The Expectation of Silence

By Neia Glynn

Andy is a small-time fence, endearing himself to precisely noone except his mother, who continually tries to win him over with affection, and his best friend from school, who believes that if he can come out of prison a better man then so can Andy. He lives alone in the London suburbs, being dire to his mother and diverting into different branches of crime. He begins to experience so many mishaps that he becomes insomniac and takes to valium. The story interweaves with scenes from the late forties and early fifties, where his grandmother struggles to cope with post-war austerity and bringing up two small girls. One Advent night, she takes her own life. Kitty, her elder daughter, and Andy's mother, grew up believing herself responsible. Only once he appears in court for the first time does he realise that all the accidents didn't happen by chance and that something he thought he had pushed aside could not leave him. Advent turns into a time of healing for people who had never imagined that they could be free.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Neia Glynn
• Release date: Nov 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311582058

Neia Glynn

Currently a home educating mum in the London suburbs, I have a background in psychology and offender rehabilitation.

Book preview

THE EXPECTATION OF SILENCE

NEIA GLYNN

Copyright 2013

Neia Glynn

All rights reserved

To

Kevin,

for telling me about the flipside

and

Malcolm,

For giving me the time to explore it

CHAPTER 1

Aaaaaaaghhhhh, the sound assailed his night-clad ears long before the rushing traffic of early morning reminded him of others’ gainful employ.

He woke with a jolt and looked about in the near-dark. In his room the night was never permitted to enshroud him in its encompassing blackness. The far city’s myriad lights, illuminating the ether, made sure that he could always see whatever time he woke. The glow from the brown suburban sky did not help him identify the noise nor did the passing headlamps of cars shed their light on anything that might give him an answer.

He was dreaming, of course. His night-time mind was often the scene of violent replays – day residues from games in which he indulged an eagerness to be part of something that seemed to matter. Nothing mattered. He didn’t, at least not to anyone else. Those people didn’t matter anyway. Not one thing mattered on this slip road to a dual carriageway that led to London or to Guildford. Neither of them mattered either. They could give him a night out and a hangover, a woman of unknown name and a taxi driver whose journey went unpaid as his fare ran from his vehicle laughing into the dawn air.

Nothing was there. Nothing except the window partly boarded over with cardboard and the widest tape that he could get into his pocket without the man in the bargain shop noticing. Nothing was in the corner except his pile of clothes. Every now and then he took them to his mother’s house where he left them for her to clean. She made noises about him needing to be independent especially given his proximity to two launderettes but it always got done. Mug. That was what she called herself. Well, that’s what she was.

It was 3:52a.m. Andy put his head back to the pillow oblivious to the smell of sebum. Yes, his mother did his washing, but only when he had noticed the necessity of something needing cleaning. When he noticed the oily yellow colour he might remove the pillowcase and launch it into the pile by the window.

Usually his dreams did not stir him from copious sleep. If they did, he could return easily to the ramblings of his unconscious. This morning was different. Now he was too awake. Having no commitments he could play on the PS3, smoke his roll-ups and go back to bed later when several aliens had been smashed, impaled and shot with heavy arms.

He pushed the duvet away from the paucity of his frame. He had been thin for as long as he could recall. His mother had tried to feed him ‘good things’ but after a while food rarely interested him. When his mother had resorted to giving him foods that she thought were ‘bad’ but that her husband preferred he ate marginally more but still tipped chips and pizza onto the floor whereupon it was picked up silently with a bowed head that hid the tears from where he sat. Now he ate to refuel when the effect of nicotine was not strong enough to suppress his body’s cries for nurturance. That saved him money or unwanted attention from the Iceland security guard. His cooker would have given him several forms of Escherichia Coli had he ever used it for its original purpose rather than as a repository for all the unwashed dishes that would not fit in the sink or on top of the fridge. His mother occasionally cleaned his microwave and hoped that in the interim times the bombardment of electromagnetic energy heating his ready meals would kill any bacteria lurking.

Andy stepped onto the carpet, his toes feeling the stiffened pile of years-old spillages. He left his bedroom and went downstairs to the lounge where the television was on standby to receive another onslaught from outer space or whatever country his renegade soldier was at war with. His stomach rumbled.

While neighbours in his 1930s ‘semi’ slept on, Andy lit up his walls with fast-paced intermittent colours, signals of shifting scenes in which he would attack, maim and crow. As daylight crept in, uncertain of its tenure in this house often darkened with drawn curtains on the sunniest of summer days, Andy returned to bed in defiance of the ball of fire.

