Zodiac's toy - John Jones (bill gates best books txt) 📗

high every time you saw them, who were never seen without a cigarette between their nicotine-stained fingers. People who spent twenty-four seven feeding their habits.

"Come on, out!" Lee shouted, and they all managed to shuffle down the stairs, and Lee opened the entrance, nodding outwards.

"Go on, fuck off". Like zombies, they moaned and staggered aimlessly into the car-park. When the last one left he slammed the door, and a light-bulb went on in his mind.

My money.

He ran up the stairs into his flat and moved the mattress. Everything was still there. He sighed with relief. I really need to hide that properly, he thought, but I'll count it again.

He went into Ray's flat, and there was a man on the sofa he had deliberately not thrown out.

Blotto. Blotto who was awake and looking up at Lee with a smile on his face.

"I've got a proposition for you," he said, "Fancy some work?"

 

Ray woke up on the floor beside his bed with a banging head-ache, but five minutes later was sat at the table in front of a steaming cup of tea, half an hour before he had to go to work. This will never clear up before then, he thought, but this was the price to pay, and he knew he would be stealing more cigarettes and bottles.

When he was ready to leave, he shrugged on his jacket and was at the top of the stairs when he heard laughing coming from Victor's flat. It sounded like him as well.

Curiosity caused him to walk in there. The laughing was coming from the bedroom. The door was wide open and he could see Victor lying on the bed in tears of laughter. His shirt was open.

"Ray," he said, "Come and look at this". Ray entered and Victor gestured to his chest.

"Look what some-one has drawn on me. I love it". Ray saw that, in thick black ink, like that of a felt-tip marker, somebody had drawn an accurate outline.

Of a crab.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 15

 

Mandy Summers sent a text to Caroline on her break-time from her work at a nursery in her Mini-Cooper, trying to hold back tears.

'He's left me again'. Carl, her childhood sweetheart, was a rather loose cannon. A free-spirit, but not in the traveller sense, in the 'I-want-to-see-the-world' sense. A person who could never make up his mind about anything. He wanted to get married, then he didn't. He wanted children, then he didn't. When he did, and Mandy agreed, she was mid-way through her pregnancy when he told her get an abortion. 'Told' her. 'I don't want no bloody kids', but while Mandy was usually rather passive and humble and usually let Carl get his way, when it came to children a mother's instinct was ruthless. She was keeping the baby, and that was that.

Carl had nowhere to go. He wasn't violent, and had to accept with a sour face the fact he was to become a father, until he left her with the prospect of being a single mother. Not the first time he had had her in tears.

So off he went, 'I-don't-wanna-be-a-dad', to London, '...’cos-there’s-loadsa-good-jobs-down-there'.

Except there wasn't. He found a job as part-time glass collector in a wine-bar.

Yet after a day, and the huge city looming over him as if it was getting ready to chew him up and spit him out, he came crawling back, his mind changed. 'I'd-love-to-be-a-dad'.

He was fairly decent for a while, settled with a job as a kitchen porter, but again he felt constrained, and decided he wanted to study to become a vet, so he signed up for courses, but soon the work became overwhelming and difficult for him.

There was a job in Cardiff which he applied for, and got an interview. Customer service in a call-centre for an energy company.

'You're holding me back Mandy', and off he went, staying down in Cardiff. He was down there for two weeks, got the job, but could only hack it for three days. The city didn't offer much more for him, and he gave serious thought to going abroad. There was fruit-picking in Holland somewhere he had heard.

Yet, the lure of safety, of comfort, led him to get a train back to Mandy. However, Mandy didn't want him back.

So the prospect of singledom, of having no job, with no real fixed abode was a rather scary notion for him, and so he pleaded with Mandy to take him back.

There wasn't really much pleading to do. She took him back, but within a week he was off again. The lure of pastures new was too much. He decided to join the army reserves, but they took one look at him and decided he wasn't for them, but he had the military in mind, and went to the naval reserve, and the royal artillery, but for all his talk and self-promotion, none of them took him in, and his vision of standing on the bow of a battleship armed with a rifle coming into dock was just that, a vision, which is as close as he would ever get.

So back to Mandy he came, who refused to take him back again.

‘Nope, not this time’.

‘Please’.

‘No’.

‘Please’.

‘No’.

‘Oh please I won't do it again I promise’.

‘You promise?’

This time he was back for a year, and Mandy found herself pregnant. Carl was non-plussed, and with two months to go, he found a prospect of work on a cruise-line, sailing from port to port around the Mediterranean, and off he went to Southampton for an interview to work behind the bar in a ship, but when he got there the position was taken, and he hung around making a nuisance of himself, got a job on another cruise-line as a glass collector.

However, before sailing day, he had a crisis of conscience, and was sorely tempted to set foot on the ship, but he watched it leave the port, and made his way back to Mandy.

