The Second Life of Nathan Jones

by David Atkinson

  I approached shed number two from the ‘blind side’ (the side with no windows) and noticed a pile of fixtures and fittings on the grass. Shed number two had recently been decked out to resemble an artist’s studio with two easels, selections of paint, acrylics, charcoal and canvases. The fact neither of my parents had any kind of artistic ability or interest whatsoever hadn’t seemed to cross his mind when he’d been planning it. Now that idea had obviously been changed and a new project had started.

  ‘Hi, Dad.’

  ‘Kat.’ My dad jumped, startled. ‘I didn’t know you were coming today. Does your mum know you’re here?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s cleaning the cornicing.’

  He nodded. ‘Still? She started that yesterday. Keeps her busy, I suppose.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’m cleaning out space for my new project.’

  ‘Which is what exactly?’

  ‘Llamas.’

  ‘Llamas?’

  ‘Llamas – they make excellent pets.’

  ‘I’m not sure they do and why do you want a pet? No disrespect, Dad, but you and Mum have a hard enough time looking after yourselves.’

  ‘They make very good guard animals, especially against small predators.’

  ‘Dad, this is Glasgow; the only small predators around here usually hail from a sink estate, are malnourished, have substance-abuse issues, a bad attitude and a Stanley knife in their pocket, oh, and maybe a pit bull in tow.’

  ‘Llamas don’t like dogs.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘I don’t like dogs either.’

  ‘I’m not sure picking a pet based on a mutual dislike of something is necessarily the way to go about it but, for argument’s sake, let’s say it is – why not just opt for a cat?’

  ‘I can’t sell cat poo online.’

  I stared at him for a moment. ‘I’m sorry, Dad, I thought you said you “can’t sell cat poo online”.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I’m not following you.’

  ‘Llama poo is called “beans” and is very prized by gardeners due to its very rich texture and high phosphate content. It retails for around £35 a kilo.’

  ‘You’re going to get a llama for its poo?’

  ‘Two. I’m going to get two. They’re sociable pack animals and like company, and two pooing llamas are better than one, and I might even breed them, so I’ll get two females to start with.’

  Although nothing my parents did really should surprise me any more I had to admit this had set me back a little – also if he planned to breed them he’d surely be better with a male and a female unless he’d decided to utilise some sort of artificial insemination technique. The picture dropped into my head of my dad approaching the rear end of a female llama with a large syringe filled with llama semen. I shook my head to get rid of the image and instead continued with my llama objections.

  ‘Aren’t they noisy?’

  ‘No, they hum a little.’

  ‘What, stink?’

  ‘No, hum as in humming a tune.’

  ‘They hum tunes?’

  ‘Well, now, I don’t know,’ he said, scratching his head. ‘I don’t think so. They just make a delightful little humming noise. There’s a website that shows some llamas humming. Do you want to see?’

  ‘Not right now, thank you. Don’t they spit at you?’

  ‘No, that’s a myth. They don’t do that unless they’re badly treated or stressed out.’

  I reckoned anything, llama or otherwise, living with my mum and dad would be likely to get stressed out damn quickly but I didn’t share my thoughts. ‘You must need a licence or permission from the local authority, then?’

  ‘No, nothing at all, they’re an administrative joy. I might even invite our local MP over to view them.’

  ‘She probably won’t come. Is there enough space out here?’

  ‘For Moira?’

  ‘No, not Moira, the llamas?’

  ‘Yeah, just about, if I provide some hay or fodder to supplement the grass, which, by the way, I’ll never need to cut again.’

  I’d run out of llama objections.

  ‘Do you want some coffee?’ My dad smiled, having outlasted me. ‘I’ve just brewed some in the “church”. Come on.’

  I followed him around to shed number three, which had been designed and built as a small scaled-down version of the original church from Salem village, Massachusetts (as depicted in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible) complete with a small, square bell tower, clock, and double oak-panelled doors. I wasn’t sure what the Reverend Samuel Parris would have made of the irreligious interior though. As you stepped over the threshold the inside was reminiscent of an old country pub, complete with a shiny mahogany bar and wooden hand pumps connected to ale caskets underneath; a large TV sat on the wall and even a fully functioning fruit machine bleeped away in the corner.

