My four-year-old twin daughters are fighting over a piece of yellow Lego. Rebecca "gobs" (as she would call it) into Kayleigh's white-blonde curls, which could as easily have been Becca's own - had she not insisted upon having her own hair cut somewhat shorter than Kayleigh would have allowed in, "like, a million years" - quote, unquote.
I gratefully gulp down gin, from a half-empty bottle, which someone evidently dumped here last night. Was it me? I can't honestly remember. The neat alcohol burns my throat, and puts me instantly back in touch with my bodily sensations. Now, I can actually feel the cold, hard concrete, beneath my somewhat bony hands and wrists, as I climb out of what, last night, constituted my "bed".
It is really a tunnel, in a kids' adventure playground. My ex-wife and I used to take the girls there - shit, how many years ago now?
But I don't want to think about Claire or the twins. It's bad enough that I still get those bloody dreams, night after night.
The girls would be seventeen now, going on eighteen. I probably wouldn't recognise them, and they definitely wouldn't know me. Shit, I wouldn't want them to, in my current state.
The dawn chorus is telling me that it's time to get my arse out of this "bed", which reeks of stale urine. Probably mine, but who knows?
Or cares, for that matter?
For my part, I'm past caring about much.
I ought to be getting back "home".
I live - well, exist - in a one-room bed-sit, just outside the centre of
The sky is tinged with Kayleigh's favourite shades of pink-and-peach, which Becca, naturally, hates - or did then. That sky reminds me of a watercolour painting by the girls' mother, which probably still hangs in the large, magnolia-walled entrance hall of Claire's mum and dad's, in Orpington.
I happen to know that her parents still reside in that poxy bungalow of theirs, which I always hated visiting. At least three out of six of Mrs. Green's, now ageing,
I've asked myself the question so many times now. Too many. But how can I not?
It's nothing more than a hoarse scream, nowadays: "Why? Answer me that, God! Why?"
Over a piece of yellow lego. Everything - all down the fucking plug-hole.
Well, okay, so I didn't split up with Claire just because of a bit of sodding Lego.
But it was the catalyst. I had taken Rebecca's "side" once too often, and pretty soon Claire and I were at one another's throats.
Well, we were always at one another's throats, so why was this so different?
It was "different" because, this time, she chucked me out of the family home.
And subsequently filed for divorce - something which, no doubt, made her parents and sisters crack open their bottles of economy, so-called "champagne", as soon as they heard the "wonderful news". Fucking vultures, the lot of them.
Of course, the bitch and her "clan" made certain that I would never get to see Rebecca or Kayleigh again. The last I heard, Claire and the twins were living in
It's funny, isn't it? We survived so many things, Claire and I: family deaths, and family feuds; Claire's continuing to vote Tory, after I had switched my allegiances to the Lib Dems; my affair with Claire's friend, Judy; my affair with Judy's husband, Robert...
My spell "inside" - for my part in an armed robbery, in which Claire's brother, Keith, was killed. That should, by rights, have been "the end of the road".
But it wasn't. You know that expression about the straw and the camel's back? Yeah, well, the "straw", in this instance, was a piece of yellow Lego.