2. Tired and Broke

Tired and broke

Jimmy scarcely noticed being tired any more; it had become as much a part of his life as eating or breathing. Of course he’d been tired sometimes in his old life. His fantasy life.

Seriously knackered, or so in his innocence he had believed. When shouting himself hoarse during an al nighter with the Tokyo Exchange or pissed up at 5am in a pub with some of the guys, watching a live ght from Vegas. Or enjoying his second straight dawn, loved up on a beach in Ibiza with a bottle of Krug between his knees and a gap-year holiday-hippy chick on either side.

Yes. He’d been tired. But not real y tired. Tired to his core, tired in his blood.

Tired to the point where he doubted his sanity. Tired until his mind dislocated itself from his body and just sort of oated a few feet above it as he went through the motions of being alive.

ese days that was how tired Jimmy felt al the time. And there would be no respite, not for years.

He could hear the screaming long before he opened the front door. e screaming never seemed to stop. ey could have recorded his life and used it as the soundtrack for a slasher movie. Both of the younger ones had clearly gone off at the same time and were competing to see who could drive their mother insane rst. Jimmy knew exactly the sort of night that awaited him.

Because it would be the same as last night. And the night before. e same as every night since that tearful moment when Jodie, the rock, the treasure, the person without whom they simply could not do, had left.

Jimmy thought about taking a last turn round the block. Of grabbing a few moments more of stumbling, agonized, half-conscious, semi-zombie cated peace before entering the maelstrom that was his home (or the bank’s home since he had been forced to mortgage his entire equity in a failed effort to get on top of his mounting debts). But Jimmy was an honourable bloke. He loved Monica. He might have failed her utterly like the sad swine that he was, but he loved her and he knew she needed him, if only to give her three minutes’

respite to pop to the loo.

One by one he unlocked the four beautiful y tooled Chubb deadlocks set perfectly along the rich, shiny edge of the huge bright-red front door of which he had once been so proud. Despite its great weight the door swung open smoothly. Of course it did, it was so expertly hung. Hung on its eight big brass hinges. Such a ful , heavy, clunkingly satisfying movement. A Romanian guy had done it; they stil understood wood in Eastern Europe. Jimmy had admired the guy at the time but now he envied him. He envied him so much.

To have a trade. To be able to actual y do something. A real, palpable, physical skil that you could offer for hire. How good would that be? Particularly now that the market for aggressive, cocky wankers shouting themselves hoarse into a telephone had so comprehensively dried up.

e marble-clad hal was empty, of course. Empty and echoing as the red door shooshed and clunked shut behind him. No welcoming cocktail served by a lovely, eager, semi-posh girl with a degree in Fine Food and Catering, fresh-faced, chef-coated and anxious to explain the details of that evening’s menu.

‘Hi, Jimmy. Cool day? Wicked. Hope you’re in the mood for Chinese duck?

I’ve been marinating it since two and my black bean sauce is awesome.’

No. at was history. Jessica had gone the way of Jodie. Her fabulous catering and hospitality skil s were now being wasted at a Garfunkel’s while she searched for a new private chef’s position, along with al the other drifting Jessicas for whom the supply of mega-rich employers was so rapidly shrinking.

She was gone and the big marble hal was empty and cold. e only thing in it besides Jimmy was screams. Bloodcurdling, brain-mashing, life-sapping screams.

e volume ramped up massively as, head bowed with exhaustion, he made his way down into the basement. As he went, he noted that only one of the little lights that had once glowed so subtly beneath the thick frosted glass of the stairs was stil working. How long had Monica agonized over the lighting?

It had seemed so important at the time. She had had a pile of catalogues and magazines. A pile. Al devoted exclusively to internal lighting.

Now there was just a single working bulb left. One by one the others had al gone out. Monica would probably see it as a metaphor for their vanished hopes and dreams. Or was it a simile? Jimmy wasn’t sure; he wasn’t bright that way, like Monica.

On the other hand, what had they been dreaming of in the rst place, il uminating the steps of their basement staircase internal y? It seemed rather a strange idea now, viewed from his new perspective. Now that his dreams involved feeding his children. But it real y had seemed important at the time.

He would have liked to replace those bulbs. As a gesture of de ance, to prove to himself that he was stil good for something. at he might be down but at least he could make the discreet interior lighting hidden in his basement stairs work. But he couldn’t even do that. He didn’t know if they had any spare bulbs. If they did have, he didn’t know where they were kept, and anyway he wouldn’t have known how to take the frosted glass off the stairs to get rid of the dead ones. Someone had always sorted that kind of stuff out for them.

ose were the days, when they had somebody to sort out their kids and somebody to sort out their light bulbs.

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