Nothing to Lose

by Anna Legat

  ‘Sorry, you parked me in,’ the handyman told Trevor. ‘Can you move your car?’

  ‘My car?’

  ‘That silver Skoda, it is yours?’

  Trevor looked at Sandra for answers, but she only rolled her eyes and disappeared in the kitchen. He had to step outside with her lover to sort out parking issues. ‘Oh that! Yes!’ he exclaimed rather too affably, ‘That’s my car. Let me get it out of your way. Sorry, what was I thinking!’

  ‘No problem! No rush!’ Mr Handy smiled, a twinkle in his eye telling Trevor he regarded him an idiot. His teeth were surprisingly white and in stark contrast with his face, which was well ploughed with deep wrinkles and the colour of tobacco stains. How did the two of them find each other, Trevor marvelled, there was no accounting for taste. Yet he didn’t begrudge Sandra her little bit on the side. She was a big girl and their days of euphoria had long gone... Had they ever had days of euphoria? Hours? Just one fleeting moment? Trevor couldn’t remember. It had been a well dragged-out marriage.

  He strolled towards his car, a spring in his step. The encounter with lover boy had put that spring in there. My, my, what was Sandra getting up to now that the kids had grown and no longer needed her undivided attention! Was she and Mr Handy doing it in their marital bed? On second thoughts Trevor didn’t wish to take that image any further. It was getting too close for comfort to the idea of him speculating about his own parents and how they did it (if they were still at it). Funny that, Sandra had grown on him and into him to the extent that he now thought of her more as a parental figure than a wife. Or even just a woman.

  He reversed with a revving engine and without looking back. His back wheels caught the raised kerb and the engine died out. The jerk brought Trevor back to reality. The handyman drove away, taking his tools and Trevor’s daydream away with him.

  Trevor restarted the engine, and quickly turned it off. It would be wise to check the state of the rear tyre out of Sandra’s sight. She wouldn’t see him in the street, behind the hedge. She wouldn’t know he had possibly torn his tyre into the pavement. And what she didn’t know she wouldn’t be able to use against him. Gingerly, he stole to the back of his Skoda. The hub cap had come off (not for the first time and Trevor knew how to clip it back in place), but so had a part of the kerb. It had crumbled into bits of crushed concrete. Small consolation, but still...

  *

  Sandra was busy mopping the kitchen floor. Her bony arse zigzagged behind the mop. There was a fair bit of water on the floor and the cupboard under the sink gaped open with all its contents pouring out alongside the water. A small plumbing disaster. Or a large one, depending on the perspective of the onlooker. Of course that explained – and justified – the presence of the handyman, and rather dashed Trevor’s hopes of an illicit sexual liaison taking place prior to his arrival. That and Sandra’s acerbic remark, ‘If only you’d bothered to spend any time at home this wouldn’t’ve happened! It’s ruined!’

  ‘What happened?’ Trevor didn’t know why he asked for further clarification.

  She turned round, her face flushed livid red with the effort of mopping or just another menopausal flush (or both), and thrust the mop into his hand. ‘A burst pipe happened! I asked you hundreds of times to do something about the leak! Now you can just mop the floor. And it cost us a hundred and twenty quid – just the callout fee!’

  Wondering what leak and how come pipes burst in the middle of summer, Trevor rolled up his sleeves and said nothing. After all, she hadn’t asked him to speak.

  *

  It was uncanny how the machine of domesticity worked: by seven the dinner was on the table and the boys had swarmed on it. Nothing – not even the Great Flood – could sabotage Sandra’s efficiency. It was clinical. Nothing could deter the boys from food. For them it was the survival of the fittest. Interestingly, they would be nowhere in sight throughout the day, hiding in their rooms with headphones on, loitering in the streets aimlessly, pretending to hang out with friends, but the moment they smelled dinner they were at it like flies. Or the aforementioned biblical locust.

  Trevor cowered at the head of the table, expecting an onslaught. Grievances had been piling up of late – an endless procession of Trevor’s failures and inadequacies. He would prefer if the inquisition wasn’t conducted in front of the boys, but Sandra didn’t mind. It would stay within their four walls. No one would know. He had it coming.

