MORNING SERIAL

“I think I may have got some sunstroke this afternoon,” I said to Clare who would have been both waiting for my call and assuming it would be late. I knew immediately almost everything I would attempt to say would be ammunition for her. I had left abruptly, without much of a plan of how to circumnavigate various familiar-yet-new financial problems I had brought down upon us.

“I am glad you’re finding time to hit the beach,” she said. “Also glad you find time to call. It sounds like you booked in to party central.”

“No, actually. It’s the family resort. Just the wrong time of day. It’s normally very quiet so far as I understand it.” “Okay.”

“I’m serious. I didn’t come here to escape, Clare.”

“And yet escape you did. As you tend to do. I had no intention of stopping you going to your friend’s funeral, but you could have gone about it differently.”

“The story of my life,” I said with an unintentional sigh.

“You can turn this into a series of meaningless idioms if you like, but tomorrow I have to phone my father to borrow some money, and you know what he’s going to say? He’s going to say what the fuck are you still doing with that dickhead?”

“And what are you going to say?” I said.

“Well, let’s just say I didn’t used to have to think about an answer in advance.”

That was the kind of conversation the two of us were getting used to. The sad thing was we both knew Clare wanted me back in London because I had a duty to clear up my own mess, and not because she missed me or wanted to see me.

It would have been a rare thing indeed in my experience to have been in a relationship not drowning in clutter. I guess that’s what had happened even between Francis and me.

He had served his time at St Martin’s and had bailed me out himself enough times, but when he left, without much fanfare it must be said, it felt like the cutting of a cord, as if he had had enough of the clutter – not just with me, but with all of the kind of life we knew back then.

> The Golden Orphans by Gary Raymond is published by Parthian www.parthianbooks.com

CONTINUES TOMORROW