by Haydn Wilks
“Oh.”
“You know what the other kids called me? Barney the pervy eyenosaur. Chad Matthews, that was their ringleader. Everyday he used to call me that. I’d go to the toilet during class and cry, then I’d come back once I’d dried the tears off, and the teacher would give me a bollocking for taking too long. And do you know where Chad Matthews is now? Working at Homebase. I saw him there about a month ago. Me and Liz went to pick out a new bathroom set-up. We said ‘alright’ to each other, but it occurred to me; if he’s working at Homebase, he can’t be making much above minimum wage, can he? How long do you reckon it’d take to afford a new bathroom set-up if you were earning minimum wage?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s minimum wage now, Jim?”
“I think it’s about seven pounds twenty,” Jim says.
“Seven twenty,” Barney repeats. “Well, this bathroom set-up we picked out cost about four grand. How many hours is Chad Matthews going to have to work at minimum wage to afford one of those?”
There’s a silence as everyone in the room runs calculations through their head; you go backwards from 4200, six-hundred times seven, then freeze up, trying to work out how you can factor in the extra twenty pence per hour and £200 off the total from there.
“About six hundred hours,” Jim says.
You stare at him with a flash of anger in your eyes; he’s clearly used the same method as you and not bothered with the extra.
“About six hundred hours!” Barney exclaims. “Now, four grand ain’t loose change for me, but it’ll take me a damn sight less than six hundred hours to save that up. See, what I’m saying, Rhys, is the only person that can you confidence is you. You are the master of your own destiny; if you want something, go for it.”
His words echo against the dialtone in your headset for the next forty, fifty, minutes, until it becomes clear what they mean for you.
“Hello,” a weary female voice says to you.
“Hi, this is Rhys Davies calling you back from Go! Life, I was just calling you back with regards to a free life insurance policy review we were conducting for you.”
“What?”
You pause; does she want me to repeat the whole thing? You highlight her postcode in Callexand copy and paste it into Google. 33 Ross Close, Chipping Sodbury.Chipping Sodbury? It doesn’t sound real. Alison on the opposite row of computers looks uneasily at you oddly smirking to yourself.
“It was about a free life insurance policy review—”
You’re cut off as a baby starts wailing in the background. Victoria Henbridge sighs loudly on the opposite end of the phone call. “Is this is a sales call?”
“No—”
“Are you calling from our existing insurance provider?”
“No, but—”
The call ends, softly clicking into dailtone. Your headset falls silent; the onus is on you to hang up. You leave the call connected and check Google Maps; Chipping Sodbury. You zoom out, noting the M4, Bath, Bristol, the Severn Bridge; you click the directions box, type Cardiff, click again, type Chipping Sodbury. 1 h 1 minby car (51.6 miles);you don’t drive though. 1 h 12 minby train; they run every half hour or so.
You’re still staring at the screen, mind a blank slate of possibilities, when Victoria lifts the receiver again. Your cursor flies across the screen, back to Callex, and cuts the call off. You jot the address down in your notebook.
50 Ross Close, Chipping Sodbury.
“You heard the latest on that missing baby?” Jake says, outside on fag break.
You fumble a cig out your packet, panic hitting.
“Nah,” Craig says, tapping fag ash.
“He’s run off to join ISIS.”
Craig smirks then laughs hard. Michaela gasps before joining in. You make a bit too much of a show of it, and Jake hits you with a quizzical look. “You enjoyed that one, didn’t you, Sicko?”
You stop laughing and look him in the eye. He shifts his glance to Michaela.
“That’s awful,” she says. “Have there seriously been no news on what happened to him?”
“Nah,” Craig says.
“I reckon it’s probably one of them immigrants what nicked it,” Keith says. “There were a load of them on the loose from that centre near town, weren’t there?”
“What would they be doing with a baby though?” Michaela asks.
“Probably fucking it,” Keith says, smirking at Craig and Jake and you in turn, hoping to draw some laughter, “or eating it, knowing them lot.” Keith cracks up.
Jake forces a smile to alleviate the awkwardness.
“I hope they catch the cunt, anyway,” you say. “Fucking bastard.” You take a drag on your cigarette. “They ought to bring hanging back for cunts like that.”
