EPISODE FIFTY-FOUR
Vanessa sat at the kitchen table, eating toast and jam while reading about
Coldplay in a magazine. Her mother
bounded excitedly through the door, making her jump. A dollop of jam dripped onto Chris Martin and
Gwyneth Paltrow’s picture.
‘Ta-ra!’ fanfared Jackie, showing off her dress. ‘What do you think?’
Vanessa nodded. ‘You’re still going through with it then.’
‘The first week in September. Before
you’re back at college. And Nicky’s on
annual leave – so neither of you will have an excuse for not attending.’
‘So we pop along to the Registry Office, have
a few drinks after...’
‘A meal,’ Jackie corrected. ‘Nigel’s
taking us all to the Spa Hotel.’
Vanessa made a point of looking unimpressed.
‘Oh, great. I can just imagine what that’s going to be like.’
Jackie let out a low moan. ‘Oh, why is it that nothing we do is right? It’s not as if either of you are young
children. And I know it’s traditional
for children to hate their stepfathers, but just what is it you’ve got against
Nigel?’
‘I don’t want to see you get hurt, that’s all.’
Jackie frowned. ‘I can’t see why...’ she
began, but the sentence died in mid-air.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Vanessa. ‘But I’ve got
to say this. I don’t trust him.’
Jackie sighed deeply, and blinked away her tears. ‘But he’s never given me – or you, for that
matter – any reason not to trust him. I
think you’re being most unfair.’
‘What about this seminar he’s supposed to be at? Almost a week gone by, and he hasn’t phoned
once.’
‘He’s probably busy. A lot on his mind. And sometimes it’s difficult to get to a
phone.’
Vanessa mimed a telephone. ‘Oh
hello-o! We don’t have mobiles.’
Jackie felt the tears about to burst.
‘He did send me a big bunch of flowers.’
Vanessa wanted to end the conversation, and said, ‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten about
the flowers. I’m sorry, I was wrong
about him. Completely wrong.’
Jackie glared at her daughter then stormed out of the room.
‘Now what have I said?’ Vanessa called
after her.
*
Barry had been drunk for over a week now.
Everyone in his local pub knew about the split, and they had been
sympathetic to begin with, but now the sympathy was becoming a chore. And when the e-mail came from his American
agent, saying they were going out of business, it was the last straw. To have to start all over again seemed a
Herculean task and didn’t bear thinking about.
So he opened another bottle of wine and thought about ending it
all. He spent all day thinking about it,
going over all the different methods he might employ.
He even imagined his funeral, wondering if suicide precluded a good
attendance. Or did one have to die a
more respectable death from natural causes?
He pictured his first wife and his ex-wife attending, and actually
chatting about him familiarly. He
wondered if Pauline would attend, then decided she might not. She might think he had killed himself
deliberately to get back at her. The
dreaded guilt trip. It would probably
make her angry. And if she had an
important golf match on the day of the funeral, bitterly he suspected that golf
might win out.
After he had opened the second bottle of wine, he had sunk to an all time low,
and thought about asphyxiation from car exhaust fumes. A painless way to drift away. By the time the second bottle had hit home,
he had worked out that he would need a hose pipe and gaffer tape and decided to
drive to Homebase. He knew he wasn’t fit
to drive. But so what? If he was done for drinking and driving, did
it matter?
All the same, he drove carefully down to Homebase. It was all very well to kill oneself, but he
didn’t want another death on his conscience.
As he went down Major York’s Road, the heavens opened up, and rain
cascaded down his windscreen.
Rivers of tears, he thought bitterly,
as he switched his wipers and headlights on.
Homebase was empty. He staggered around
drunkenly; everything seemed a blur. God knows how he I managed to drive down
here. Eventually, he managed to find
an assistant, and asked, ‘I need some
gaffer tape and a hosepipe. Urgently.’
The spotty-faced youth regarded him with a look that was both quizzical and
fractious. ‘That aisle over there for
the garden hose,’ he mumbled. ‘And over there for gaffer tape.’
As the youth shuffled off, Barry watched him go, and called after him, ‘Your
simian features do you a disservice.
You’re actually very efficient.’
When Barry got back to the car park with his purchases, he discovered his
headlights were still on, and remembered the bleeping warning signal had packed
up for some reason.
Oh well, he thought. Not much point in getting it repaired
now. I’m free. Free of the burden of
living.
Then he drove home extremely carefully, and only clipped two wing mirrors from
cars parked at the bottom end of Major York’s Road.
Two bottles later, he was out of it. He
came to, as he suspected he would, in the early hours of the morning. He went out to the flats’ car park at the
rear of the building. There was a half
moon and just enough light to see what he was doing, although he was
staggering, swaying and bumping into things, and everything he did took an enormous
amount of time and effort. But
eventually, he managed to tape the hose to the exhaust pipe and threaded it
through the window by the driver’s seat.
Then he went indoors and got the fifth bottle of wine, uncorked it, and
returned to the car. He sat in the
driving seat and covered the gap in the window with masses of tape. Then he took an enormous swig of wine, almost
a quarter of a bottle in one gulp. After
all, what did it matter? It could hardly
be bad for his health. Not as bad as
carbon monoxide.
Bye-byes time, he told himself, and
turned the key in the ignition.
Click! He turned it again.
Click! Nothing. The car wouldn’t start. He had left the headlights on and the battery
was flat.
IN EPISODE FIFTY-FIVE
Mike picks on the wrong person in the pub and lives to regret it.