The question, like the answer, came from myself. And when you’re the psychiatrist and the patient, and you’re lying to yourself while you lie on your own couch, then you know that what you are witnessing is the first real sign of madness, a madness that upstages all other embryonic forms of insanity. Even hairs on the palms of your hands, even sending Christmas cards to yourself because you want to drag the last drop of loneliness out of the unproductive year that is Two-Thousand-and-bloody-Three…
No matter. I mean, who needs friends or relatives when happiness, like all other things in a forty-year-old life is relative.
I’ve got a girlfriend called Lisa. We have things in common. We have great sex. Well, great telephone sex between her Chicago conferences. But, hell - I’m happy. Relatively. And who knows how much happier I’d feel if I was with someone else? Or how much more miserable? At least the phone sex is better than the last long-distance relationship. Here, Rick. Let’s drink. Let’s drink to sex more than once in Two-Thousand-and-sodding-Four. And, while we’re at it, let’s drink to more than one note from my bloody euphonium-playing pupil next door. Talk about a busman’s holiday! They ought to re-name it ‘Music teacher’s holiday’.
Actually, I can’t bring myself to look forward to the New Year. How can I, when nearly two years ago Lisa went to Chicago and I had a one-night stand with Monica?  Why, I hear you ask (or rather I don’t). Well, I’ll tell you. The result of this lonely little liaison was…another Monica. A little Monica. But I made sure I had the last laugh, oh yes: a sort of compensation, I suppose, for the fact that I knew I’d be paying for that little mistake for the next forty bloody years. I registered little Monica’s full name as Harriet Angela Rebecca Monica. H.A.R. Monica Stallion. Ha, ha, ha. And you know what? Big Monica went ahead and christened my daughter with that name and no one even noticed the initials ‘til the Godparents had worked their way into the third sherry bottle. Still, it could be worse. ‘Harmonica’ could’ve been a euphonium player, just like that precocious, pig-tailed prima donna next door. And there was me, exactly a year ago, thinking this house was gong to be a refuge, an escape for me from all this child-stuff. Fat chance! Just imagine if my ‘one night wonder’ had turned into a one-note wonder like this kid! God, that child must’ve annoyed everyone, ever since it woke whoever it was who used to live here squealing on its first night. I teach kids. I hate kids. I have a kid. I hate myself. No, I’m most definitely not happy. There, I’ve said it! Only I couldn’t hear myself saying it above that din. “Shut UP, you little brat!”   

******

“You’ll have to have a word with that bloody slave-driving professor, Sue.”
“He isn’t a professor, Mark. He’s just - well, he’s just plain Rick Stallion and he’s just…”
“Just a music teacher. And he’s just next door. But you’re wrong about the professor bit. He’s a professor of irritation.  Why can’t bloody Stallion teach Becci some more sodding notes? It’s just as well he’s not her maths teacher, isn’t it Sue? I mean, the bloody sadist tells our daughter to practise for fifteen minutes a day and, being our daughter, she does exactly what he says…”
“She isn’t our daughter. You know I don’t like you using the D-word.”
“I know. Oh come on, love. Please don’t cry. You know I can’t deal with this. It’s a New Year. Let’s try and celebrate new beginnings. Ok, so we can’t have a child of our own but Becci’s everything that our own child…”
 “Wouldn’t have been. Our child, Mark, would’ve been the best child we could produce. And that wasn’t good enough, was it? I could only give birth to imperfect children. And then we go and adopt one. Off the peg, so as to speak. And it turns out perfect. And just as I’m dealing with all that, getting my head round it so as to speak, Mark darling, Stallion goes and teaches her to practise fanatically for fifteen minutes a day but he only ever teaches her one note. And another thing: why is it Stallion never takes women back to that house? He’s a one-note wonder, that man. Are you sure, Mark, that he should even be teaching our daughter at all?”
“That’s better, love. You’ve stopped crying. And you’ve started referring to Becci as our daughter. Like I said, 2004 is going to be a new start. So let me finish Stallion off.
I’m going round there, right now. Going to sort this out once and forever.

******

Stupid, isn’t it? New Years Eve and I have to go down the Bullshit and Bush just to escape from one of my own pupils. Just because Lisa isn’t at home for Christmas and I’m (relatively) unhappy. And I’m the product of my own success story because here is my star euphonium pupil - well, all right, my ONLY euphonium pupil - driving me out of my own house. Next door: nuclear bloody family, doing some proper living, making a proper noise. Here? Me, living in a sort of pseudo-silence. Hearing every pin drop, eavesdropping on every fart, LISTENING TO THAT BLOODY EUPHONIUM. There she is, my star pupil at work, coming back to haunt me in my private (very private) life. It’s Frankenstein’s syndrome: If you create a monster, then don’t be surprised if one day it jumps up and bites you.  

******

“Look, Mark love, it’s New Year’s Eve. Stallion’s probably down the Iraq and Ruin.”
“The Bullshit and Bush.”
“Ok, but even if Rick isn’t drinking in the Bull you can’t just go round and confront him now.”
“Yes I can. And he’s got no life so he’s bound to be in. I’m going to knock him up. And when I’ve finished knocking Stallion up, I’m going to bloody well knock him out.”

******

They don’t call me Rick Stallion for nothing. I’m sick of listening to that child. That’s it: I’ve had my new year drink now and I’m going to bloody well bang on the Carters’ door, new year no bloody new year. And by the time I’ve finished with those bloody Carters they’ll both need to be carted off to hospital….
“What are you doing out here in the rain, Stallion?”
I could’ve asked Carter the same thing. And I did.
“Looking for you, Stallion. And asking you why…”
“Why?”
“Yep. Why. You tell me. Why did you teach our adopted daughter just one bloody note?”
“All right, all right. I hate children.”
“But you teach them?”
“I know, Mark. But after I’d had a one-night stand with Monica I had a little Monica with big Monica, Ha ha ha. And the only way she and her bloke could deal with it was to move away somewhere, to a different house. They tried to make it work, but they couldn’t hack it. Too much water under the bridge. So they ‘sold’ the baby…”
“Wait a minute, Stallion. Did you say her name was Monica?”
“Did I?”
“Yes you did. You said her name. And then you laughed. You went ‘Monica, ha, ha ha. Our Monica is so used to that.”
“But the kid’s called…shit, Carter. Your kid is called Rebecca.”
“Harriet Angela…”
“Rebecca Monica…”
“…Stallion! STALLION, SHE’S YOUR BLOODY LOVE CHILD. Listen to her now, playing that one bloody annoying note…”
“Can’t hear anything.”
“Not surprising, is it Stallion? Not surprising that Monica’s stopped playing. She’s having a break after her fifteen-minute, one-note wonder. But listen - hey! Is that silence I hear, or is our daughter learning how to see the New Year in with her new tune? Listen, Stallion! Monica’s learning to play ‘Land of our Fathers’.”