Bring back hanging, you repeat to yourself, back at the computer. You said that yesterday. You dispassionately blow through your spiel again and again, call after call, nobody interested. This is shit, you think to yourself. How much worse could prison be, really? Probably be better, in a way; you wouldn’t have to do this shit to get the money to live. No: free accommodation, three square meals a day, a prison library, probably access to a PlayStation. They’ll probably even have a gym. You’ve never actually set foot in a gym before; the price has always put you off. Thirty-odd quid a month, and there’s no guarantee you’d actually bother going there anyway. But if it was free, it’d be alright. You’d probably actually be living a healthier lifestyle if you went inside. And chances are you’ll get found out now anyway, what with Emma tossing the skeleton out with the rest of the household waste. They’ll be able to work out you’ve carved the meat off it. No way you get anything less than a life sentence. And there’s no way you could get anything more than a life sentence. You think about how the Welsh acquired the nickname sheep shaggers; back in the day, the penalty for stealing a sheep to eat was hanging, but if you got caught buggering one, you’d be shipped off to start a new life in the colonies. It doesn’t work like that with babies, you argue against your tangent. That’s not the point though, is it. Play the system. If you’re going down anyway, you might as well make the most of it. 50 Ross Close. Chipping Sodbury. You look at the address you jotted down earlier.50 Ross Close. You ignore the dailtoneechoing in your headset and tap the address into Google Maps again. You remember the baby you heard crying out in the background. Chipping Sodbury. Next thing you know, you’re in a dialtone-induced trance booking train tickets. Cardiff to Chipping Sodbury, 10.10am, Saturday. 1h 12m, change at Bristol Parkway. £12.60 off-peak day return.After the deed’s done, you scold yourself something fierce – What the fuck are you thinking? Are you trying to get caught? You know damn well the government have instructed Internet Service Providers to keep a record of all citizens’ internet traffic. Yeah, and? It’s not your private connection, is it? And what difference does it make either way – all you’ve done is use the net to book a train ticket. And there’s not even any crime connected to it yet. You’ve not yet been to Sodding Chipbury. Chipping Sodbury. Nothing untoward has happened there. Yet. And do you think that’s what happens whenever there’s a big crime – the police start combing through records of train tickets bought and sold to the area? You could’ve just bought a ticket at the station. It would’ve been anonymous that way. Yeah, and that’s why the police don’t comb through the records of train tickets sold every time there’s been a murder. Because most murderers wouldn’t be fucking stupid enough to book their train tickets in advance for the sake of shaving a couple of pence off the cost.
You stop in Tesco on the way home from work and avoid microwaveables, instead picking up a couple of carrots, an onion, some chicken breast, wholegrain pasta and some tomato-heavy pasta sauce. That’s probably what you’re problem is; the shit you eat, you think, queueing up to pay. That’s why you got that burst of mad energy; not to be crude about it, but eating fresh. Eating healthy. You are what you eat. The diet maketh the man. You pay and go home and say hi to Emma and feign inter
est in how her day went, then get to chopping up chicken and veg, and as she’s going on about some dickhead customer who irked her, as if that very same thing or something similar to it hasn’t happened to her every day for the last year or two years or however fucking long she’s been working at Costa, and as she blabbers on, your concentration slips, and so does the knife, and as it cuts through the chicken breast, it slices through your index finger.
You hold it under the tap, cold water washing blood into the drain, as you wince with throbbing pain and try and remember if they ever mentioned in school what to do if you get raw chicken in a cut. You figure there’s got to be consequences, that mingling your blood with uncooked poultry must be every bit as bad for you as eating it, if not worse, but you reason that it’s probably a just punishment, probably the least that you deserve, and you don’t even bother washing your hands before running to the chicken, haphazardly smearing blood all over it, then chuck it in a frying pan and put the kettle on. Dave walks in as you’re pouring boiling water over the wholegrain pasta.
“Bloody hell, soft lad, are you cooking? What’s got into you?” He’s staring at the browning chicken, the bubbling water in the pot full of pasta. “There enough for two?”
“Sure,” you smirk, thinking of the blood you dripped over the chicken.
Your smirk disappears as you realise the act of cooking will sanitise it.
