Pulp Idol Firsts 2015

Pulp Idol Firsts

Writing on the Wall Kuumba Imani Millennium Centre 4, Princes Road, Liverpool L8 1TH Published by Writing on the Wall 2014 Š Remains with authors Design and layout by Rosa Murdoch ISBN: 978-1-910580-02-8 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

0151 703 0020 info@writingonthewall.org.uk www.writingonthewall.org.uk

Contents Foreword

i

Introductions

ii

Craig Whittle Driven To Rust

1

Rob Knipe A Game of Two Halves

11

Cheryl Joyce The Grass Is Darker

17

Jack Tasker Currents

27

Michael Taylor Forty by Forty

33

Debbie O'Brien People’s Parties

47

Paul Clark A Difficult First Album

59

Lee Butcher Desperate Dad

69

Laura-Kate Barrow Dale Street

77

Steven John Horay My Father’s Academy

89

Foreword Earlier this year we received the news that Pulp Idol 2010 winner James Rice has signed a two-book deal with Hodder and Stoughton who will publish his debut novel, Alice and the Fly, in January 2015. James is a talented writer who has produced an incredible debut novel.

Good news knocked on our door again when 2014 finalist Clare Coombes (nee Doran) called to say her debut novel, Dictionary of Departures, which appeared in last year’s Firsts, is to be published in spring 2015 by Bennion Kearney.

We offer them our congratulations and are proud to have played some part in their success, which is well deserved.

Both James and Clare confirm that talent plus dedication, with an eye to using opportunities like Pulp Idol to put your work into the path of readers, agents and publishers, are some of the key ingredients you need to get your work published.

This year we welcomed as Pulp Idol Final judges, literary agents Tom Witcombe of Blake Friedman and Alex Christofi from Conville and Walsh. Their participation confirms Pulp Idol’s growing reputation among the wider literary world as a standard mark for new, quality writing.

The quality of the writing presented here gives us the expectation that more than one of our writers will follow in the successful footsteps of James and Clare, and numerous other Pulp idol writers from previous editions.

We are sure you too will enjoy their work as much as we have. We wish them all every success in the future.

Mike Morris, Editor.

i

Introductions Pulp Idol 2014/15 winner Craig Whittle’s Driven To Rust introduces Detective Creager, a desperate man in a race against time to find his own son as he works the underbelly beat of death and despair in Liverpool’s docklands.

A Game of Two Halves concerns a fantasy football match unlike any other and Rob Knipe’s sharply-written chapter is terse, vivid, compelling and will have you on the edge of your seat.

In The Grass is Greener, Cheryl Joyce gives us an intimate portrait of a new mother, as this devastating account of Danielle's struggles to preserve her identity and bond with her baby unfolds.

Jack Tasker's novel, Currents, deals with old hurts, loss of love, and new beginnings. The novel is full of conflict, both internal and external within an unpredictable, dangerous setting.

You’ll love to hate Roger Cashmore, Michael Taylor’s protagonist in Forty By Forty, who is taking no prisoners on his mission to hit the big payoff in time for his fortieth birthday.

This is a fast story of greed and excess told with great energy and a good ear for ‘banter’.

Readers of People’s Parties by Debbie O’Brien can be sure of excellent company as they follow the fortunes of her lively cast of characters searching for the meaning of life in witty dialogue and exuberant prose.

In Paul Clark’s Difficult First Album Andrew’s search through what remains of his dead father’s desolate flat turns up a chapter of a life he never knew. This softly told tale will hold you in its subtle grip.

Lee Butcher’s Desperate Dad is a wild tale of a child caught in the cross-fire of a parental war, trying desperately to hold ii

on to a sense of normality as his father slips rapidly over the edge.

Laura Kate Barrow’s Dale Street opens with an idyllic Sunday morning scene. But as the day unfolds and the faces of uniformed men begin to appear, it becomes clear all is not what it seems.

In My Father’s Academy Stephen John Hooray captures teenage angst and first love, amidst a scandal born of young Tom Bradley’s mother’s lurid affair. The tension builds as this horror story threatens to explode at any moment.

Editors, Penny Feeny & Debbie Morgan

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Craig Whittle

craigwhittle37@gmail.com In 2014, I graduated LJMU with a degree in Creative Writing.

Born and raised in Liverpool, I want to write stories about this city and it’s people. I have been writing in some capacity, whether it be song writing, prose or poetry, for as long as I can remember.

Driven to Rust In 2011, DI Harry Creager’s son disappeared in Liverpool and was never seen again. Two years later, Creager’s life has fallen apart, but when the body of a little girl is found he hopes to find redemption in bringing her killer to justice, and soon suspects the two cases are intrisincally linked.

1

Driven to Rust What was left of the kid lay behind the abandoned biscuit factory off the Rainford By-Pass, the grass growing through his tiny bleached ribs. It had taken me close to an hour of combing through wild grass and weeds to find him. Twenty years ago it would have taken me half the time. I pulled the photograph out the inside pocket of my raincoat, the crease white from too much folding. Hard to recognise anyone from their bones.

This kid looked too tall to be Eric.

I called it in. While I waited I knelt down beside the kid. I had wanted to move him out of the weeds and mud but knew I couldn’t. He’d been out here for over a year, freezing in the snow, decomposing in the summer heat.

Within ten minutes the place was alive with flashes and noise. I drank weak tea out of a polystyrene cup while SOCOs gathered evidence. They wouldn’t find anything of course, it had been far too long for that.

Eventually the bones were zipped in the black bag, wheeled past the police tape and flashing cameras and slid into the back of the forensic van. A handful of reporters stood behind the yellow tape below the faded Bernard’s Biscuits sign. I recognised a few, Liz Hampson from The Echo, a couple of bloggers, no TV. People have short memories and this case was old news.

‘Detective! Detective Creager!’

‘Care to comment on what you’ve found here today?’

They stretched their microphones out like the undead crawling from their graves. I kept my head tucked into the collar of my raincoat and walked past them towards my car.

‘How has your family coped the last two years? Torn apart?’

2

‘What? Who was that?’ I stopped and turned.

A student reporter pushed his way to the front of the crowd, his curly black hair blowing softly in the wind.

‘Your family must’ve been torn apart-‘ I lunged towards him. Flashes erupted from behind him. I’d got within striking distance when I was tackled to the ground.

More flashes. I was hauled out of sight behind the biscuit factory as officers made a small circle in the crowd to shield the reporter.

‘Harry! What the fuck was that?’ Mason slammed me against the wall. Ed Mason was probably my best friend, although I doubt I was his – so I didn’t put up much of a fight.

He saw I wasn’t fighting back and let me go.

‘I have no idea what you’ve been through and I’m not going to pretend that I do. You’ve sacrificed enough for twenty officers. But you can’t hit reporters.’ He peered around the wall. ‘At least not in front of other reporters.’

‘It’s not Eric.’

‘We can’t be sure yet.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Whoever it is, this kid had to be found, and you found them.’

‘What does it mean, though?’ I said. ‘The kid is dead. He was a pile of fucking bones for Christ’s sake. We knew he was dead, so what good is finding him. It doesn’t change anything.’

‘Maybe it isn’t our job to change.’ He smacked me on the shoulder. ’Well done, Harry, I mean it.’

Mason lit a cigarette. He was a good few years younger than me and had one of those perfectly pruned beards all the kids seem to have these days.

‘How old was that lad anyway? Fifteen? You beating up kids now?’

‘Babies, Grandmothers, I don’t discriminate.’

3

Mason laughed and smoke fell out his nose.

‘Be careful, Harry, next time this sexy bastard won’t be there to pull your punches for you.’

Mason brought my car around to Siding Lane behind the factory and I made my getaway. It was getting dark and the sky brimmed. I fiddled with the radio and found an early Beatles record. I didn’t want to go home, but I would. That’s about ninety percent of being a man, doing things you don’t want to do. My Dad hated working on the Dunlop factory line, hated that I didn’t make the school football team, and just plain hated my mum but he always came home. He might have been pissed and we might have been better off if he hadn’t, but that’s not the point.

I turned the radio off. I like the Beatles but I could go my whole life without hearing them again. On the horizon to my right funnels pumped thick clouds into the sky. To my left night had already settled over the orange lights of Liverpool.

Detective Superintendent Ron Chambers was five years older than me but with his bald head and sagging pink jowls you could have mistaken him for a man of sixty. He called me into his office and by the time I had closed the glass door he was already sitting in his leather chair. It was shipped in during his first week as Superintendent, cost him close to a grand.

Important when you spend most of your day on your arse.

Behind him a window stretched from floor to ceiling, overlooking St. Anne Street. His desk was full of case files and paperwork.

‘Have a seat, Harry. How’re you feeling?’

I shifted awkwardly in the chair. ‘Alright.’

‘How’s Maria? You two doing okay?’

‘Look, Ron, I’ve had a long day, so if you don’t mind I’d prefer-‘

4

‘Fine, I’ll cut the pleasantries.’ He stood and leaned towards me with his hands on the desk. ‘I want to tell you that whether that kid you found today is Eric or the Brownlow kid, you’ve got to let this go.’

‘Let it go?’

‘All these little private investigations you’ve been running in your spare time, they stop. Right now. You’re not part of that investigation anymore, you know that, and you can’t go around pretending you’re on police business with your own agenda.’

‘I thought finding missing children was both of our agendas.’

‘Don’t get funny with me. I’ve cut you a lot of slack the last few years, stuck by you, and what do you do?’ He picked up a case file from the desk and threw it in front of me. I opened it and high definition photographs of me fell out onto the desk.

‘You pull shit like this.’

I flicked through the photographs, all taken today and showed me seconds from ripping the student reporters head off. One was an extreme close-up, just my eyes, nose and teeth. My nostrils were flared and teeth gritted but it was my eyes that made me stop flicking. They were dead and cold, like I’d saw a thousand times over the last twenty years, but never in my own.

‘How did you get these pictures already?’

‘This is the twenty-first century, Harry, anybody with a fucking Internet connection can see these pictures.’

‘Shit.’

Ron rubbed his entire head from crown to chin with his giant hand, a habit of stress he’d never been able to shake.

He had stuck by me, I know that people above him were pressuring him to cut me loose last year, today wasn’t the first time that I’d seen red.

5

‘Alex Burgess,’ Ron said.

‘What?’

‘That’s the lads name, the one you were two seconds away from beating to a bloody pulp when Ed stepped in.’

‘So?’ He slid a business card across the table that read ‘Alex Burgess, Journalist’ and had a link to his blog, BreakingBurgessBlog.com.

‘Everybody’s a fucking journalist these days.’

‘You’re going to make things right with him.’

I slid the card into my jacket pocket and said, ‘Fine.’

‘Lucas Hoem is in Ashworth,’ Ron said after a while, and my blood jumped at the sound of that name. ‘You got your man.’

I put the photos back in the file and slid it across the desk.

‘So I should move on? Just forget that my son is still out there?’

‘You should do your job. Or leave so we can find someone that will.’

I stood.

‘Are you going to sack me, Ron?’ ‘What are you talking about? I’m trying to help you, you fucking idiot.’

‘You want to help me? Put me on some real cases, not this drunken disorderly, breaking and entering shite.’

‘Show me you’re ready then.’ He sat back down in his leather chair. ‘Now get the fuck out my face.’

The curtains twitched as I parked the car. Maria stood in the hallway, tapping the house phone against her thigh.

‘I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all day,’ she said.

I peeled off my raincoat and hung it behind the front door.

‘It’s not him,’ I said.

‘What? Mason just told me they haven’t got the results back yet?’

6

I scratched the corner of my forehead that used to be hair.

‘What do you want me to say? It’s not him, the skeleton was too big.’

She gasped, like she was trying to push out air that wasn’t there. ‘Skeleton?’

She started to shake and tears glossed her eyes. Shit. You fucking arsehole. I let her cry into my shoulder for a few seconds before she snapped out of it. She stepped back and tried to wipe the tears and mascara from her cheeks, composing herself.

‘I’ve made up the couch for you.’

I kicked off my boots and stood them next to the door. I walked past her and hovered for a second. She didn’t want me to kiss her but I tried anyway. She turned her head before I even got in the vicinity. I slumped on the couch. It felt good to put my feet up. Maria was reflected in the black television screen. She watched me for a few moments from the hallway before going upstairs.

I had never been good with girls, now I’m no good with women. I used to blame it on going to an all boys school. It’s harder to fool myself like that nowadays. It’s a miracle that I ever got married. I look back and wonder how I fell into someone like Maria. Smart, beautiful, even now. She’s relentless. In all the years I’ve been with her she’s told me I looked good once, and that was when we were camping in Anglesey and I forgot my electric razor. She’s tough. I need tough. We both did.

She was crying upstairs, in Eric’s room, sliding out drawers and rooting through his boxes of toys. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway, but now it was impossible. Her cries crawled through the house like termites. She cleaned that room everyday for the first three months, now it was once a week.

7

I took a beer from the fridge. It was so cold it made my teeth shiver. I turned on the TV and flicked around for a few minutes but there was nothing on. Her crying hadn’t let up in those minutes either. I downed the last dregs of beer, grabbed two more from the fridge and left the house.

I liked driving at night. The headlights stretched out ahead on the wet tarmac. I tried to stay as close to the river as I could but in this city it’s hard and I had to settle for glimpsing it occasionally down side streets on the Dock Road.

Derelict warehouses and mountains of scrap metal lined the riverfront. I wish I had been alive a hundred years ago to see this city, when Liverpool was the biggest port in the world, when there were stone piers to see from Dingle up to Bootle.

The yellow Mersey alive with roaring steam ferries and white trans-Atlantic liners. When this city had a purpose.

I drove slowly and slid a CD into the slot. Darkness on the Edge of Town. I skipped to ‘Something in the Night’. Down a side street a lorries brake lights cut through the rain as he parked up outside a warehouse. At least they’re not all abandoned.

I stopped at the junction at Millers Bridge. An old man was asleep in the doorway of a cafe, huddled in a dirty sleeping bag. Across the street from him three smackheads, two men and a woman, slumped in a bus stop watching an ATM machine, hoping a taxi would stop and a young girl would need to make a withdrawal. My knuckles turned green, and I pulled away.

I parked in an empty car park facing Crosby Beach, in a corner sheltered from the glow of street lamps. The rain had lessened to a fine drizzle. I opened the glove compartment and pulled out an evidence bag with a full joint in it, something I’d found on a young hoodie a few nights back in Tuebrook.

8

I could smell the river, the wind smacking about the dunes.

