A Garden of Bones by Andy Done-Johnson

Author:Andy Done-Johnson [Done-Johnson, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781916376519
Publisher: Crazy Dog Publishing
Published: 2020-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

The train has slowed now, creaking on British rails back towards the London they had fled for good, less than a year ago, the London they had said goodbye to, hoping to never see again.

“Won’t be long now,” Chris says, like he’s talking to a bored child on a day trip back from the seaside.

It’s the first time he’s spoken since the train set off from Lille.

Susan doesn’t reply. The anger has built up in her again. Anger at dad. Anger at mum, and anger at Chris – because he’s the only one left, and because he’s got them into this. Only he hasn’t, not really.

For a while, a year maybe, Susan had felt empowered, in control. She had fled the nest and lived with Chris in their little flat in Dagenham, and she had dad on a leash because she part-owned the house he was living in. It was one quick call to the estate agent to turn his miserable old bones out into the street.

She’d go to visit, sometimes even taking Chris to prove a point, and because she knew dad would go out she could sit and talk to mum. Although mostly Chris stayed away because he didn’t want the hassle of it and all the rows and abuse; first with dad and then from Susan on the way home, taking out her own frustrations on him. Dagenham was about as far from Edgware as you could get while still being in London, and that suited Susan perfectly.

It took over an hour on public transport and mum and dad never came calling.

To this day Susan didn’t know why she agreed to sign over the house to them, why she gave them every penny she’d ever had. Perhaps it was the first euphoria of new marriage, that sense of growing up, of being independent, of not wanting to be controlled by her parents, and of not wanting to control them. But part of her also knew it was a severing of ties – all they really had that joined them now was their three signatures on the deeds to a house in Edgware, and if she removed her name then she was setting herself free in a very real way.

And besides, what was seven grand when you were content? Chris had a steady job and earned a decent wage, so to hell with the house, and to hell with mum and dad; well, dad, anyway.

Only Susan hadn’t realised until their second year of marriage that Chris was useless with money, really bloody useless. He didn’t drink much and neither of them smoked, but he kept buying things, things he wanted but didn’t need – first for himself, his Churchill first editions and his De Gaulle letters, and then for her. He’d turn up with a new picture of Gary or Frank or Rock or Monty, and he’d hand it to her like a sheepish schoolboy who had just brought a painting home for mother.

Susan would gush and he’d peck her on the cheek.

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