Sleep eluded him. It normally lurked around a corner of his mind and then came out about half an hour after his head of unwashed hair was placed on the meagre pillow. Today, though, it ran and jiggled away from him. He was angry at it and decided to get up. His stomach was growling at him in a menacing fashion, stating certainly that if he did not fill it he would be thrown into the most horrible of moods. Angered, Andy walked to what had been described in similar properties as a kitchen. It resembled something akin to a warehouse with its cardboard strewn floor. Andy’s dietary intake consisted of what other people had prepared and put into boxes, cartons and pots. Whatever he ate was dead. Fresh things, foodstuffs with an element of life, which might have given him the enzymes to help him to digest the rest of his long-labelled fayre were confined to the apples that his mother brought round weekly in her continued attempts to remind him to eat something fresh, dear. Silly witch, didn’t she notice that they either mouldered on the table where she left them or greeted her as part of the stray rubbish on his front drive?

Andy found some puffed rice cereal in an open box next to the sink. He stuffed his hand into the bag inside and poured air-filled white things into his mouth and onto the floor. He did this several times till he realised that they were less filling than his stomach was prepared to accept. He looked at the bread that his mother had brought him on the previous morning. He had been insulted that it had a ‘reduced’ sticker on the side. The food was cheap enough as it was in Iceland without his mother having to buy him what was nearly out of date. She would be round later, no doubt, checking on him, inveigling her way in with proffered goods and half-smiles. He found a knife that did not look entirely unhygienic and spread the bread with something yellow that was supposed to astound him by not being butter.

He looked at the clock, an activity that had no more purpose than to fulfil a habit since its batteries had not been replaced in months. He needed no clock to provide a routine for his day. He did what he liked at times that suited him. Outside, the cars that had come from further afield could be distinguished from those whose drivers had risen later by whether their headlights were on or off. Andy laughed at the thought of getting up and working. Work’s for mugs he could always be heard saying whenever the topic of employment came up in infrequent conversations with people who were prepared to talk with him for an extended period. He made his money in what he thought was a much easier and more flexible manner. No deadlines or pressures from people who had put themselves in authority over him. He was the one in control of everything that came and went through his hands. He just had to be a bit careful.

The terrestrial television channels were a bit too informative for him so he flicked through his Freeview box till he came to one offering him a morning of ‘R & B’. He smirked as he watched videos of women in cloth that hugged their rears like second skin. It reminded him that it was ‘R & B’ night that night, Friday, at Profusion in Kingston. His smirk spread from its one-sided appearance of being a fish caught on a line to a full grin bearing its teeth at the extravagance of flesh and scarcity of clothes. Tonight he would feel as well as see. The women were so fine - shining skin for him to gorge himself on, bodies pneumatic, movements sensuous and inveigling. Andy’s hands went down the front of his trousers, the ones that he had been wearing throughout the day before and night. It was warm for autumn but he never slept naked. That was for hippy freaks.

Andy felt sleep call him through the heavy bass and indulgent lyrics. His head fell to the cushion on the sofa but slumber sloped away. The cushion was lumpy, which was infuriating because it never had been before. He picked it up angrily and reached inside the cover to smoothe out the lumps. Socks. He vituperated at whichever of his inebriated visitors must have put them there. He swore again when there was a knock at the door. He wanted to leave it, to revel more but whoever was there might have been about to fuel his earning machine. Again he swore. Mother. There was no point turning away since his front door had glass panels and she would have seen him come out of the lounge. If he left her there she would go home and call him later. Then he would never hear the end of it even if he didn’t answer his mobile when she rang in tears.

He opened the door. She smiled expectantly and ephemerally. He said nothing but walked into the kitchen where she usually got out the pittance that she was offering that day.

Hello son. You look a bit tired today, Kitty spoke warmly and softly.

Yeah.

Is anything the matter? You look a bit pale?

What’s with the questions?

Sorry son. I was just being concerned, that’s all, Kitty’s face assumed its habitual apologetic expression. I’ve brought you a cake that might cheer you up.

That worked when I was a child.

Kitty tried to take that as a happy remembrance. She took out the old tin that she had used many times before and placed it on the kitchen table with a smile that fled and hid as it saw her son’s granite face. There were the signs of knocks from where her tired hands had dropped the tin on the floor; the shows of rust on the unpainted edges; the sticker where she had written words of attempted amusement. Kitty stayed silent for some seconds. Her stomach tensed at the internal debate on whether to speak again. She was reminded of a physics program she had caught one night, about ‘adiabatic’ systems impenetrable by heat.

