“What happened here?” someone was speaking and then a hand gripped my arm.

“I’m asking you what happened here?” the police officer stood in front of me, shaking my arm.  

“He’s in shock,” a woman shouted as she was working near the open door of the ambulance.

“Can you speak to me?” the police officer ignored her.  

“I saw it all,” I said.

“We’ll take you to the station.   Get you some coffee.   Calm you down.   Come along.” He guided me into the police car.   There was another man sitting in there already, two of us.   We didn’t speak.   Everyone else had disappeared, I heard later.

Only two of us made statements that night, John Ogilvy and me.   We weren’t the only ones who witnessed the assault but no one else came forward and, as it turned out, the police didn’t need them because Ogilvy’s account of what happened matched mine exactly.   The chain of events and the description of the attacker.   The weapon was covered in finger prints and the police quickly found their man on the database.   Since he was fifteen Donald Cowan had been involved in a string of assaults and had once even been charged with grievous bodily harm.   He was only seventeen then.    Apart from a six month stint in a young offenders place he’d escaped with suspended sentences.   This time he got twelve years for murder.   It seemed inevitable, as though he’d been training for it.

This happened four years ago when he was 22 and I only 20.   It’s something that will never leave me.   It could so easily have been me he attacked that night.   During the trial he admitted to spending a sudden alcohol fuelled blinding rage on an innocent man he’d never met.   It was like a wave crashing to shore, he’d said.   The victim, in his early twenties like us, had done nothing to provoke him.   The experience left me with a permanent empty space where my belief in ordinary human decency had once been.   I will never feel safe again.

And now, four years later, a letter has arrived from him.   The envelope gives no clue about the identity of the sender but I tense up with anxiety as soon as I see the handwriting.   I don’t know why.   I’ve never seen the neat, childlike characters before.  

He’s in Appleby Prison in Cornwall.  It’s a private prison, he tells me, and he shares a small room with a man in his 50s.    He has a minimum of two years left to serve, he says, if he can stay out of trouble.   He’s spent most of his time during the past four years learning to write properly.   The letter I’m holding is the first letter he’s ever written.  

It’s not because he couldn’t write at all before he was incarcerated at Appleby.   No, it’s because he didn’t know what writing could do.   Before he came here words were arrows, mortar shells, shrapnel, the blades of knives delivered to pierce the heart.   Well, that’s how his mother had always used them.

He’s sitting in the day room, so called, even though it’s also used at night for the evening meal, and for movies which are shown twice a week.   The paper he’s writing on rests on a clean metal refectory table and he sits on one of the twenty-four armless chairs which are arranged neatly around four identical tables.  The room is lit by windows too high up to see out of or be broken and a row of neon tubes on the ceiling.  These tables and chairs are the only movable furniture in the room.   The tables are too heavy to throw and the chairs too light to cause damage.   Donald looks up, his pen poised, and absorbs a sight which has been his greatest source of comfort since the day he arrived here four years ago.   Kelloggs Corn Flakes, Rice Crispies, Raison Bran, All Bran, Weet-a-Bix.   The boxes stand in a row, their inner packets rolled up neatly to keep the contents dry.   As soon as he saw them on that first morning, lined up on the kitchen counter, he knew that at Appleby there was a choice.

Twelve years for killing an innocent man outside a bar in Birmingham in the early hours.   It hadn’t been the first time he’d assaulted someone.   Drunk beyond sanity he’d been picked up and charged before but magistrates had always given him another chance.   He was young, he was drunk, he hadn’t had an easy life.   But he hadn’t killed before and he’d finally used up his youth.   Six years if he could behave himself, and he hadn’t been sure he could.   He didn’t feel he could.   He’d never felt he could.   That’s what his mother had always told him.  

“You make me sick,” she’d yelled, “I can’t stand the sight of you.   Take that hand off me this minute.   Put it there one more time and I’ll beat your backside till you bleed you little bugger.   Stop that noise.   No one wants to hear you bawling, get off me, wait till I get you home.”   He was about three years old when he can first recall this voice but it was branded on him much earlier.

I felt sick.   I had some sort of premonition about the letter.   I didn’t want to open it.   I wanted to throw it out, drop it accidentally.   I looked straight down to the end of the second page of neat, sinister writing, Donald Cowan.   For a few seconds I couldn’t see at all.   I was dizzy and nauseous and I almost fainted.   The hand with the smashed bottle, the smashed face, the scream, the blood, the death.