“It’s not exactly Jamie’s Italian, but this ain’t a bad effort for you, soft lad,” Dave says, as you sit and eat in the living room.
Your phone goes off; WhatsApp: Emilia. Hey, what u up to tonite? I think me and some friends are going to the Welsh Club.
Dave looks up from his phone as you look up from yours: “Either of you fancy a few brewskis this evening? Branston says he’s heading to Welsh Club.”
Fucking Branston. “Sure.”
“Can’t tonight,” Emma says. She never can; you never care.
An hour later, you’re walking into town with Dave, swigging cans of San Miguel on the way. You fret over mentioning the girls to him, worried you’ll get him excited, that he’ll cartwheel the whole fucking route to Welsh Club, so you keep schtum, and at Clwb Ifor you’re traipsing round behind him in search of Branston, stealing glances at your phone; Emilia’s pre-drinking, running late, so it’s a couple of beers with dickhead Branston and dickhead Dave, then a Jaeger Bomb, mind on your phone all the while. A shit band’s up first, some folk duo, and Dave gets knocked back a few times too many, and he’s talking of moving on elsewhere, thus you’re forced to break the news to him.
“Fuck me, soft lad, you kept that one quiet.”
So Branston and Dave make crude remarks and you’re forced to grin and banter back on them until the girls arrive, then you’re all smiles to Emilia, but still, Dave’s quick to cartwheeling, making a mockery of himself and all around him, and Branston’s well in on it, the clown’s assistant, tossing custard pies up for Dave to soil himself with. The next band are wank as well, the headline act, Johnny Pulmonary & the Embolisms, twaddling navel-gazing Yank folksy alt-rock, though Emilia seems to enjoy it, then the girls are on about going elsewhere, Emilia and the other two, the mixed race one Dave was trying desperately to get on the first time you met her, and the other one, a pudgy little pig-nosed thing, the prize that awaits whoever out of Branston and Dave fails on securing the fit mixed race one, so they’re both flipping over backward, and Branston’s casting banter at Emilia and all, and soon Dave’s joining in on that, and the mixed race one’s low on cash or something, and she’s turning down all suggestions, and Branston suggests going back to his for drinks, and the dickhead twat’s got a place on Mary’s Street to himself, so of course the girls are well impressed by that, so that’s how you wind up back at Branston’s flat overlooking the city’s main boozy thoroughfare some time between 11 and 12. Branston cracks the Captain Morgan’s Spiced and Coke out, then a little real coke, a line a head, and Dave’s saying “you’ve not got nothing more in have you,” and Branston says he can call someone, but the girls are reticent, so he reaches for the playing cards instead, a shitmix with too much Pitbull playing through shitty laptop speakers on Spotify all the while.
“You girls know how to play shithead?” Branston asks.
None of them do, so he explains it; each person has three cards down, three cards on top of them, three cards in their hand, and whatever’s left over once everyone’s got that in the middle, usually, though this time there’s not enough cards for there to being any left over once you’ve all been dealt your nine starters, and in fact your one short, so someone starts the game with a card-in-hand less than the others, then you get rid of cards as best you can, 10 burning the deck, 7 changing direction, 3 and 2 being put downable at any time, cards having to rise numerically otherwise, with 3 being invisible and 2 starting the count-up over again, putting down of all same-numbered cards at once being encouraged. The girls lose each of the first three games in turn, Emilia’s stumble coming on the second one, and each downs the whole of a strong-mixed Captain & Coke as a result, but they’ve got the hang of it as the cards are dealt out for the fourth time. The Captain Morgan starts running low and Dave suggests going to the shop, but Branston has a rustle around and turns up half a bottle of Japanese whiskey, Suntory Malt, that someone gifted him ages ago, and half a litre of Glenn’s Vodka that’d be best left forgotten, so the drinking turns to barbaric Glenn’s & Suntory shitmixes, as Dave makes his pounce, and tries to make things interesting: “Every time you pick up, take an item of clothing off. Lose the game, get your fucking rat out right off. Or cock. We’re all of us in this one together, lads.”