I sat on the bonnet and cracked open the beer with the bottle opener on my keychain. The river and the cloudy night sky merged into a wall of darkness. I lit the joint and buried my head into my jacket while I pulled so the wind didn’t beat me to it.

I thought about Maria crying back at the house. I felt bad for leaving but knew that even if I’d stayed and tried to comfort her she wouldn’t have let me. Maria was losing hope, a hope that had infected her from the moment Eric went missing. Every morning I woke up and hoped the sun would be there when I pulled back the curtains, because there’s a level of chance involved in that. Maria was just starting to let herself realise that she’d never pull back the curtains and see Eric standing there.

Seventy-two hours after Eric left school and didn’t make it home I knew he was gone.

I smoked the joint until it was roach and tossed it into the wind. Through the car windscreen my phone buzzed blue on the dashboard. I climbed in and answered it.

‘It’s a little late for a booty call, Mason.’

‘We’ve found something, you’re going to want to see it.’

I stretched my arm out to read my watch.

‘At half three in the morning?’

‘Trust me.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘We’ve found a little girl, dead. Whoever did it, they fucked her up.’

‘Why are you calling me?’

‘You ready for a real case again?’

I looked out at the sand dunes, high and a little drunk and said: ‘Where are you?’

9

10

Rob Knipe

therobknipe@gmail.com I am due to complete the MA Creative Writing programme in Liverpool John Moores University in June 2015. I write a modern style of comic fantasy and science fiction with a gallows humour, and have written four unpublished novels set in the same world.

A Game of Two Halves – The Torso and Legs A comic underdog novel about the violent sport of Fistball. It follows peasant, Faran Groper and the noble Alvin Tanner as their village team gains entry into a professional fistball league. Set up to fail, they must fight, bet and bribe for survival.

11

A Game of Two Halves – The Torso and Legs Faran’s eyes were drawn to the mace gently swinging from the dwarf referee’s belt. It seemed so graceful, almost serene compared to what was about to happen in the name of sport.

He opened his visor and wiped the sweat from his face with a padded glove. His jaw ached from an earlier punch, and he would have another tooth for the bowl after the final whistle blew. The leather straps of his helm were soaked with sweat and splattered with dirt. Gritty and cold every time they touched his skin.

‘Take your positions,’ yelled the referee.

The Allstars formed up on the line. This far in he knew they were out-muscled, and they were being easily out-played. The Bone Crunchers were the stuff of nightmares. His mind was groggy from too many crunching blows, his armour dented and scuffed. Covered in blood, sweat and tears. The painted Allstars logo on his chest was scuffed, and now read ‘ars’. The crowd were chanting. He couldn’t tell what, but it was rhythmic.

He slapped his visor shut and braced.

The whistle blew.

The teams crashed together, fists flying and shoulders slamming.

Grimble roared from the centre of the line, the sounds of his mighty blows ringing out above the deafening noise of the crowd.

Faran moved side to side across the pitch, looking for an opening in the ork’s line. A cry of pain to his left and blue and white hit the pitch in a clatter of armour plates.

12

The Allstars line was faltering, men were being forced backwards. Someone dropped from the wing and slammed into the Brogar line in the centre, forcing a greenskin back.

The crowd roared.

An opening.

Faran made his move, sprinting at the gap, closing with every second lost. Legs braced and muscles strained as blue and white held back red and green.

He reached the gap and leapt through. Armoured hands reached out for him. Thick green fingers swiped at him, knocking him off balance and he stumbled, touching the ground with one hand to right himself before moving off at speed.

A guttural bellow from the greenskin half and the ork defence turned to face him.

Faran’s armour rattled with every pace, his strides fast and long. His heartbeat filled his ears as he put everything into clearing the line. An ork charged, turning and throwing in a spiked pauldron at the last minute.

He reached out a hand, pushing off from the shoulder a split-second before the pauldron would have pierced him.

Circling the greenskin, he outpaced him up the pitch, his feet tearing up what remained of the lush green turf.

The crowd roared again. Cheers and jeers. ‘Groper!’ Faran turned, spotting the spiked and studded ball spinning through the air.

An ork slid in towards him.

Faran leapt, catching the ball and clasping it tight as he landed without breaking his stride. His palms stung from the studs, his legs ached from the effort.

Halfway through the opposition half. Only one greenskin stood between him and the equaliser, one of the Bone 13

Cruncher’s scrawny goblins. Faran’s eyes narrowed, he had every intention of laying his shoulder in. After what Little Dirty Bastard had done to Scheister, he was determined to return the favour.

The cacophony of the scrum and the din of the crowd became distant as he focussed on scoring. His heartbeat grew louder in his ears.

Twenty metres.

He was breathing hard; loud, deep breaths. Armour clattering, his feet pounding the pitch.

Ten metres.

Heavy footsteps slamming onto the pitch; they weren’t his own.

Five metres.

He checked to his right as a knuckle-duster struck home, ringing through his helmet and turning his legs to jelly.

His vision dimmed as he stumbled, his steps wild and uncoordinated.

Outstretched green hands grabbed at him. The goblin’s expression turned to terror as Faran plummeted into him. A crash of armour rang out across the pitch and the crowd went silent. Two bodies hit the floor, plates buckling and bones breaking.

His vision faded in and out. The goblin writhed in front of the goal, legs facing the wrong way and an arm bent to look like it had three elbows.

Faran smiled.

His heart beat filled his ears, fast and loud. Sweat ran from his face, cooled by the breeze across the pitch. His free hand raised his visor, alternates of dazzling sunlight and blackness as he struggled to stay conscious. His other arm fell to his side and the ball rolled free. Something smashed into Faran’s leg

14

and an ork plummeted onto the goblin, turning wails of pain into fatal silence. The ball rolled slowly across the line.

The crowd went wild.

15

16

Cheryl Joyce

joyce_family@btinternet.com I gained my degree in Imaginative Writing from LJMU when I was 22, but did not have the discipline or appreciation for life that I do at 34. Married with 3 children, 1 has severe autism.

I write to relieve the stress of everyday life and because I love it!

The Grass is Darker This novel explores the theme of depression from three perspectives; the one who is depressed, one who doesn’t believe depression is a real illness and one who loves someone with depression. When all is said and done, is the grass really greener on the other side, or is it darker?

17

The Grass Is Darker I am awakened by the feeling of his erection pushed against my behind. He tries to slide his arm under my head in order to get closer to me. I sigh and push my head deeper into the pillow. It fails to deter him. I let him have his way, figuring it will be the quickest way to get back to sleep, but he only has one thing on his mind. I should just tell him no, but I don't want to hurt his feelings. I am his wife after all.

He reaches down and attempts to enter me from behind. I immediately tense up.

‘No, I need sleep!’ I groan. ‘Can't we just cuddle?’

‘Just let me put it in for a minute,’ he says and without waiting for my reply he pushes himself inside me.

‘I'm too tired.’ I wince at the tight, dry pinching sensation I feel down below. My body has yet to respond.

‘You don't have to do anything, I'll do all the work,’ he whispers into my ear as his breath hitches.

‘But I do,’ I moan and pull away as my body prickles.

‘What time is it?’

‘Five-thirty.’

‘It's too early!’

‘Please,’ he pleads, now he has had a taste of it.

I give in reluctantly and the pinching sensation begins to soften. He kisses my neck and wraps his arms around me lovingly, spooning me.

‘Lell?’ he says and nibbles my ear. He is the only one who calls me Lell to shorten my name - Danielle, most people call me Dan, but he says it feels like he’s referring to a man.

‘What?’

‘I love you.’

18

‘I love you too.’ I say, feeling guilty now for my earlier indifference.

He climbs on top of me pushing my legs either side of his. I arch my pelvis and he slips back inside me. He leans in to kiss me and I quickly show him my neck. I'm self-conscious about my morning breath. He obliges me and plants soft kisses onto my neck.

As he continues his love making, I try my utmost to relax.

I'm tense as he moves down my body caressing and kissing my breasts. Every part of me is tingling, but not in an erotic sense.

I'm uncomfortable, agitated and feel my muscles straining. I'm on edge, like the feeling you get in anticipation of being tickled, but I'm far from laughing. What's wrong with me?

As he makes his way down further, my arms instinctively react to protect my body.

‘What's the matter?’ He looks up at me.

‘I don't want to wake Archie.’

‘We won't,’ he says.

‘I'll be too loud,’ I pull his head back up. ‘Besides, I want you back inside me,’ I reassure him.

He obliges me once more and I start to move the way he wants me to. Make the noises he wants to hear and he quickly comes inside me. He falls back onto the bed drained and content. I climb out of the bed to get a tissue from the en-suite bathroom and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I cringe at the reflection. You could write a verse in the lines across my forehead. My eyes look forlorn and heavy; the bags under my eyes are filled with fatigue. My skin is lacklustre, not even a trace of after sex glow. My whole face feels like its sinking and it's impossible to raise a smile. I shudder at my appearance and return to the bed with a tissue in hand for my husband, who’s now sleeping soundly, in all his glory.

19

I huff and climb back into bed, having to sleep on his side as he has rolled onto mine. As I settle back under the sheets, I hear Archie murmuring in his cot on the monitor.

‘Jay, can you go this time?’ I whisper to my now satisfied husband and poke him.

‘I will,’ he snorts and drifts back into unconsciousness.

I roll my eyes and clamber over him, deliberately wanting to disturb him to let him know - yes I am going to see to the baby, for the millionth time, but he doesn't even stir.

Archie is lying at the end of his cot in a sleep pod, white vest and mitts. He is puckering his lips, elongating his neck and searching for the smell of my milk. I pick him up and lay him across my arm to feed him. I relax into my feeding chair situated next to his cot and feel the gentle tugging sensation on my nipple as he latches on. I glance at the clock, it's turned six. I sigh; his last feed was just two hours ago. The morning sun tries to creep through the black-out blind covering his bedroom window. The blind glitters as the force of billions of tiny speckles of light weaken the cotton barrier.

I close my eyes, making a mental note of the things I have to do today: put washing on, iron Archie's sleep suits, clean house, take Archie to playgroup, nip to the shops, make dinner... I start to lose interest as the list of mundane activities scrolls through my mind. When did my life become this uninteresting and conventional?

Archie falls asleep and uses my nipple as a teether. I hook my finger under his top lip and he releases it. I slowly place him back in his cot, making sure his feet are touching the base and his head is upright. Creeping out of his room I'm careful not to step on any of the creaky floorboards. I know where most of the hotspots are. Irritatingly, I always find a new one.

20

Whilst waiting for the kettle to boil so I can make myself a much needed cup of coffee, I gaze out into the garden. We live in a two bedroom house, on a new housing estate, in a small town, on the outskirts of Liverpool. We had intended it to be our starter home and we would move on to bigger and better things, but when the house prices fell, so did we, into negative equity.

We have a long, narrow stretch of lawn that backs onto a railway line which is seldom used. Just the one passenger train speeds past at eight minutes past the hour and the occasional freight train passes sporadically throughout the day.

The garden is neat but empty, neither Jay nor I have green fingers. We maintain the lawn and have painted the surrounding fences, but that's the extent of our landscaping efforts. There are a couple of rows of grey stone flags as you step off the patio into the garden where weeds have grown in between the cracks.

As the sun rises spilling light over the top of the garden fence, I notice a dividing line down the centre of the lawn with contrasting shades of green on either side. The grass is greener on one side, the other looks dull and patchy in comparison. I don't know why but I'm reminded of what I used to be; bright, healthy, well groomed, and what I've become: a shade of my former self.

I am knocked out of my trance when I feel Jay's arms wrap around me. He kisses me on the cheek and says, ‘Morning beautiful.’

All I can think about is the smell of concrete and dust on his work clothes.

‘Morning,’ I say in return and release myself from his hold.

‘Would you like some breakfast?’

He orders a bacon sandwich to go and I start to prepare it.

21

‘What are you up to today?’ he asks, as I busy myself in the kitchen.

‘Oh you know...the usual...’

I'm about to ask him if he needs anything from the shops, when I see him playing on his iPhone. No doubt looking to see if there's any transfer news this morning, or flicking through the tweets of the various footballers, golfers and cyclists he follows on Twitter. Whatever it is, it's bound to be much more interesting than anything I've got to say, so I return to the grill and concentrate on getting the perfect crisp on the bacon and butter his toast. I wrap his sandwich in cling film and hand it to him.

He kisses me on the cheek and says, ‘Thanks babe, I'm off now.’

Grabbing his keys and phone, he heads for the door, slamming it carelessly and leaving me in quiet solitude for now, fading into the background, falling into obscurity, insignificance and boredom.

I'm standing in the hallway, gazing at the front door, as if waiting for him to return and whisk me off on some romantic getaway – perhaps a surprise skiing trip, or a city break? The things we used to do with relative ease before we became parents. Heck, I'd even take an impromptu trip to Wales, stand in silent awe of the mountain scenery of Snowdonia, revel in the seaside delights of Barry Island, or marvel at the medieval make up of Conwy, anywhere other than the confines of this house and the prospect of my mundane Monday routine.

The house is silent, but its emptiness is deafening. I know Archie is sleeping soundly upstairs in his cot, but all I feel is completely and utterly alone. Detached from the world and imprisoned in my own home.

I glance around the walls and suddenly feel suffocated by how narrow the hallway is. Feeling like the walls are closing in 22

on me, I reach out and touch them just make sure they aren't actually moving. The walls are cold and I feel as though I'm frozen in time. Everyone around me is living their busy, fruitful lives and here's me - staring at the walls. I'm pathetic, useless, not worth surprising.

I'm startled by the unexpected drop of letters falling from the letterbox. A blurry red figure hovers through the bevelled glass in the front door and in the blink of an eye is gone and I'm back to being alone again.

I pick the letters up off the floor and sift through the mix of bills and bank statements until I come across my wage slip. I stop and tear into it. My eyes jump straight to the net pay ÂŁ488.17. It's a stark contrast to what I was previously earning.

I feel inept. Up until now I had been the breadwinner. While Jay's wages have remained reliable yet stagnant over the years working in the construction industry, I've had two promotions, at top buying agency, Procurement Solutions. This was one of the reasons I put off having children until my thirties.

I had Archie when I was thirty-three. Jay, and in particular, my mother-in-law Carole, had been on my back for years to start a family. Jay is an only child, like me, hence Carole's desperation. As the years went by I watched her disappointment with every new baby announcement that came through the family or social network, or at her work where, I'm told, most of her friends are on their second or third grandchild. When we finally told Carole I was pregnant, you would think she'd won the lottery, she was so excited. She congratulated Jay's dad first, on the fact they were going to be grandparents, before she hugged me and kissed Jay, clapping her hands with giddy excitement. I did think at that moment, Carole was more excited than me.

