3

In the hospital, P had been sleeping for over a week. Jo had been at his bedside constantly, talking to him, stroking his head, holding his hand, getting more and more desperate for him to wake up.
P’s mother had also been there on and off, talking to him and to the doctors and to Jo, telling her what a wonderful little boy he had been. ‘Always happy, he was when he was little’ she said. ‘So funny, not like his brother, ooohh he was a bastard, was Herman. Still is’. They smiled thinly at each other, then looked at P. ‘So funny’, said his mother. ‘Always had a funny antidote, he did’.
Every day her parents called in to join her, hoping everything was alright and every day they left saddened and disappointed, worried at their daughter’s health as well as P’s. Every day, Sam too joined her for the late shift once her parents had gone. Every night they talked to each other and they tried to talk P into waking up. By the second week, Jo was crying less and running out of things to talk about. Alone with P she would slap his face and punch his chest for doing this to her, for leaving her with her life suspended.
Sam usually managed to calm her down, but the stress of living every day sitting beside a hospital bed, her life dangling uselessly, while the man she loved lie unconscious for no reason at all was tiring and making her sick, physically as well as mentally.
The doctors, specialists and experts were still no nearer discovering what was actually causing P’s unconsciousness, despite carrying out test after test and eliminating brain damage, brain disease, concussion, assault, alien abduction, drug abuse, poisoning, shock and coma. It was a most perplexing mystery.
On the 9th day, after her parents and Sam had been and gone, Jo edged her chair closer to P’s bed and told him how they had met and how she felt that first weekend. How low and miserable and unhappy she had been with wanker, how meaningless her life had seemed, how she felt like her life was spiralling downwards and away from her until she met him.
He had given her everything. He had been attentive and interested and funny and amusing and sexy and made her feel desirable and wanted and human again. Within weeks of meeting P, she knew he was the one for her, he had been the only man she had ever met that made her feel good about being herself, made her feel for the first time that being her was good enough.
She had believed in herself again with him and in humanity in general. He kissed her like nobody ever had and when they had sex, she could believe in heaven. He had given her life meaning, despite his lack of belief in himself, she believed in him and loved him. She had long decided that spending the rest of her life with him was as good as life could get. And now, he had seemingly taken himself away from her, she could see no other reason for what had happened.
She allowed her head to fall onto his stomach and as she wept, she begged him to come back to her.

In his head, P dreamed of riding the Indian plains. The day after the art room clay fight was P’s birthday. His mother had worked extra shifts all through January to cover the cost of a bike for her baby boy. He was ecstatic.
‘Told ya you were too small for a chopper’ said Herman, green with envy because he had wanted a chopper. Apart from that small remark, Herman was nice to him all day so that he could have a go on P’s sleek, shiny, new Tomahawk.
It was only after a few days hard riding that P moaned that it should’ve been red instead of blue. It was only a minor quibble, though. He was thrilled with his new bike.
‘These kids have no bloody gratitude’ P heard his mother mumble to his father as she went back in to make the tea. P lowered his head and ran out towards the door and a ride on the tomahawk. ‘Still’ she said. ‘Worth it though, look at him’.
‘You shouldn’t have bothered’ said his father as he went back to his armchair. ‘It’ll just be a sodding five minute wonder’.
‘I don’t care’ said his mother to herself as she watched P cycle off up the street. ‘It was worth it. Even if it was just for five minutes of that look on his face’.

Saturday was the best day of the week for P. No school, football on the telly and every Saturday night, fish and chips! On Saturday afternoons, P usually went to the park to escape Herman and play football or runouts and to trap spiders, then sit on the park wall and drop them at the girls in the park. Jim, Butch and Andrew, Butch’s little brother, usually went along, too. Butch’s mother insisted that Andrew always went along with Butch at the weekend, so he was always annoying them on Saturdays.
This particular Saturday, they couldn’t play football because Jim’s ball had burst when one of the fourth year toughs booted it over the muddy wall into the docks. Bugger! Disaster! So, instead, after going on the swings for a bit and checking to see if anything new had been dumped in the newty (which there hadn’t, just the usual rubbish like bike wheels, prams, bits of wood and shopping trolleys), they decided on cowboys and Indians.
‘My Dad got me this’ announced Butch proudly and he produced a gleaming new spud gun. Then he leapt forwards and froze when he hit the ground, arm outstretched like James Bond. ‘PEE-OWW, PEE-OWW, PEE-OWW’.
‘COR!’ was the general view of P and Jim. ‘Let’s have a go’ said Jim.
‘NO, chuff off, it’s mine’ said Butch, frowning. ‘You go and get your bows and arrers and we’ll see you back here for cowboys and Indians. You’s two can be the Indians and me an’ Andy will be Butch and Sundance’. Andrew smiled and puffed out his chest.