The girls laugh and are drunk enough to go along with it. You shift uncomfortably in your position seated upon the rugged floor around a coffee table; you wouldn’t mind getting the first non-net broadcast glimpse of female flesh you’ve had in over a year, but you’re not exactly happy for dickhead Dave and dickhead Branston to clasp their dickhead eyes on Emilia’s pale milky awesomeness before you yourself have had chance to get acquainted with it. But the game is on, and it begins with a quick round of high card to decide who benefits from a 52 card deck not mathematically covering all six people’s 3 face-down, 3 face-up and 3 in-the-hand cards. Dave gets an Ace because of course he does, so he gets to start the game with 2 cards in his hand, and he’s responsible for dealing them out. The god-awful Coke-whiskey-vodka cocktails awfulness becomes less apparent by the sip as everyone arranges the three best of their six opening upturned cards upon their three flipped over end-of-gamers. Dave’s only gone and dealt himself three fucking 10s, while Emilia’s got a 7, a Queen, and an Ace, while you’ve got yourself a 2 and two Jacks up-turned, and start with a 6 and two 8s in-the-hand.
“What are we doing with the jokers?” Branston asks.
You mean you and Dave? you want to ask, but don’t, smirking silently to yourself over the quip instead.
“A joker’s nominate,” Dave says. “You can play it whenever, and whoever you choose has to take a bit of kit off.”
Branston starts the game with a 4. The mixed-race girl – Anna, or something like that, you think her name was – puts down a 4, and tries to follow it with a 5 and 6, prompting Branston and Dave to shout about how she can’t do that.
“Sorry,” she says, taking the 5 and 6 back from the cards in the middle.
Dave plays a joker and nominates himself: “Let’s get cracking!” He pulls off his sky blue T-shirt with a picture of a postage stamp bearing Queen Elizabeth’s image, the acronym Q.I.L.F. (Queen I’d Like to Fuck) spelt out beneath it, and hurls it across the room, as the mixed-race girl and the pug nosed fat one whoop and clap.
“So what do I have to do now?” Emilia says, looking at the joker in confusion.
“Beat the four,” Branston tells her. “Joker’s invisible.”
She plays a 5. You put down a 6: two 8s left in-hand.
Pug nose plays two 6s. Branston plays a 7; the direction changes.
“Bloody hell,” pug nose says. She picks all the cards up and takes her black hoodie off.
“Who’s go’s it now?” Anna, or whatever-her-name-is, the mixed race one, asks.
“Mine,” you say, putting your two 8s into the empty space in the middle. You’re the first to offload your in-hand cards.
Emilia plays a 9, Dave follows it with a 2, starting the count-up afresh. Anna (you’re pretty sure it’s Anna) plays a 5. Branston says “I knew you’d do that” and plays a 7 – change of direction, back to Anna.
“So I have to beat a seven? Bastard!” She picks the card up from the middle and takes a shoe off.
“Eh, come off it!” Dave shouts. “Shoes come in pairs, you’ve got to get them both off!”
Anna looks at Branston, and he insists as well. The second shoe comes off. Dave plays a 3 – invisible, meaning Emilia can play anything. She plays a King. You choose a 2 from your three up-turned cards. The fat one frets with the mass of cards in her hands.
“You can play anything,” Dave tells her.
“Yeah, I know, but I’ve got so many, I don’t know what to do with them.”
“Just get rid of as many as possible,” Branston instructs her.
She lays down three 4s.
Branston plays a 3 (invisibile).
“So I have to beat a three?” Anna asks, fretting with her in-hand overload.
“Four!” Dave shouts. “Three’s invisible. You can’t fucking see it. Pretend it don’t even exist.”
Anna squeals and plays a 7, changing direction.
“Thank you very much,” Branston says, playing a King.
Fatty pug-nose plays a Joker. “I’m nominating you!” she yells at Branston.
He kicks his shoes off.
“Your shoes!” Dave shouts. “What a pussy-oh!”
“Early days, mate,” Branston grins.
The joker’s invisible, leaving you to beat a King. You’ve got two Jacks up-turned.
“Pick ‘em up, soft lad!”
You grab the cards and consider whipping your top off, to outdo Dave, but know your mooby call centre-toned paunch will compare unfavourably to Dave’s sickeningly slender top-half, so you kick your shoes off instead.