23

I wished I could speak to my own mum about my impending motherhood, but she died of cancer when I was twelve years old.

I spent the nine months of my pregnancy dreaming of a pretty baby girl, with brown eyes and hair and olive skin, the mirror image of me. I wanted a girly name like Esme, or Sienna, but Jay thought those names were too 'out there'. He wouldn't even contemplate my unusual, celeb-child wannabe names such as Anais-Apple or Harper-Two, after my lucky number.

We settled on Bella-Rose for our little girl and had a choice between Archie and Ethan for a boy. I wasn't fussed either way, so told Jay if it was a boy he could name the baby, confident it was going to be a girl.

Archie was born at 8.02pm in the midst of a summer heat wave at the back end of July. In my exhausted, post opiate state, I called out for my baby girl but passed out before the doctor could tell me I'd had a boy.

It was several minutes before I awoke to see her swaddled in a greyish-white hospital branded blanket in Jay's secure arms. Her tiny hand was clutching his index finger. He looked elated. A tear escaped from his eye as he saw me come round.

‘I'm so proud of you, Lell,’ he whispered.

‘Can I see her?’ I asked tentatively.

‘She's a he,’ Jay said proudly.

I couldn't help the momentary look of disappointment on my face, which he must have seen as he brought our son over to meet his mother for the first time.

I don't know if I had overdramatised this moment in my mind throughout my pregnancy, but the reality was very different. I had imagined I would be crying with glee, holding my baby for the first time. Jay would kiss her on her tiny forehead, then kiss me gently on my lips and we would have three way cuddle, embracing our new little family, while The 24

Most Beautiful Girl in the World, by Prince, played softly in the background. When I held my baby boy in my arms, it felt surreal. I was numb.

25

26

Jack Tasker

jackbctasker@gmail.com Jack Tasker is a writer based in the Midlands. He graduated from Liverpool John Moores University's Creative Writing degree in 2012. As a writer he is heavily influenced by the conversational tone of Salinger, the magical mundanity of Murakami and biting wit of Mark Doty.

Currents Currents is a dual narrative piece that follows the lives of Roe Freeman, a fisherman in a small coastal Scottish village called Isagair, and Tristan Minshell, a young man running away from London. Tristan arrives in Isagair and attempts to start a new life in the village escaping his past mistakes.

27

Currents Dogger and Cromarty Roe had taken his crew out in conditions he’d normally consider suicidal, but things were getting desperate and they needed to make a living. The rain that was thrashing against the frail glass windows of his home told him all he needed to know, but he still followed the motion of switching on the radio and finding the forecast. His weathered hand worked the dial as if it were a lock on a safe, slightly to the left, slightly to the right; he listened to the crackle fade in and out. The voice became clearer, then flew away again, teasing him, dancing on the airwaves. Ash fell from the cigarette clamped between his lips and landed on his idle hand. He didn’t flinch or show any pain, his attention was focused entirely on the radio in front of him. The crackle dipped and a soft, well-spoken voice cut through.

‘South easterly gale force eight imminent increasing storm force ten soon…’ then disappeared into fuzz again.

‘Useless piece of junk,’ he grumbled, leaving the dial alone and fiddling with the aerial instead. After another half minute of careful tweaking the voice cut through clear, free of crackle and distortion.

‘Moderate or rough, becoming very rough for a time.’

It’d been an awful winter, one that showed no signs of improving. He was dead set against calling the Fishermen’s Mission, Iasgair had managed to survive without them and he didn’t want to submit now. His father had never asked for their help, he’d always figured out a means of muddling through the hard times. In a village like Isagair you were always judged by how well you carried the millstone around your neck.

‘Good becoming poor or very poor for a time.’

28

There was always a first for everything though, he thought.

The fuzz kicked up again, but he corrected it with a flick of his index finger. He listened to the forecast, taking long drags on his cigarette, his eyes were locked on the middle distance, he rarely blinked. To anyone walking past he would have looked like a corpse. But there was no one walking past, this was his study, it was ten to one in the morning and pitch black outside, no one would be walking past. He was utterly alone. His cigarette burnt down to a pathetic butt, which he dropped into the glass ashtray on the table. Outside the rain was howling, thrashing against the window, but it didn’t faze him at all, he was miles away, thinking, planning, scheming. He wondered if his son was up at this dark, lonely time, perhaps he was, perhaps he was staring into the nothingness whilst thinking about him. It was possible, though it would be a first.

But there was always a first for everything, he smiled.

‘Moderate or poor, occasionally very poor. Thank you for listening, we’re now going over to the World Service. Take care, goodnig-’ He switched the radio off. It wasn’t good news at all, he couldn’t take care, sleep well, wrap up warm and cosy.

Tomorrow he’d be taking his crew out into a sea that was seething, desperate and hungry. He believed the ocean had a mind of its own, a malicious, bitter mind, wracked by the unending march of the ages. Worried didn’t even cover it, he had the lives of nearly all the fit and able men in Iasgair clutched in his hands and he was juggling with them. There was only one good way to deal with the stress, fear and worry, a bottle kept in the kitchen cupboard.

As the thought entered his mind he found himself in the kitchen opening the small wooden door, its hinge squeaked in the cold, empty room. He lifted the whiskey from the shelf and placed it on the sideboard. In the gloom of the kitchen he 29

searched for a clean glass, but couldn’t find one. He contemplated washing one that was standing in the sink, but then realised there was no point, he was drinking alone in a dead house. There was no point in a clean glass. He took the bottle back into the study and slumped into his seat.

His thin fingers plucked a fresh cigarette from the packet in his top pocket and lit it. He’d smoked since he was thirteen, now he was fifty-four, he’d taken forty years’ worth of nicotine and tar into his body, and barely thought twice about it. His father had smoked endless hand-rolled cowboy cigarettes, while his grandfather had always carried a small clay pipe with him, eternally blowing plumes of grey from his cracked lips.

The men in the Freeman family smoked and that was that.

However, as he’d gotten older, he’d become more aware of the fact he was doing it, he’d light a cigarette and stop to think about the action, a stark contrast to the previous forty years of chain smoking.

Whenever one of these moments of self-awareness came, it was followed by an image of his son, Owen. It was stupid, to relate the act of smoking to the image of his son, but he couldn’t shake it. He took a long drag on the cigarette and wondered if Owen really was up and restless. All he had to do was pick up a phone and in an instant he would be connected, people kept telling him this was one of the joys of the modern world.

Instead of calling his son he lifted a thick black book off the shelf in front of him, it was at the right height so he didn’t even have to get up to reach it. It slipped from his hand and landed with a dull thud onto the table. He ran his fingers across the leather cover. This book had become his life over the past five years. He’d recorded every single thought relating to the boat, crew and village. Roe was the de facto mayor, leader and figurehead of the village, and because of that he felt it right to 30

record everything, every detail he noticed. Even a tiny speck of existence like Iasgair was a hub of happenings, of people coming and going, sleeping and working, living and dying. He wanted to chronicle it all, so that when he disappeared no one could criticise him of leaving them unprepared. He hoped that he would pass the book onto Owen and that he’d take over ownership of it, and all that it entailed, but Owen showed no interest in fishing and the life of the village.

His son was studying at University to be a videogames designer, his lecturers said he was showing great promise, and they were already talking about work placements due to his first class coursework. He was all set to make a reality of his dreams. But Roe hoped there’d be a chance that he’d see Iasgair, the state it was in and realise that he had an obligation, as a Freeman, to look after the small fishing village on the west coast of Scotland. Owen was coming home in a few days and Roe would press the matter, with the force of a titan. He needed his son to carry on the bloated black book, to start a new volume, to sustain, as they always had.

He lifted the whiskey bottle to his lips and took a quick swig. The amber liquid slid down his throat, he relished the slight burning sensation. The last diary entry had been made at the same time on the previous day.

December 27th Large haul of bass and haddock today. We picked up an unusual amount of coalfish for this time of year, I doubt breeding patterns have changed but it’s something worth noting. Rough waters for the whole day. This storm front is wreaking havoc on the rig and crew. Harrow and Bell nearly got pulled off the boat when a wave surged across the deck, luckily they’d clipped their harnesses on. God knows the 31

amount of times we forget to hook up the safety equipment. I need to remind everyone to go through the check list every time they step onto the deck.

Roe turned the page and wrote the entry for today. It was much of the same, vile waters but a decent haul. It’d been worth breaking the Christmas holiday for. He knew that the safety of his men should have been top of his agenda, but they needed to earn money and that was at the front of all of their minds. He finished writing and took another swig from the bottle. His cigarette had burnt down so he stubbed it out in the ashtray. The book was returned to its resting spot on the shelf and Roe headed towards the stairs and his empty, unmade bed. He tried to abate his worries about the weather and his crew; it would be a first for them to make a serious mistake.

32

Michael Taylor

michael@wethinkmore.com As an award winning business journalist, I know there are some stories you simply can’t tell. On the basis that you should write about what you know, this is my first novel.

Forty by Forty The inside tale of the crash of 2008 as told by Cheshire bad boy Roger Cashmore. Wanting to cash out and live a life of reality TV stardom, sex on the side and permanent lads’ tours, his contradictions and weaknesses come crashing down, confronting his gilded existence.

33

Forty by Forty ‘Sick white children. You can’t go wrong with sick white children.’

How did picking your annual charity become such a ballache? It’s all so fucking political. And it’s the top item on the agenda at our first executive meeting of the New Year, so it must be important.

RC Solutions, my company, Roger Cashmore – RC, geddit?

- has adopted a policy of listening to the staff. It wasn’t my idea, it was Rick’s. My so-called business partner, Rick Chambers.

He has strange ideas about stakeholder democracy, motivation, equity spread and risk. Me? I think it’s dangerous talk. We didn’t build up this company by taking decisions by committee.

So, I go along with this shite, this charade, this exercise in being a good guy. Letting the salaried masses have their say isn’t quite the same as acting on it, but being seen to listen is what the new inclusive way of business is all about, so Rick says.

I know, deep down, what is behind corporate social responsibility and charity. Rick would quite like a gong for services to business and for his charitable work. Either that, or a quiet life with his head down.

It’s all about planning for the future. We’re selling up and moving on. I’ve worked out I can net 40 by 40, which sets me up nicely. That’s £40m total liquid assets by the grand occasion of my 40th birthday in December 2008.

We’re going to accept an offer to buy the business from this outfit called Delphic Private Equity. The deal is sweet for

34

us, £75million, split between me, Rick and the other minority investors.

The clock’s ticking on this as Gordon Brown’s greedy socialists – the Department of Wealth Prevention - have slapped Capital Gains Tax up to 18 per cent, the robbing bastards. So we’re going to have to get this away by the start of April when the tax deadline kicks in so we can get on with the rest of our lives.

Now I don’t actually give a flying fuck or a rolling doughnut for sick kids and what have you, or whatever charity we choose.

As long as it gets better publicity for my missus, Serena Cashmore, on the occasion of her big night of the year: the RC Foundation Glitter Ball at Mere Golf and Country Club, the epicentre of her world.

Serena, or the tethered goat, as I call her, spends a fortune sprucing up like you wouldn’t believe. It’s the high spot of her year to be photographed in Cheshire Life handing over the charity cheque to some cloying, desperate and overpaid fundraiser with a pathetic specimen of humankind at their side.

And trust me, a sick white kiddie ticks all the boxes.

She also thinks it promotes her business and gets her closer to her dream of getting her own television series as the Queen of Tasteful Décor.

For the moment, she’s an ‘entrepreneur’. Or at least she thinks she is. I’ve set her up in this business doing up houses.

She calls it ‘interior ambient solutions’. I call it buying stuff you don’t need, for people you don’t like, for people with no taste.

She goes in and tells these grape-brained bints who’ve managed to slip onto the arm of some thick-as-dung footballer and tells them what to put in their house. It’s really quite unbelievable how utterly incapable of looking after 35

themselves these people really are. She’s got an account at Arighi Bianchi that doesn’t actually give us any discount, but these idiots think it does.

I’ve worked out that the whole tawdry enterprise will probably lose us, well me, £100K a year. But even with her taking a decent salary it’s still better for the personal P&L overall, as she’ll spend that – easily – on shite of her own.

More cars, more dresses, new tits, more stuff for the house, getting her hair done every day, rather than just the twice a week, another new place in Abersoch, or Majorca, or Dubai. So the job keeps her busy, out of the shops and it makes her feel important.

She’s learnt to avoid the Dutch and Scandis like the plague, as they’re far too intelligent to fall for a caper like this.

No, she sticks to the council estate scrubbers who got lucky, the waxwork dolly birds who, if you let them, would create little outposts of Wythenshawe (or worse still, Liverpool) in the heart of our beautiful county of Cheshire.

One of them bought a gaff with a pool and asked Serena if ‘they’ came round to clean it.

‘Sorry, who’s they?’ she asked.

‘The council,’ came the reply. Unbelievable.

Anyway, for Serena, this charity racket is a bit of a personal marketing exercise all of its own.

And that’s why we’re planning for the 2008 riot now. For the birds, it’s all they think about all year. We always try and get a few fit celeb tarts off the telly to come along. Basically, the fitter they are, the harder the wives try. The earlier we can get it out that we’ve got some nubile starlet that everyone’s talking about, then the more likely they’ll get their silicon bangers pumped up even bigger. The more bling comes out.

The whoredrobes on display would make you gasp. The dresses get sluttier. They make more of an effort. They will do 36

things that even make my eyes water. By the end of the night the air is so thick with competitive tension and female paranoia it’s like the set of Caligula, Cheshire-style.

And do you know the beauty of it? Do you want to know the beauty of the best night of the year? It doesn’t cost me a penny. We sell tables at £2k a pop. I get my best sales guys on it. The ones from a boiler room so pumped up on adrenaline, Red Bull and gak that you can taste the blood in your mouth when you take the junction off the M56 at Sharston and point your satnav in their general direction.

I have this sales motivational technique called JFSI. Just Fucking Sort It. If it worked for me, it will work for them. It works selling solutions and all that techie stuff we do, it works for this as well. I stick a big chart on the wall with a line on a graph etched in red. Fall in the bottom 10 per cent – below that line on the graph, the P45 line - and its goodnight Vienna.

