Disraeli Avenue. Caroline Smailes

law. How the fuck did that happen? I’m going to Newcastle, so I’ll still live at home with Mam and Sam.

      But Dad turned up.

      I answered the door and of course I didn’t recognise him. He looked a state in a knitted cardigan covered in wolves and a moon. His hair was long, grey, thin, scraggy and he was wearing flip-flops with trackie bottoms. I thought he was collecting for something. Anyway he started talking and it turns out that he’d heard about my mam and Sam and thought that seeing as my mam had come into money, that we’d all be able to be one big happy fucking family. Apparently my three brothers were waiting around the corner to meet me too. I don’t know why him having three more lads pissed me off quite so much, but I seriously needed to deck the bloke.

      It was then that my mam came to the door.

      I was standing with my fist clenched leaning forward, my mam was in front of me pushing me back with her huge arse and she was staying canny cool. She looked my dad up and down, then she did her fake laughing thing that she does when she’s actually scared shitless. She told my dad that we’d managed sixteen years without him and that really he should just fuck off. Then she closed the door in my dad’s face.

      I used to make up a story for the kids in my primary school class. I’d tell them the legend of hundreds and thousands of small green men with orange hair living in the lighthouse in Lymouth Bay. I even told them that I’d met one when I was buying a quarter of Toasted Teacakes from Brian’s newsagents. Jude Williams and Karen Johnson believed me.

      Now for the real legend.

      Legend has it that I once had a dad who went on jury service and pissed off with some woman who he’d known for all of three weeks. He left me and his wife of ten years for a fucking weird tart who changed her name from Wendy Jackson to Sky Thursday and made my dad want to live in a council flat and play the didgeridoo. Legend has it, that my dad ate his egg and chips, then packed his bags, took a pint of milk from the fridge and then pissed off. It took him nearly sixteen years to remember me.

       Number 3

       Mr and Mrs Drake

      Red car matches red front door

      Red car matches red garage door

      EVS 343V

       A tarot reading

       () indicates the length of pause, in seconds

       (.) indicates a pause of less than one second

      ‘What question would you like to ask of the cards?’

      I’m only allowed one question?

       (.)

      My thoughts are all over the place

       (5.0)

      I’m sort of thinking that everyone needs a partner.

       (.)

      For some I guess it’s sexual, for others convenience.

      For some I guess that it’s a chance to be eternally mothered, for others something else. I wish I knew what that something else was.

       (3.2)

      No that’s not my question. That’s not even a question.

       (.)

      Some people don’t enquire. They accept what they’re given. They say ‘thank you very much’ to the first man or woman who happens upon them. They panic, they grab, they accept. They can relax then. They can mate.

       (2.0)

      And I’m kind of sure that most people can go through life feeling content. They accept, they embrace; they make do with whoever it was who happened to stumble onto them, into them, beside them.

       (.)

      I’m beginning to sound cynical.

      Really this isn’t a bad thing.

      I’m just saying.

       (1.2)

      I’ve been thinking too much about life and death. It comes from living on this bloody street. The bed hopping, the suicide, the abandoning, the repression. It’s all getting to me a bit, but we can’t move. We’ve got too much debt, we’re trapped.

       (3.0)

      I’m looking at him and wondering if I’ve made a big mistake. I didn’t know who else to turn to and so I thought I’d try you. I thought you’d understand. I thought you’d be able to see into my lives and give me an answer.

       (.)

      But I’m only allowed one question.

      I’ll have to formulate all my ramblings into one, all of these floating thoughts into one question.

       (.)

      You see I’ve got to thinking that maybe life is continual.

      I know that this goes against what you, what some people believe in. Well it sort of does. Doesn’t it?

       (2.3)

      That’s not my question.

       (.)

      I just think that life is one big series of livings and deaths. And the more that I think about it, the more I get to worrying that there may be one true soul mate for each of us.

       (1.5)

      I’m rambling on. I’m trying not to sound too manic. Too confused. But I guess that I am.

       (.)

      You see, I’m wondering if there is just one special person for each of us. And then I’m wondering if life is really simply about bumping into them. If that one special person keeps coming in and out of our lives. And if only true believers, I mean believers in true love, could ever realise.

       (.)

      Does that make any sense?

       (4.1)

      That’s not my question.

       (.)

      I’m getting to wonder if life is one big game of Russian Roulette, but without the gun. It’s like holding your nerve until the time is right. Until you get a feeling that there is no next one. Really no next one. That this one person, this one connection is true.

       (1.8)

      I met a lad called Simon when I was five and he was six. I clicked with him instantly. We met at a family wedding. He was on the groom’s side, being a pageboy. I was on the bride’s side, being a bridesmaid. I remember dancing with him during the do. We held hands and loads of people snapped photos. I remember it being late, dark and I remember him leaving the party.

       (.)

      My mam used to have a photo of the two of us on the sideboard. She’d polish it and tell the same story.

       (.)

      The story went that when Simon left, I started crying. Apparently