Den and Angie

By Eric Bray

After losing his wife to a hit-and-run driver, Den is struggling to support himself and his daughter, Jilly, as she goes through the last years of school, then further education, and University.
Angie works in the local library, and has her own demons to contend with.
When they meet, will it all fall apart, or explode? Then when Jilly comes into the mix, what will the outcome be?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eric Bray
• Release date: Mar 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476179926

Eric Bray

Born in 1950, after school,I served my country in the Royal Navy, the least said about which the better. Since then I have made plastic drain-pipes, driven a fork truck, worked as a courier in the multi-drop rip-off game, and for the last two years have watched a conveyor belt going around. I have now achieved retirement. I began writing for amusement during my lunch-breaks, and rose to the challenge of becoming published when I commented on a book I had purchased, saying something along the lines of - "I could do better than that!" - when someone said - "Go on, then!" My other hobbies are scuba-diving, designing, building, and flying radio-controlled model aircraft, ham radio, photography, and avoiding gardening.

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Den and Angie

Published by Eric Bray at smashwords

Copyright 2012 Eric Bray

These scribblings are a work of fiction.

All characters, places, events, and any and everything else that occurs or is mentioned within these pages are entirely a work of fiction, created within my imagination. As such, they bear no intended resemblance to any person, place, event, or thing.

Should any resemblance occur, it is entirely by chance, and is regretted.

Chapter-----Title

01-----------Why?

02-----------Wednesday morning.

03-----------Five years later.

04-----------What if?

05-----------First step back.

06-----------Mr. and Mrs.

07-----------Holiday.

08-----------Problems.

09-----------Aftermath.

Chapter one.

Why?

Why is it, I frequently ask myself, that no matter where I stop for my lunch-break, no matter how far off the beaten track, or how far out in the ‘sticks’, or how far down the road to nowhere that I park, within two minutes there is a lost motorist seeking directions? Why do they all assume that I know everywhere?

Why, just the other day, I had barely had time to put the stopper back into my flask after pouring a cup of coffee, when there was an Old Dear tapping on my window.

I sighed, turned the radio down, cranked the window down, and barely had time to draw breath, when she asked me if I knew where the ‘Cat’s Protection’ place was. In reply, I pointed to the big sign a few yards in front of my van, on the opposite side of the road. The sign was ten feet high, and fourty feet wide, the size of an artic trailer. In fact, it WAS an artic trailer. Having reached the end of its useful life as a freight haulage device, it had been given a new lease of life as a mobile signboard. It read, for those who cared to read it, - ‘Cat’s Protection League’- in big red letters along the trailer’s length. The letters were underlined by a large black arrow pointing down the desired side-track. Finally, it was adorned with a caricature of a happy pussy cat.

I mean, if she was incapable of seeing a sign that big, what was she doing in charge of a motor vehicle?

She favoured me with a silly smile when she turned back, after looking in the direction I had indicated, and then walked round behind my van. After a moment, a big engine began blatting, then, with a powerful growl, a Jeep Cherokee LTD snarled past, with ‘Granny’ peering over the top of the dashboard. I imagine that if she had raised the seat any further, her feet wouldn’t reach the pedals! What with her restricted forward vision and defective eyesight, I wouldn’t care to be in front of her, if she had needed to park it in a tight -. Then I realized, I had been in front of her, in a tight space! The dirt ‘lay-by’ worn into the grass verge by repeated use was only two vans long.

‘Granny’ turned down the right track, and burbled off.

By then, I had missed the news bulletins, and the traffic report. I turned the radio up again in time to hear the weather girl tell me it was raining. I found that rather strange, as I hadn’t noticed. Granted, it was a bit grey and overcast, which is only to be expected in the English summertime, but rain? I hadn’t felt any, nor had I seen any spots on my windscreen. It wasn’t very warm, nor was it chilly, and I had been driving with the windows raised to keep the noise level in the cab down, not the temperature up!

I settled back with my cup of coffee, and a cheese sandwich, and another lost motorist wanted to know if I knew where the bird sanctuary was! That one stumped me, as I wasn’t aware of one around here. Then, with a flash of inspiration, and a hint of vindictiveness, I directed him to the local hospital’s Nurses Home!