Dear Steven,

I expect you are surprised to hear from me.   I found your address in an old phone book in our library.  It might be an old address so you might not get this.  If you do then don’t be scared.   I have still got two years to go here and I won’t hurt you anyway.  This is a private prison and we have a library here.   Most of us are studying something so we all spend time there.   There not much else to do.   I’ve been learning to write, as you can see.   I started from scratch with some of the others even though I could write before but not very well.   

I would like to find my grandmother.   Her name is Mary Cowan.   She is my fathers mother, not my mothers.   My father left after I was born so I never met him.  His name was Edward called Ted.   But my granny wrote to me a few times.   I never met her either.   I don’t have any friends to ask so I am asking you.  You are a good person.    All I know is my granny lived in Norfok.  We lived in Kent so she never visited.   When you find her please ask her to write to me.   The address is at the top.   I would like to talk to you if you come here.

Yours sincerely

Donald Cowan

Oh shit.   I dropped onto the sofa.   I put the letter on the table and sat back staring at the fireplace.   Why me?   Why has he chosen me?   I could ignore it.   Or send it on to the prison management to deal with.  Why didn’t he just ask them to find her?   Probably scare the wits out of her, that’s why.  I could give it to the police but what can they do?   He knows where I live already so unless I move away he’ll find me if he wants to.    I can’t move from here, the house belongs to my parents.   It might actually be wise for me to find the grandmother and speak to her.   At least I’ll know what I could be in for.

Steven goes upstairs and logs onto the internet to get a list of all the Cowans in Norfolk.   There are 27 listed.

He sits at his father’s desk in a small room and prints off the list of Cowans.   Twenty-seven phone calls for a man who’s ruined my life.   Shit .. shit .. shit .. .   The bottle, the scream, the blood, the chaos, the fear and then, finally, the loss.   The loss of innocence, of faith.   Left in an adultless world.   A parentless world.   Oh shit.  

I should call someone, a friend maybe, and see what they think.   Remember that murderer from Birmingham?   The one I testified against?   He’s written me a letter.

What?   The bastard.  Who gave him your address?   Christ, you can’t trust squat these days.   Even witnesses aren’t protected.   You should give it to the police, Steven.   Just hand it over and forget about it.

How can I forget about it?   He’s got my address.   He’ll be out in two years.  Shit.   I can’t tell my parents he’s got their address, it’ll terrify them.

No one’s going to suggest it might be a good idea to find the man’s grandmother, are they?   Twenty-seven calls for someone who’s ruined my bloody life.   Shit.   Steven sobs.   He’ll never escape the horror of it.   He should be living alone by now but he doesn’t have the courage.   He finished university last year but still doesn’t have a job.   He’s twenty-four but he can’t get on with his life.   He feels the warmth of the house concentrating in this small room, like a womb.   He blows his nose, takes a deep breath and reaches for the phone which stands on his father’s desk.

All he says is this : I’m looking for Mary Cowan on behalf of a relative of hers who needs her.  Could you help me?   That’s all.   After only eight calls he reaches someone who knows of a Mary Cowan and she offers to ask her to call him.   Steven gives her his number and thanks her.   Within an hour Mary’s on the phone.   Yes she is Donald’s grandmother but she hasn’t seen him since he was two years old and his father left the family.   How is Donald?

She sounds gentle, educated, trusting, nice.

Your grandson Donald’s in prison …..

He killed a man by smashing a broken bottle into his skull …..

I watched him do it ……

I put him in prison.

That’s not what Steven said, not then anyway.

“He’s in some difficulty and needs to talk to you.   Could we meet, you and me.   I’d rather tell you over tea, or something.”

“Yes, of course, you could come here.    I’m in Norwich at No 14 Wellesley Road.”   Steven interrupts.  

“Are you sure you’re happy for me to come to your house?”

“Why not.   You’re a friend of Donald’s.   It’s quite alright.   I’m 77 and not getting out as much as I used to so I’d prefer it if you came here.   I’d like to know how Donald is.   I don’t want you to think I abandoned him on purpose but his mother wouldn’t have me near him, or her, after my son left them.”

“I’m sure you did your best.   I could drive up tomorrow, if that’s alright.”

She gives him directions and her home phone number.