‘Oh piss. Why are we always the fucking Indians?’ asked Jim. ‘I wanna be a cowboy, dishing out the bullets, bringing law and order to these wild lands and raping the squaws’.
‘Cos I’ve got a new spud gun and you’ve got bows and arrers, see? Anyway there ain’t any squaws’. P did not know how to rape a squaw anyway and he was too scared to ask in case Jim took the piss again.
Jim put on his Indian voice. ‘We go to plain. We grab heap big white squaw and tie to um tree with string. Then we pulled down um white squaw skirts and look at their knickers’. P laughed and Jim giggled. Butch did not.
‘The only girl you’ll get to come is Maureen Stoat and we’ve all seen her knickers a hundred times. Go get your bows and arrers and we’ll see you over the muddy’. That was true enough. They had all seen Maureen’s knickers and she’d even take them off for a twix.
So Jim and P trudged off to get their Indian gear. ‘I’m fed up always being the Indians just because he’s got better guns’. Jim also had the hump.
‘I heap big warrior’ he said stopping in the street and slapping himself in the chest. ‘Have killed many paleface. Have many scalps. I will go on raiding party to smoky big stack, get heap big spudgun and shoot Butch in nob with it’.
Twenty minutes later they met up on the old ruined swimming pool on the muddy. The old pool was just a large hole in the ground (all the tiles from the pool had been pinched years ago), but with a skeleton of metal roof supports that arced over the pool like a huge dinosaurs ribcage, thick, grey bones curving up towards the sky and just failing to meet in the middle, with the sun where the heart should be. They always met on the old pool. When they played cowboys and Indians, it was pool creek.
The muddy was a vast area of waste ground left over from the docks. It was even bigger than the park and much more interesting. It was hilly, lumpy and wild, it had the ruined old swimming pool, the old warehouse road lined with bare, grizzled trees, the newty which was smelly and full of good things like old bikes and shopping trolleys and, best of all, it had loads of old air raid shelters left over from the war. Some were at ground level, vandalised, covered in graffiti and always full of beer cans, glue bags and urine, but the underground ones were fantastic. Dark caverns that suited millions of different games. Jim had brought his torch along one Saturday and they had all ventured into the dank, murky blackness. P did not like to admit it, but he was a little scared in underground shelters and they stank of piss, so he could not wait to get out into the air to play.
They were always going over the muddy at weekends and during the summer holidays. When they did not have a football or were just bored. There was no end of games you could play over there. Tag, Run-outs, war, hide and seek, picking those arrow shaped weedy things and throwing them at the girls so they stuck on their coats and jumpers. But, today it was cowboys and Indians.
P and Jim were very un-Indian like in their cord dungarees, anoraks and trainers. Which is exactly what Butch and Andrew had on, except that they also wore plastic cowboy hats and silver six-shooter holsters to go with it. The four boys split up and set about tracking each other. Butch and Andrew galloped off on their mighty steeds, while Jim and P had to be sneaky Indians crawling through the tumbleweeds. Except that there weren’t any tumbleweeds on the muddy, but there were a lot of stinging nettles, so they had to crawl sneakily, but carefully. Nothing gave the game away like crawling into a stinging nettle bush. There were plenty of dog turds, too. It was a mans life in the wild country.
Thirty seconds after they had begun, which was just long enough for P to tread in a large, squelchy dog turd, they were spotted. P and Jim raced onto the pool Woo-woo-woo-ing for all their worth as Butch and Andrew ran towards them like John Wayne with all guns blazing.
Andrew took an early arrow (he had to or they threatened to beat him up later), leaving Butch to meet the redface menace alone. Jim took a bullet in the shoulder and fell as dramatically as possible with a scream to wake up the neighbourhood. Butch drew his new spud gun as P bore down on him, arrow primed and ready to fire. Butch fired and a lump of stale potato thumped into P’s bottom lip with all the power, accuracy and pain of a real bullet.
‘OWWWWWWWWW’ cried P. ‘That bloody hurt’. As Butch strode over to the dead Indians in his best John Wayne cowboy walk.
‘Damn Injuns. This be white mans country now, boy’. P fired off his last arrow (stick) in anger and hit Butch plum in the face, just below the eye. Butch howled in pain and doubled up. Jim and Andrew recovered and walked over to see the damage. As Butch stood up, a torrent of blood seemed to be flowing down his face. The three unharmed warriors gasped in unison, while Butch seeing his own blood suddenly felt queasily faint. They grabbed him before he fell over and whisked him off to his house, where his Father rushed him off to the hospital.
‘D’yer think he’s dead?’ asked Jim.
‘I hope not. We’ve got the cup final next week’ replied P, as he dragged his foot along the floor scraping off the remains of the poo.
‘Spose we’ll have to go home, then’ said Jim, grumpily.