Your father said that he hadn’t seen you in some time and that we should ask you round for lunch this Sunday, Kitty ventured.

Well, I might be busy.

Oh yes? Kitty said lightly, hoping that this meant that Andy had found a friend to visit.

Yeah, well, I might be, I might not.

Well, the offer is there. In the absence of any sign of Andy entering into conversation, Kitty made her way to the front door. I hope that you enjoy your cake. Please let me know whether you’ll be coming on Sunday. I’ll do lunch for 1:30.

That’s far too early.

Does that mean that you are coming?

No. It’s just a statement.

Please think about it and let me know so I know how much veg to prepare. It would be nice to have you round. Kitty nearly added how long it had been since Andy had been to visit her nearby home. Goodbye, son.

Yeah.`

CHAPTER 2

Kitty shut the front door. She looked at the glass panes that her sister used to clean with vinegar and newspaper every Monday evening after work. Stains of orange tar ran in imperceptible slowness down the original clarity. She thought of her son’s lungs and the posters that had been put up recently on the hoardings at the nearby station. Trains. He used to like trains. He had been a sweet boy when it was just the two of them. He hadn’t minded that the 1930s station looked like something from a mildly menacing television series, the sort of series put on in the 1950s with grim foretellings of a sterile future. Kitty’s eyes were pricked with the beginnings of tears. She saw the unvarnished wood bars between the panes, cracked where previously they had been painted every year with mahogany coloured varnish.

Kitty’s sister, Penny, had been houseproud, but not to a tedious extent. She had wanted to live near to Kitty as she become more aware that her sister had nothing that resembled the loving bond of their childhood lives. She moved to Surrey as part of a career change having been overseas for many years. They had found life an adversity as tiny children but their knowledge of each other’s proximity had saved them from the sadness on which a single mind might feed. As teens they made the decision together to ask their father for their mother’s diaries. They had thought that her leaving might be their fault. Their hearts broke together and their tears flowed down each other’s cheeks as they read the neat handwriting in yellowing books.

The diaries had started ambitiously. Kitty’s mother, Andrea, related her joy at being the parent of a beautiful baby, born into a world that had hoped for better but was finding that the installation of Mr. Attlee’s government had yet to deliver the freedom that the nation had thought it was fighting for. Andrea at least felt less alone in her pessimism when the founder of the Mass Observation chimed with her feelings that people laughed less and found little to be enthusiastic about. Here, though, in this blue-eyed cherub, was a future dreamed of one August night in 1945 by reunited parents.

Kitty had been a difficult newborn to work out. Andrea could never quite ascertain what Kitty needed but it was all fine because she was such a pretty thing it made up for the nights of wakefulness and the days of crying. Motherhood, everyone had told her, was an instinctive thing. Andrea tried to work out what had gone wrong with her since other people’s babies slept and nursed and cooed or glugged merrily at the formula that the scientific vanguard of the previous decade had marketed as superior to nature.

Much later, a trained counsellor, Penny revisited those diaries with objectivity. Her anger burgeoned as she thought how far removed was her afflicted mum from the generic post-industrial mother against whom she had tried to compare herself. Penny had decided against marriage and against having children. If she could not bring up her children in a perfect world where there was a community of nurturing helpers then she would leave child-rearing to the rich, brave or naïve. Penny had wavered as to which of the latter two could be ascribed to Kitty. Penny had volunteered for, then managed overseas disaster relief projects with the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere for many years before she could no longer resist the call of conscience that brought her back to England.

Kitty looked at the front bedroom window where pretty net curtains, starched every other month, used to hang. The cardboard pressed on her heart, which sank further. Where had she gone wrong? She asked herself more and more frequently as Andy approached thirty. Her neighbour’s son had recently married. He was a happy man with a car and a job. Kitty turned from the house and walked across the drive where weeds grew prolifically through the cracks in the brickwork. Instead of gardens there were plots of grey or faded ochre. Even paving that had once been chosen to be bright in pink and yellow was coated in the emissions of a carbon-addicted stream. Everyone had their cars parked next to the houses. They were much easier to get into when there was no fear of being hit by one of the vehicles speeding off the dual carriageway and up to the traffic light before the roundabout.

Kitty knew that Penny had never wanted to live here. It was all that she could afford when she moved back into the area. Kitty’s mind used to fill deliciously with romanticised images of the places in which Penny used to lay her head…tents, bivouacs under skies far starrier than the suburban brown near London… these were the sites of dreams made real. Kitty’s tears rolled more heavily as she thought guiltily of how much she wished that Penny had stayed under those skies. She was ever so glad when Penny had come home but never sadder than when she knew that Penny’s suitcase would no longer collect its labels from exotic airports. Penny had told her that she was overdramatising the situation, that her role as a ranger for the county council suited her perfectly well but Kitty did not quite believe her. Penny said that she would have come back to Surrey anyway.