  Surprisingly, she was pleasantly civil – served spaghetti Bolognese with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese and a glass of red in the fancy glasses she had inherited from her grandmother. Special occasion glasses. Trevor stopped to think. A special occasion? Had she gone and got a job? She was a pharmacist – could earn decent money. That would help. It would certainly make his disclosure more palatable. The Bolognese would go down smoothly. As it were it was choking him and making swallowing difficult. He had to focus all his energy on the act of eating.

  Sandra said, ‘So? Don’t you have anything to tell us?’

  A long piece of spaghetti had made its way into Trevor’s windpipe. He coughed.

  ‘Pass us some water, Brad, please.’

  He took his time to drink and gather his thoughts. Then he said, ‘Tell you what?’ It was better than nothing. At least he was maintaining conversation at the table.

  ‘I need new trainers.’ Unexpectedly Ross came to the rescue.

  ‘What happened to the old ones?’

  ‘Fell apart.’

  ‘You lost them!’ With a brother like Nathan who needed enemies?

  ‘I didn’t lose them,’ Ross hissed at him.

  ‘Oh yeah? So where are they?’

  ‘I don’t have them.’

  ‘Cos you lost them!’

  ‘I threw them away, dickhead!’

  Trevor’s can we please cease swearing at the dinner table was drowned in a crossfire of colourful epithets and verbal hate-mail. Ross had the last word, ‘I threw them away because they fell apart. Twat!’

  If Trevor hoped the fight between his younger twins had saved his skin, he was wrong. It had passed totally unacknowledged by Sandra. ‘So,’ she repeated, ‘you were late for a reason, I take it?’

  ‘Late?’

  ‘Stop repeating everything I say, for God’s sake Trevor! What time do you finish school? You came home at half six! Wouldn’t you call that late? Wouldn’t you like to tell us why? Is it too much to hope that you got that department head at last? You did, didn’t you? That’s why you’re late, right? Hurn took you to one side after school, after they went home and he told you, didn’t he? You got the promotion? That’s why I opened the wine. Don’t tell me I wasted a good bottle of wine!’ She was semi-frowning, semi-smiling – all together a strange mixture of facial contortions. That explained why she wasn’t all that angry with him about the burst pipe. The burst pipe paled in the face of promotion. She had it all worked out. There was no contradicting Sandra. Trevor would not contemplate such an unwise move. He had to go with the flow. She had already decided he got the job. There were no alternatives. Trevor said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, you got it!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I knew it! I knew Hurn would keep it secret until the last day of school. At last!’ She beamed and poured herself a glass of red. She saluted Trevor. ‘Damned Hurn! He knows how to keep you on your toes. He’s kept you waiting long enough!’

  ‘Does that mean I can have new trainers?’ Ross interjected.

  ‘If he gets new trainers, me too!’

  ‘I suppose we can go on a shopping spree, just this once.’ Was she already pissed? Sandra didn’t do shopping sprees – she purchased necessities.

  Brad and James smirked at each other and, what’s more, Brad had the audacity to wink at his father! As if they were in on some sordid secret! As if! What were they thinking? How dared they doubt his word? Trevor was livid. Little shits!

  *

  Giacomo was sailing home. It had been a long day. He had taken that last call as he was leav
ing, after Francine had already packed and gone home. Theoretically it was after hours. The woman sounded desperate, couldn’t wait till the morning – burst pipe. He could do with a bit on the side so he had said yes, he would be there in half an hour; the address was in Sexton’s Canning, on his way home. Megan and her warm bosom would have to wait a little bit longer.

  It turned out it wasn’t a burst pipe, just a worn valve, but the stupid female had gone under the sink and tried to fix it by herself, pulled the thing from the bracket and dislodged it. Flood happened. Water under the sink, in the cupboard, spilling onto the floor and seeping under the loosely fitted lino – amateur’s job. Giacomo hated dilettantes! What had made the woman think she could do it? What made her think she knew the first thing about it? And even as he was sorting out her mess, his arse soaking wet on the flooded floor, she stood there over his head, watching him like a hawk. What did she think he would do – steal her bleach bottle and rubber gloves? She didn’t even pretend she was there for the company. Didn’t speak, just watched him work. Giacomo regretted taking this job. He should be home with Megan, his hand on her soft belly, not in a cold cupboard with damp rising to his nostrils. The woman didn’t as much as offer him a cup of coffee. Just stood there, watching, ugly thing that she was: square and gristly like a dog’s bone. So Giacomo’s hourly rate had instantly gone up by twenty quid. He felt sorry for the bloke who by all accounts looked like her husband: a beaten-up type, a sort of palsied gnome. He had walked into that house like it was a scaffold with a noose hanging above it. Giacomo was a lucky man because he was flying home. Every day he sprang wings and flew home where his gorgeous wife was floating in her silky gowns.

