winner takes all

Roz was the kind of mum who thought everything happens for a reason. When flicking through her IPhone first thing in the morning her eyes doodlebugged with lack of sleep and screen time she almost dropped the bottle of water she had in her hand shrieked with joy. Bill lying next to her in bed pulled the extra-large quilt around his ears. In the wardrobe mirror he caught a glimpse of the straps and rounded shoulders of her nightie taking the strain of her breasts, and a bare arm, but his eyes were bad now he wasn’t sure if he’d fell asleep with his specs still on, or if it was her arms he was looking at or his own.  He felt the loss of heat and the acrid womanly smell changing the chemistry of the bedroom, dissipating as she moved across to her side of the bed and the strip of carpet near the door. He heard the frenzied tip-tip tapping of fingers and thumb on her phone as she painted a canvas on her phone of the kind of mother she was and her eyes glowed as she sent messages out into the world how wonderful the day had started. She dunted his back.

‘Don’t you want to know then?’ Roz asked.

‘Whit is it noo?’ he asked and farted, out loud. On purpose.

She slapped his thigh though the muffled warmth and he sighed.

‘Whit time is it, anyway?’ His bald head emerged like a periscope out of the quilt, the tangle of his hairy chest a stripe of black against quilt and the silvery-grey of the wall behind him.  He turned his head scratching at his knackers and looking for his specs. He yawned. ‘It’s freezing, is the heating on?’

Roz’s lips were parted, her front teeth protruding. She waited until he had his specks on and was looking at her properly, before she whooped again, ‘Dove has come joint first in the West Dunbartonshire Libraries poetry competition.’  Her knees bent as she leaned across, her hair falling forward showing the freckles on her shoulders, she thrust the phone screen at his nose as evidence.

‘That’s great.’ Bill touched her breasts, let his fingers linger and circle with that smile on his face.

She pushed his hand away. ‘Is that all you ever think of?’

‘Aye,’ he said, and laughed, pulling the quilt back to show her.

She scrambled away, phone in hand, finding her slippers by touch, eyes onscreen, bumping her feet under the bed and wangling her feet into them. Her nightgown was pulled on and she tip-tapped on the phone going up the hall and sitting on the pan. Her daughter’s news was already on Instagram, Facebook, and she’d tweeted a picture of her four year-old daughter and her remarkable success on the page of West Dunbartonshire awards, showing she wasn’t just anybody, she was a Winton.   The other joint winner had already posted his poem on the feed with his picture under it. She quickly read through it. Rubbish, she thought, Dove’s poem was so much better and she was so much younger, but Roz tapped a like on the Twitter-feed page. She didn’t want to seem hard-hearted. She had another look at the other joint-winner’s face and laughed out loud, Davie Brown, a typical teenager, almost Chinese looking because of the eczema on his plug face. She almost felt sorry for him.

Roz made the full English breakfast posting the sizzling spread on Instagram. She waited until later before posting the family shot in the living room, her family sprawled across and in front of the couch. Desiree in her sun-yellow sweater and pink leggings, posed and pirouettes in her flat black shoes and practiced a model’s  dipping shoulder walk, at nine, an old hand at posing and clowning for phone pictures. Dove was dressed more modestly in brown leggings and a round-neck jumper of the same colour. She expertly held a scroll up as her mum fiddled with the filters and tried to get them all in shot: a proud Dad, hand on each of his girls’ shoulders, but not too close to show Bill’s fat belly bulging out of his banded rugby top, or the golden piece of paper isn’t for a poetry competition winner, but Desiree’s completion certificate of a sponsored walk she’d recently done.

‘Shit,’ Roz says, and wipes a less than flattering picture, before getting it right, an arresting image of her family being ultra-successful and modestly perfect.

After breakfast Roz is engrossed in the viral fallout of success.

Wonderful you, tweeted an old friend.

What a brilliant daughter you’ve got. Her IQ must be stratospheric. Watch out Stephen Hawkins lol

Chip off an old block. Einstein or Shakespeare, split the difference.

You must be so proud!!!

Doesn’t surprise me at all.

You’re such a brilliant mother – an inspiration to us all.

Couldn’t be happier if it were my own daughter. Magical. So proud. See you at the award’s ceremony.

West Dunbartonshire Libraries Award’s Ceremony was held downstairs in the modest surrounding of the main library on Dumbarton Road. Plastic chairs and a sour subterranean dampness with raincoats drying on the backs of the seats, and  an audience talking in a funeral tone among themselves and looking over the leaflets on each chair, one of which was a survey form, the other the schedule of the prize-winning ceremony.  

John, the head librarian, played Master of Ceremonies and stood at the front in his best suit and looked out affably through half-moon spectacles at his middle-aged audience, and a few sprinkling of kids also corralled into coming. He smiled and did the party trick of tapping the microphone and ‘one-two-testing’ at the front, behind him was a screen in which the winning stories and poems were projected onto a white-screen behind the speakers.  

Erica, an eleven-year-old prose winner of the junior subcategory titled ‘Apples - a horror story’ with illustrations one of the few exceptions to the other prize winners as she spoke clearly into the microphone and delivered a rousing rendition of her story, which brought loud applause and some laughter.

When the Master of Ceremonies announced Dove Hinton he broke with protocol and crouched down to her level. Dove was sitting in the front row between her mum and dad, her sister sat on her dad’s side. When her name was mentioned she smiled shyly and turned cooring into her mum, hiding her face.

‘In a work of remarkable maturity,’ John, the head librarian said, ‘Dove Winton has won joint first prize with her poem “Cherry Blossoms”. The poem appeared behind his back on the white-screen. ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to get her to read for us.’ He smiled and turning read the first few lines. ‘Underneath the Cherry Blossom trees/ I stand with my family and me/ And step over the shadow of common humanity…’ John closes the distance between them and sloped the microphone towards Dove, coaxing her into speaking to the audience, but the little girl burrowed further into her mum and shrunk away from him. He laughed and passed her by and addressed himself once more to his audience. ‘Aw, she’s shy,’ out of the corner of his eye he noticed Desiree almost bounding out of the chair. He pushed the microphone in her direction, ‘Perhaps the older sister will do us the honour…’

Desiree snatched the microphone from the MC’s hand eager to play her part. She stood up and looked up at the screen and announced ‘It’s OK, I’ll read the rest of it. My wee sister is too wee, anyway and cannae read or write yet.’

Imagine accusing you of cheating.

Shocking.

They should be ashamed of themselves. I’d sue the bastards for every penny they were worth.

Crappy wee prize anyway. I thought it was funny!!! You certainly put one across their snide faces.