Magnetically Kitty walked the grey pavement to the subway that led under the roundabout. She knew that she should smile at the mosaic that had been diligently put up, where a couple of years before the only colour on the wall had been repeated graffiti. She had read in the local paper of the schoolboy winning a competition with his pretty design and she thought that he was a clever boy so she should smile at his work. Her boy had not won accolades. She had feigned pride on many an occasion. She continued to walk past the office block gaily called something reminiscent of the sun. It struck her that she could have caught a bus to Kingston or hopped onto one of the trains that went every half an hour to Chessington. She could have gone and had a laugh on some rides at the World of Adventures or taken herself to a pub for lunch. She carried on towards home and routine. What would Ken say if she stayed away from the house when she should have been there to create lunch? She never got as far as actually imagining since the scenario was not an option.

Throughout the rest of her walk, with steps made tiny, tears fell down Kitty’s wrinkling cheeks. Her mother had held those cheeks and marvelled at them. How could one child be so cute? she used to ask herself in delight. How did she never dream that those cheeks would be so wonderful, so squidgy? The tears rolled past the lines near her mouth that Kitty’s friends would call laughter lines but that she knew came from the years of yawning. She had never dared estimate the years of sleep that she had lost through worry. If she could trust in a competency to make Andy’s way through life then it would not matter that he never initiated contact but he had demonstrated time and time again that despite appearances of independence he could no more support himself than could a creeping ivy.

On travelled the trudging feet and on travelled the tears, dripping onto Kitty’s outdated maroon top. She had bought it, oh so indulgently, at the store where fashion never altered on the Broadway many years previously. At the time she had felt that it was too much money to spend. She had to get good use out of it. She had no idea when fashions changed - it could make no difference to her static array of clothes.

Kitty had never used her appearance to attract partners. She had been told by her father that it was unlikely that she would ever marry since she was a bit of a tank so she dressed simply so as not to attract attention to her frame. Andy’s father, Ken, had been the only man whom Kitty had ever dated. A part of her had been amazed and grateful that someone had been attracted to her at an age by which she had gone past even trying to delude herself that her father was incorrect. Her thankfulness extended to primary blindness to any personal fault that Ken demonstrated. Her friends were more objective and suggested that life would be better spent alone than in the company of someone who would forever prey upon her indebtedness. Her longing to be accepted as a wife won over her unenchanted heart and they wedded at Kingston Register Office on a blustery January Wednesday in 1979. Her dress had been the prettiest that she could afford but Ken had failed to pass comment. She smiled and convinced herself that she was content but her soul knew that her heart had so few experiences of guiltless happiness that it had little by way of standard.

The tears soaked into the top and turned to burgundy, the colour of the wines that Kitty’s friends drank with their husbands on these evenings when the sun had set early but the warmth was kept on by the open fires held in their eager hearths. That was a bit risqué, having fires in this smokeless zone. Ken would never make her a fire. Kitty often saw kindling by the entrance to the open land beyond the station and thought what a ready supply it would be but it stayed there, mouldering then decomposing. Where her top was wetted her skin became cold from the slight but biting autumn breeze. It looked bright and the heating had been on indoors so she had not been minded to bring her coat.

On went the feet, following the route that they commuted so often and upon which they rarely received respite. When they had arrived at Andy’s home their load was not lessened. They would have loved to have rested as Kitty sat and chatted to her boy, the one whom she had held and for whose bright future she had dreamed, but whenever Ken had seen her swooping him up in her arms or kissing him about the neck and face he told her not to mollycoddle the boy and in her fear she let him down. There had been a zeitgeist that said that babies should be distanced from excessive affection lest it ruin them. This was authoritatively given so it must have been right. Kitty wished that she had paid more attention in school so that she would have been clever enough to read all about what was best but at least she had Ken who could inform her.