The house is one of many identical small, Victorian terraces stretching up a gentle slope on both sides of the road.   At the end of the road, on the incline is a church.   Cars are parallel parked along both sides of the narrow road but there are spaces at this time of day and Steven pulls in almost opposite no 14.

“Steven dear,” she says as he takes off his coat and sits opposite her on one of two small sofas in the sitting room.   He smiles at her and she looks at him directly.

“I’m so glad Donald has a friend.”   She takes his coat and goes to the kitchen to prepare tea.

She’s a small, slender woman with a straight back.   Her grey hair is cut in a simple but modern bob and she’s wearing a berry read twin set and a straight tweed skirt.   She’s wearing low-heeled black shoes. 

“Donald tells me you used to write to him,” calls Steven as he looks around the tiny sitting room.   There are the two small, matching blue checked sofas facing each with a coffee table between them.   Books on shelves on either side of the fireplace.   Framed hand made embroideries on the walls.   An unfinished embroidery in a basket on the floor in a corner.   A photograph of a small boy, about two years old, standing with a good looking young man, probably the boy’s father.   Steven stands up to look closely at the photograph, particularly at the boy.

“Yes, it was the only way I could have any contact,” she replies from the kitchen.   “I didn’t know whether the letters reached him or not.  Obviously they did, or some anyway.    I think I started writing to him when I thought he might be able to read, about six or so but I never had a reply.”

She comes in carrying a tray, puts it on the coffee table and sits down opposite Steven.

“What did you say to him in your letters?”

“Oh, under the circumstances at the time I thought about that very carefully.   Just two things really.   That I was his granny and I loved him and that he should learn everything he possibly could.   That’s about it.   I wanted him to know those two things.   I knew that after his Dad left things would be very hard for him.   His mother didn’t have a clue, not a clue.   That’s why he left.   She couldn’t love you know.   There are people like that.”

As gently as he could Steven tells her what happened on the night, four years ago, when Donald killed an innocent man.   His voice shakes.

Tears trickle down her face as she listens.   She takes his hand.

“Oh Steven, I’m so, so sorry.   I always feared he might end up in trouble.   Prison has even crossed my mind.   I’ve wondered and worried but I’ve never imagined murder.   Poor, poor Donald.   And poor you Steven.   How has it affected you?”

“I feel helpless.   I don’t feel safe anymore.   He’s destroyed my belief in safety.”   She watches his face and nods.  

Steven hands her Donald’s letter.   She takes it and reads.

“Does Donald have any siblings?” he asks suddenly. 

“There were none when he was born.   I don’t know about later.   I hope not.   What about you Steven?   Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“An older sister and a younger brother.   My sister is married and lives in Australia and my brother’s at university in Scotland.   We don’t have much contact.”  

“That’s a shame, siblings can be such a comfort.   I don’t know what I’d have done without mine.   But they often aren’t, I know that.”

“What happened to Donald’s father?   I hope you don’t mind me asking.”

“No, of course not.   He re-married and had another child, Sarah.   Oh, I see what you mean.   Of course, Donald does have a half sister.   They live in Canada.   She might not even know about Donald.   My son wanted to put all that behind him.”

At Appleby Donald sits low over a wooden table in the library practicing his letters.   Rows and rows of a’s, b’s, c’s and so on.   He writes his name over and over again, perfecting the words.   Hour after hour, like meditation.

“What shall we do then, Steven?” she asks, still holding the letter.   We?   He  pauses.

“He wants you to write to him.   I’m not sure if you should.   It’s up to you.   He’ll be out in two years …. he might be … ”

“Dangerous .. troublesome .. I know.   But I’m old.   It doesn’t matter how he is.   I’ll write to him tonight.   I’m also thinking of you, Steven, you’re still young.   We could go and visit him together, you and me?   We could go by train.   I’ll pay.   I’ll be happy to.   I’ll freshen the pot.”   She takes the teapot to the kitchen.   Steven sits.   The letter lies on the table.   He searches the room for another photo.  There isn’t one.   She comes back in holding the teapot by the handle with one hand and a circle of protective cork under it with the other.   She puts it on the tray and sits pouring tea as he watches her.

“Would you prefer to wait for a reply from Donald before we go?” he asks.   She looks at him and smiles.  