At the top is a picture of a Porsche Cayman, the best thing I ever bought for this company (a bright red one as well, nothing subtle here). I parked it at the front and said the best sales person of every quarter gets this for the next quarter. And on it goes. They have pictures of it on the sales floor. Right next to the big fucking bell we have in the middle of the office, which the lads ring every time they make a sale. Then they carry over the magic marker attached to a pulley and a piece of elastic and scroll the numbers up on the white board.

Then there’s the mentalist who creams one last sale on a Friday to hit his numbers, knowing he’ll be rolling up in a Porsche to pick his kids up that night from his bitch ex-wife and her new fella.

So, for this charity do they target these suppliers, turning the screw on them, these oily little salary men from some law firm, gripped by tension that I might not notice they didn’t even try and bid for anything in the auction. Meanwhile, me 37

and my pals crank up the bids for a signed Manchester City shirt, reaching some obscenely horrible sum of money at which I scream to the punters, ‘come on, this is for the sick kids.’

‘Sold! For £4,000!’ yells the auctioneer, Neil ‘Ducky’ Duckworth, ‘to Roger Cashmore, a Manchester City football, signed by Brazilian sensation Elano.’

Chant it like a mantra: sick kids, sick kids, sick kids.

Hospitals, cancer, death. Heartbroken parents. How can anyone not respond to a sales line like that? Pay up, you muppets, pay up. TWO GRAND A TABLE. BARGAIN. Think of the sick kids!

So, back to the big decision and Rick’s pointless exercise in corporate democracy. In plain English, who are we going to give a big cheque to this year? What do the busy drongos from accounts and IT and HR all think we should give MY money to?

I slurp down my mug of coffee, ingest the caffeine rush, slam the mug down and shout my morning mantra: ‘Right, Java installed, let’s just fucking sort it.’

I survey the scene in this meeting, which has plenty of potential to be dull as fuck. Rick sits at the top of the table. For a ‘chief executive officer’ he’s a disgrace. He looks fucked. He tries to smile, but his face is puffed up and sagging. His gut hangs over the edge of the table. When he’s listening, he hangs his mouth open to breathe, his striped pink, yellow and brown Paul Smith shirt (which he thinks gives him character and personality) bringing out some of the colour on his purple nose.

I can’t believe how much he’s let himself go a bit since we were kids. He doesn’t go to the gym and he ducked out of the Friday football thing a long time ago, which is just as well because he couldn’t score in a barrel of fannies. He’s even got one of these poncey Apple iPhone things that all the smarmy 38

twats have got into. Not a proper phone and, from what I hear, they don’t even work that well. There’s another example of a company that’s lost its way.

‘Welcome everyone,’ he says. ‘This is such a good opportunity for all of us in the business to reflect on our core values and see how we can help those less fortunate than ourselves.’

As executive chairman, I offer to lead this one. I’ve been handed a pile of cards from the office manager, Rick’s overpromoted secretary, Geraldine. I give them a shuffle and crack my best sneer.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, do we have a violinist on cue?’

Everybody laughs, some more than others, I note. It’s my meeting now.

I hand them to Angela to read out for me. She’s my secretary, but we’ve given her the title of ‘special assistant to the executive chairman’. She’s a bit obvious-looking in that emergent Cheshire Set kind of way. Straight blonde hair, massive spiky heels, skirt just on the right side of acceptably short. Skin the orange side of salmon pink. Plastic tits, obviously, and if I’m honest, probably a bit underdone. This is something I’ve never understood. Women get their norks enlarged for one reason: to have bigger ones. The embarrassment, the hardship, the pain and discomfort they go through in order to make themselves more attractive to me, and other men, is something of a turn on, I admit. High heels they can’t walk in is one level of commitment, but sticking needles in your face and getting some doctor to slice your tits off and stuff a bag of dodgy plastic in there, just so we notice you a bit more – now THAT’S making the effort.

But why not go for the supersize option? But then I’ve always held to the philosophy that greed is good.

39

‘Okay Roger, thank you. First one out of the hat, The Big Issue in the North,’ she says, flashing a big wide smile. I do my best not to notice but the silly cow has had her teeth polished and shined up as well. Probably at one of those new places in Wilmslow, the same one that Rick goes to. How much are we paying her?

I know what I want from this meeting and not only do I want it sorted quickly, I want my outcome.

‘Oh dear. Homeless twats. Too scruffy, they’ll spend it on wife beater and Buckfast,’ I say. They laugh nervously at this.

Too nervously. But I’m right. You won’t get Bryan Robson to donate a pair of his old boots for Ron Wood to buy at auction if he thinks some homeless crusty with a dog on a piece of string is going to get his filthy diseased hands on the money.

Not a chance on earth. No debate needed. To this day I still haven’t bought a copy off that bloke on King Street in Manchester, just by Boodles. I used to say ‘already got it mate’. I don’t even bother saying that now, I just tell him to get a proper job.

‘Next’.

‘BBC Children in Need,’ she says with far too much emphasis on the ‘ee’ in ‘need’. It’s that accent. Not too rough, but clearly still very northern. This is better, but I still don’t like it. This is one of those charities where the staff get involved.

The very thought of seeing some failing middle manager dressed as Batman makes me think of those sad-sack knobhead custody dads protesting about their bitch ex-wives and pretending they can’t see their kids. And they should be working, not baking cakes and taking the team off on bonding trips thinking they might get on telly. No, I don’t like that either, the more I think about it.

‘I’m sure they’ll get along just fine without us,’ I offer.

40

‘Action Aid for Africa,’ says Angela with no particular enthusiasm because she knows what I’m going to say, possibly because I puff out my cheeks and roll my eyes in my head.

Anton Wilcox our commercial manager and an arse licker of the highest order pipes up: ‘We have to be sure we know where the money’s going to.’

I’m starting to get the hang of this inclusive meeting thing.

‘Good point, Anton,’ I say, almost sincerely. ‘Some General will nick it to buy a new palace. Or tanks and guns to invade the tribe next door.’

The rabble, my rabble, my lads, like kicking this African idea to death, and they’re getting a bit racist now because they think I’ll approve, but I need to move on. There’s more ribald laughter. Good, I like this. Rick is sliding into his chair, brooding, and though he knows I can rein in the wild dogs, I don’t. He’s lost control of this one already and he knows it.

‘Mental health hospice,’ says Angela.

‘Nutters,’ shrieks Gary Garner, another of our commercial boys. He’s so far up my arse he can see Anton’s feet.

Dave Ritchie, this Scottish low life we hired adds for good measure; ‘We have to think of the security issue as well. What if one of them attacks Rick or Roger? That wouldn’t help our PR.’ This is good, this is really good. Because Rick wants pictures when we hand the cheque over. It wouldn’t appeal to his vanity to have some hapless mong gurning from the photo, even worse if they threw a wobbly, which I have to admit is pretty much impossible, but I pretend to agree for the purposes of getting what I want.

Ritchie pipes up, ‘I think Gary knows the bird that works for this charity.’ He motions with his hands that she’s got massive bangers.

‘Did you smash it?’ says Anton.

41

‘Fucking right I did,’ Gary chips in, a bit unconvincingly if you ask me. ‘Filthy bitch she was.’

‘It’d have to be to have you hanging out of the back of it,’ I say and they all laugh again. Except Angela, Geraldine and Rick, who are as po-faced as ever.

Anton doesn’t hold back, though: ‘Is that her mate, the Karen one, the slapper who Roger’s mate ratted up the arse?’ he asks. Adding - ever the diplomat - ‘he changed lanes without indicating, didn’t he Roger?’

I’m just nodding, but there’s a bit of a hush when Garner blushes and says, ‘No mate, that’s Karen, my girlfriend, she just moved in with me.’

The tone of the meeting has now veered from a lynch mob ready to hack gays to bits, to the Christian Brotherhood praying for the souls of soon-to-be-dead children, to a slightly awkward séance.

Factually though, I think he’s right. My mate Tony Martinez, property developer and shagger extraordinaire, did indeed do Gary’s new bird up the rusty sheriff’s badge. But she wasn’t the first or the last to fall for his preying charms.

Angela is by now so anxious I can smell the fear. Women like her just want to be liked by men like me. They seem to gag for our approval every minute of the day. Anything said out of turn, or misunderstood, and you just know, just know, it’s ruined her day. Give her the nod and the smile and her day is made, she goes home happy and her boyfriend (he’s in pensions or something) will get his gold-plated invitation to maul those placcy bangers.

‘Next.’

No, no, no, no. Someone’s suggesting an AIDS charity.

‘Who’s suggested this?’ I demand to know.

‘Nigel Brown from sales support,’ she says, very neutrally, as if she knows she’s landed him right in it, but without any 42

kind of encouragement in case she gets caught out for showing any kind of disloyalty.

I’m actually not that bothered, but it’s a chance to up the ante and paddle some distance in this meeting. ‘I didn’t even know he was a poof, always seems alright to me.’

This unleashes a torrent of abuse and an unwitting stream of foaming hysteria from Ritchie, Wilcox and Garner. ‘Arse bandit,’ says one, I’m not sure which because I’m not really listening and I’m motioning to Rick to get this meeting moving along as we’ve got serious things to do today.

‘Pillow biter’ adds the other, just daring the other to trump him with ‘chutney ferret’ or some other unimaginative expletive, from which, frankly, the two women in the room are starting to recoil.

‘The thought of what those queers do to each other turns my stomach,’ Gary says, just a little too vociferously.

Sometimes I wonder where we find this rag bag collection of delinquents, psychopaths and sycophants. Then I remember, I hire them and promise them riches beyond their wildest dreams. And the Porsche.

That’s what they get when they’re here. Word in the recruitment market is you can earn big bonuses and commissions at RC Solutions. As a result it tends to attract the right calibre of cut-throat backstabber. I ask them all a few key questions at interview. If you could have a million pounds right now, but you had to push this button and a Chinaman dies, what would you choose? If the slanty eye gets it, they’re past the next hurdle.

Then I move in for the kill. See that Porsche outside? How badly do you want it? What if I said you can have the million, but one of your kids had to get leukaemia?

Admittedly, even for me this is a bit hardcore, but you see the fibre of the man. They have to genuinely struggle to 43

answer that one. They have to weigh up survival rates, how treatable is leukaemia these days? How they could turn it to their own personal advantage? They have to contemplate the bigger picture. Anyone who dismisses the question as abhorrent is not for us.

And do you notice I say lads? Mostly they are lads in frontline sales. We have had a few birds in sales, we had a few right slappers a few years back, but the trouble was they were alright as exercise bikes – quite a few of the lads had ridden them – but it just makes it too complicated.

We prefer to keep chicks in marketing, as secretaries, obviously, and on reception at the front of house. Recruitment here is much more straightforward, they might as well just send in a picture. It’s called ‘selection by erection’.

And then we have that question about a medical condition for which they are currently requiring treatment? Yes, that’s a good one for the birds as well. If they’re up the duff then they have to say so. You’re not officially allowed to ask them that, but you can ask them about ‘condition’ and if they are pregnant then obviously we don’t employ them. We don’t allow flexible working or any of that bollocks and we pay the absolute minimum for mum-leave.

I’ve absolutely had enough of this and we need a quick decision. Blissfully, Angela pulls out a card from someone who has very sensibly come up with a suggestion to support some hospice for sick kiddies. They even know the name of it. Saint something, God bless. We have consensus. Rick smiles, nervously, weakly and unconvincingly. Even he’s pleased with this outcome, so I make the point for him that this is OUR decision.

‘I tell you what; you can’t go wrong with sick white children,’ I say it twice for extra effect. And it’s true. As long as they haven’t been abused, which puts the dinner guests off 44

their starters, you can’t go wrong with sick kids. White ones, preferably. The papers love it, the staff love it and you don’t feel embarrassed around ill kids and everyone gets to see what a great guy I am.

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46

Debbie O’Brien

groovydeb@live.co.uk I started out as a theatre performer co-writing scripts and sketches and then went on to study English and Music at University of Liverpool. I've always enjoyed creating stories so I did a Masters Degree in Writing Studies and started writing full-length fiction. People's Parties is my third novel.

People’s Parties ‘Who am I? Why am here? What is the meaning of life?

In an attempt to answers life's big questions, two showbiz and party-loving twenty-somethings begin evening classes in Philosophy.

People's Parties is a story about the hard shiny crust of glamour and the emptiness inside.

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People’s Parties So, Saturday afternoon I was halfway up a flight of stairs at the bottom end of a double mattress. At last – my fabulous new bed for my fabulous new room. Sean bore the brunt of it, manfully steering it around corners and up more stairs. It was like trying to manoeuvre a giant waffle, but finally we got to the top landing outside my bedroom door.

We’d only just got the bed all set up and were enjoying the fruits of our labours by bouncing up and down on it when the doorbell rang. It was Ged. He was wearing a T-shirt that said, ‘speak slowly I’m a natural blonde’ and still had some traces of make up on his face. He proffered a cheek for me to kiss.

‘Quick bit of business, Jennifer darling,’ he said, trotting upstairs behind me. ‘The contract’s come through for the Christmas show, and could we squeeze a little something into the studio at the end of the month?’ We turned the corner onto the first landing, past Sean’s room and up more stairs.

‘No word yet from Gaytown. Maybe you could give them a try, in a double-pronged attack? And oh,’ he said breathlessly as we reached my bedroom door, ‘I’ve found some fabulous fabric for our disco costumes.’

Back in my room, Sean was at the top of the stepladder hanging a mirror ball from one of the beams.

‘Scorchy kisses, Love!’ Ged said as he swept through the door. ‘I’m just on my way home from my fabulous showbiz life and thought I’d pop in and see how the fabulous room’s coming along.’ He cast a glance around the room at the golden cherubs and all the glittery shit I’d been filling it up with.

‘Mmm…white satin sheets,’ he said, eyeing my new bed.

‘Ambitious.’

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‘Do you think they’re a fire hazard? It says on the pack inflammable but isn’t that just the same as flammable? Sean said they might explode during some particularly frictional sex.’

‘Chance’d be a fine thing.’ Ged threw himself onto the bed and adopted a sexy pose, gazing up seductively at me and Sean. ‘And now I shall remove all of my clothes while you describe what you’d like to do to me.’

I plonked myself down on the end of the bed and Sean stepped down from the ladder and said he’d go and put the kettle on. ‘Nothing for me,’ Ged shouted after him. He sat up and pulled a leaflet out of his back pocket and handed it to me.

It was a flier for philosophy classes.

‘Over the centuries, Man has asked the big questions of life. Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of life?’ I scanned the rest of it, whizzing through the weekly topics. ‘The human condition... The play of creation…The eternal aspect of our being.’ I looked up at Ged. ‘A cheeky little something for our existential angst?’