  Even though I’d been in here loads of times its authenticity always made me smile. When he shut the door, blocking out the views of the garden, you’d almost swear you were privy to some old-world pub lock-in event.

  ‘Can I tempt you with a pint of Leg Spreader?’

  ‘DAD!’

  ‘That’s what it’s called. Look.’

  He pointed to the picture on the hand pump, which depicted a smiling buxom girl in a short skirt sitting on the ground with her legs open. A strategically placed pint glass of frothy ale hid her embarrassment.

  I had to smile. ‘Yeah and I’m sure you just got it because it tastes nice.’

  ‘It’s a good pint actually. Bob likes it too.’

  ‘I’m sure he does.’ Bob is my dad’s best, and sometimes I think only, friend. Bob lives a quarter of a mile away, and, as well as sharing my dad’s love of wooden huts, is a web designer and fellow lecturer at my father’s university. He’s a lover of real ales, online gaming and collecting vintage comic books. Unsurprisingly, he’s also single and stares at my boobs whenever he sees me, which thankfully isn’t very often.

  ‘I’m fine with coffee, Dad, and I’m driving.’

  ‘You could always stay over; the house isn’t the same since you left.’

  ‘Dad, I’ve been gone for seven years now.’

  ‘I know, and I’ve still not got used to it.’

  ‘You should have had more than one kid, then.’

  ‘We should have but that wasn’t down to me; your mother had been so traumatised by your birth we barely had sex for—’

  ‘Ouch! Too much information, Dad.’ At least I knew where I got that trait from.

  ‘Oh, sorry, Kat, anyway, we’re fine now. We just miss having you around.’

  He handed me a steaming mug of coffee and I sat on a bar stool while he stood behind the bar, polishing some glasses like a caricature publican. ‘Any change on the boyfriend front?’

  Why did everyone need to know about my sex life, or, as it happened to be, my non-sex life? ‘No, Dad, no chance of any grandchildren any time soon.’

  ‘You’re nearly thirty now, Kat. You need to get out more. You spend too much time mooching about at home and, let’s face it, your job doesn’t exactly offer up the opportunity to meet anyone, does it?’

  ‘I had a cute corpse in recently. He sat up and said hello.’

  He didn’t believe me. ‘Yeah, sure, Kat. You could tone down your make-up as well – you probably scare most men away.’

  ‘Dad, I’m Goth. It’s not a werewolf mask or anything. Underneath I’m a nice person. If I have to change who I am to try and attract someone, what does that say about me and what does it say about that person who’d only want to be with me if I pretended to be something I’m not?’

  My dad blinked at me a few times, put down the glass he’d been polishing and said, ‘I’ve obviously hit a nerve again; maybe we should go back to talking about llamas?’

  I laughed; my dad had always been great at dealing with my outbursts. ‘I think we’ve exhausted the llama dilemma. What d
oes Mum think about it?’

  ‘She’s not said much. I suspect she thinks I won’t go through with it, but I will. I need a new hobby.’

  I drained my mug and for the briefest of moments considered trying the Leg Spreader, but opted for another coffee instead. ‘I did actually meet a cute corpse, Dad.’

  My dad stared at me for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Kat, that’s not even funny. You spend too much time in the morgue; it can’t be good for the mind, staring at corpses and doing whatever ghastly things it is that you do to them.’

  ‘Ghastly?’ I spluttered in disbelief, choking in laughter. ‘Did you actually say ghastly? Have we gone back to 1952?’

  ‘Ghastly is a perfectly respectable modern word, especially in relation to what you do to those poor dead people.’

  ‘They’re dead, Dad – well, usually – so they don’t know anything that’s happening to them. But it’s true, I had a live one recently. You might have read about it in the papers; he got mentioned in a few. He’d been brought in on the Saturday and I found him still alive on the Monday.’