“Yes, I think that would be a good idea.   I’ll write to him tonight and tell him we’ll be coming and ask him to let us know the best day and time.”   She takes her cup and saucer, sits back on the sofa, looks directly at Steven and smiles again before sipping her tea.”  

Neither Mary nor Steven has ever been to a prison before.   They share the same iconic impression from films of a featureless Victorian brick building of two or three storeys with small, barred windows.   They expect it to be surrounded by a twelve foot high wall or fence topped with razor wire.  

Only the fencing is accurate.   Appleby is a new prison, built recently by the private company which won the bid when the government controversially put part of prison construction and management out to tender.   It’s a complex of single storey modern buildings built around a single, two-storey block.  Each single-storey building has 12 rooms or cells with two inmates to a room and each building has its own ablutions, kitchen and day room.   The two-storey building houses the administration offices, library, workshops, gym and classrooms.   Behind this building is the prison clinic and counselling rooms.  Closest to the gate, in front of the main building and linked to it by a covered walkway are two reception rooms, one for visitors and one for the processing of prisoners coming in and leaving.   Mary and Steven are searched before joining other visitors in the waiting room.   Mary carries books in a supermarket bag.  They’re unwrapped in accordance with prison rules.   Steven refuses to take off his coat.

“Visitors for Cowan,” calls a warder from the door.   Mary gets up and stands straight.   She takes a breath, looks at Steven’s face, smiles, nods and squeezes his hand before marching ahead of him through the door.   The warder leads them to one of a row of doors along the side of a long narrow room where more warders are sitting and standing.   He opens the door and Mary leads Steven inside.   Donald is standing waiting.   He rushes forward when he sees Mary.   She holds him back.   Steven waits by the door.   Mary looks at Donald and then pulls him to her and hugs him tightly.   She doesn’t cry.   She stands aside and beckons to Steven to take a seat.   Donald holds out his hand.   Steven ignores it and sits.  

“Sit down Donald,” she says as she sits herself.    “I’m so happy to see you, darling.   So happy.”   Donald cries.   Mary gets up to stroke his hair and his cheek.  

“It’s hard for Steven,” she says.   “You understand that, don’t you?”   Donald looks at Steven and nods before speaking for the first time.

“And Ogilvy.”   Mary frowns and looks at Steven.

“Ogilvy was the other witness,” says Steven.

“What happened to him?” she asks Steven.

“No idea.”   He shrugs.

“I wrote to him,” says Donald.

“Did he write back?”

“No.   I heard nothing.”

“Did you write to him before or after you wrote to me?”

“Before.   Long before.”  

“Why?”   Donald looks surprised.

“I mean why did you write to Ogilvy before me?”   Steven feels ridiculous.   Mary interrupts.

“Tell us what you do here, Donald.”   He’s relieved and gives her his attention.   Steven listens.   Mary sits near Donald.

“Not much.   I practice my letters.   I remembered what you said, Gran, to learn and that.”

“Well your letters and words are perfect as far as I can see.   What else do you do?”

“We have films twice a week, in the day room.”

“That’s in the evenings, what about during the day?”

“We all have to do cleaning and make our beds and clear up and that.   And we have counselling quite a lot, over at the clinic.”   He shrugs.

“Are you sick?”   Donald looks alarmed.

“No, Gran, I’m fine.   I have anger management.”   Mary shakes her head.

“Do you read, Donald?”

“Not much.”  

“Can you read?”

“Not too well, but I can.   I’m learning, like you said.”  

“I’ve brought you some books.”   She takes the books from the bag and puts them on the table.   There are six thin paperbacks.

 “I want you to promise me that you’ll read all these by the time I come back to visit you.   Alright?”

“Alright,” he says without enthusiasm.

“It’s the next step in learning Donald.   You can stop the letters now.   You’re good enough at those.   No more letters and words, now you must start reading.”   He nods.

Warders walk up and down looking in through the glass in the door.   Mary talks to Donald about what he eats and what exercise he does.   Then she tells him their time’s up and they have to leave. 

“There’s one more thing I want you to do, dear,” she says to him, taking his hand.   He listens and nods.

“You must do something to make things better for the other prisoners in your block.   That’s the only way you can make amends for what you did.   Do you understand me Donald?”   He stares at her.

“What should I do Gran?”

“You think of something and write to me about it.   I trust you to think of a way to make up for killing that man that night.”   Steven is stunned.   Donald leans back as though he’s been struck.