‘Truth, Consciousness and Bliss, Jennifer darling. We want those things don’t we?’ He closed his eyes and mimed a pair of finger cymbals in each hand. ‘Ching ching ching, make me the best.’ He shuffled to the end of the bed. ‘At the very least, you might get a drink and a shag out of it.’

‘Ah,’ I sighed, ‘the raison d’etre.’

Ged got to his feet and headed for the door.

‘So,’ I said, following him, ‘did Lover Boy turn up at the show today as promised?’

‘Did he fuck.’

‘He’s such a crap pretend boyfriend.’

‘Oh, he’s nice when he’s nice. He’s just a bit closety.’

I puckered up my lips. ‘You’re so glamorous, Geraldine darling.’

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Ged puckered up too. ‘No you are.’

And with scorchy kisses he was gone.

I lay back on the bed and looked around the room. The window was open to let out the chemical stink from the many cans of gold spray I’d used and I could hear the traffic rumbling along the road outside. The satin bedding felt cool and slippery against my skin and I gazed at all my gorgeous things: the mirror balls, the feathery pampas grasses, the golden vases, the showbiz mirror on my dressing table. Beside me, the ancient radiator gurgled into action as Sean turned on the heating downstairs. I stared up at the high ceiling: it was going to be a cold winter. I’d have to get myself a hot man to heat it up. Several, maybe. In fact, why not be a girl-about-town?

I stared into space, fantasising about all the fabulous things that lay ahead of me.

In the evening, I was reluctantly ironing my stage gear and getting my vanity case together. I’d decided it was definitely going to be the night when I told Dave I wanted to leave the band. I couldn’t put it off any longer. Dave might be pissed-off but he couldn’t forbid me, could he? I thought cabaret was going to be like Shirley Bassey performing Live at The Talk of the Town in 1972, not bingo and raffles and Simply the Best.

The doorbell rang as Dave came to pick me up. It was just a local gig in a social club up the road but all evening I was on tenterhooks, waiting for right moment to tell him: unloading the van, putting speakers on stands, after the sound check, after the bingo. But the gig went so well and Dave was on such a high, I couldn’t do it. Next time, definitely.

Back home, Sean was still up. The light was on in his bedroom and the door was open. I caught a whiff of a familiar chemical stink. Inspired by my efforts, he’d been decorating his room. Spraying things silver and generally gaying it up.

He’d draped some fairy lights around his headboard and 50

sprayed the panelling on his wardrobe.

I hovered in the doorway and Sean looked up. ‘Did you tell Dave?’

‘No. I will though. After tomorrow’s gig.’

Sean sat down on the bed. ‘Listen Jen, can I have a quick word.’

I felt a rush of alarm. Had I done something wrong?

Breached some important flatmate etiquette?

‘I was talking to Baker earlier and he wonders – we both do – whether you’d be interested in being the musical director for the community show?’

‘Is he in? Do I have to tiptoe upstairs?’

Sean shook his head.

‘Why does he still rent that room when he’s always at his girlfriend’s place?’

He gave me a knowing look. ‘It’s his bolthole.’

‘Pity, we could’ve turned it into a roller disco.’

Anyway, Sean told me rehearsals were starting in a couple of weeks so I said I’d give it a go. I bid him goodnight and turned to leave but he stopped me.

‘Oh, and our beloved Landlord rang earlier and said we’ve got some candidates coming this week to have a look at the room at the back.’ He frowned.

‘I hate this process. It always makes me feel unsettled. A string of knobheads coming through the front door. Thank fuck you turned up, Jen.’ I grinned. ‘Of course you say that now...’

But yes, thank fuck I did turn up. What good fortune stumbling upon Sean and this flat.

I went up to bed and fell asleep thinking about what I’d say to Dave, but at Sunday night’s gig, during the break, just as I was steeling myself to tell him, he won the raffle! It was only an Argos gift voucher but he was so chuffed about winning, I 51

didn’t want to piss on his chips. I’ll phone him after the Bank Holiday. Definitely.

Tuesday morning, I was just about to ring Dave when I got a phone call. It was Veronica about the school’s tour next month, and was I up for it again?

‘It’s good money, Jen,’ she said down the phone. She’s tweaked the script this time so it’s about alcohol awareness.

It’s called Please Drink Responsibly. The kids are going to laugh us off the stage (or assembly hall/gymnasium – delete as required).

‘Will the lovely Geraldine be on board again?’

I hesitated. Ged told me Hocus Pocus are auditioning in a couple of weeks. Longer tour, better money. I fudged it, said best to give him a call.

So, more T.I.E bollocks. Another round of janitors and staff rooms, weak tea and custard creams. Still, it beats working for a living.

After I finished with Veronica, I rang Gaytown. But there was no reply. How am I supposed to book a gig if nobody answers the phone?

Finally, I rang Dave.

It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. All that worrying for nothing!

He said we’d finish up the last few gigs in the diary and that’s it. He said he’d ring the agent and let him know but it might be a good idea if I did too. Just as a courtesy thing. So without further procrastination I rang the agent next. I told him I wanted to concentrate on other things. I said I had a new act that maybe he was interested in?

‘We’re kind of like a has-been Las Vegas lounge duo. Big hair. Cheesy songs. Orange tans. Originally we were going to call ourselves Golden Showers, but we settled on Silver Dollar.’

He didn’t quite get it.

‘It’s a piss-take,’ I went on. ‘We write material too. Gags.’

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He said it wasn't his thing but gave me a number for a variety agent opening his books soon.

Now that I’d finally sorted it with Dave, I felt a weight off my shoulders. I’m free! Free to be fabulous! I practically skipped out of the house and went to the gym for the first time in over a week and had a lovely swim and sauna. Afterwards, with nothing pressing, I had a mooch around some charity shops for kitschy knick-knacks for my room. Nothing of that ilk caught my eye but I did come across a fantastic old leather jacket and back here, I pegged it onto the washing line and was spraying it silver when Sean turned up with Baker.

Baker looked disparagingly at my efforts. ‘Tell me that’s for a costume.’

‘No, it’s for my real life. Whatever that is.’

He can talk. With his Fred Perry T-shirt and black zip-up jacket, he looks like he went to a Jam concert in 1979 and never got changed.

He’d called round to pick something up from his room and to drop off a copy of the script for me. I was dying to read it straightaway but me and Sean had a couple of would-be tenants coming to have a look at the room at the back and needed to give the place a quick tidy.

We needn’t have bothered. The first candidate looked as though he needed a bit of a tidy himself. Frankly, he stank, and he when he reached for the cuppa Sean’d made for him, I noticed he had dirt under his fingernails. But even worse than that, he told us he was into Pink Floyd – or The Floyd, as he called them and wouldn’t it be ‘cosmic’ to paint a huge psychedelic mural on the wall above the sideboard.

Sean and I led him down the stairs. ‘We’ll let you know.’

The next one was awful in a different way. I suppose he was quite good looking if you like bleached teeth and sunbed tans, but he absolutely loved himself. He told us he was in a boy 53

band and he was moving out of his current flat because of all the fans camping out on his lawn. Then he said something which seemed at first to be a non sequitur. He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘I’m not being funny, like, but is anyone here gay?’

Sean and I exchanged a glance.

‘I had some trouble over the summer, y’know, with a gay guy.’ He said it as though it was an illness you have to speak of under your breath.

Sean glanced at me again and I saw a momentary flash in his eyes. ‘Well, I’m a flaming mincer, mate. With a steady stream of gentlemen callers.’

‘And I like to watch.’

The lad said he had other rooms to look at.

So, on with the search. It’d be nice to have another female in the flat, someone to borrow cotton wool from, stuff like that. Unlike Ged, Sean doesn't have nice moisturisers or bronzers to borrow. He’s actually not much of flaming mincer at all. If you didn’t know he was gay you wouldn't know he was gay.

Up in bed, I finally got a chance to read Baker’s script. It’s called Sharrock Street, after the community centre where the rehearsals are happening and it’s about a street where the residents refuse to pay their council tax and instead decide to do everything themselves – with comical results. It ends with a battle scene between the residents and the powers-that-be and, because it’s only a play, the little people triumph.

Through the week there was another string of loser candidates for the back room. Still no joy. Friday morning, I was with Chris Peterson in the music studio. He’d asked me to do some backing vocals on a version of ‘Copacabana’ for one of his regulars. It’s a comedy bit with different lyrics and of course I was only too happy to oblige. What would me and 54

Ged’ve have done without Chris and the amazing bespoke backing tracks he made for us? Our infamous cheesy medleys.

The studio was unusually quiet with no one in either of the rehearsal rooms, just Chris, sat at the mixing desk, wearing an over-sized Hawaiian shirt and eating a big sandwich. With the stillness of the room and the muted lighting, it could’ve been any time of day or night. Chris handed me the lyrics to look over while he set up the microphone and checked the sound levels. We were just about ready to rehearse a take when his phone rang. He held up his hand apologetically and took the call and I stared down at the lyrics, trying not to listen to his conversation. But then I heard him mention my name.

‘Yeh, Jenny Reilly’s here,’ he said down the phone, ‘doing some backing vox.’ He nodded and handed me the phone. ‘It’s Woody. He wants to have a quick word.’

I hesitated before I put the phone to my ear. I hadn’t seen Woody since our afternoon of crappy sex back in the summer.

I’d heard on the grapevine that he was back with his girlfriend again – again – and I was a bit apprehensive about speaking to him.

‘Are you doing Veronica’s bollocks again?’ he said, straight to the point. Woody’s voice on the phone always surprises me.

It’s so light and fine and yet, on stage, you can hear him from the gods.

‘Are you?’

He laughed. ‘I asked you first.’

I sighed down the phone. ‘Oh, it’s money, isn’t it? And there’s always the cafe.’

As usual, Woody started slagging Veronica off: what a crap writer she is, what a crap director, but I got the impression that he too would be doing the school’s tour. For the money.

He asked me if I was going for a pint later but me and Sean had some more would-be tenants coming to look at the flat so I 55

declined.

I felt better for squaring things with Woody. I suppose I must’ve been worrying about it somewhere in the back of my mind, worrying that things might be sour between us. Not that it’d ended badly, just that it was a crap shag. It seemed like a good idea at the time, an afternoon of afternoon delight, but it just didn’t take off.

It didn’t take long to get the Copacabana track together and afterwards I nipped up to the theatre to pick up the new season’s brochures. As soon as I was back outside on the street I flipped immediately to the picture of me and Ged next to the publicity blurb for our Christmas Spectacular. I stared at us pouting into the lens provocatively. Me in my big blonde wig and boobacious dress and Ged with silver frosting on the tips of his hair, his shirt unbuttoned to the waist. Like Vaseline on the lens, we were a blur of lip gloss and fake tan.

In the evening, me and Sean gave the flat a quick tidy before the would-be tenants arrived. But only one person turned up. She was milk white with enormous knockers that even Sean couldn’t take his eyes off. She was interminably difficult to talk to, but we managed to glean that her name was Fleur and she was an Arts graduate. Anyway, she’s been the best of a bad bunch so she’s moving in.

After she’d gone, Sean went to the chippy and I came up to my room to make a start on the Sharrock St songs. I felt inspired by ‘Copacabana’ and wanted to have a go at a similar kind of Latino song for Sean’s big number. Cast against type, he’s playing a straight Lothario and the song’s about all the souvenirs he’s acquired from the ladies over the years. It starts off obviously enough with a pair of lacy panties, a bra, that sort of thing, but by the end there’s a set of false teeth, a wooden leg, a stuffed parrot. It’ll be a great visual number and I can just picture Sean centre-stage, with all the cast behind him 56

shaking maracas and Sean wearing huge frilly sleeves.

In fact, why not have everyone in frilly sleeves?

I picked up my guitar but I’d hardly had time to tune it when the doorbell rang. It was the lovely Geraldine. He’d been away all week in London with Lover Boy. ‘At least you have a pretend boyfriend, Ged,’ I said, leading him up the stairs. ‘The only men I have relationships with are gay.’

We came into the living room and Ged dumped his bag on the table. ‘Imagine how I feel. You’re the only person I’m close to – and you’re a woman.’

‘It’s not like I want to meet the great love of my life or anything. A pretend boyfriend would do. I never meet anyone I really like, do I? And even if I do, they’ve already got someone. I can’t even remember the last time I had a date. It’s not too much to ask it? Wined, dined and sixty-nined?’

‘Oh, it’s the work, love, home cliché isn’t it?’ he sighed.

‘There’s always holes to be filled. Look, work’s filled, and home’s good. I suppose you can never have it all.’

‘I need to fill the love hole? Eee-ew.’

Ged took his jacket off and hung it over the back of the chair. ‘Maybe the philosophy classes can sort us out?’ He did his finger cymbal routine. ‘Ching ching ching. Fill my holes.’ He sat down at the table and reached into his bag. ‘For you, my queen.’

I took the small package and traced it with my hands.

‘I picked it up in a charity shop in South Ken. You get a better class of shit there.’

I hurriedly tore off the wrapping paper. It was a plastic cherub with his dick out.

‘It’s a pissing boy,’ Ged said excitedly. ‘A battery operated pissing boy.’ He pointed to the chunky button at the base of the plastic statue.

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‘It’s just what I’ve always wanted.’

There was a neglected bottle of ginger wine on the sideboard and Ged reached over for it. Carefully, he unscrewed the head of the pissing boy and poured in the liquid. He pressed down on the chunky button and it made a horrible discordant whirring noise as the wine leaked out of the little plastic dick. Ged leaned down and let it trickle into his mouth.

‘Oh darling,’ I said, ‘you’re so glamorous.’

After he’d gone, I lay in bed listening to the traffic outside.

I had a moment’s bliss before my mind whirred into gear thinking about all the things I had to do. Sharrock St, Silver Dollar, Veronica’s bollocks, philosophy classes. When would I have any time to spend in my lovely bed? I had another look at the Philosophy leaflet Ged had brought round and noticed the first class is the night after his birthday party. Will we be able to contemplate the meaning of existence with a hangover? Maybe the classes would act as stress relief?

Although dearly, I could also do with some s-e-x relief. A crap shag with Woody and then nothing since. What a sad-sack.

Who am I? Why am here? What is the meaning of life?

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Paul Clark

paulclark72@gmail.com Paul Clark is Liverpool-born, currently based in St Helens. He has written in many forms over the years and has been concentrating on developing a novel lately. In 2013 he started a MA in Creative Writing at MMU. He’s previously worked as a journalist and now lecturers in the subject.