‘Yeah. Doctor Who’s on soon, anyway. See ya, Jim’ and off they headed for home, dinner and Doctor Who, their minds full of football, food and torrents of blood. P sneaked home stealthily, just in case the cavalry were out.
When they returned to school on Monday, Butch turned up with a black eye, a huge plaster and a sorrowful look on his face. P was dead impressed with the size of the plaster.
‘Cor, that must be an enormous cut’.
‘Yes, it chuffing is and yes it chuffing hurts and it’s all your flipping fault’ said Butch. ‘Dear me. Why did you shoot me? You were supposed to be dead’.
‘Well, I ..er..managed to get one off before I fell’ was his rather lame excuse. ‘Anyway look at my lip’, P said thrusting his lip theatrically towards Butch. ‘Look’.
‘It was only a bit of potato, look at my chuffing face’.
He had to agree Butch had come off much worse. ‘Sorry’. Now he looked a bit sorrowful.
‘S’alright’ replied Butch. ‘Dear me. Think of the great scar I’ll have’. This brightened them all up and they looked forward to seeing his scar. Jim said it would probably make him look better and Butch threw a Treat at him. The Treat missed, so Jim watched where it landed, picked it off the floor and ate it.
They weren’t allowed to play cowboys and Indians any more after that. But Butch had been bought a new football as a get well present, so they didn’t need to anyway. Whenever Butch was asked about his scar in later life, he would only say that he’d received it in the battle of pool creek and remained enigmatically quiet after that.
Winter came and P caught the measles. Small red spots had appeared all over his body. Even on his willy!
‘You’ve got the measles’ said his mother. P had guessed this anyway. ‘Go to bed and stay there’. Hooray! No school.
P raced back to bed and dozed off. But he soon came to regret his Hooray as he became hotter and hotter and boiled like a bead of sweat in a sunbather’s crack. Soon a never ending torrent of snot was cascading from his nose, covering his pyjamas and sheets, his eyes burned like hot coals and he was too tired to move.
The doctor arrived, an ordinary one with no long scarf, big grin or jelly babies. He just looked bored, boring and miserable. Through tired, fevered eyes, time seemed to sway around him as the doctor approached the bed. The very air rippled off him as if the room had been re-painted by Van Gogh, he had eyes the size of footballs and a mouth that said something malicious was going to happen to P. When he awoke the doctor was gone, but the soreness, fever and snot had not.
His mother continually brought him fizzy pop and soup, his father brought him comics and salt and vinegar crisps (even though he knew he preferred cheese and onion or beef or Bovril flavoured crisps), his Nan, Annette and Ginge brought sweets and grapes and Herman, pinched his nose at every opportunity, the low-down scumbag. P prayed that Herman would be sucked away to the bowels of hell where he would be visited constantly by dentists, dance teachers and nit nurses and only had regurgitated sprouts to eat. Off the floor. The dirty pooey floor.
His fevered brain seemed to be sucking every drop of energy in his body to fuel his strange, semi-conscious visions. Spider-man crawled across the wall to displace John Radford and head firmly past Phil Parkes, his mother brought in soup wearing what appeared to be two shovels and a small collection of vegetables, Jim and Butch visited him (very briefly for fear of infection) before turning into a pair of monkeys and left chatting about Captain Pugwash whilst swinging from the lampshade. It was all most strange.
P later discovered that his father had put some brandy into his Ovaltine to try to help ease the fever.
To make matters worse, he was sweating so much that his mother forced him to take a bath and change his pyjamas and sheets every day!
On the third night, he awoke in a heavy sweat, in drenched sheets and saw a figure standing in the doorway. The figure walked slowly, silently over and sat on the end of the bed. He was old, frail and very pale with short white hair. He held a long black stick and was dressed completely in black, only his hands and head were visible.
The man looked slowly around the room with a thin smile on his face.
‘Ooohhhhhhhhhh, how much more?’ he said. P frowned and looked up at him through hot, sore eyes.
‘Who are you?’
‘Hmmm?’ said the man turning slowly to face P, apparently surprised he had spoken. ‘They don’t normally talk’ he muttered to himself. He leaned forward slowly and painfully, squinting at P. ‘Best if I don’t say’.
‘Have you brought me any sick gifts? Cos if you haven’t, you can clear off’.
‘Gifts? No, I haven’t. What sort of gift would you need in the middle of the night? You seem to have tissues and fluid and you’re too young for anything else.’
‘Sweets or fruit or...or colouring books’. The man puffed. ‘Anything apart from the bloody Beano. I’ve already got three of them’.
‘No, I didn’t bring you any sick gifts’ said the man, spitting out the last word. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, wincing as though a jolt of pain had just shot through him.
‘I’m ill. I’ve got the measles’ said P trying to look poorly.