“It’s easy sitting here all day, writing out your letters and words.   It isn’t enough.”

“What do you mean, Gran.   What can I do?   I don’t understand.”

“Well, maybe you can learn to cook and make some nice food, or you can learn to paint pictures to decorate the walls and make the rooms look better, or plant a garden … it doesn’t matter what it is as long as it’s for other people to enjoy.   You can think about it, if you like, and write to me.   I’ll be expecting to hear about it, and the books, when I come next time.”   Donald smile is joyous.

“When will you come back, Gran?”

“Next month.   You’ve got one month to read these books, and think about them, and to start something to make life better for your friends here.”   He nods.   They get up.   This time Donald doesn’t offer his hand to Steven.   Steven walks to the door, turns, waves and smiles.    Mary hugs Donald and says she’ll see him next month.

“Have you seen the other witness, Ogilvy, since the trial?” asks Mary when they’re on the train.

“No, we went our separate ways.   We were both traumatised.”   He looks away, muttering, “I wonder why he contacted Ogilvy first.”

“He might have sensed that Ogilvy would respond better than you.   Donald acts on instinct, Steven, you have to remember that.”

“It’s been so brave of you to come down here with me, Steven.”   He nods and fixes his gaze on the passing countryside.

It’s Jane Ogilvy who answers the door to Steven.   Back in his father’s study it took him longer to find John Ogilvy than it did to find Mary Cowan but he finally tracked him to Cherry Hinton, a suburb of Cambridge.

“Hello Steven, welcome,” says Jane holding the door open for him.   Two small children peer at him from the kitchen door at the other end of the entrance hall.   Jane leads him into the sitting room and offers him a drink.  

“John will be home soon.   Make yourself comfortable while I get the tea.   He works on the other side of Cambridge, in the so-called Technology Park.”  

The house is small and cluttered with equipment which Steven can’t identify until he sees an electric guitar propped up in a corner of the adjoining dining room.

“Who’s the musician,” he asks when Jane comes back.

“Oh, that’s John,” she laughs.   “He plays in a band at weekends, guitar mainly but he’s not bad on vocals.   The evidence is everywhere in the house.   He really needs a studio or something.   Speaking of evidence …”   She looks at Steven as she arranges cups and pours the tea.

“It was shocking what happened.”

“Were you and John married then?” Steven asks.

“No, we were together.   We got married soon after the trial.   I think John was so traumatised by the whole thing he needed certainty, you know, stability.   I don’t know if he reckoned on two more mouths to feed but that’s what marriage is for, after all.   You married Steven?”

“No.”   A noise at the front door brings John Ogilvy into the room, taking a cycle helmet off.   Steven gets up to greet him.

“Ah, Steven, hello,” they shake hands.   His arrival brings shrieks and yelps from the children who gallop up to him.   He hugs them both while calling to Jane to take his bike around to the back of the house.

“Can’t leave a bike unprotected around here,” he says to Steven as he pours himself a cup of tea.   “How are you?” he asks sitting down.

“I’m sorry to bring this all back again, you know, the trial but I had a letter from Donald Cowan and it frankly completely unnerved me.   You’ll probably think I’m crazy but I ended up going to see him in prison and he said he’d also written to you.   I just needed to know how you reacted.”

“Yes, I did get a letter, months ago.   It unnerved me too, believe me.   Both Jane and I even considered moving out of the house.   But then we decided he’d done enough to us already.   Why let him do more.   So I binned it.   I don’t think either of us thought about it again until you called.”

“Yes, sorry about that.”

“No, it’s good to see you.   It really is.   We should have stayed in touch after the trial.”

“Well, from what Jane’s told me you’ve been pretty busy since then,” he laughs gesturing to the two children sitting one on either side of their father.

“We certainly have.   I don’t know how I’d have coped without Jane.   With a wife and kids you just have to get on with it.   Little bodies have to be housed and mouths fed,” he tickles the children.   How was it, meeting up with Cowan in prison?”  Steven describes the visit.  

“I don’t think he’s anything for you and Jane to worry about,” he says finally.

Back in his father’s study Steven writes a letter to Donald Cowan.