A Difficult First Album Andrew’s father was a mystery to him when he was alive. The emergence of journals after his death reveals an unknown music past. This starts the journey in finding his true father and reform his band. In doing so he threatens to emulate his late father’s less endearing characteristics.

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A Difficult First Album To call it a flat would be too kind a description. It was somewhere that estate agents would euphemistically call a studio apartment. In truth, it was a bedsit. In a part of town far from being labelled as desirable. The room contained furniture of varying ages and conditions. The sideboard, sofa and the old-fashioned box-like TV were all destined for the tip.

The sideboard was big and dominated the room. The pattern on the glass cabinet dated it to the 1960s. There were no books on the shelves, instead they were empty apart from a couple of photographs and vinyl records. One of the pictures was a black and white image of Andrew’s grandparents and another when he was a baby. Suzy headed for that as soon as she saw it. He was distracted by the records. There wasn't much vinyl, but there was enough to delay him from the task at hand.

The first record he selected was Neil Young’s Harvest. It cracked with static as he slipped the album out of its cover. He sniffed the disc, which was reasonably well preserved despite its age. Suzy looked at him as though this was the strangest thing she had ever encountered. Having lived with Andrew for the last two years, she had witnessed most of his eccentricities by now. This was a new one to add to the list.

'What? You can’t beat the smell of a vinyl record. You don’t get that with a CD or an mp3.’

She shook her head and carried on with what she was doing. He flipped the cover and looked at the song titles on the back. He ran his finger down the list and tapped one of the titles. He sat momentarily engrossed by the cover.

'Old Man,’ he announced.

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Suzy looked worried that the emotion of the day was getting to him. He explained that it was a title. She nodded, still none the wiser to its relevance.

‘My dad tried to teach me how to play it on the guitar. I was crap.’

‘You can play it now though. I like that Kinks song you often play.’

‘What, Days?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘He gave up after a while. I had to get one of those teachyourself-in-a-day books. It took longer than a day before I could play a tune. The first song I mastered was Blowin’ in the Wind.

He flicked through the other records. There was some Bob Dylan albums, Freewheelin’ and Highway 61 Revisited. One by The Byrds, and Al Stewart. He remembered that his father had owned more records than this. What had happened to all those Beatles records? His father once had a record player, a good one too. But like everything else he had somehow frittered his possessions away. This would make the process of clearing flat easier.

They turned their attention to the sleeping area. The bed looked modern, similar in style to a futon. In truth, it was nothing more than an old mattress, attached to some cheap looking wood and given some exotic-sounding Scandinavian name. The bed sheets looked like they hadn’t seen the inside of a washing machine in years. On the small bedside table was an old Robert Ludlum book, which blended into the surroundings with its yellowing battered appearance. By the bed was a rack of clothes that contained items of an uncertain age. They were so bad they couldn’t even be reclaimed as some sort of retro post-modernist fashion statement. They were just old.

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'Look at this suit,' Andrew said to Suzy as he picked it up from the rail. It was a brown pinstriped affair. There were shirts too, they had that ruffled style beloved of 1970s comedians. He held the suit jacket against his chest.

'It's a pity we haven't any fancy dress parties to go to. You could go as Rab C Nesbitt, dressed in that.’

‘I was thinking more Dr Who.’ Suzy cast him a quizzical look to indicate that her first suggestion was the right one.

‘He was never one for keeping up with fashion. This must have been fashionable once?’

He gave it one last look, before he added to the pile of rubbish. There wouldn't be much that could be rescued. The best use for some of the clothing would be as dusters.

The last item in the room was an old battered trunk tucked away where the clothes rail was positioned. The type seafarers would have dragged around with them on their voyages, big and able to withstand being bashed about. It served as a secondary table, given the lager cans, newspapers and the pub ashtray left on it.

They scooped the mess off the lid and into the bin bag and wrested the trunk open to reveal its contents. In the movies there would have been gold illuminating their faces as they lifted the lid, but this wasn’t Hollywood. Instead they found old newspapers. Andrew looked through them to see if there was anything in them that might have had some significance for his father. There was an old porn mag, discreetly tucked inside a copy of The Daily Express. The front cover had been torn off. Suzy caught him looking at the magazine for longer than he should have been, and in his rush to get the magazine out of his hands he threw it on to the keep pile, that so far contained the photograph that Suzy liked and the vinyl.

‘Why are you keeping that?’

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‘I’m not. I er, put it on the wrong pile.’

‘Of course you did.’

Suzy shook her head and watched him as he returned to the trunk. He delved a little deeper to find bills and other assorted paperwork. There was a manila envelope that didn’t promise much. He peered inside and slid its contents on to the floor. It was a clutch of photographs. The first one that caught his attention was an old black and white strip of four passportsized pictures of his mother and father together. They looked happy. Andrew smiled at this scene. His father looked quite dashing with his dark hair and moustache. His mum reminded him of someone who at that moment he couldn’t quite place.

In this snapshot they were so happy and carefree, young and enjoying life. His father was wearing a suit, similar to one that Andrew had just found. The shot looked like it had been taken at a celebration, a wedding or a birthday. His mum seemed to be wearing a blouse that had flyaway collars, fashionable at the time.

He spread the rest of the photographs across the floor.

There weren’t that many in total. The ones that he did find covered a span of years and reflected various stages of technological advancement. There were few from the latter part of his father’s life. He saw other women who he had vague memories of, other half remembered faces. The petite blonde was Julia. She seemed to disappear quickly from his father’s life for whatever reason. There was another set. With another woman. She was dressed like a school teacher. All thick knitted jumpers and starchy skirts. Suzy was intrigued by the photos of all these women.

‘Who are they?’

‘Some of my father’s girlfriends. That’s Julia. I think that’s Rita. I’m not sure. I’ve forgotten her name. Dreadful woman though.’

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‘Why was that?’

Before he could tell her the reasons why she was, he remembered her name.

‘Uh, Rene. That was it, Rene,’ he said, casting the pictures of her to one side.

The thought of her stopped him from flicking through that particular set of photographs.

‘Well, she liked hitting me for starters.’

‘Maybe you deserved it,’ Suzy said.

‘Probably. Although she seemed to get some sadistic pleasure in doing so. I remember her giving me a smack because I was winding her up.’

‘What did your father do?’

‘Nothing. He just stood to one side and watched her doing it. I think he was scared of her.’

‘What about your father’s other girlfriends?’

‘I only met a few of them. That Julia was nice. She had a kind nature, was always buying me sweets and ice creams. The others I don’t really have an opinion of. Apart from Rita, er, Rene.’

‘Were there many?’

‘I’m not sure. Looking back at when he occasionally took me out somewhere, it was almost like he was trying to do his duty to me, his son, while also entertaining a new woman in his life. Though falling short in both regards.’

Suzy stood up and walked past Andrew and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

‘All this clearing up is making me thirsty. Shall I go and get us something to drink?’

He nodded and asked for a Coke before continuing with the clearing up. The other photographs were of little note. Just the usual crowd scenes. These looked like nights out with work

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colleagues. The sort of pictures that you would see plastered all over someone’s Facebook site these days.

He continued looking through the contents of the trunk. He found a number of photographs of what looked like a band.

They weren’t just Polaroid pictures, but ones that had been produced professionally. They had the name of the band, High Wire, and their contact details printed in the margins. They were all dressed in similar attire. The photograph was black and white, but it was clear that they were wearing dark shirts and dark trousers, with white kipper ties to boot.

He looked at the longhaired guy at the front with the moustache. The hair was longer than in the photograph with his mum, but there could be no mistaking who it was. His father’s hair may have been greyer and shorter as he got older, but his facial features hadn’t changed over the years. The more that he flicked through the photographs of gigs and other promotional shots, he realised this was a part of his father’s life he knew nothing about. He threw the pictures to one side, reluctant to bring himself to look at the others for fear of what else he might find out that his father hadn’t told him.

He finally tackled the final bundle and found two old diaries and two school exercise books. The diaries were from 1981 and 1982. He flicked through the first diary from to see an entry for January 23. It read ‘The Stockbridge Village Social Club. 7:30pm. Supporting ‘The Smoke Clouds.’ There were other dates throughout the year. Nearly one a week, sometimes two. Not just in Liverpool, but also further afield.

Manchester, Carlisle and even one date in Birmingham. In between these gigs there were other entries such as ‘meet Carol, at 7:30. In The Grapes’, a reference to his mum. There were also a couple of other girl’s names in the same year, with

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similar times to meet, in the same pub. Andrew admired his father’s consistency.

He picked up the diary from the following year. More gigs.

This time they had made it down to London and up to Glasgow. The gig in London was described as…‘Rough, never again!’ There were also other girl’s names: a Mandy, a Tracey and a Bridget. These weren’t afforded times or places, but were pencilled in next to the entries for gigs. For some reason Mandy’s name was underlined. Twice.

Suzy had come back from the newsagents over the road and passed a bottle of Coke to Andrew. He took a big gulp from it.

‘Have you found anything interesting?’

‘There are pictures of him in a band. As well as song books and diaries.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Sifting through this stuff. I get an increasing sense…’ He paused before continuing, '...that. My father. I didn’t know him. I never really knew who he was.’

‘You've always said that.’

‘I know, but here’s the evidence to confirm it,’ he said as he pointed to the artefacts before him.

Suzy looked through the band photographs, while Andrew looked at the other books. They were dog-eared and reminded Andrew of the ones that he had when he was at school. He noticed that they contained his father’s handwriting, which he recognised from the occasional birthday card that he’d been sent. His style was flowing to the point of it being untidy and unreadable. It could be said that it had an artistic flourish to it.

One of the exercise books contained a journal noting his father’s time with the band. It detailed gigs and set lists. There were scribbled notes relating to their performance. The rough gig in London on May 31st was because they had been bottled 66

off at a gig having been put on a bill with a load of punk bands.

Some of the girls in the other diary had longer mentions.

He handed Suzy the diaries and pointed to the references to the girls. She looked at them with a smirk on her face.

‘They must be his groupies,’ she giggled.

‘That’s really weird keeping a record of their names in a journal.’

‘It is a bit.’

Suzy handed the diaries back to Andrew and took a drink from the bottle of water she had brought back from the shop.

The second book was from the same era and related to the band. It contained handwritten lyrics and guitar chords. There were a number of titles and the name of Daley in brackets.

There were a couple of songs that looked like collaborations with presumably other band members. Moore/Daley.

Taylor/Moore/Daley. Not only had his father been something of an accomplished musician, but a songwriter too.

The songs had traditional structures. There were various song titles that Andrew looked at, trying to interpret any hidden meanings behind them. Were there any songs written about his mother, for instance? Was there a song written for when he was born? At first glance they looked like sort of generic love songs that bands of every era churn out.

On the set lists were a number of covers. Tunes by The Beatles, David Bowie and ELO. No wonder they had gone down so badly at the punk gig in London.

‘Have you seen these?’ He said as passed her the books.

‘Not more lady friends?’

‘No. It’s a book of songs. Written by my dad.’

‘Oh, I’ve just the seen the picture of his band.’

Having examined the contents of the trunk there was little else for them to do at the flat. The pitiful-looking furniture had been dragged to a corner of the room in readiness for its 67

removal. Andrew gathered up the records, photographs, diaries and the exercise books and placed them into his bag.

The fact was all that would be spared added another level of poignancy to the day. This was all he had to show for his father’s life. He had hoped that today have been a chance to have answered a number of questions about him. Instead the day had prompted more questions. Who was the band? Why had his father not said anything about this chapter of his life given Andrew’s interest in music?

Andrew knew that the search for his real father wouldn’t end here. He needed to look elsewhere. The first person that could answer his questions was his mum. Though she had long since closed off this avenue in her life. He would have to get her to open up about her past. No matter how difficult that was for her.

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Lee Butcher

Leelit123@yandex.com After many changes of scene and costume, at last I focused on gaining my English Literature degree from the Open University. My passions are writing and performing. My favourite literature includes cheques made out to me and the wit of T-shirt sound-bites.

Desperate Dad Desperate Dad is a piece of entertainment and a how-not-to guide in the form of a fictionalised biography of a parochial man, Patrick; more child than man, and more lunatic than sane. The book’s narrator is his son Liam, a more often than not silent witness in a fractured family piece and shock tragicomedy for everyone involved.

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Desperate Dad Back to Rubik’s Cubes and Maggie No – U turns. I’m back to being eleven years old and living in Crosby. I’m back inside the house in the Crescent – Driver’s Crescent – only a partial moon but fully mad. We are in the upstairs bedroom - the venue for more madness.

‘Just look at me,’ he demanded I watched as he flung off one item after the next, like a stripper with anger issues.

He continued. He always did.

‘Your mother looked at me like that...and she didn’t give a shit either. Twenty years together...but she didn’t blink. And she didn’t care - the fucking heartless bitch.’

I listened, as I was supposed to.

‘She looked at me...in this state...with my ribs sticking out...with my body withered away...worse than an anorexic...worse than an AIDS patient...worse than an inmate of Belsen...and she didn’t care,’ he said.

I looked at him. There he was: naked but for his stained Yfronts and one sock, which was on his foot.

He went on.

‘She looked me in the face and said: ‘I wouldn’t give you the money for a packet of crisps. And she said this even after I’d explained that I wasn’t eating so that you wouldn’t go hungry.

The divorce killed me, crucified me slower than Jesus on the crucifixion cross. ‘Think of the child,’ I’d pleaded.’ Let’s save the children,’ I’d said. You tell her Liam; you tell her, when she comes back, that fucking chess set won’t feed us.’

Patrick was referring to the hand-carved chess set that Brenda had brought me earlier that morning. She had joint custody. I’d elected to live with Patrick – God help me. They’d 70

made me choose. The offending chess set was a present for my eleventh birthday.

‘He doesn’t need to tell me anything. I’ve heard it all. The bitch is back,’ shouted Brenda, storming into the bedroom with the indignation of a Queen Bee from Dynasty.

Patrick farted in surprise.

I looked again at the shape made by the stain on his underpants and thought it reminded me of a nice cloud I’d once seen.

I looked up to see that Patrick had noticed I had been looking at his Y-fronts. Without warning, he yanked them down to half-mast, letting them hang down from the tops of his knee caps. He was an impulsive guy.

‘Look at this!’ he bellowed, spit flying from his mouth. ‘Look at this floppy beast.’

There he was with his hand yanking his flaccid member about.

