Lego

My four-year-old twin daughters are fighting over a piece of yellow Lego. Rebecca “gobs” (as she would call it) into Kayleigh's white-blonde curls, which could as easily have been Becca's own – had she not insisted upon having her hair cut somewhat shorter than Kayleigh would have allowed in “like, a million years” - quote, unquote.

***

I gratefully gulp down gin, from a half-empty bottle, which someone evidently dumped here last night. Was it me? I can't honestly remember. The neat alcohol burns my throat, and puts me instantly back in touch with my bodily sensations. Now, I can actually feel the cold, hard concrete, beneath my somewhat bony hands and wrists, as I climb out of what, last night, constituted my “bed”.

It's really a tunnel, in a kids' adventure playground. My ex-wife and I used to bring the girls here – shit, how many years ago now?

But I don't want to think about Claire or the twins. It's bad enough that I still get those bloody dreams, night after night.

The girls must be seventeen now, going on eighteen. I probably wouldn't recognise them, and they definitely wouldn't know me. I wouldn't want them to, in my current state.

The dawn chorus is telling me that it's time to get my arse out of this “bed”, which reeks of stale urine. Probably mine, but who knows?

Or cares, for that matter?

For my part, I'm past caring about much.

I ought to be getting back “home”.

I live – well, exist – in a one-room bedsit, just outside the centre of Reading. This is where, as a rule, I tend to sleep, but I had a bit too much to drink last night and...Yeah, well – you catch my drift.

The sky is tinged with Kayleigh's favourite shades of pink and peach, which Becca, naturally, hates – or did then. That sky reminds me of a watercolour painting by the girls' mother, which probably still hangs in the large, magnolia-walled entrance hall of Claire's mum and dad's, in Orpington.

I happen to know that her parents still reside in that poxy bungalow of theirs, which I always hated visiting. At least three out of six of Mrs. Green's, now ageing, Labradors are, likewise, still around.

I've asked myself the question so many times now. Too many. But how can I not?

It's nothing more than a hoarse scream, nowadays: “Why? Answer me that, God! Why?”

Over a piece of yellow Lego. Everything – all down the fucking plughole.

Well, okay – so I didn't split up with Claire just because of some sodding Lego.

But it was the catalyst. I'd taken Rebecca's “side” once too often, and pretty soon Claire and I were at each other's throats.

Well, we were always at one another's throats, so why was this so different?

It was “different” because, this time, she chucked me out of the family home.

And subsequently filed for divorce – something which, no doubt, made her parents and sisters crack open their bottles of economy so-called “champagne”, the moment they heard. Fucking vultures, the lot of them.

Of course, the bitch and her “clan” made certain I'd never get to see Rebecca or Kayleigh again. The last I heard, Claire and the twins were living in Spain, with her new bloke. Some fat jerk – accountant, apparently. Well, bully for her.

It's funny, isn't it? We survived so many things, Claire and I: family deaths, and family feuds; Claire's continuing to vote Tory, after I'd switched my allegiances to the Lib Dems; my affair with Claire's friend, Judy; my affair with Judy's husband, Robert...

My spell inside – for my part in an armed robbery, in which Claire's brother, Keith, was killed. That should, by rights, have been the end.

But it wasn't. You know that expression about the straw and the camel's back? Yeah, well – the “straw”, in this instance, was a piece of yellow Lego. 




Paula Writes