‘I know’ said the man. ‘It’ll go soon. Wipe that snot off your face’.
‘Why can’t you tell me who you are?’ asked P. ‘And why are you here in the middle of the night? And why are you so white? Are you ill, as well?’
Herman shifted in his bed and groaned. ‘Shut up, Shat I’m trying to sleep’. P poked out his tongue at Herman and gave him a ‘shut your face, you spas’ look.
‘Well, firstly I just can’t, secondly it seemed the right time to come, thirdly I just am and finally not any more. Satisfied?’ P was deeply confused and not at all satisfied. He could not remember what he had asked him now.
‘How did you get in here?’
‘I let myself in. Eventually’ said the man.
‘How?’
‘God, you ask too many questions. I’d forgotten how annoying you could be, I’m off. I take it I can leave?’ The man rose from the bed and headed for the door. P assumed he was dreaming in his dreaming. And it wasn’t even a very interesting one.
‘Will you visit me again?’
‘Don’t you ever say anything that isn’t a question?’ replied the man. ‘Possibly. I’m having trouble getting the hang of this’ he said and walked out of the bedroom.
He turned and gave P a half-smile, then he was gone. P listened to hear voices or the door closing or anything. After a few seconds, he had heard nothing and drifted off into a fevered sleep with dreams of holding Annette’s tits beneath a fluffy red jumper with very white hands.
Eventually, the fever started to pass and P started to realise what a sweaty pong he was giving off.
‘I’m sleeping in the living room tonight’ said Herman, sick of the whiff. ‘You smell like a dogs arse’.
‘Better than looking like one’ P replied, feeling a bit more like himself.
‘Very funny coming from a spotty smellbag like you’. Herman later got revenge by putting a comedy beard and glasses on his Charlie George poster. There is not a word that accurately described how much he hated the scumbag-gitshit.
He did not even get the measles.

Three weeks had now passed since P had been sleeping in hospital and the strain and the pressure of it all finally crept up on Jo as she was laid low with the flu. Her parents and Sam insisted she stay in bed, while they vowed to take over bedside duties until she was well enough to return to P’s side.
To make matters worse, Jo’s employers had started to lose patience with the whole saga and were hinting that she had to choose between her man and her job. Jo’s career was very important to her and once she was alone in the house that night, while her parents visited P, she sobbed into her bedclothes, knowing that P might never wake up and she would have to return to work sooner or later.
The doctors were certain that P would recover from whatever ailed him very soon. ‘He will be awake soon’ comforted one of the doctors the previous night in his best bedside voice. Awake or a wake, though? As heartbreaking as it was for Jo, she wondered how long she could carry on if he did not wake up.
In Paradise, the God of Miracles switched on his Godly television and turned the volume up loud to drown the nagging in his head.
In his head, P dreamed of snow. He was always accident prone as a child. On his very first school day trip he had tried to climb a farmyard gate to get in to see the pigs, but caught his foot at the top of the gate, fell over it and broken his ankle, missing the following eight weeks of school. And he never did get to see the pigs. He was only in plaster for six weeks, but refused to walk for a fortnight afterwards and dragged himself around on his bottom, trailing the gammy leg behind him. Now he had tried to climb the statue of Jerimiah Twigg outside the swimming baths, slipped in the years of compacted pigeon shit on the shoulder and fallen heavily to the ground. Luckily, his face and arm broke his fall and he got away with a broken wrist and arm.
His childhood was littered with incidents of that sort. He was knocked unconscious by a flying discus at sports day when he lazily took a short-cut across the sports field, twisted an ankle on a cross-country run, was head-butted by a ram at another farm visit, bitten by a horse at the “come and meet the animals” day at the Isle of Dogs farm, had his foot crushed by another horse when Ginge had taken him to see Arsenal lose 1-0 at home to Tranmere Rovers in the League Cup, had a turd thrown at him by an irate elephant that had either taken an irrational dislike to him or had lost it’s famous memory and mistaken him for somebody else, was hit by a stunt motorcycle rider at a funfair on Blackheath after the said stuntman had successfully leaped six double decker buses without a scratch, but then had to be taken to hospital with a suspected broken arm after hitting him on the lap of honour (P escaped unscathed much to his annoyance) and was even once run over by an ambulance. Inside a hospital grounds!
The worst accident, although his fault, did not happen to him. The family often took a day out to visit Mad uncle Bert in Kent. Mad uncle Bert was raving mad. Mad Bert they called him. He had a massive house with a big garden, where he kept pigs, chickens, geese and ducks, which he often killed himself and ate. Occasionally raw so the rumour goes, but P had never seen any evidence of this. He also kept budgies, which he didn’t kill. He had a budgie room in the very top of the house, which was incredibly smelly and noisy, and had a floor covered in budgie crap. P loved to go running through the room, sending the budgies flying off all over the place, into walls, the ceiling and each other.
