The Paper Eater by Liz Jensen Read Free Book Online

choose it. When you’re constructing an identity from a set of laundered birth certificates you’ve –
    Well, it was like talking to the wall.
    Some couples just rub along together, as far as I can tell. Not us. Mum, Dad, Uncle Sid, Cameron and Lola remained a big problem in our marriage, even after Tiffany was born. It emerged that one of the Canadian cousins had nosy-parked his way into my Family Room when I was out, and seen what he called my pin-ups. That hadn’t helped, to have Gwynneth’s prejudices confirmed by a third party.
    I didn’t watch the birth, because Gwynneth told me theCustomer Hotline advised not to, but I saw her minutes later. Boy, was she a funny creature. She had a grumpy face and grown-up ears, and when she grabbed on to my finger with her tiny hand with its tiny perfect nails, I fell in love. I’d never had a pet and had always wanted one but this was miles better, I could tell. I had founded a family! A real one!
    – It’s Daddy, I told her. Say hello to Dad!
    But Gwynneth said I was talking too loud and it’d make Tiffany cry, plus she’d catch a chill, and what did I think I was doing, leaving the door open, and couldn’t I see I’d give her all sorts of germs, and they say the father should keep his distance in the first year. And she shooed me away.
    – Go and make money, she said. Go pow-wow with your Hoggs. You’re earning for three now.
    That was the beginning of it, and it didn’t stop. It was Gwynneth’s way of getting back at me for the Hoggs. If I was going to have my own private family members, she was going to have hers.
    – You can’t argue with the logic of it, she told me.
    And she was right, I couldn’t.
    So I did what I knew how to do; I made money, and Gwynneth spent it. She dressed Tiffany in little themed outfits and changed our three-piece suite once a year. She bought novelty garlic-crushers, garden rakes, designer sweatshirts, the same kind of shoes in three different colours, travelling irons, espresso machines, teak coffee tables, opaque plastic salad bowls, self-seeding window-boxes, holidays for her and her mum and Tiffany in Ghana or Lanzarote, bathroom makeovers and exercise videos. She bought wedding presents for her friends when they got married, and sympathy lunches when they divorced, and took Tiffany to Florida for her fifth birthday, to swim with dolphins. When Tiffany was nine, they both joined the Feel Real Club and started doing parachute descents and bungee jumps and white-water rafting.
    And Tiff was a crakko little kid. I’d watch her out of the window wobbling about on her big bike and feel these huge waves of love.
    But me and Gwynneth, we were always dogged by the same old conflict that we dragged around behind us like a ball and chain: money versus the Hoggs. You couldn’t have one without the other, as far as I was concerned. She disagreed. Like all regular arguments, ours took the form of a vicious circle.
    – I just want you to get rid of that family, Gwynneth’d say.
    – But it’s a family business, I’d go. And what would we live on? Thin air?
    Then she’d say something like – You could find a proper job. You’re clever with paperwork, you can do computers and admin and whatever. You could do anything.
    And I’d say – I’m not trained. I’m self-employed. I can’t have a boss, it’s against my nature.
    And she’d say – Well if you don’t, I’m leaving.
    – And Tiffany? I’d go.
    – I just want you to get rid of them, she’d go.
    – And what would we live on? Thin air? I’d go.
    – You could find a proper job, she’d go.
    Etc.
    It would be fair to say that I frustrated Gwynneth. When Tiffany was about ten, she persuaded me to see a stress-management consultant called Geoff, whose sister’s nails she did. I’d sit there in his sissy consulting-room that stank of aromatherapy, trying to understand what Geoff called my ‘demons’, and listening to his suggestions. Such as, I could take Gwynneth to