‘I’m impotent,’ he said to me, ‘and all because your mother is starving my manhood. She sucks on the sweets from her sugar daddy. Oh yes, but poor old Patrick doesn’t get a crumb of nourishment. Check-fucking mate, eh?! And you, boy, I send you down to the newsagents to get a paper-round, but you’re too chicken to even ask for one. What kind of man are you? You’re your mother’s son alright.’

‘Come on, Liam,’ said Brenda, ‘we’re going to Southport.’

Half an hour later.

‘There’s my house: I mean John’s house, our house. There’s his fleet of cars in the driveway. You can see them, can’t you, Liam? But you can’t see the large garden at the back of the house. Plenty of room to play in! Lots of bedroom space as

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well. John and I have the master bedroom, your sister has her bedroom, and there’s a lovely big spare bedroom as well.’

‘Nice,’ I said.

Brenda had pointed out where she was living, on Minge Street, as we sped by on the express bus service to Southport.

Patrick had told me she would try to ‘buy me off,’ just like she had my sister.

‘We’ll have a great time in Southport, won’t we, Liam?’

‘Yes.’ ‘What did he have planned for your birthday today, Liam?’

‘I dunno: I think he wanted me to go to school.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said.

I should have felt excited about a day trip to Southport, but for some reason I didn’t. I probably felt a bit dull, if anything.

The coach ride was three quarters of an hour in. We had travelled most of the way along its route and we were now passing through Birkdale, homing in on Southport.

Brenda craned her neck to look at me.

‘Someone doesn’t look very excited do they, Liam? What’s up with your little face, then?’

‘Oh, nothing... I dunno... I think I’m a bit hungry.’

‘Just like my penis, then!’ shouted a familiar voice from the back of the coach.

Brenda and I wrenched our heads as we both spun round to look down the aisle. The whole coach was looking as well.

‘Didn’t see me here, now did you?’ he bellowed, ‘they seek him here, they seek him there – they seek the elusive Patrick, everywhere. Oh yes! I’ve heard every word you’ve said, followed you every step of the way. She plans to snatch you, son. Kidnap you and have her sugar daddy chase you around that big house, corner you and beat you to a pulp. But never fear – Patricks here! I’m forever here for you, son, protecting you from evil.’

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Patrick was sprawled on the centre seat on the back row, bold as brass and half a dozen rows back. He delivered his piece with his head up in the air and his hands palmed together, in the form of a steeple. Even to my young, untrained eyes, he looked a sight in his second-hand Harris Tweed sports jacket, one of my school shirts complete with the school badge on the breast pocket, purple corduroy trousers, white cotton tennis socks and his Hi-Tec running shoes.

‘You’re a fucking nutcase, Patrick. You’re a nutter in the head, not right in the head. Do you see now why I divorced him, Liam? You do see, don’t you?’ repeated Brenda.

‘Yes,’ I said.

Five hours later and Brenda and I are stepping off the express, back in Crosby. We have nearly said our goodbyes before Patrick moves in.

‘Get thee behind me, Brenda; get walking back to your house of sin, and leave Liam alone,’ Patrick says.

‘Wait till I tell my solicitor about this; wait till I tell John about this,’ screams Brenda. ‘I wanted half a day with Liam and it’s ruined by you trailing twenty yards behind us all over Southport. Nutcase, bloody nutcase,’ she says.

Patrick moves into me as Brenda storms off away from the bus stop.

‘Now lad,’ he says in a quiet voice, ‘you just remember that that violent bitch only wants you as a trophy. You’re more than that to me: you keep a roof over my head. Stay close, lad. I need you.’

‘Yes Patrick,’ I say.

My teenage years were littered with Viscount Biscuits.

‘What have you done, what have you done? Look what you’ve done.’

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There it was again. I shuffled, head bowed, towards the voice. The twisted shapes cupped in his outstretched hands were coming towards me. The foil shapes brushed off my cheek and fell to the carpet below.

‘Just look what you’ve done, Liam. Destroyed! Disaster!

John Lennon exhibited bricks, but I’ve created art. Unique art.

Now they’re ruined forever. She never wanted my talent to be known either. She was jealous. They all are. Attacked from within this house, I was. By all of you. Like in Sodom and Gomorrah! The best horses don’t race until the final furlong – that’s me, you’ll see, you’ll see. Get out of my sight! Take that dog for a walk before you do any more damage, you traitor!’ he screamed.

Rexy the dog was not the only animal living in the threebedroomed house. He was cowering in the corner of the kitchen, under the table. There is something distressing about watching a Staffordshire bull terrier shiver with terror as fear ripples along the muscles of its back, shoulders and face.

I turned to see what was coming next. Patrick did a jig as he came into the kitchen with his hands behind his back.

‘Jesus only turned water into wine because he liked to fit in at parties, but I’ve done this – I’m the Red Adair of the art world,’ he said.

Patrick flourished the same foil shapes which had distressed him a few minutes ago. The material for his art was the green and orange foil wrappers off the Viscount Biscuits.

While he munched the contents, he used his hands to twist the wrappers into shapes and I’d watch from the hallway as he positioned his foil figurines, his precious creations, delicately between framed pictures of himself on the glass shelf. Only a brain surgeon would take greater care.

‘My blood, sweat and tears made Winston Churchill proud to shake me by the hand,’ he said, as he raised his bearded 74

chin and held the attitude for thirty seconds. He glanced down at me. I think he wanted me to be drawing him. Under his grey and white pin-striped shirt, my shirt, I could see the beginning of the hernia, which one day would have the kids in the street playing football asking him if they could have their footy back.

His stained underpants had bunched-up scraps of used toilet paper tumbling out from the slit in the Y-front, dribbling and pointing towards his white ankle socks, my socks.

Finally, he broke his pose, sat himself down in the chair, which creaked as it bore the gravity of his weight. He glared at the child he was saddled with, me. I was the millstone round his neck. He adjusted his underpants and said, ‘The eighties will be remembered for Margaret Thatcher, Rick Astley, and me!’ Then he looked triumphantly at me and giggled.

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Laura-Kate Barrow

laura.kat@live.co.uk Laura-Kate Barrow studied for a MA in Creative Writing specialising in prose, but these days is more often found in the theatre. She is currently Writer on Attachment at Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, and coordinator of Lady Parts Theatre a Liverpool based company which specialises in creating and promoting strong roles for women. Her latest play Sticky Labels was nominated for Best Theatre and Best New Writing at Buxton Fringe 2014.

Dale Street Another day. The bus spills passengers onto the corner and manoeuvres back again, the night will come. Everything is the same. Hour by hour the time passes for the residents of Elizabeth Barracks, just as it always has. Outwardly there is nothing new, but there are stories through every window. A pile of letters, a bed unmade, an unexpected arrival. Is it really just another day?

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Dale Street British sunshine is polite. Timid. Morning does not burst unannounced into rural England; it trickles in, creeping slowly over peaks and running down troughs. There are no fanfares, no parades. This is not the place for trumpets, for uniforms, for ceremony. If anything, the bleary eyed sunlight is terribly sorry to intrude. It politely sidles through gaps in hastily-shut curtains and rests patiently on faces set to snooze.

It’s Saturday, and the longest day. The druids call it the summer equinox, Shakespeare has his Midsummer Night.

That’s the thing with days: we don’t share them. Where you are, who you are, where you are meant to be: it changes everything. You are the only one to experience your day. It’s yours alone. The first enthusiastic rays know they have no hurry. The light tangles with a whisper of cloud making the sky over Cheshire look like it was painted by Monet. The beams entrance onto Elizabeth Barracks is an infiltration, not an assault. They flow synchronised over the intimidating residential block and the adjoining street which contains the private lives of friends, and family and the soon to be family.

The street is still breathing heavily, rhythmically, as rays sneak silently into the bed of the couple in the upstairs apartment at number six. They pick over the bodies entwined in separate dreams, placing bets on where one figure ends and the other begins.

In the garden shed of number five, amongst a jumble of discarded gaudy plastic toys, the light dances over the dangerously sharp cracked edges, and indistinguishable polythene parts. It flickers along the edges of the possiblyonce fire engine and probably part trampoline. In the corner the light lands on a spider making its home in a child sized blue 78

plastic seashell, long since reclaimed from its former owners.

In the front garden Action Man enjoys the sunrise from his position on the makeshift beach of a sandpit.

A welcoming party greets the light at number twelve. Rows of flowers in reds and yellows for the summer, regimented, standing to attention in neat beds ordered for the perfect balance between efficiency and finesse. This welcoming party is no accident. Throughout the seasons the colours change, but a drop in standard could never be allowed. It is not an option in this household.

As the morning light trips into the twin cots at number ten, the brightening room awakens the baby girl. Minutes older, months wiser, she is caught, fascinated, somewhere between dreaming and waking as she reaches a chubby hand to catch the sparkling dust particles. A happy gurgle escapes unnoticed, she is transfixed, leaving Mum to sleep a moment more. Her brother is sound asleep in the cot next to hers, lying on his front, nappy in the air and that serious look on his face he uses when he has just figured something out for the first time. He still has some big dreaming to do.

Gently the light traces the curved outline of the woman at number nine, where she lies curled on one side of a double bed. It makes no impact in the gloom of a bedside lamp left on. This sunlight is weak and white, inspiring the teas and coffees it beckons.

At the end of the street the light meets the wall of Dale Residence: three storeys of flat blank brick, interrupted only by uniform rectangular windows. No light flickers behind grey blinds. On the top floor one room breaks the pattern, its stillness projecting through the unmasked glass and into the early morning haze.

The sports field of the Dale Residence shares its boundaries with a patch of woodland. If it wasn’t for some pioneering 79

ground-keeping the woodland would have reclaimed the sports field for its own many years since. Near the edge there is a pile of wood, hastily gathered following violent storms earlier in the year and just as hastily forgotten. It has become home to a family of hedgehogs. The light signals their return home, and now as it filters through to the prickly inhabitants as they rest silently. The squatters are experts at avoiding detection in the daylight. Next to the woodpile, sideways, is a traffic cone. Inexplicably still wearing the traffic cone, is a man, sprawled and mud-stained on the grass. The cone defies gravity, at a jaunty angle like a Burger King crown or a burlesque top-hat. Even in dreams he’s pretty proud. Another man, next to him, offered no protection by the shades drawn in permanent marker on his face, grunts and rolls over in the morning dew. He has forgotten about these facial decorations, never mind whether he was being Harry Potter or John Lennon. Groggily, still clinging on to sleep even as the light touches them, they haul themselves back to their beds in the residence block.

Round the corner, the dog at number eight growls. She’s a Yorkshire terrier: pristine white despite all her best efforts.

She wasn’t bought as a guard-dog but that would never stop her trying. In the still morning air she hears a familiar whirring of tires as yet undetected by the streets human residents. She has been listening intently for this arrival since the first tentative rays trickled over the plastic edges of its bed. As predicted, the postman in his schoolboy style shorts turns off the main road and into the cul-de-sac. This street is at the start of the postman’s route and he yawns bleary eyed as he parks his bike against the wall of number one. His bag is heavy, but he knows it will be much lighter by the end of this street. Post is still an important method of communication in the barracks.

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The woman at number twelve has always been an early riser. She prides herself on that. No sooner had she dressed but she whips open the curtains to ensure the neighbours know that she is ready for the day’s business, whatever that may be. Today she is clear on her business. She knows that today will be trying and long and have an impact that will alter her life tremendously. However the day must begin as every day does, with English Breakfast Tea, served in a china pot and enjoyed with just a spot of milk.

At the other end of the street the postman approaches the gates of his first house. Knowing his route well he lifts the battered gate as he pushes, feeling the familiar jolt of its hinges. A few steps along the path he pulls a handful of letters out of his bag, ready to push them through the cheery red door. He looks at the letter on the top of the pile and stops.

His familiar routine judders to a halt. He stands, unsure of which way to move, like a learner driver poorly positioned between two lanes of traffic. Still, in the middle of the path, letters in hand.

‘Well we can’t all be morning people can we.’ The bus driver says, largely to himself, as he notices the stunned postman. Shaking his head, he pulls the bus into reverse, and begins his first manoeuvre of the day at the end of the cul-desac. Nobody gets on or off the bus. Nobody ever does at this time.

The tired clunk of gears alerts the night-guard at Dale Residence that it is the end of his shift. Standing with more enthusiasm than he has managed to muster in the previous twelve hours combined, he reaches for the last of the print outs. He folds the single sheet deftly in thirds, neatly slides it into an envelope and scrawls the name on the front. His handwriting has never been more than a scrawl. It was the mantra at school, slow and steady, but he surprised everyone 81

by proving it is possible to produce a scrawl slowly. It’s thanks to him that they have self-adhesive envelopes on reception.

On a busy day he could get through ten or sometimes even twelve and they don’t leave a pleasant taste. Since his request reached head office he can now peel back the strip and go.

Now that is military efficiency. He smoothes the envelopes lapel into its body and adds it to the pile. Sixteen this morning.

The news getting through mustn’t be that bad if they can still attract this stream of new recruits. That’s a blessing of sorts.

He doesn’t dwell on how consistently new recruits are needed. That doesn’t change a thing.

The woman at number one opens her door. Early morning jog. She jumps to see the postman frozen on her gravel path and then he jumps to see her, and they both laugh a nervous apology. She takes the post from him. The top letter catches her eye and he looks at her closely, gauging her reaction.

‘Don’t be so nervous’ she forces a smile, ‘You didn’t send it, did you.’

The woman at number twelve watches through her curtains as the postman chats to the woman flagrantly wearing skimpy curve-hugging gym wear. She tuts. Largely to herself, and makes her way to intercept him when gets further down the road.

The woman at number one heads back to the house to put the letters inside before carrying on with her day. She can’t help herself looking at the letter on the top of the pile. It is bright and eye-catching, just as it has been designed to be.

Even the envelope is full colour. Glossy too. The image is of faces. Rows and rows of faces staring out at her. Smiling. They were taken on different days, in different places, but they are all smiling. Some faces are looking proud, some nervous and some happy. On some you can see and all their emotions colliding just behind their eyes. It’s a charity appeal envelope 82

for the British Military Foundation. Soldiers faces. Soldiers who left a barracks just like this one, in the coaches that come and go, and got on a plane and flew away, somewhere, could have been anywhere. The soldiers that didn’t come back. And here they are on an envelope. Smiling.