When someone Bert loved or admired died, Bert would take one of the budgies, whisper something to it and set it free, believing it took the spirit of the dead and set it free to roam. He usually found the budgie dead somewhere near the house over the following few days. His father thought Bert should have kept cuckoos instead.
Bert was full of great stories. War stories, horror stories, funny stories and his house was full of great stuff. He had an gigantic train set that ran through three rooms, a snooker table, which he used as a dining table with the condiments stored in the pockets, a ancient pinball machine that wouldn’t DING, but only CLUNKed instead and in the cellar, all sorts of old toys, books, bits of cars, gargoyles, stuffed animals, garden furniture which he said didn’t suit being in a garden, loads of shopping trolleys and his own gravestone, which he insisted be used when he died and was buried in his garden.
It was usually a lovely trip. Bert’s wife Ruth was lovely and made the most smashing pies and cakes P have ever tasted and they had two sons, Danny and Nero (mad Bert’s idea) and a scrummy daughter called Lisa, whom P adored. She was two years older than him with wonderful, flowing Alice blonde hair. Mad Bert, Ruth, Danny and Nero all had black hair and his mother used to say that it was strange that Lisa was so fair, when Bert and Ruth were so dark. Mum often wondered whether Bert’s milkman or postman were blonde. P did not understand what she meant at the time and he did not care either. Lisa was lovely and he adored her.
He was also the best of friends with Danny, both boys hated Nero, who did not get on with anyone and Danny, Nero and P all hated Herman.
One Christmas, the clan travelled down to Kent to stay with Mad Bert for a while. On the way down it started to snow and the next day, the land had turned white and the water had turned to ice. P got up dead early and helped Bert feed the animals. They had to break the ice on the pigs water trough, then feed hard bread to the ducks, then finally feed the chickens. P tried to feed the chickens one at a time and one of them bit him, which made Bert laugh like a sewer. P was not happy, but Bert made him feel better by promising that the offending chicken would be the next to die. Ha-ha.
After breakfast, P, Danny, Herman, Lisa, Bert and His father walked off to the park to play in the snow. P loved the park near Bert’s. It was wild, with big trees and bushes and an enormous lake. His father said it was just a pond, but P called it a lake and today it was frozen solid.
‘Coorrrrrrrr’.
‘Coorrrrrrrr’ echoed Danny. Herman poked out his tongue and made mong noises at them when his father and Bert were not looking.
‘Buzz off, Herm’ said P and got a smack round the ear. It didn’t hurt through his big woolly, balloon-shaped hat, though. Herman walked off in the direction of Lisa and P stuck up two fingers at Herman’s back, then P and Danny investigated the lake. They looked and they touched and they poked it with their boots. It didn’t move or crack, so P kicked it hard with his heel. It still didn’t break.
‘I dare you to stand on it’ said Danny. P was a little scared, but held onto Danny’s hand and stood on the ice. It still didn’t break! He was standing on the lake! This was great. Jesus wasn’t so clever. He let go of Danny’s hand and Danny joined him on the ice. They were getting a little bolder now as they laughed and slipped and slid about and pushed each other over. The ice was rock solid.
‘Do you think it’s safe?’
‘Yeah. You could probably drive a car over here today’ said Danny. ‘Dad did it once before’. P said Cor again.
About twenty feet away, the branch of a leaning tree dipped into the lake and was frozen into it.
‘I dare you to run to the tree and back’ said Danny. P did not want to look like a big, girly poof, so he did it. He ran as fast as he could and as fast as the ice would let him. He fell over three times and was terrified, but exhilarated by the time he made it back to the shore.
‘I dare you to run to the other side and back’ said P, through great puffs of hot breath. Danny grinned and set off.
Halfway across, Danny slipped onto his arse and P thought he heard a crack. Danny got up and ran to the far side of the lake. When he reached the far side he turned and beckoned for P to join him. P shook his head and called Danny back.
He started to run back and this time P heard a definite CRACK. Danny was running and slipping and sliding and smiling, a beautiful child gorgeously framed in the isolated, wintry landscape. P was sure he had heard a crack. Danny was still running and slipping and grinning his way across the flat plate of ice. P heard another crack and cold ran right through him. Danny waved from the ice. Then suddenly he wasn’t there. A large, black crack snaked across the lake and Danny had fallen into it. P stared at the widening, jagged gap in the ice for a second, rooted to the spot in shock. Suddenly, P saw Danny’s head and hand bob above the icy line, then disappear. Danny did not re-appear. P screamed.
Bert, Lisa, Herman and His father came running over and asked what was the matter. Where was Danny? P was still screaming and pointing to the crack.
His father and Bert ran across the lake and jumped into the freezing water. Herman ran off through the snow heading for the house to call an ambulance.