Why me? I pondered, over the half-masticated first bite. There is no sign on my van that reads ‘Ordnance Survey’, or ‘Geographer’s A to Z’. There is no neon sign positioned on the roof, pointing directly at me, with the words ‘Ask Den!’

I really must remember to put some pickles on the bread, in future, to help dissolve the sticky glue that the sandwich always turn into, when I eat them! That thought set a new train into motion, if the bread bakers sold their product as glue, just add water, they would make a killing on the stock market! How many times have you bought a tube of glue that determinedly refuses to stick? If you think it through, it cannot be good glue, or it would never let go of the tube it comes in! That ‘superglue’ stuff is very good, though. It is very good at sticking the lid permanently to the bottle, so, unless you use all the glue in one go, you can never open the bottle again! Gallons of the stuff must get thrown away, sealed for perpetuity into its little 2cc container, at a cost of £3 a drop!

I managed to complete my lunch without further interruption but at my first delivery halt afterwards, I was accosted, and asked for directions to the Parcel-line depot. I pointed at a passing van, and suggested that the asker might care to follow it, as it would be going back to the depot. I didn’t add the final word – eventually! It even happens when I’m in the depot. Someone is almost guaranteed to ask if I’d been to such a place, or that Company, and how to get there from-.

Yet, if I turn it round, and ask directions of someone else, they either reel off a stream of pub names, left at the Red Lion, right at the Mucky Duck. Or they can’t tell left from right, or they cannot recall if there are any bridges along their given route lower than thirteen feet, thus preventing my van from passing beneath!

I made it back to the depot without getting lost, and was in the process of completing the paperwork when the headless chicken, who purports to be the ‘Boss’, came mincing over to my cab.

Did I know the way to the Bedwas body shop, because that ten foot box van that Charlie tried to take under an eight-foot bridge was booked in for repair tomorrow.

Ah! Overtime, because tomorrow was Saturday! I said I did.

Good, then tell Joe, he’s taking it in the morning!

I suggested that Joe took the M6 to Birmingham, where he should pick up the M5 for South Wales, then look for the signs. I knew full well that Bedwas was such a big place, it wasn’t sign-posted until you got there. Blink, and you had gone through and out of the other side!

When the morning arrived, I felt a bit guilty about giving Joe duff directions, as the promised rain from yesterday had arrived, and the damaged van was lacking a windscreen. The top of the frame had been distorted by the collision, and a new screen couldn't be fitted. The guilt was eased somewhat when I found that Joe got six hours time and a half, and a night out, from the job, when I bought him a pint, that evening in the local. He also told me that his girlfriend used to live in Bedwas, and he hadn’t needed directions to the place anyway!

When I had asked if he’d got his leg over, he merely tapped his nose, and said, Not yet! Then he began flirting outrageously with the pretty girl behind the bar, who happened to have a Welsh acc-.

Then, nobody could complain, could they? Joe was in Bedwas, earning his six by time and a half, and his night out, so he can’t have been here, could he? They told us the new style time-sheets couldn’t be fiddled. Mind you, the run to Bedwas, in a bent van, and back in a replacement, in eight hours, is pretty good going!

Having plucked up the liquid courage to go home to the girl’s cooking, I did so, only to find a note which informed me that she had gone out! It concluded, - ‘Your tea is in the zapper.’

Assuming that the zapper was the microwave, I looked inside, and found half a ‘family’ pizza, and the steel knife she had used to cut it! As you may well know, knives don’t ‘zap’ very successfully, so it’s a good job I looked!

I guessed at three minutes, and turned the thing on, then primed the kettle. The ‘zapper’ pinged cheerfully as I plugged the kettle in, leaving me with the task of separating the pizza from the glass turntable. The cheese had melted nicely, leaked off the base, and successfully glued the one to the other. Cheese makes pretty good glue, too!

I compromised, incidentally saving on a plate, by eating the pizza in ragged chunks chiselled off the microwave plate, with a knife.

After tea, I began the daily game of ‘hunt the t.v. remote’. I found the one for the video machine hidden behind a green plant on the window-ledge, and the one for the stereo with only one speaker, under a cushion on the armchair. Ten more minutes searching allowed me to find the remote for the cable-box in the freezer. Don’t ask why I looked in there. The telly control eluded me, though. Still, I could manually push-buttons, tune the telly to the cable box, and then change channels from there.

