Starting Over. Tony Parsons

      

       Starting Over

      Tony Parsons

      

       For Yuriko

       Foreword

      That was the last time the girl Wendy ever saw him. For a little longer she tried for his sake not to have growing pains; and she felt she was untrue to him when she got a prize for general knowledge. But the years came and went without bringing the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy was a married woman, and Peter was no more to her than a little dust in the box in which she had kept her toys. Wendy was grown up. You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up.

      J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan and Wendy

      Table of Contents

       Cover Page

       Title Page

       Dedication

Foreword

Part One The Canteen Cowboy V The Careless Boy

The Shape Of A Heart

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

       Eight

       Nine

       Ten

       Eleven

       Twelve

       Part Two Zen And The Art Of Swimming Pool Maintenance

       Thirteen

       Fourteen

       Fifteen

       Sixteen

       Seventeen

       Eighteen

       Nineteen

       Twenty

       Part Three The Dipping Crew

       Twenty-One

       Twenty-Two

       Twenty-Three

       Twenty-Four

       Twenty-Five

       About the Author

       By the Same Author

       Praise for Tony Parsons

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

Part One The Canteen Cowboy v The Careless Boy

       The Shape of A Heart

       She doesn’t feel comfortable driving this car. It is too big, too unfamiliar, too much her husband’s car. And the woman on the sat nav just will not shut up.

       ‘If possible, try to make a U-turn…try to make a U-turn.’

       It is late now. She doesn’t know this neighbourhood. The big BMW X5 rolls past strips of worn-out shops, ugly superstores, unlit yards protected by razor wire. And everywhere, there are the children. In groups of three or four or more, standing by their bikes, the light from their phones glowing in their fists, their faces hidden inside their hooded tops.

       ‘Try to make a U-turn…’

       ‘I’m trying!’ she shouts, suddenly aware that she has had perhaps one glass of wine too many.

       Eyes follow her. At least that is how it feels. She is too well dressed for this area, the car too conspicuously expensive. She should have taken her own beat-up little runaround. But her husband had pressed the BMW X5 on her, telling her she would feel safer.

       Yeah, right.

       The terrain changes. Suddenly the exhausted shops and the superstores and the herds of sullen youth have gone. There are no signs of life here. These are streets full of – what are they? – warehouses. Old warehouses. Big, black buildings with long skylights that have been smashed. They look as though they were deserted years ago, as though they are rotting, as though they are waiting to be swept away and built upon. The big car barrels through the dead streets. She is perhaps a few miles from home but this no longer feels like her town.

       ‘Try to make a U-turn…’

       ‘Oh, try to put a bloody sock in it!’ she cries.