By the time the ambulance had delivered the three of them to the hospital, His father and Bert had to be kept in for treatment and Danny was dead. P barely said a word for over a week. He had killed one of his best friends. It was all his fault. If only they had played snowballs or slid down the hill or thrown stones onto the lake or anything, Danny would still be alive and P would not have heavy insides and a throat full of crying stones. His father and Bert were kept in hospital for two days to recover. P never really did recover. He never returned to Bert’s.
Bert died two winters later of a heart attack whilst out walking the dogs. P did not go to the funeral. Ruth, Lisa, and Nero moved house shortly afterwards. P did not see them for again years.

A month had passed. Jo was recovering from her stress-induced flu and had reluctantly and with much crying and literal heartache, decided to go back to work. If nothing else, it would distract her for parts of her day and hopefully make her so tired, that she would fall immediately to sleep in the evening instead of lying awake and crying.
Her eyes had become obscene cricket balls, round, red and inflated to the point of bursting it seemed. She was back at P’s bedside and talking to him again. Hours passed and eventually a nurse softly interrupted her.
‘I’m sorry, but you have to leave now’ she said as kindly as she could. Jo nodded and stood to put on her coat.
She stood staring down at him, then at the nurse, then back to P once again. ‘I miss you, my love’ she whispered, her eyes filling yet again. She leaned down to kiss him, but fell upon his chest in despair and wept openly once more. ‘Oh P, please come back to me’ she wailed, her body spasming with great, racking sobs. ‘Please come back to me. I can’t bear it’ she cried as the nurse quickly walked away, too upset to continue watching. ‘I can’t bear it’ she said again. ‘I can’t bear it’ her voice fading as her energy did the same.
A doctor appeared with the tearful nurse in tow and half-led, half-carried Jo from P’s side. They sat with her as her tears and sobs finally receded and she rubbed her eyes even bigger with tissues.
‘I wish I could offer some solace, something to help you with what you’re going through’ said the doctor earnestly.
‘Why is he doing this?’ demanded Jo, pleading with him through heartbreak eyes.
‘I wish I knew’ he replied softly. ‘I really do, but he has experts from all over the world baffled’. Jo’s head dropped once again. ‘I can tell you that he is asleep and that’s all. Apart from the fact that he won’t wake up, there’s nothing at all wrong with him that we can find’. He knew this sounded feeble and was thankful Jo did not say so.
‘He will wake up and once he does you’ll be the first to know, I promise’. This had little effect, although he was grateful she had stopped crying. ‘Let me give you something’ he suggested. The nurse reached out her hand and placed it over Jo’s.
Jo looked up at each of them, pleading, desperate and confused. ‘Just a little something to help you relax, to ease the stress you’re under’.
‘A sedative?’ asked Jo, dubiously.
‘A relaxant’ replied the doctor.
‘Don’t you think one of us unconscious is enough?’
‘More than enough, but while he is sleeping in there, you are suffering out here, that’s why I want you to take these’ he offered her a small brown bottle half-filled with white tablets.
Jo took them hesitantly with an unsure frown. ‘What are they?’ she asked as she stared into the bottle.
‘Just a relaxant, you can call them a sedative if you like, but that’s not exactly what they are. They’re designed to help people overcome and overwrought with grief or stress and I’m afraid that is you to a tee at the moment, young lady’. He smiled comfortingly as Jo looked pleadingly at him with huge eyes. She slipped the bottle into her bag, certain she would not use them.
‘How are you getting home?’ asked the nurse earnestly appearing at her side, trying not to cry along with her.
Jo nodded towards the clock and checked her watch needlessly. ‘My father is picking me up at 10.30’ she replied.
‘I’ll come and wait with you in the lobby, if that’s alright’. Jo nodded and painfully got to her feet, thanking them both for everything they were doing. By the time she and the nurse reached the lobby, her father was already waiting for her, concern etched into his face. He walked quickly towards her and Jo’s tears flooded out once again as he hugged her. The nurse choked back her own tears through a strained smile and almost ran away. Her father held her for a few moments, then led her to the car, whispering words of consolation and struggling to hold his own tears in check, seeing his little girl being torn apart so distressingly.
That night, she stayed with her parents again and told them about the night’s events. At her father’s pleading, Jo took one of the tablets given her by the doctor. Once she was in bed, she took another and for the first time in a month, she slept.
She slept for sixteen hours.

In his head, P dreamed of fish. One gloriously hot, clear, golden autumn morning, P, Herman, his father and his uncle Ginge went fishing. P had never been fishing before and his father had always insisted that he would hate it, but P went on and on and on and on until his father finally capitulated and agreed to take P with him. Herman was not happy, but then Herman never was. Usually just the three of them went fishing, but this time P went along and Herman was determined to make sure that P DID hate it. Why God created big brothers was one of the great mysteries of life. Like the duck billed platypus and the smell of old ladies and where teeth came from. Perhaps, P thought, he was incredibly sinful in a previous life and Herman was his punishment.