Freezing a remote control stops it from working.

I listened to lop-sided music from the half-stereo, for a while, because the telly had its audio muted, and I couldn’t remember how to get into the ‘settings’ menu, from the array of tiny push-buttons under the plastic guillotine on the lower front edge of the case.

Jilly came back in at about ten to breakfast time, smelling of party, perfume, and late teens girl/woman. She went into her room for a minute, and then went back downstairs. In two minutes, she had the t.v. going, on one of those interminable pop video channels, and was busy incinerating bread under the grille.

I probably groaned. Jilly says I do it a lot, and then stared at the clock until the blurry numbers focussed. Three minutes to getting up time! I knew from past experience that if I stayed in bed, I would JUST be dozing off again, when the alarm -.The alarm sounded, jerking me awake. So I dragged myself sort of upright, to start another dreary day. After dressing, I disposed of used coffee, then went downstairs.

Jilly looked at me over a wobbly pile of toast, half a loafs-worth, I think, with a puzzled frown. You’re up early!

—. I like time to wake up, before attempting conversation, and blundered off in the direction of the kettle.

One cup of paint-stripper later, my larynx began working. Someone has to go and earn a crust!

Oh? She waggled an eyebrow, while she swallowed a bite of my marmalade that was generously smeared onto her toast. Overtime?

Don’t be daft!

Dad, it’s Sunday!

Is it? I looked around. The paper said it was, and Jilly had said it was. I drank the last of my coffee, pinched a round of her toast, with my marmalade on it, and went back to bed.

Jilly just shook her head sadly.

Later, the slurp/howling of the vacuum cleaner didn’t disturb me, neither did the assorted splashing, whining, and off-balance spinning noises of the washing machine, as they did their things.

The delicate tinkle of the dangly thing, placed where the door would catch it, did, and the silence that followed it did, too. The damn lying clock claimed that it was 3.30. My bladder claimed that it was about to burst, and my stomach claimed that my throat had been cut. I got up, and put things right.

The wall-clock downstairs claimed that the time was 3.42, and the telly clock nearly agreed, saying that it was 3.43.

The furniture in the living room seemed to have been re-arranged since last time I looked. A couple of letters lay on the side-table, and the daily crop of junk mail was heaped colourfully in the bin. Of my daughter, Jilly, there was no trace, apart from the one and only photograph of the three of us, snapped a few precious hours before Jo was taken from us by a maniac in a Transit van. He hadn’t stopped, and has never been found. Jo had stopped, though, there and then. Her one-day-old fleece, with the Tigers’ head on it, blotting up her crimson blood.

We later, Jilly and I, found that her new three week old foetus also stopped. I never knew if Jo even knew it was there, just beginning to grow inside her. She had said nothing to me about it.

I found myself recalling my stumbling attempt to explain to our nine-year-old Jilly why her Mother wouldn’t be coming to her birthday party, in three days time. I don’t think she understood, not then. Later, we had gone to the hospital, to see what was left of Jo. She lay on the white sheet, neatly arranged, with the thin blanket over her, in the curtained-off alcove.

They had tried, but her make-up was all wrong. It was too bronzed, and the lipstick was the wrong colour. Jo always was very particular about her appearance.

Jilly had seen ‘dead’ people before, on the telly, and now she was seeing one for real.

That’s not my Mummy! she declared. Mummy doesn’t look like that!

How do you tell a nine-year-old that the Mortician had been forced to guess at what Jo looked like, because half her face was smeared along a stretch of tarmac?

Jilly decided that if her Mummy couldn’t come to her party, she jolly well wasn’t going to have one! She set about telling everyone, except me. She told me on the day it was due to happen, when she found me baking ready-made sausage rolls, and trying to persuade a jelly to set.

We had our own little party, just Jilly and me. On the spur of the moment, I gave her the present her Mum had been carrying home from the shop, and explained why it was broken.

Like Mummy’s head?

Yes, Darling.

We cried, together, then.

