He used to make toast for The Pope

Chapter One

She left me the day Diana died, just like the other blonde to break my heart did twenty five years earlier when I was in short trousers and heavy new shoes. Both times I cried. Turning my cheeks into beacons of red-hot remorse. For the first time since that first day of school, I tasted the salt of my own tears. You see she didn’t leave alone, she took the twins - the two curly haired, blue eyed drunken midgets who at two and a half where filling life with more joy than my clumsy heart could hold.
Let me tell you the reason for my membership to the ranks of the newly separated, sitting in a rented flat with a cheap cord carpet surrounded by IKEA lamps, photo frames and futon beds? The reason, a compulsive liar called Tom, who is ‘all Audi and capped teeth’ according to my old fashioned Mum. She’d spotted Trish and the lads in Curry’s and he was with them, twirling his keys and pretending he was their daddy. Apparently kitting the boys out with the latest gaming machine and ‘treating’ Trisha to a new big television.
How could she? You see Tom was no ordinary liar he was golden. On that first awkward meeting, a Barnsley heartbeat after I’d ordered tea and toast in the neutral agreed meeting place of Franks Café, he bragged 'that he used to make toast for the Pope.' No one smiled except me, Trish this once sane woman who was rarely conned, nodded in agreement and a docker sat opposite who was listening intently to every word made the sign of the cross and coughed up a gold watch. “I have no intention of replacing you as the kids Dad Jim.” he assured me looking too pleased for my liking as he swaggerd out of the cafe twirling his keys. “Trish can I have word?” I pleaded. Trish looked to Tom
“No Jim you can’t.” I was left sat fiddling with the over sized red plastic tomato on the table that was fabled to contain sauce. The Docker caught my eye, and with teeth like sugar puffs smiled big – “Toast for the Pope,” he said, then winked and tucked back into the mountain of bacon sausage egg and black pudding on his truckers salad.

It was Saturday afternoon. There was a knock on the flat door, a tuneful knock intended through the medium of tapping on wood, to convey it was a friendly familiar call, a knock that gave away the identity of the caller .The tune- Rule Britannia, played with love and hate knuckles meant that it could only be Eddie, he was also recently separated, but from his Mum. Eddie had mispent all his 38 years with her until she’d died at Christmas, a tragic-comic death choking on a toffee Revel. Now he raised his smoke across the hall in flat three, a flat with only slightly less IKEA furniture than my own and likewise all his plants had died within four days of him bringing them home. Eddie had planned a film night ‘The Good, The Brad and The Ugly’ he called it. He’d even done a poster for it on his new computer, and pinned to my door. It announced the running order as, For A Few Dollars More, Snatch and Two Mules For Sister Sarah.

Eddie had brought the refreshments which consisted of 48 eight of those tiny bottles of French lager and a bottle of quality malt whisky (as it was plugged with a cork.) He’d also brought two blankets, which were to be our ponchos and four bananas which were to be our Smith and Wesson .38’s. The bottles of lager had gone before Clint had killed anyone and as we sat in our ponchos shooting at the screen baddies with our yellow ‘guns’. I pulled the cork out the whisky with my teeth. Shooting baddies ponchoed up and gulping neat malt was a far cry from the Saturday afternoon of three months ago –

Saturday afternoon we’d agreed was Trish’s down time, some time for her away from the lads, I’d take them the park, The Burger Bunker or to squint at the sea where they’d look at boats through petrol station binoculars that magnified things about six per-cent. For her Saturday, Trish usually used it as a gym day, the gym where she met Tom – the place had been buzzing she’d been telling me, about the new ex-celebrity trainer. I remember when the T word first entered our lives. It was early Saturday evening and Trish said she met the new trainer Tom he’d commented she had a remarkably toned body for a mum of twins
“Fancy that, she said as she dropped her shocking pink sports bag back at the bottom of the stairs, the very man who trained MC Hammer saying I had a great body.”
“Well just remember, he can’t touch this’ I said, giving her bottom with a playful squeeze. I then jumped into action doing the Hammer Time can’t touch this silly dance der ner ner ne I laughed ‘Hammer time.’ Trish I remember moved swiftly away without even a smile. “As if someone like that would never be interested in someone like me in that sort of way” she said coating her lips with a new shade of red. I was frozen feeling stupid in the Hammer position with hands on my knees.
“Going somewhere nice?” I teased her gently, no she sighed just thought I needed to try something new” and my heart sank a few hundred feet.

For the first time since they’d gone Saturday afternoon wasn’t torture – If I dare say it, it was fun, albeit stupid man fun. Neil Morrissey behaving badly fun. I hated that show and now I felt like I was acting out the script. One thing was for sure I thought as Brad Pitt as the tinker Mickey, sent another prize fighter into a coma I’d have fought him there and then with one hand tied behind my back for the chance for it to all be alright, back to how it was, stood back in the leading role on what I still considered my stage. Bathing the kids, taking the bin bags out and getting up if I it sounded like were were being burgled by a blind bloke

After a few gulps of malt it seemed incredible that I was here in rented accommodation, Falling down drunk in a bedroom that had never seen love and a blue plastic clock ticking loudly, making my broken heart thump and reminding me of every second that i'd been away.