The Best of Friends by Alex Day (accelerated reader books .txt) 📕

After a renewed tussle with the lock, I manage to get the front door open. The house is gloomy and dank, the curtains still drawn, the heating off. There’s a permanently fusty airless smell about the place that makes me think that perhaps the damp hasn’t been adequately dealt with, despite what I told Miriam so confidently. Either that or we’ve got mice.

I perch on a chair in the kitchen as I create a new contact in my phone and add the number Dan gave me. Then I get up and stash the piece of paper carefully in one of the dresser drawers, just in case my ancient and outdated mobile packs up, which gets more and more likely as each day passes.

I force myself to eat a banana, shower and change, and then go up to the boys’ bedroom to do a bit of ineffectual unpacking of yet another box of toys – Lego, Playmobil, and some weird orange remote control thing with wheels and claws. I have no idea where it came from and nor do I ever recollect either of the boys playing with it. I want to throw it in the trash – after all, if they ask about it, I can always say that it got lost in the move. But somehow I lose heart. Maybe it’s something really important and they’ve lost so much else that it would be cruel to wrest it away from them.

I look around at all the rest. I should probably try to sell it on eBay – someone told me that you can get a fair bit for Lego, even incomplete sets and all mixed up. I sit back on my heels and consider this. I actually have no idea how to sell things on eBay; it’s just one of those terms that people bandy about but probably half of them don’t actually do it, either. I half-heartedly put some potentially saleable bits of Lego in an empty box and then ponder the mess anew, despairing of ever sorting it and knowing that, even when the boxes are all unpacked and the toys binned or stowed away in cupboards or under beds, the metaphorical mess which is my tattered life will still surround me.

A rapping at the front door jerks me forcibly from my reverie. I’m immediately on high alert, my body tensed for the next noise. When the bailiffs called, all those months ago, I unwittingly opened the door without using the chain because I lived in Barnes and didn’t think about danger on the doorstep. And certainly hadn’t ever envisaged six-foot bully boys coming to call.

A size eleven shoe was immediately placed on the door jamb, and a letter from the local authority thrust towards me saying that the bailiffs were authorised to collect money and/or goods from the house in payment of substantial council tax arrears. After that, everything descended into a horrific blur; I didn’t have any money to pay them off and whilst I tried to call Justin to find out what the hell was going on, the two large and intimidating men made themselves busy carting away the flatscreen TV, the Bose sound system, and the Gaggia coffee machine that were his pride and joy.

That was how I found out that my world had fallen apart and that we were going to lose everything. Talk about a rude awakening.

I get up nervously and peer over the banister and down the stairs. A bundle of post lies on the doormat. The noise was just the postman, after all. His visit also terrifies me, albeit for different reasons. I go downstairs to pick up the sheaf of envelopes, flicking quickly through them. My eyes are pierced for the franking stamp I’ve come to dread but don’t see it.

In fact, most of the letters are addressed to the previous owner who obviously hasn’t bothered to set up a forwarding service with the Royal Mail. I’ve already marked her as a cheapskate; she took every lightbulb, every loo roll, every curtain pole from the house, leaving it ripped bare, an empty shell. She also hasn’t left her new address so I dump all her post in the bin. It’ll serve her right if one’s about her win on the premium bonds or an inheritance she needs to claim.

All the remaining letters are bills. Nothing unexpected, not today. Just bills, bills, and more bills. There’s an electricity red notice, demanding instant payment, which I can’t understand given that I’ve only just moved in. And a council tax bill, the very thing that Justin neglected for years, resulting in the bailiff’s visit. It’s for a huge sum, much more than I expected. I had harboured the notion that it was cheaper to live in the country; that was half the reason for the move to the sticks, the hope that I would be able to eke out the little I have a bit further if my expenses are less and all we eat is budget-range pasta and tinned tomatoes. I laugh bitterly to myself. As if. Everything costs just as much here as in London, if not more: a longer drive using more petrol to get to the supermarket, a colder climate so higher heating bills.

Opening my bank statement does nothing to alleviate my black mood. I need a job and I need it fast but it’s been so long since I was in gainful employment outside the home that I can hardly remember how to go about it and, having dropped out of uni without finishing my Pharmacy and Toxicology degree, I’m not really qualified to do anything. All I have to my name are a few GCSEs and A-levels; zilch recent or relevant experience. I’m not a pharmacist and never will be, nor can be.

I ran a gift shop for the ten years between the aborted degree and marrying Justin and that kept me going, but there’s no