Jilly’s non-party morphed into Jo’s wake. One or two of Jo’s friends called round, hung around for a while, then quietly faded away again, in that awkward embarrassed silence that accompanies such occasions. They left the usual instruction, - If there’s anything you need-. We both knew they really meant, Please don’t.

Jilly had grown up fast, after that. The little girl with no Mum took it on herself to look after me, as best she could. She began by cleaning up her own mess - then, over time, expanded that into cleaning up MY mess, too. One Saturday, she demanded that I showed her how to work the vacuum, and the washing machine. The following weekend, she did the washing, before I got up. Our pink and grey ‘whites’ were mute testimony to her ‘learning curve’. She had also vacuumed through the downstairs rooms. She had been forced to leave the stairs, and her bedroom, because she simply wasn’t physically capable of wrestling the machine up to them.

It must have been around then that she had decided where her future ‘path’ lay, and buckled down to her school-work, instead of just coasting, as she had previously. Her grades showed a marked improvement. She also took herself off to the local library, and signed herself in there.

When she was nearly eleven, she asked if she could have a door key. When I asked why, Jilly explained, perfectly reasonably, that it was so she could get in! A little gentle probing revealed that Mrs. Jones, a few doors up the street, who had been ‘looking after’ her, after school, and before I got home, expected Jilly to look after her six and seven-year-olds, and they were stopping Jilly from doing her homework.

She got her key. We reached a compromise, where she went to Mrs. Jones’ for an hour, then came home, on the strict understanding that nobody, but nobody, else came in with her.

That worked fine, for a while, and then Jilly began swatting for her exams, and modified the routine unilaterally. She would call at Mrs. Jones', tell her she had a stack of work, and did Mrs. Jones mind-. Jilly would then go home, and get on with her work.

I came home, one evening, to find her crying quietly, with a large burn on her arm.

It’s my own silly fault! Jilly admitted. I was trying to iron my dress!

She had been experimenting with the steam-iron, trying to recall how Jo had used it, and had managed to iron her fore-arm.

Don’t tell me not to do it again! She threatened. I mean the ironing! I won’t burn myself again, it hurts!

Alright, I won’t. Just be careful.

I will. She agreed, and as far as I know, she didn’t burn herself again. She made mistakes, of course, as anyone would, without guidance. Like the time she tried to iron a nylon blouse with the iron set to the cotton temperature. We both had to seek advice on how to get the sticky black mess off the sole plate.

Then there was the day when she came to me, very embarrassed, saying she thought she had hurt herself while moving some furniture, as she was bleeding a bit, down below.

I suppose I should have warned her about ‘growing up’, but somehow-. Anyway, I asked her if she would allow me to have a look, in case it was something silly we could fix without bothering the Doctor. Jilly went bright red, thought about it, then agreed. A quick look confirmed my suspicion that she was having her first period, and I then had to explain about sanitary towels, and all the rest. Of course, we didn’t have any!

By the time I’d finished, we were both bright red. I suspect that she discussed it with the School Nurse, or maybe the Doctor, to fill in the gaps in our joint knowledge.

Jilly also began experimenting with cookery, above and beyond the school ‘packet-mix’ lessons. As a result, we dined on some weird and wonderful, occasionally barely edible, concoctions. To give her her due, everything she placed on the table she attempted to eat herself, too.

Our little collection of books began growing, too, as she added to, or sought, knowledge. We accumulated cook-books, gardening books, make-it-yourself books, and fix-it books, amongst others.

When Jilly turned fourteen, she gradually took over running the finances, too, paying the bills, and keeping track of income and outgoings. She forgot things less often than me, and sorted out any muddles she got into, often without telling me she had a problem.

She always consulted with me first, before doing anything drastic, because I had to sign the papers, but usually she was right. She soon learned to differentiate between genuine and junk offers, and then I found she was sorting the mail, too. She began by placing them in separate little piles, which she referred to as ‘see to’, ‘don’t know’, ‘probably junk’, and ‘junk’. After a while, the ‘junk’ pile could be found pre-sorted into the floor-level filing cabinet.

None of this was by my request, Jilly just got on with it, as well as her school, and later, college, work. When I asked, one time, she offered as an explanation that I was breaking my back bringing in the cash for her to spend, and it was her contribution, because it was something she could do better than I. I couldn’t argue! The money did seem to go further, and the ends