The day was glorious. Warm, late September sunshine blazed in a brilliant, cloudless sky, bathing the riverbank in honey and dancing on the water like river fairies. Birds swooped from tree to tree, insects buzzed and hummed lazily through the air, the merest whisper of a breeze made the trees shush each other and everything seemed good in the world. Unless you had an annoying big brother, of course. Herman was determined to make the day a bad one for P. His father and Ginge did not seem to want to catch any fish at all. They just laid back on the bank with their rods in the water, taking it easy and drinking beer.
Herman the creep baited everyone’s lines (except P’s) and Ginge had to show him how to do it. Baiting was Herman’s favourite part, getting fresh, wriggly maggots and worms and impaling them alive onto the sharp hooks. Here was someone born several hundred years too late. The Spanish Inquisition or medieval torture chambers would have suited him down to the blood sodden ground.
Ginge was demonstrating how to fish, the Ginge way. ‘Right, get yer tackle out’. Ginge and His father smaned, but P missed the joke and just looked bemused. Herman smaned, too, but just after the others.
P struggled with rod, line, float, etc, but Ginge was there to help, while his father laid back on the grass, eyes closed, beer in hand and Herman was already set up and waiting eagerly for his first bite.
‘Now what you’ve got to do’, Ginge continued, ‘is dip it in slowly and if it starts going up and down, grip it firmly or you might lose control completely’. Ginge and his father’s smans had turned to chuckles for some reason.
‘What are we fishing for?’ asked P.
‘Fish’.
‘What sort of fish are we looking for?’
‘Perch, mostly here, but I’d love a salmon, so keep an eye out for them. They’re long and pink with a big purple ‘ead’. His father burst out laughing again for no reason at all at this point and almost spilt his beer. Herman laughed in a half-hearted way and stared intently at the water.
‘Long and pink with a purple head’ P repeated to himself determined to spot one and his father and Ginge laughed even more! This must be some kind of fishing joke that he would learn in time.
P stared at the water intensely, seeking the slightest sign of a fish or a wobbling rod. Ginge joined his brother on the bank, lying in the warm sunshine drinking warm beer.
Ten minutes passed and P was starting to get bored. He reluctantly looked over at Herman, who was still looking intensely into the water. ‘Anything yet?’ Herman frowned and poked two fingers back at him.
‘Oh come on, Herm’.
‘We’ve only just got here’ replied Herman, nastily without looking up.
‘Well, how long does it normally take?’
‘Shat’ said Herman testily, ‘you just have to wait. Some days you don’t catch anything’.
‘Nothing at all?’ he asked, incredulously. ‘Taaa’. No wonder his father and Ginge were lying down having a beer.
Another ten minutes passed. Fishing, he decided, had to be the most boring thing on earth. You just sat there, sat on a muddy riverbank being blinded by the river fairies, for minute after tedious minute, waiting for (twitch).....what was that? (twitch, twitch). There it was again. A definite movement of the rod. P grabbed it firmly, just as Ginge had told him. The rod suddenly lunged so hard that he was almost dragged into the river.
‘I’ve got one, I’ve got one!’ he yelled, while YANKing as hard as he could yank.
Ginge jumped to his feet and bounded over while his father lay motionless, apparently now asleep, although his beer was still upright.
Ginge talked P through the catch and a few minutes of strenuous yanking later, he pulled out his first ever fish to a ‘Hoorayyyy’ from Ginge and a fierce stare from Herman, ha-ha.
‘Oooh you have got a big one’ said Ginge with a grin, looking over to His father, but he was now completely asleep and Ginge’s joke was wasted. Although even P got that one. Just.
‘If only we had a camera you could have a picture of you dangling your big one over the river’ said Ginge. P looked proudly down at the fish as it jumped and flopped about feebly on the bank, it’s mouth gasping.
‘What do we do with it now, Ginge?’
‘Chuck it back in’ he replied. P’s mouth clanged open like the cave door hiding Thunderbird 2. He looked at Ginge in disbelief.
‘Chuck it back in?’ he asked, amazed. ‘But I wanna keep it’.
‘You can’t keep it and you can’t eat it, it’ll just go off and stink the place out. Chuck it back in’. With a powerful heave of his mighty arms, the Fantastic Fishman pulled the gigantic fish beast from its watery domain and pummelled it out of existence. The vanquished gulper flapped limply on the shore as the Fantastic Fishman gasped for air after their monumental struggle and looked on dolefully as his uncle Ginge picked it up and plopped it gently back into the river, where it slipped back down into the inky depths.
