Losing It Read Online Free Page A

schools, Diesel to Mafeking Street and Farukto St Saviour’s. After that day at the record shop, Faruk and Diesel got all pally again and I found myself spending more time with Clive. Which was okay, because though it was now Faruk and Diesel and me and Clive, together we were The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as we called ourselves when drunk – all except Faruk, of course. Now it only remains for me to tell you something about Clive and then I can introduce you, finally, to the heavenly Rosalind.

C HAPTER 3
    Changing Man
    ‘It’s a f-f-flaming disgrace. Now there’s rolls of playground netting in the driveway. And lead flashing on the front lawn. I wonder which church roof that’s from? Somebody should f-f-flaming well report him to the council.’
    My father, Charles Johnson, is peering through the small window at the top of the stairs at the side of the house, the only place from which he can get an unobstructed view of our neigh-bours’ garden, or what’s left of it.
    ‘You did report him, dear.’ That’s my mum, standing a few steps below him, watching him the way a sparrow might watch a hawk. ‘In fact,’ she ventures, ‘I think you’ve reported him a number of times.’
    ‘I have reported that man,’ Dad says, ‘on twenty-two occasions for sixteen f-f-flagrant violations of local statutes. Six reports concerning a repeated inf-f-fringement of the same bylaw.’
    ‘Was that the one about storing work materials in your garden?’
    ‘That’s not a garden, that’s Coventry after the blitz,’ Dad says. ‘Look at it. It’s like living next door to a camp of f-f-flaming gypsies.’
    ‘I expect he’ll tidy it all up one day,’ Mum says. She’s looking at the world through her rose-tinted varifocals again; she has to, living with Dad. ‘Then he’ll probably want to have a garden just like yours, Charlie.’
    ‘Charlie? Charlie?’ says Dad. ‘When in all these long years of our marriage have I ever encouraged you to call me Charlie? I hate Charlie. Charles, woman, the name is Charles.’
    Mum shuts up, Dad goes on complaining. I’m waiting to godownstairs so I can pop up town and investigate this new Chinese remedies shop on the high street but I can’t because Dad is there on the bit of landing where the stair turns, standing on a short set of steps so he can see out of the unfrosted top half of the window. I’m dealing with the idea of Clive’s dad having a garden like ours, where the lawn edges have been trimmed with the rigour of a military barber and every line is ruler-straight. There’s not a single weed in Dad’s flowerbeds and he must have used a spirit level to trim the hedge tops.
    ‘This is too, too much,’ he’s saying. ‘He’s turned that garden into a scrapyard. Literally. Coils of wire, old engine blocks, rusty iron pipes. I tell you, Violet, that man has been a thorn in my side since the day he moved in. And now look at him, wondering around bold as brass in his swimming trunks!’
    ‘It’s a hot day, love,’ Mum points out.
    ‘But swimming trunks in Laurel Gardens! Where’s his sense of decency? It lowers the tone, and the house prices too, I shouldn’t wonder.’
    ‘Don’t work yourself up, love,’ Mum says. ‘Think about your blood pressure.’
    But Dad seems to think a heart attack is worth the price of being able to stand at his post, soaking up the squalor surrounding the squat little bungalow next door. This is Clive’s dad’s house and, lately, his workplace, after the credit crunch obliged him to relocate his scrap metal business to his garden and down the sides of his house, and also into the knackered caravan parked by the back door.
    ‘Look at him!’ Dad says again. ‘Standing there in his little red swimming trunks for all the world to see! It’s disgusting. I’m going to—’
    ‘Write to the council, I know, dear,’ Mum says, and goes back downstairs, where there’s a big pile of Dad’s white underpants on the ironing board,