  He knew Ryan the cousin was there – his racer-boy Vauxhall with low suspension was sitting in front of the house, right wheels on the pavement. At least he hadn’t parked himself in front of Giacomo’s garage as he had done in the past, forcing Giacomo to leave his van with all his tools in the street. Giacomo was a man of principle: his car, his space.

  His wife...

  She kept telling him how Ryan was her cousin, but Giacomo clearly remembered the first time he had met the bastard – she’d told him then they knew each other from school. Of course they could be cousins who had gone to the same school, but somehow Giacomo didn’t believe that. He certainly couldn’t remember that particular cousin from their wedding, and he would’ve noticed him: mean, lean, young bastard whose beer consumption hadn’t yet caught up with him. Giacomo was finely tuned to competition.

  He took his time to reverse into the garage, doing a three-point turn in front of the kitchen window. He shut the garage door with a bang, made lots of noise at the front door, pretending to be looking for his key. Consciously he would never admit he was warning them of his arrival, but somewhere at the back of his mind that is exactly what he was doing. He didn’t have the confidence to walk in on them and take them by surprise. The mere realisation that he was doing this repulsed him. Was he so insecure? So afraid? So old.

  When had he stopped trusting Megan?

  He had no time to dwell on this question. Behind the front door was something heavy and bulky that was preventing him from entering his own house. ‘Megan!’ he shouted. ‘There’s something –’

  She emerged from the lounge, her face glowing – a radiant hint of pink that blended into her tight strapless top which was also pink and glittery. Giacomo noted she wasn’t wearing a bra under that top so her breasts were free to flow and ebb as she hurried to the door. ‘Oh blimey! Sorry, Jammie! It’s Ryan’s bags. Ryan, can you move the bags?’

  As Ryan flew from the lounge and began pulling a sizeable backpack followed by a bulging training bag from behind the front door, Giacomo had just a split second to contemplate the unthinkable: has the cousin moved in with them?

  ‘Sorry, Giacomo! Here you go!’ Ryan opened the door wide for him, welcoming Giacomo into his own house. ‘How you doing, mate?’

  Giacomo wasn’t doing very well at all. He was feeling slightly giddy, his still wet trousers glued to his arse and the back of his legs, sweat suddenly springing alongside his hairline and armpits. Normally, he would steal a kiss from his treasured wife and jump into the shower to wash off the grime of his day and make himself presentable for her. Making himself presentable was taking longer and longer these days, but she was worth it. She didn’t deserve a dirty, sweaty, slightly older man sharing a meal with her. Normally, there’d be a meal – home cooking was what his mother used to do for his father back in Italy. It was a tradition, and Giacomo was big on tradition: husband, the breadwinner; wife, the homemaker. Family. Home cooking, naturally. It was the bare necessity of family life, except today there wasn’t a whiff of any cooking in the air, and Giacomo wouldn’t go to have a shower first because he had to sit down here and now, before he fainted.

  ‘Ryan’s ordered pizza. You love pizza, Jammie,’ Megan was telling him as if he didn’t know, as if he was a child. ‘Deep pan, your favourite. He offered. I couldn’t say no –’

  ‘I wouldn’t take no for an answer!’ the bastard grinned. ‘You doing me a big favour, I mean.’

  ‘What favour?’ Giacomo was finding it hard to follow. He was blinking rapidly, the English language was becoming more foreign by the minute.

  ‘As I was telling you... Did you pay attention? Yesterday – I told you. You don’t ever pay attention to what I’m saying, do you?’ Megan formed that cute little pout that she did sometimes when she wanted something really badly. Giacomo was partial to that pout, he couldn’t resist it. Generally, he wouldn’t resist it but today his brain was mushy peas and he couldn’t quite make out what the pout was all about.