The happiness he had felt with his first catch had now evaporated. What was the point sitting about all day trying to catch a fish, when you threw anything you caught back into the river as soon as you caught it? The Fantastic Fishman sat on the riverbank and had a little sulk.
As Ginge threw the fish back into the water, P thought he caught sight of something on the opposite bank. It looked like a man in a long, black coat. Who would wear a big coat in this heat? P stared down into the water, but when he looked across the river to the opposite bank again, he was gone.
The day came to an end with Ginge having caught the most despite dossing on his back for most of the day. P had caught four (and thrown them all back in) and Herman caught one. Time for the Fantastic Fishman to swim fluidly off to the nearest pub and impress all the girls there by drinking like a fish without falling over or vomming.
‘You won’t impress any of the girls with a tiddler like that, Herm’ said Ginge. Herman frowned back. His father had caught nothing at all. All he had done all day was lie about drinking beer. Even when he had a bite he’d just sat there with his beer and Ginge had to pull it out. Apparently he had never caught a fish in his life. He only went for the beer and a nice sleep in the sunshine.
Ginge was having problems tidying away his gear. ‘Oh, I’ve got this all tangled up. I wish Annette was here to undo my flies, eh Bill?’ His father gave him a drunken grin.
They all got home just in time for It’s A Knockout and fish and chips and P was telling his mother all about the day. K and C were not interested in the slightest, Herman had gone out and his father had collapsed in front of the telly, his shining head getting redder by the minute.
‘Sounds lovely, darling, but you’d better have a bath and get to bed. It looks like you’ve caught a bit of sun’.
The next morning, he awoke with a burning sensation all over the top half of his body and sweat dripping off him. As he turned to get out of bed his body screamed in disapproval. He finally managed to pull himself up to a standing position and glanced at his reflection in the mirror and recoiled in shock. Holy sunburn, Batman! Overnight he had become a walking tomato! His entire upper body and head was a burning red and every movement was causing shockwaves of pain to ripple through him like a boiling tidal wave. He took a peek at Herman, who was still sleeping and was glad to notice that he was just the same. His pain became a little easier to bear at the thought of Herman suffering, too.
The King of the Tomatomen sneaked over to Herman’s bed and gave him a stiff shake. ‘WAKEY, WAKEY!’
‘ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH’.
P ran slowly and painfully to the kitchen where his mother was preparing breakfast as usual.
‘Oh dear. Another two lobsters for the pot. Have some breakfast and I’ll rub some cream in for you’.
Herman gave P a vicious look as he went to take his seat at the table. Just as he sat down, a piece of bacon spat out a blob of hot, sizzling fat which flew through the air and landed on Herman’s shoulder, just missing his vest strap.
‘ARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH’ he cried again.
‘Oh dear’, said his Mum, trying to suppress a giggle. ‘You’re not having much luck today, are you Herm?’
P hee-hee’d in delight at Herman who gave him an even more vicious look in return.
As they finished off their breakfast and Mum went to the bathroom, Herman walked out of the kitchen and as he passed, gave P a huge slap on the back.
‘OOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW’.
‘Don’t mess around with me, Shat. You’ll end up worse off every time’. Herm was a real scumbag. He could never take a joke. The brave King of the Tomatomen tried to stop his chin from wobbling.
When his mother later rubbed cream into his burning skin, he experienced the nearest feeling he had ever had to bliss and the nicest feeling he would have until he discovered masturbation. The relief was exquisite, a gentle breeze, a glass of Tizer on a Sunday afternoon or a cool swim in the heat of summer. The discomfort gradually eased through the day, until he foolishly took a bath. It was fine when he sat in it, but when he tried to lower himself, ‘ARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHH’, he leapt out of the bath and danced around the bathroom trying desperately to cool down, to ease the scorching burning sensation. ‘HOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR’.
If only they had a shower like when they had gone to Clacton. Tomatoes didn’t like baths.
His mother appeared. ‘Oh dear, I should’ve warned you about that’. The pain had roared back into his body with a vengeance. ‘Dry yourself off and I’ll rub some more cream in for you’.
P felt wretched and very sorry for himself. And all over stupid fishing, too. That entire weekend had been a disaster.
‘At least it’s half-term next week’ P said to his mother as he went into the living room.
‘Is it?’ said his father. ‘That’s ‘andy. You can help me with the decorating as Herman’s away’.
‘Away?’
‘Herman’s off to Abergavenny on a school trip’ explained his mother. Curses! Drat and Double Drat.
‘Oh. Great’. If only he were Superman, thought P, he would never have to help with the decorating and he could fly away from Rachel whenever he saw her coming. And he could use his Super x-ray vision to see into the girls changing rooms and look through their skirts to see their knickers. At the time he did not know why he wanted to do that, but Butch had said that was what the best thing about being Superman was. Although even Superman wouldn’t want to see Rachel’s knickers.