She’s seen them taking these photos. Not the photos on the envelope, of course. None of these glossy envelope faces have smiled at her. But she’s seen their type. The coaches arrive, usually Dave’s Coaches or Barry’s or Steve’s, hired to take the soldiers to the airport and there are all the usual checks. Passport. Identity tags. Then they all line up and get their photo taken. It’s for the newspapers, so they have something ready to print in case they are killed. They have to be decent quality just in case they make the front page. That’s a great perk for anyone’s photography portfolio. She can’t see them agreeing to that in any other job. Front page plus BBC website and churned out on Remembrance Sunday and any convenient political junctures.

As the envelope and the rows of faces land in the waste paper basket of number one. They are landing on doormats further down the street. The rows of faces are being pushed through letterboxes that bite, that snap at fingers, and those that operate fair rules of business and swing open cooperatively. The letterbox at number eight growls. The man who lives there makes a grab for it before the dog can turn it into confetti.

He stops when he sees the faces. His wife is never far from his mind, but this brings her right to the forefront. He watched as she lined up outside the residence with the others, and they took her photos. There were so many jokes. It was all the usual stuff. Bet she’s used to having her photo taken with all her experience on Page three. That kind of thing. He never wanted to know the specifics. Not about his wife. He watched 83

her through the window as she laughed it all off, and felt so proud of how strong she was. She gave as good as she got, and they loved her for that, the other soldiers. She is the only woman in her platoon. She was warned by others during her training how lonely the army can be for a woman. Having a separate sleeping area and not being able to join in with the most male parts of the male bonding can make some women feel removed, alienated, but not her. She has always been funny and bright, and she’s a great soldier. Of course they loved her. He remembers seeing looks, whilst she was having her photo taken, looks that would have gone under her radar completely, but that a husband picks up on. The way the other soldiers were looking at her he could tell they were impressed.

I don’t think they’d seen her in full make-up before. She looked beautiful.

He has that photo on the mantel piece. Often people comment that it’s a beautiful photo, but an odd choice, once they know its intention. His mother thinks it’s morbid, although he tried to argue it couldn’t be as she’s still alive. She thinks it’s like keeping an obituary on standby. He doesn’t see it like that at all.

This is not the first photograph to take centre stage on the mantelpiece. There have been many others in its place. First the one of them at university, there is a statue of an elephant, a bronze one, outside the cathedral in Chester and the couple were sat on it, laughing. They clearly weren’t ready for the photo but it’s so lovely and natural. Then there was the one on holiday in Spain, Fuengirola, or it might have been Marbella. Standing on a balcony. She was at the front of the photo wearing a maxi dress, and simple gold sandals. The dress is white with horizontal stripes black, pink, yellow and blue. The neckline is elegantly scooped and it has capped sleeves. He knows because he remembers her reading him the 84

descriptions from Asos when she was deciding which dress to buy. After she’d explained all the terms he said they all sounded lovely, and she threw a pillow at him for being useless. He loved that dress. He’s always thought she had an incredible figure, but that dress made her look so tiny and amazing. Her olive skin was glowing with the sun and she’s just exuding happiness. She has always photographed well. In this one it feels like she’s looking right through the frame.

After that it was their wedding photo. The official one, taken outdoors. The one that feels compulsory, of them gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes, which until that moment they had never spent much time doing. The classic. Or it would have been, except as soon as the photographer gave the order to start walking, she nearly fell over. It was on grass and she’s not used to wearing heels. The photographer caught her midlaugh, eyes squeezed tightly shut, bent forward, showing rows of white teeth as he steadied her. That has always been his favourite from the day. It makes him chuckle every time he sees it, which is slightly less often now it’s in its new position by the bed This photo of her is relatively new to the prime position. He put it up there just after she went. His copy arrived pretty quickly from the printers. She’d be embarrassed if she knew.

He still stands by his decision to display that photo. She looks so beautiful. And it’s not just the make-up. It’s the same thing that made the photo on the elephant so special, and the holiday snaps and it shone through all the glitter of the wedding photography. She looks happy. Really happy.

The man throws the envelope of faces in the bin without reading the contents. His family are giving enough to the British Military.

At number ten the letter is thrust into the hand of a woman, who barely allows enough time for the postman to 85

jump out the way before continuing down the path and to the bus stop pushing the twin buggy in front of her like a battering ram. She means business. She has a lot to do before one, or inevitably both of them wake up.

A few paces further down the street and the woman from number one has to step into the road to avoid being flattened by the buggy as she makes her way towards the woodland to resume her jog. As she makes her way across the sports field she has to duck and dive around men, in army uniform though not yet quite soldiers, setting up gazebos and stalls. She makes a mental note to avoid whatever dreary event is taking place by jogging home the other way.

Upstairs in number six the girlfriend snuggles further into her boyfriend’s shoulder. She has no intention of moving any time soon. She traces his tattoo. She knows if he was awake this would tickle him, but she is deft and gentles as she traces each letter. It’s Latin, something about striving towards goals, about never being beaten.

On a bedside table, in another bedroom, is a bunch of letters. Or rather e-blueys, emailed from Afghan, printed at the post office and arriving on the doormat courtesy of Royal Mail. The machine that prints them also seals them. It’s for confidentiality but it makes the pile look uneven round the edges, unloved, the way they have been ripped open. The only thing spoiling this illusion is the fact the entire bundle have been tied together with a piece of blue ribbon.

Now, the woman at number twelve takes the ribbon and carefully unties the bow, laying both sides flat on the table.

Taking the first piece of paper from the pile, she settles herself carefully into her armchair.

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Mam, Got to Bastion safe. Sure they probably already told you that.

Not sure how much proper information you get in your family and friends newsletter. There’s a general one, but you get a specific one too, right?

I’m talking nonsense. Sorry. Not used to writing letters, am I? Plus I almost swore then. Think you’re right. Will be swearing like a trooper at the end of six months. Literally.

Anyway. Bastion’s cool. The computer room is pretty nice.

Basic dial up is a bit of a nightmare. Probably won’t be putting up photos ‘til I get back. Not that there’s that much opportunity to take them. Plus you probably wouldn’t want to see them all. The lads were on one yesterday. Mental on the coach, then mental on the plane. Then absolutely buzzing in the Chinook. ‘Specially when we were told to plate up. Nobody needed to wear the combat gear, we’d literally just put our passports away. Pretty exciting though.

So what else about Bastion? It’s huge. Bed spaces are basic but sound. It’s proper busy. Full of Yanks at the moment, and Afghans, and us of course. It’s funny. Everyone here is either running like, mad busy, or they are bored out of their minds.

Nearly swore again. Sorry. There is no in between. Sure I’ll get used to it.

Saw the lads our battalion is taking over from in passing.

They were great, full of advice, and a load of banter, but they looked destroyed. Think it’s been a difficult tour for them.

There’s a pizza hut here. So you don’t need to worry about me being underfed just yet. There was a massive queue last night so we got a large one each. Best not keep it up or the Taliban will have a massive fat target to fire at!

Hope all’s well your end, Love to the girls (tell Tim that means him too) 87

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Steven John Horay

SJHoray@hotmail.com I’m an aspiring novelist and short story writer. My work primarily focuses on psychological drama and dystopian satire. I live in Liverpool, where I obtained my degree in Creative Writing and Screen Studies from John Moore’s University. I publish flash fiction and short stories online at Fictionaut.com.

My Father’s Academy Tom Bradley’s father is the countries’ most successful pop music entrepreneur. When Tom visits his father’s Academy for the annual show, he tries to enjoy himself and relax. But behind the glitz and glamour lies something dark and unsettling. Within hours, Tom is drawn into a world of horror.

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My Father’s Academy As soon as the bell starts ringing everybody springs up from their science stools as though they've literally been electrocuted. I hang back, packing my satchel slowly, half expecting one of my classmates to wish me good luck for the weekend. With everything I’ve got coming up, I can’t help but expect at least a few words of encouragement. But almost everybody, I find, has been lost to conversations about computer games or how many teenagers get ‘eaten alive’ in the latest zombie apocalypse movie.

As usual, Bella Daniels speaks the loudest. ‘In 3-D! Oh . . . my . . . God. That scene when the blind guy walking his doggie transforms into a zombie! The way he comes at you in your seats! I almost had a seizure! It’s like bye-bye milkshake! Byebye nacho’s! Hello zombie Doberman! Scary, just too scary!

Ethan jumped so high his guacamole disappeared! I think it got stuck to the ceiling. It was mental! Everybody should go see it!’

Three bleeps from the security sensor on the far wall and the silver doors swish open. Everybody bursts through into the corridor. It’s Friday afternoon, and spring bank holiday is finally upon me.

‘Don't go crazy out there you kids!’ Mr Tombs keep shouting, ushering out the last of us with butcher-like swiping gestures. ‘Make sure you all come back to me in one piece!’

As I pass, Mr Tombs twists his swipe into an enthusiastic thumbs-up sign, but it comes across as desperate rather than hopeful. I pull my satchel tight across my shoulder and offer what I hope is a reassuring smile.

Out in the bright, sun-lit main corridor, the students who are spending the weekend back at home are shouting 90

‘freedom!’ and spinning their ties in the air. Those with parents too busy to see them tonight make their way back to the darkness of the dorms with promises to kill each other over X-Box. I walk down the corridor slowly, as though I'm going nowhere; like I always do when I'm on the way to counselling.

During class I received another text from my father.

Apparently, he has dispatched a ‘Kick Ass Vehicle’ for me to ride home in. ‘Super-Fast, Super-cool’ he confirmed.

Unfortunately though, my driver is running late. So I’ll have to wait a little longer to see the car. He said he’ll text me again when my driver gets here.

As usual, my father finished his text with two smiling yellow faces, and the words: ‘Look 4ward 2 Seeing U, Son!’ I check my phone again but find no updates from my father.

I try to imagine what type of car dad has sent, but find myself filling with dread. Lately, dad’s taste in cars has been shocking.

He likes yellow things which soak up all the attention. Surely he must understand that right now, I don’t want any more attention.

As I’m sliding my phone back inside my blazer’s front pocket, unable to stop my heart from racing, I overhear somebody calling me from down the corridor.

‘Tom! Tom Wait! Tom!’ Eliza is rushing towards me. Eliza’s a really bright girl from English class who has this trippy enthusiasm about the world which nobody can match. She has some hilarious beliefs too, like; people who still believe in God are ‘super-cute’ but men who were vests out in public should be banished to a dark cave somewhere in South America. Plus Eliza was one of the only girls here who didn't bug me about the scandal involving my mother. Unlike most people, Eliza didn't buy into the scandal;

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didn’t harass me with accusations, didn't rant about how disgusted she was by my mother’s actions.

‘Can I please, please, please ask you something a teeny bit private?’ she pants breathlessly.

‘As long as you don’t jot down my response and e-mail it to the Daily Star,’ I reply, eying the glittery notepad she’s pulling out of her satchel.

Eliza tilts her head to one side, studying me sympathetically. She then imitates one of those government sponsored self-esteem adverts, her voice sounding all big and cartoonish. ‘Negativity alert! Negativity alert!’

‘Okay, okay, what do you wanna know?’ I relent. ‘Forgive me for thinking it has something to do with that fuzzy pink book you've just pulled out of your bag.’

For a brief second, Eliza pretends to study the book.

‘Actually, it's got more to do with you going back to your dad’s Academy, but yeah, the book figures.’

Suddenly everything feels awkward again. I try to take a deep breath. When things get awkward, breathing slowly always helps. You'd be surprised, but concentrating on your breathing —literally just staying alive- really helps you focus. I continue breathing, composing myself the way I’ve been taught to, but I’m interrupted by a presence behind me. I can feel something, someone. Turning around, I’m faced by two younger girls –one blonde and blank looking, the other with a brassy face and long ginger pig-tails. They’re walking beside me really slowly, totally glaring. They continue to stare as they pass.

Instinctively, I take a step back.

The blonde speaks first, her voice cold and detached. ‘Your mum is a fucking slut!’

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The red head has crossed her arms across her chest and is rigorously nodding her head. ‘An evil slut who completely destroyed my little sister’s Christmas!’

‘She should die!’ screams the blonde. They fire me another evil look before moving off down the corridor. And they walk purposefully, with the air of people proud and forceful, like they’ve just got something really important off their chests.

But they haven’t achieved anything. I’ve heard it all before.

‘Ignore that! Ignore it,’ Eliza is telling me, calming me, soothing. And I do. I resume my breathing. I forget the girls. I tell Eliza to carry on with what she was saying.

‘Basically Tom, before we were rudely interrupted!’ Eliza’s voice rises defiantly. ‘I wanted to ask you something. Now if you're still going back to The Academy, could you please get this book filled with as many signatures as possible? It’s for my little sister.’ Eliza waves the glittery notepad. ‘This belongs to her,’ she flips through the empty white pages. ‘It’s going to be her first ever autograph book.’

Down the corridor, in the sunlight, the two disgusting brats who insulted my mother give me the finger before disappearing outside.

I ignore them. ‘Yeah sure,’ I tell Eliza. ‘That shouldn’t be much of a problem. Are there any signatures she would like in particular?’

‘Any of the boys from Rulez,’ Eliza says. ‘Preferably all three of them.’

‘Oh man, anybody but them.’

‘What's wrong with Rulez?’

‘Jay-Jerome mainly,’ I spit out. ‘He's so annoying and empty headed but with the biggest most disgusting ego ever. Plus I can’t stand his stupid crew cut. He gets it clipped almost every day by Leandro at The Academy. And the line across his forehead is so perfect, so unbelievably straight, that I think it 93

makes his whole face look like it’s moulded from plastic. Plus his lyrics are pathetic.’

Eliza stares at me softly, the way she always stares at me when I’m sinking into something negative. ‘He's an R’n’B singer Tom, not a poet. Look are you going to do it or-’ ‘Sure, sure, don't worry. I'll get the signatures.’

‘Thanks Tom, it would really mean a lot to her. Could you also get The Toucans to sign some autographs?’

‘Those kids practically sign autographs in their sleep. No problem.’

‘And Cooper Scott?’ she smiles guiltily. ‘Pretty please!’

‘That shouldn't be an issue.’

‘But isn't he like the most in-demand fifteen year old in Europe?’ Eliza says sarcastically.

‘Apparently he thrives on attention,’ I tell her. ‘He wants to set a new world record; most autograph inquiries in a calendar year. What a dork.’

Eliza hands me the glittery book. As I take it, her warm fingers move across mine, lingering. ‘I'll be in touch over the weekend,’ she says.

‘Okay,’ I murmur, and with that, we both head in our opposing directions; Eliza towards the sunlight streaming through the school entrance, and me towards the gloomy old stairwell leading up to counselling.

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