  ‘I didn’t read anything about it in The Telegraph.’

  I smiled. ‘No, you probably wouldn’t have. Anyway, he’s a cutie called Nathan Jones.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘What’s his family history?’

  ‘I’m not really sure.’

  I watched my dad as his brain whirred. ‘Jones, that’s a Patronymic name.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It’s a very old name meaning ‘derived from the father’. Back in the day some poor people didn’t have or know their surnames, so they only had a first name, usually John.’

  ‘What, everyone was called John?’

  ‘Not everyone, but lots of people, so they took the second name John as well.’

  ‘What, John John?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That’s silly. You can’t go around being called John John.’

  ‘Well, they did, becoming known as “two Johns”, which eventually morphed into “Jones”. That’s how it came about. There are other examples like—’

  I held my hand up. ‘No, no, that’s enough, I’m bored now, but I’ll be sure and tell him that. I’m glad he’s called Nathan and not John – he’s cute.’

  He wasn’t listening. ‘If we go into number one we could look it up on my database?’

  ‘Maybe in a minute, but I’m not sure it’s worth it.’

  ‘I thought you said he was cute.’ He had been listening.

  ‘He is, but why do I need to know his ancestry at this point?’

  ‘Might give you something to talk about on your next date.’

  ‘What date?’

  ‘Well, you said … I just assumed … Is he disabled after whatever happened to him?’

  ‘No, he’s married.’

  ‘Oh, that’s worse.’

  ‘What, being married is worse than being disabled?’

  My dad laughed. ‘No … well, it feels like it sometimes … but no, I mean in terms of liking him, if he’s married then it’s a non-starter.’

  ‘His wife’s left him or is about to or something like that anyway.’

  ‘How do you know that? Has he told you?’

  ‘Just my intuition.’

  ‘Sounds a bit messy, Kat; do you really want to get involved? Can you not just try internet dating or something?’

  ‘Hayley did that. She hated it.’

  ‘Hayley’s too fussy.’

  ‘And you’re saying I’m not?’

  ‘I didn’t mean you, I meant Hayley. You’re fussy too but in a different way.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were different degrees of fussiness.’

  ‘There must be. Dr Dave.’

  ‘Don’t mention Dr Dave.’

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘I wish I’d never brought him to meet you – biggest mistake of my life.’

  ‘Bringing Dr Dave to meet us? He did come across as a queer fish.’

  That shocked me. If my parents thought that about him, given their own eccentricities, he must have been a bloody borderline psychopath. Dr Dave Ross had worked with me some years before, and I’d unwisely become involved emotionally with him. Thankfully, he now lived and worked in London, far away from me. ‘Yeah, I shouldn’t have got involved with him in the first place. He wasn’t good for me.’

  My dad knew better than to poke around in that sore. ‘What are you going to do about Mr Jones?’

  ‘Find out about his ancestry; c’mon, let’s fire up your search engine.’

  ‘And while we’re there I’ll show you the humming llamas.’

  ‘Great, I can’t wait.’

  Sarcasm always missed my dad. ‘Right, we’ll look at that first, then, shall we?’

  Chapter 10

  ‘I’m taking the girls to London for Easter, Nathan. The schools break up on the Thursday and we’ll get the teatime flight down.’

  Nathan hadn’t expected that. ‘You can’t, Laura. It’s Easter – I thought you’d be here, so we could at least pretend to be playing happy families. I won’t get to see them or—’

  ‘Look, I don’t want to be here with you. I want to be in London with—’

  ‘Simon.’

  The name struck home; he could tell by the silence on the other end of the phone. Eventually she recovered her composure. ‘Well, I suppose you had to find out some time, but I hadn’t planned on mentioning him. I want to be in London with the girls; there’s so much to do now the weather’s getting better. It’ll be a whole new experience for them and I want them to see it.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘You’re not invited,’ she said cruelly. ‘Look, Nathan, I don’t want to fight about it. I don’t want to spend Easter with you, but I do want my girls with me. They should be with their mum during the holidays; I don’t get to see them enough.’

