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Read Part Two

Read Part Three

4

“Dad, will you give me a lift down to the sports ground in a bit?” This was Gemma. It was Friday evening.

“What for?” She sighed when I asked this, looking at me as if it was perfectly obvious, then said in a slightly patronising voice,

“To go hang out with my friends.” I was about to reprimand her for speaking like that but decided against it and instead asked,

“What time?”

“About seven.”

It was half six already.

“You haven’t eaten yet.” I said.

“What we having?”

“Fish and chips.” She wrinkled her nose and I felt a little dismayed; she always used to really like fish and chips.

“I’m not hungry yet,” she paused, thinking, “you could drop me off on your way to the fish shop.”

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3

“What did you do at school today?” I asked Lucy, trying to drive through the obstacle course of primary school children with a loose grasp of road safety and parents in oversized SUVs with an even looser grasp of road courtesy.

“We did maths in the morning and we learned about cubes and cubic centimetres.”

“Oh, that sounds difficult,” I said, pulling into a gap to let a car with no intention of stopping for me go past, “could you do it alright?”

“Yes, daddy, I got a gold star. See” I glanced quickly at the little sticker on her red jumper.

“Well done, sweetie” I said.

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Read Part Three

2

I dropped my keys into the little dish on the shelf by the side of the door, next to the waist-high rubber plant. Then I slipped off my shoes, pushing them with my toes side-by-side next to Gemma’s battered trainers, and Lucy’s shiny pink-and-white light-up ones next to Gemma’s, and then, on the other side of my shoes, my plain fleece slippers, a present from Lucy last Christmas, which I slipped on now.

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I realise I probably spend as much time apologising for not updating my site as I do actually updating it, but in an ideal world, it would be updated far more regularly. However, of late I have been busy, particularly with university work as deadlines loom (less than three weeks to finish a twenty page play of which I have (badly) written two pages, as well as co-write and perform a second play). Also, I have written little that I consider postworthy and so, delving into my back-catalogue, I found this piece I wrote about eighteen months ago. Perhaps I might change some of the phrasing were I to go through it now, but I feel it stands up pretty well and, being the longest piece I’ve ever finished (very nearly a novella), it’s one of my acheivements of writing. Here is the first chapter:
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