‘I'm not taking you back’.

‘I did it for you and the baby’.

‘Really..?’

With Mandy working in a nursery, she was sometimes required in various nurseries around the city, which meant she would always go back to the same house wherever she went, but a temporary posting up in Blackpool meant three months away.

Arguments ensued.

'You're not going'

'Yes I am'.

'What about the baby?'

'She's coming with me'.

'No. You're not going'.

Carl eventually wore her down, and the doubts, put there by him, festered in her mind until she eventually agreed.

'Alright, I'll stay'.

 

So it went on. He would stay awhile, then see a prospect in the distance and leave. Her friends, just shy of calling her stupid wondered why she put up with him, because on some of his trysts away, they were not always job related.

He was on several dating websites and would sometimes message women. Mostly he would not receive a reply, but occasionally he would engage in conversation, and when he thought something might come of it, off he would go.

'I'm leaving you Mandy I've found someone else,' said a note on the kitchen table. Cue Mandy's tears. Cue Carl's return with his tail between his legs the following day.

'I'm not taking you back'.

'Ah babes...I'm sorry. That was definitely the last time...I promise'.

'No...definitely?’

Sometimes she would find his phone unattended, and scroll through and find that he has been sending 'dick pics' to various women.

'Hi gorgeous. Think you can take this on?'. There was one reply to such a request, as most women thought that any man who sent those pictures were 'sad losers', there were those out there that would respond in a positive way. They were rare, but they did exist, and one such woman replied:

'I know what to do with that. Let me show you'. So off he went again, texting Mandy:

'Sorry, I found someone else. Bye'.

However, slinking back again, Mandy really did try and put her foot down.

'No chance. You're not coming back here'

'Please'

'No way'

'Oh please...babes. That was definitely the last time I promise, and the kids need a father'.

So on it went, time and again. Three years was the most he hung on for before following some mythical pipe-dream and discovering it was an illusion, sliding his way back into Mandy's good books.

This time was no different. He had decided he wanted to go mountaineering, and thought it looks easy enough. How hard can it be? He wasn't exactly climbing Mount Everest, but Snowdon, Tryfell and Glyder Fach, and while he was there he would find a nice woman with similar interests and they would 'get-back-to-nature' and live off the land and start a farm.

Mandy knew that even if he should find such a woman, it wouldn't be long before she would be in tears as well because he would be off again when something else catches his eye, but Mandy, at the back of her mind always guessed he would be back, but it was never guaranteed. Maybe he really was going to start a farm. Maybe he really was going to work on cruise ships. Maybe he really would get with a woman who said yes to a 'cock pic'.

While she never exactly waited for him to return, venturing out into the single world was a daunting prospect for her. She was safe in her bubble. Telling herself there was no rush for a man. Two kids, a house, a job. She was fine.

She tried to convince herself on some lonely nights curled up on the sofa with a cup of hot chocolate, watching television. Maybe it would be nice to cuddle up to someone, but having to start all over again with a new man was something that filled her with apprehension. 'Hi, what are your interests? I like this this and this, but I don't like this this and that'. Dating was basically an interview process. 'Getting-to-know-you' with each having to prove to the other they were not a 'freaky weirdo'. At least she knew Carl, knew his foibles and faults, and there were good points too. Sometimes he made her laugh, and bought take-aways for them, and tidied up, even the children's bedrooms, but mostly he was just 'around', just being Carl. Nothing remotely unique about him. He wasn't handsome or ugly, just a bland guy you forget the second you look away.

There were more cons than pros in their relationship. He would complain about her sometimes, put her down, tell her she looks 'cheap' and that she was stupid. She was asked occasionally what she ever saw in him, and why she's still with him. Why hadn't she dumped him years ago? Mandy never really had an answer. Why does the wife stay with the violent husband? What is it about being single, about what's over the horizon that's so scary? Whatever is over there can't be worse than staying, but stay they did, and Mandy had a similar state of mind. She was so embedded in the comfort zone, even though there was hardly much comfort there at all, getting out would be difficult, because even if she was to meet somebody else, there would be a lot of emotional 'baggage', and getting her mind-set locked into somebody new would prove to be hard because they would be taking Carl's place, or she would be taking the place of somebody on his side. Either way, it was a daunting prospect, and she stayed, because here she knew where she was.

Mandy never tried to escape, but knew she could if she wanted. If she really tried. The door was open to leave, but it was too difficult. Carl knew what side his bread was buttered on. Knew Mandy would relent in the end. Perhaps because she wanted to. She thought she loved him. Carl played with her emotions enough for her to not know exactly whether she loved him or not. Perhaps it was somewhere in the middle. She had 'affection' for him. Sometimes.

'See ya babe' was his text.

He'd got some basic mountaineering equipment and caught the train. She often wondered why she cried for him at all. He annoyed