Dear Donald,

I thought you might like to know that when I got back from visiting you I got in touch with John Ogilvy and he invited me to his house.   After the trial he got married and he and his wife have two children.   John also has a good job working in computers and he plays the guitar in a band.   As you can imagine he has been very busy.  He said he couldn’t remember getting a letter from you.   I expect it never arrived.   Perhaps you sent it to an old address.   Anyway, I know you’ll be pleased to hear that he’s doing well.

You’re very lucky to have such a kind and wise grandmother.   Now that you’re in contact with her I’m sure she’ll be a big help to you when you come out in two years.   She believes that you will find some way of improving the lives of the other men in your section.   I also think you will come up with something that will please her.   You could ask the counsellors to help you.   That’s what I would do.

Yours sincerely

Steven Taverner

By Sheila Linder

It’s a Sunday in mid December and he’s reading the paper in the heated conservatory.   He sits comfortably in a wicker armchair with floral cushions.   Before his transformation he would have sized up the chairs in this room and chosen a more robust looking one to sit on.   There are a number of metal chairs which look as though they might be able to hold a man of six feet weighing over a hundred kilos.   Of course he wouldn’t have been sure it would hold him until he sat down and gave up his weight fully, which he always did slowly and with dread.   The list of humiliating scenarios had grown with his increasing weight.   Having a chair buckle underneath him was only one of the more likely, and more public, possibilities he had to bear in mind.

The conservatory is a big room with comfortable furniture and a hint of the colonies about it.   A heavy teak table stands against one wall of glass.   It holds a tea tray with a white porcelain teapot, milk jug with crocheted doily over it and a silver sugar bowl containing cubes and tongs.   There’s a small table next to Bob’s chair with a flower-patterned cup and saucer on it and he has the paper open over his crossed legs.    He’s reading a story about the wife of a celebrity tv chef whose husband has abandoned her for another woman.   Added to that injury the chef has also gone off to a tropical location where he’s competing in the show ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here’.   There’s a picture of the wife, her eyes wild with fury, in the doorway of the restaurant she and the tv chef had built and run together in Devon.   She’s holding a stuffed black bin liner which she’s about to add to a pile of similarly filled bags outside the door.   The caption reads : Abandoned wife of celebrity chef, John Bailey-Foyle, empties the freezers before shutting their successful restaurant just before Christmas, leaving hundreds of disappointed diners.

Bob finishes reading the story, puts down the paper and gazes over the wintry garden.   He senses that something about this story relates to the changes that have taken place in his own life.

There we sat once again, he remembers, Julia, my wife and our three kids, in front of the telly eating pizza.    Julia and I too tired after work to bother with plates and salad and so on.   Just plenty of pizza heated up and a couple of beers. 

“Bob, could you put this on the coffee table,” Julia hands me pizza from the oven or microwave as I walk in from work.   I carry it through to the sitting room where the kids are watching telly.  

“Food’s ready,” I say and the kids grunt without looking up.   I put the pizza on the table and they take slices and eat it as they watch the screen.   Julia joins us carrying more pizza.   

After the pizza she offers ice cream or tubs of chocolate mousse, ready-made and convenient.   The kids never refuse and neither do I.   We eat the puddings watching tv too.   More often than not we’re watching a food program.   Celebrity chefs showing us how to prepare so-called nutritionally balanced meals while we stuff ourselves with fat calories scooped out of cellophane or plastic. 

“Take a large onion and chop it finely.”   Chop, chop, chop, rattatatatat …..

We’re mesmerised by the speed.   We expect a finger to go.  

“Fry the onion in oil until transparent and then add one clove of garlic.”   In a flash of thumb, knife and hand heel the garlic cloves are separated and crunched with the back of the knife.

“Fry the garlic with the onion and then add the lean mince.   Allocate about 200 grams per person.”   I’m calculating a kilo.   Julia’s thinking of how long all these steps would take without much cooking experience.

“Now add tomato puree and mix and fry and then a can of chopped tomatoes.   Now remove the mixture from the stove and peel potatoes for the mash which we’ll be putting on top of our cottage pie.   Here we have some peeled earlier.”   The chef stretches an arm off-screen and it comes back with a colander of peeled potatoes.   “You’ll need about two potatoes per adult for the mash.”   That’s 10 potatoes, I’m thinking.   Julia’s thinking of the time it takes to peel ten potatoes.