  ‘Putting me up. For a few days, I mean. Just to tide me over.’

  ‘I told you, Jammie! Don’t tell me you can’t remember. I told you yesterday: Ryan’s landlord was giving him grief, this and that, nothing proper. If you ask me he’s just a bully and Ryan was right to get out of there,’ she gave the bastard a tender look, sympathy, glee, and something else – something only the two of them were in on – fluttering with her heavily made up eyelashes. ‘I said, straightaway I said, “Ryan, you must come and stay with us. You must! What family are for?” I knew you would of said the same if you were me.’ Now she was gazing – pouting – at Giacomo.

  ‘Staying here? In this house?’

  ‘Where else? I couldn’t let him sleep rough. I couldn’t. No one would. You wouldn’t, would you?’ There was genuine puzzlement in her round blue eyes. Perhaps Giacomo was a bit too hard on her. She was only trying to be helpful. That’s the kind of woman she was – giving, kind. People like that Ryan would take advantage of her generosity, but he was another kettle of fish altogether. That couldn’t be blamed on Megan.

  ‘No, course not. How long for?’

  She beamed and kissed him on his sweaty head. ‘I knew you’d say yes. I know you inside out.’

  ‘Thanks, Giacomo!’ The bastard moved towards Giacomo, threatening to kiss him too. ‘I thought I’d help with the light fittings. Megan’s been on about it. The least I could do...’

  ‘Light fittings? What’s wrong with our light fittings?’

  ‘Aw, you don’t have to! You really don’t! I told you, Jammie, I told you about the light fittings. I really like the ones that look like candle holders. Saw them in that magazine you brought the other day. Remember?’

  He nodded. In fact, he couldn’t remember. He could not remember anything anymore, but he didn’t want to upset his wife. She meant well. Of course, she did. And she was so beautiful and her breasts bounced towards his face when she kissed him on the head, and now her nipples were two raised buttons under the glittery fabric of her pink top. He couldn’t say no to that! And at the end of the day, he was still her husband. She would be sleeping in his bed, by his side. They would have sex – husband and wife. Ryan the cousin would be camping in the spare room. Only for a few days. Giacomo would keep an eye on him. Maybe he would take a few days off to help with the li
ght fittings.

  *

  Trevor had a date. He had been fantasising about it the whole weekend. The woman had crawled under his skin and was... well, fucking with his head. This was the only way to describe it, because he had spent every conscious (and semi-conscious) hour of the day and night thinking about her. Why and how she had chosen him in the stream of hundreds of morning commuters Trevor could not tell. He did not fancy himself as particularly handsome – he wasn’t given to delusions. He was an average, ordinary man. Yet, she had got her tentacles into him and wouldn’t let him go. All that circling she had been doing, following him, closing up on him, overtaking... it was a mating dance. Now she was sure he had noticed her at last. She had smiled at him in the car park. She was pleased he had caught up with her.

  What would come next?

  Trevor had given it a lot of thought. He would let her take the lead. He hadn’t done anything like this before. He would follow her wherever she wanted to take him. She must have planned it well in advance. It was bound to be her place – a flat with a large, king-size bed, red silk sheets, crumpled from when she had got up in the morning and couldn’t be bothered to make it. The bed would still be warm and would smell of her. Trevor would never be able to describe that smell in words, but his brain would inhale it and memorise it for ever. She would shed her clothes on the floor, firstly the one-button jacket; then she would unzip her skirt and wriggle her hips to let it slip down on a soft fluffy carpet; she would step out of the skirt, still wearing her killer-heels and sheer stockings held by a black lace suspender belt, no knickers. Her pussy would be deliciously exposed. She would undo the buttons of her white blouse, slowly, seductively, one by one, letting him watch but not letting him help. The shirt would drift to the floor revealing a black lace bra – not the push-up variety, but just thin lace wrapped around her tits. She would undo her bra and let those tits loose. It would be a holy sight – a hallelujah scream! This would be where he wouldn’t be able to hold back any longer. He’d pounce on her, she would free-fly backwards onto the red silk sheets and the whole bed would tremble. The springs would begin to creak and the headboard would be set in motion banging against the wall with every thrust.