Nobody Loves a Ginger Baby by Laura Marney Read Free Book Online Page B

you’re so far away.’
    ‘Och well, you know what I mean. Email me Daphne, I’m on hotmail, Albert set up an account for me. I’ll send you some pictures of the kids tomorrow, they’re a couple of wee smashers. Albert’s here, do you want a word?’
    ‘No Mum, actually I’m on my way out the door, going out tonight.’
    It’s another five minutes before Daphne gets her mum off the phone. She holds the empty whisky glass over her face, like an oxygen mask, breathing in the fumes.

Chapter 7
    He quite literally bumped into her. On the Underground he had been strap-hanging but stood freestyle, legs wide for balance, just for a second, to put his ticket in his pocket. In that second the train jolted and launched him into her arms.
    He didn’t even have to see her face to know it was her. Her fleeting embrace, more to protect herself than to catch him, was so sweetly familiar it made him want to cry. Her perfume, no, it wasn’t even perfume, it was her smell, the smell that no other woman had, smelled like home. The atmosphere around her seemed to be vibrating, like jungle drums beating out a message that only he could understand: yes, this is right, yes, this is right.
    Up until that moment he hadn’t even seen her on the train. They were only a few feet from each other but on the Underground in the morning rush hour no one looked at anyone else. Not even their ex-wives. He wouldn’t have spotted the woman that he’d worked with and dated, and slept with, and fallen in love with, and married, and bought his first car with, and developed a drinking problem with, and fought with and whose CDs he’d smashed and photos he’d ripped, the woman he’d divorced.
    If he hadn’t put his ticket in his pocket at just that moment, or if he’d fallen to the left on to the fat man on the other side of the carriage, his life, and her life, and Daphne’s life, would have gone on exactly the same.
    The train was so noisy it was pointless trying to speak. He mouthed the word ‘sorry’ and she nodded her acceptance. It was just as easy as that. Sorry for all the shit, the tantrums and paranoia, sorry for the ugly angry stuff, sorry for divorcing you, sorry I wasever stupid enough to walk away, sorry.
    Okay, forget it, she nodded.
    She looked so much older. Fifteen years ago, on their honeymoon , lying in bed chatting, too tired for sex, she’d asked if he would still love her when she developed jowls like her mother and a sagging turkey neck like her TV star aunty. He said he could hardly wait, that he’d probably love her best when she was old. Then she couldn’t leave him for someone handsome; she’d have to depend on him not leaving her. Looking at her now, at 8.15am without the benefit of soft lighting or make up, there was no disguising the gravitational pull and weight of the years. And it was true; he loved her. What must she see when she looked at him?
    Though he was eight years younger than Bertha, the clock was running at the same rate for everyone. He was not ageing well; he knew it. It wasn’t his fault; it wasn’t as though he didn’t try. He didn’t smoke, he tried to eat healthily and played football twice a week, but he couldn’t fight his genes. Donnie came from a long line of wasters: puny disease-prone alcoholic smokers, generations who had abused their lungs and livers and hearts. When members of his family died, from their heart attack/ stroke/ cancer – one or two of his bad boy uncles had the hat-trick – nobody paid inheritance tax. There was no estate to be fought over. They bestowed the only thing they had: their sorry DNA. His dad was barely fifty and fucked with the fags and drink. They were a family neither blessed with good health nor longevity. As far back as they could tell no male member had made it past their 63rd birthday. That’s why Donnie so resented the compulsory pension scheme at work; he would never live to see it.
    He was mortified to be caught wearing this jacket. It was