Were we aware of any irony as we watched and ate?   He shrugs and grimaces as he looks out across the garden.  He uncrosses his legs to lean forward resting his chin on his clasped fingers.   The newspaper slides to the floor.   It’s a large garden for a suburban Victorian detached house.   There are four very grand old trees; two oaks, an ash and a chestnut.   Dianna says they should remove one, to let more light onto the lawn but he says he likes them, so they’re still there.

It was already too late when I realised we were a fat family.   It sort of crept up.   I wasn’t a fat child and neither of us was fat when we got married.   I knew we weren’t eating well but Julia seemed to accept the food provision role without question.   I helped out with other stuff in the house and outside but it seemed natural that she was in charge of the food.   I doubt I’d have done it differently, anyway.   My own mother wasn’t much of a cook so I didn’t have anything to compare with, except the cooking shows, I suppose.   I don’t really understand why we weren’t influenced by them, we watched them constantly.   Maybe it’s because we actually craved the rubbish we ate.   We liked it.   The only time we ever sat at a table together to eat was when we went to a restaurant, which we did quite often.   Two salaries meant we could afford to take the kids out fairly regularly as long as we didn’t go anywhere too costly.   Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Nandos .. that sort of thing. 

I particularly liked the programs with the voluptuous Mariella who prepared the sort of food we would have enjoyed eating.   Lots of packets and cans and cream and chocolate.   I don’t remember her ever mentioning vegetables or fresh fruit.   She was always scooping up spoonfuls of pudding or smearing generous blobs of something or other on toast or bread and eating it with the sort of sensuous enjoyment I was missing.   Hers was the sort of food that satisfied more than the stomach.   Her big breasts, accentuated by tight t-shirts screamed eat more of this.   I wished I could. We all wanted more of what she was offering.   I certainly did, anyway.  

Bob picks up the newspaper from the floor and studies the photograph of John Bailey-Foyle’s wife, soon to be ex-wife, furiously destroying the food that could have made them both a good profit over Christmas.   He wonders about John Bailey-Foyle.   In what way has this wife failed him?   Bailey-Foyle’s thin, after all.

Of course, we didn’t only eat pizza, ice cream and chocolate pudding.   Julia also bought a lot of those ready meals, one for each of us.   You can have Sunday roast, including vegetables, for five people any day of the week for the price of the same meal with drinks for two at a pub on Sundays.   Julia said you couldn’t possibly provide the same meal for that price if you cooked it all yourself.   I’m sure she was right.   Anyway, we wouldn’t have known where to start and were too tired to try.   So we all got steadily fatter and, I have to say, more and more bored.

If you’d seen me at my heaviest which was about five years ago when I was 48 I don’t think you’d recognise me now.   My face had no definition.   It was the face of anyone fat.   Now it has shape and contours, more lines as well, but at least this face is unmistakably and uniquely me.   Julia looked even less identifiable than me because, at only five and a half feet tall there was less space to store her excess 30 kilos.   Seeing the kids with wobbling extra chins and bulging bellies was painful although we never talked about it.   There was a polite code of silence in the house which we all signed up to.   But I noticed and I knew it was too late.   I had caused these misshapen progeny and I knew they were disabled for ever.

The garden reminds Bob of Christmas, specially Mariella’s Christmas program.  This type of daydreaming’s dangerous, Bob’s aware of that but he can’t resist a lingering flashback to the famously beautiful tv chef dressed in a tight red top and with a sprig of mistletoe in her wild black hair.

It wasn’t only that she was beautiful and sexy and flaunted both.   All men are attracted to that combination.   I know this sounds deluded but I felt we understood each other, Mariella and me.   She encouraged me, yes me, to enjoy my calories unmediated by any pretence to gentility.   Everything she did was quick and easy.   But I also felt she needed me.   I was sure of it then and I’m certain of it now.   Our eyes used to meet.   We both had needs and she fed mine and I fed hers.   The more I loved her the more she clearly loved me.   I suppose it was her lips that captured most of my attention as I watched but her eyes told me she needed and wanted me. 

At first I simply enjoyed watching but after a few weeks I became anxious about her.   I felt protective.   If she seemed to miss a cue or lose her timing I’d yell at the kids to keep quiet or snap at Julia.

“I think you’re soft on her Bob,” joked Julia.   I barked back which was very unusual for me.  I’d always been mild mannered.

“What do you mean, soft on her?”   Julia’s eyebrows rose.