measuring the birdsong.
Light attacks the sky
behind the blind.
I am not alert in the afternoons,
head on my office desk,
calls on hold.
And at night here you are,
pacing,
chasing me,
the muddy-booted
freeholder of my sanity.
You couldn’t leave because Rebecca.
You couldn’t leave because Rebecca’s pain.
You couldn’t leave because Rebecca’s pain versus my pain.
You couldn’t leave because.
You couldn’t leave.
You couldn’t.
You. You. You.
My neighbour’s alarm rings through the wall.
She is a nurse.
Slim. Polish.
Polite when she hands over misdelivered mail.
Sometimes I want to ask her if she has access to medicine.
A van idles.
The nurse’s alarm reminds her to
get up get up get up.
Light movement.
You couldn’t leave because my pain didn’t matter.
And now look at what you’ve done.
To everyone.
Mr Young is a new client.
The lines in his forehead seem new too.
‘I have to be able to do something
about my wife going nuts
and taking him to some posh clinic in London
where it’s not just leaflets
but drugs they’re giving him.
And then I have to pay for a therapist
who won’t listen.
I mean,
listens to my wife spouting neo-liberal bullshit,
but not to me when I beg him to veto the pills.
Look, I don’t mind buying my son Oil of sodding Olay
or even calling him Jet.
I call him Jet.
But if they think I’ll sit on my hands
like a cockless cunt
while they bury my son
like he was never even born,
they have another think coming.
I’m paying for bras.
I mean, he’s twelve years old for fuck’s sake.
He believed in Santa Claus until he was nine
and three years later I should trust him with this?
‘I’m not a fascist, which is what my wife’s saying.
I voted to remain.’
He slams his hand against his knee
and stares at the hardback books behind me.
He is crying.
‘It can’t be legal.
The father has to have a word or two to say
before they meddle with his body.’
‘What would you like me to do?’ I ask.
‘Disinherit him.
I need a will that says he gets nothing if he’s a she.
Chemically and physically, I mean.’
‘You think disinheriting your child will stop this?’
‘Here we go.
What’s happening in the world?
I don’t understand anything any more.’
This is a man who loves.
I lean forward to be closer to him.
‘Mr Young. I think counselling
would be the best thing for your family.
Maybe we could talk in a few months.’
He stands. Pushes the chair away.
He is sobbing now, hardly able to inhale.
‘Yup. Yeah. OK. Helpful. Thank you.
Liberal hearts unite, right?
Might have known.
Could have guessed from your
fucking haircut.’
I touch the ends of my hair.
It is dry. Needs a conditioning treatment.
His own is long, tied up into a messy man-bun.
He charges from the office and Helen replaces him.
She is chewing on something. ‘You alright?’
‘Don’t invoice him for that meeting.’
I rest my forehead on the desk.
‘Can I have tea?’
‘Why was he so upset?’
‘He can’t control people,’ I tell her.
‘Don’t put too much milk into it.’
I dragged Tanya to the Bald Faced Stag
every Friday for three weeks
until you reappeared.
You didn’t see me
from your stool,
chatting easily with the barman.
I stood by you. Ordered loudly.
‘It’s you,’ you said.
‘It appears so,’ I agreed.
‘I thought about heading to O’Rafferty’s
but I hear the bar staff aren’t up to much these days.’
It was the closest to flirting I’d ever been
but it worked,
made you smirk
and offer me a drink.
‘I need help with a legal problem,’ you said,
a couple of hours later
when Tanya had gone home in a sulk.
I shook my head.
‘Make an appointment or I’ll have to invoice you.’
‘I paid for the drinks.’
‘Meet me in Gertie Browne’s next Friday
and I’ll answer anything you like.’
The bar was noisy
but there was silence suddenly
between us.
I was trying to arrange something.
But it wasn’t the kind of thing I did,
wasn’t the sort of woman I was.
I wanted to explain, to say,
I don’t know what’s happening to me.
You examined your glass,
‘I’ll make an appointment.’
‘What was your question?’
I tried to be light.
It was too late.
You were leaving,
going home to Rebecca
and her chic interiors.
To your boys.
‘I have so many questions, Ana,’ you said.
Apart from the computer screens,
my office is in darkness.
The phone rings. It’s Nora.
In the background, screaming.
‘Ana. You never called me back.’
‘I was just finishing off at work.’
‘You’re still there?
I guess that’s how you afford posh wellies.’
If I didn’t know Nora better
I would mistake her tone for concern.
‘What do you want?’
I have my teeth in a claim that
Rogers & Cowell negligently prepared a will
and now their client’s kids are fuming,
heirlooms passed on to a stepmother,
known to the deceased for less than two months
and with a penchant, apparently,
for old men with clattering coughs.
‘Can you get that baker you know
to make a cake for Fiona’s party?
She wants a cat on it.’
‘Bit of a tight turnaround, but I’ll text her.’
‘Seriously, go home.
You’re there late every night.
You aren’t shagging one of the partners, are you?
Do you lot get written consent before banging each other?
Just in case.’
Nora has always been funny.
When we were children, she was unkind,
stealing my sweets with a wink,
pinching me for the remote.
I’d laugh
at the easy way she had of getting what she wanted
by making cruelty a joke.
‘I’ve got to finish this.’
‘Go home,’ she repeats. ‘And get me a cat cake.
You’re paying for it though. I’m skint.’
Done with Rogers & Cowell,
I draft a codicil for Mr Ward’s will
to prevent his drug-addled third son