  ‘Yeah, well, whose fault is that?’

  ‘I’m not going to fight with you, Nathan.’

  ‘But it’s not fair.’

  ‘No, it’s not, but I’ll only keep them for a week and you can have the second week of the break. I’ve taken the two weeks off work so that’ll still leave me with a bit of time to tidy up and sort stuff once they’ve gone.’

  ‘And gives you some alone time with Simon?’

  Laura paused. ‘Maybe. I didn’t want you to find out about him yet. I’m not sure how I feel; it’s all very early. How did you find out anyway … Millie?’

  ‘Yeah, she’d got really upset about it.’

  ‘How did she know? She only met him the once when he gave us a lift to the airport.’

  Nathan didn’t want to reveal his daughter’s clandestine surveillance techniques, which also meant he couldn’t mention the whole happy families bit either, at least not directly. ‘I think she just put two and two together. She’s very perceptive. She said he told her he makes oodles of cash.’

  ‘Oodles?’

  ‘That’s what he told her.’

  Laura considered that for a moment. ‘Yeah, that’s the sort of thing he would say. Not one of his best features, I have to admit.’

  ‘How did you meet?’

  ‘He works in the office down here. He’s an accountant in a different department.’

  Nathan snorted. ‘Love over the water cooler.’

  ‘Jealousy doesn’t sit well on you, Nathan. It never has.’

  ‘You’re my wife. You shouldn’t be shagging someone else.’

  ‘Nathan, our marriage is a sham. It has been for years. I’m surprised one of us hasn’t done anything before now …’

  ‘You mean you’re surprised you haven’t?’

  ‘If I’m honest, yes. I needed to get away for my own sanity. I didn’t expect to meet anyone, nor did I go looking for it, if that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t know what’ll happen. It’s early days.’

  ‘Why would he want to get into a relationship with som
eone with three kids?’

  ‘Simon loves children.’

  ‘Does he have any of his own?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does that not strike you as a bit weird?’

  ‘Not at all. If he wants to be with me then he knows I come with baggage.’

  ‘Is that how you described your daughters?’

  Laura snorted down the phone. ‘Good try at winding me up, Nathan, but I’m above that sort of comment now. I just need someone to hold me and tell me everything is going to be okay.’

  ‘I could do that, Laura. I used to do that.’

  ‘I know you did, but I don’t believe you any more; nothing about us works. We’re broken. Our marriage is broken and it’s not fixable.’

  ‘We could—’

  She interrupted. ‘No, Nathan, we couldn’t, and I don’t want to, that’s the thing. If someone came along and said, “Here, take this pill and everything will be okay between you and Nathan,” I wouldn’t take it. It’s over. You need to accept that, Nathan. We can’t keep going over this old ground. It’s not good for anyone.’

  They were both silent for a few moments before Laura said, ‘Anyway, that’s why I’m not coming back for Easter. I did think about it, but I couldn’t deal with the arguments and resentment, so I think it’s best if I’m away. I’ll bring them back on the Sunday and you can have them until they go back to school.’

  Nathan hated the fact she’d started seeing someone else, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He didn’t want it to eat him up inside and destroy what little self-confidence he had left so he had to try and learn to live with it. His marriage had been a sham for a while, he knew that – although he’d tried to fool himself otherwise. He’d started to wonder if Laura had been unfaithful before, but he’d stopped himself. That train of thought would take him to another dark place he didn’t want to visit.

  *

  He’d made it to Wednesday and the girls had been away for six days now. He missed them, but they were due back on Sunday, so he had a few more days to kill. Daisy and Chloe had been excited to be going on a long train journey, but Millie knew the reality of the situation and had been difficult and huffy. However, at the age of ten she still did what her mother told her, albeit reluctantly. Laura had moved to a larger flat a few weeks ago and had tried to placate her with a room of her own. It didn’t work.