Once Kitty had gone over the dual carriageway and through the sliproad tunnel she walked up the tarmac slope. If she went up the steps she would reach her house faster but there was a newsagent at the top of the slope and therein lay her comfort. She would stare at the array of sugar and cocoa mass and the man behind the counter would smile at her. It was their relationship – he would warm her with quotidian chatter and she would gain something secret from him. Only he knew that she would come in daily for her treat. Kitty had looked at the beautifully designed boxes for chocolates and sweets but she could not justify buying such, nor could she afford to with the money allotted her by Ken. She had long since given up trying to keep a figure that she had never been sure that her husband found attractive. Before buying the chocolate that she would munch quickly, she perused the magazines. Even in her thirties she had foregone reading certain types of magazine that suffused her self-esteem with a further sense of inadequacy for her unexplored sexuality. Her husband’s disinterestedness meant that what curiosity she had contained in her wedding trousseau stayed locked up, like the dresses that she had dreamt of wearing and the sheets of a cold marital bed. Those same magazines told of women whose husbands found their pregnant bodies alluring whereas Ken had found his wife’s obvious fecundity no such enticement and, during Kitty’s pregnancy and especially following Andy’s birth, he responded to Aphrodite’s call elsewhere.

Kitty left the shop and returned to the bright chill of autumn. Her feet went still slower towards home, deterred by the thought of more standing… at the work surface chopping; at the stove; at the sink where only one set of hands had ever cleaned food from a plate. The feet were cracked inside their worn at heel shoes. Their skin reminded Kitty of the man found in a peat bog. That could have been something to laugh at– it just reminded her that she felt like an antiquity, preserved by the willingness to serve. She felt her every sinew tighten as she thought of her mother, somewhere in water. Perhaps she too would be found, kept for others to look on and to wonder about how she died.

To protect her vivid imagination Kitty had been told that Andrea’s body had never been found. A winter shoe on the willow-covered island of Steven’s Eyot told of her having been taken by the flow that shimmered in the night and continued brown and rarely transparent by day. Gone was the big coat, the one that Kitty used to snuggle in since it was as huge as a bear and could fit her and Mummy inside…the one that Kitty sat in and sniffed to smell Mummy’s scent. The coat had weighed Andrea down, like the responsibility for two tiny humans, and it pressed on Kitty’s heart till it ached in unwarranted remorse and unrelenting sorrow.

Tears started to make puddles where Kitty’s large glasses met her high, round cheeks. Oh, those darling cheeks at which her mother had marvelled and giggled. If she was so cute, why did Mummy leave? Kitty had only opened the door to her stock of untapped empathy for Andrea when she herself became a mother and felt the shock of isolation. Prior to that she had believed that she would be complete when she conceived and gave birth. After all, every portrayal of motherhood was an image of calm bliss, of contentment and pristine coping in an ordered home. She battled every temptation to indulge her self-pity when it nudged her to weep that she was alone in her responsibility for this new human’s nurturance. She promised herself that she would become neither of her parents – not the abandoning mother and not the emotionally dismissive father whose attentions seemed only perfunctory. So where had she gone so wrong that her son towards her was colder than this wind with its tiny needles?

There was comfort – warmth like lost embrances and reassurance - in chocolate. Her largeness made her feel more motherly, more squishy, like the kind of person that her son would like to hug. She was not enormous, after all, and still walked a lot. After breakfast Ken barely ate, with a nicotine-diminished appetite, and she did not wish to appear greedy in front of him. She recalled her mother’s diary where she had bemoaned her appearance. Andrea had once been relatively comfortable with her physique, till pregnancy parted her abdominal muscles, which decided ever after that they would rather not reacquaint themselves. Coupled with poor posture Andrea had caught sight of herself passing shop windows sometimes and inwardly recoiled from her figure - the misshapen gourd. Kitty had half laughed at similar thoughts and now it was all covered up with layers…of clothes, of food, of solace and complacency.

Slowing feet took her through the estate of gardened, terraced houses. It was a happier place to be now that the dispersal zone had been implemented and the loud mopeds had been stopped from racing past her spare room window at obscure hours of night. There had been occasions on which she had sat in the sometimes-shared bed weeping from tiredness, when what sleep she had gleaned from the miracle of her husband’s silence was ruined by the piercing yet puny engines. It was her lot to go to bed next to a man whose throat was inhabited by errant trolls hauling bulky items over cobbles, occasionally dropping them down a rocky hill. At least now that she slept in the spare room the walls muffled some of the din but the bed was uncomfortable there and Ken said that it was not worth buying a new one just to accommodate her fussiness. It felt unfaithful to imagine other men, ones who were better looking, more silent at night, ones who bought flowers and smiles and never hurt her.

Through the front room window Kitty could see her cohabitee of uncountable years. They had made vows thirty years previously but Ken had not been a husband for the duration of the time that could only officially be recognised as marriage. Kitty had known of his dalliances and had wept and sighed in resignation, especially during those months so close after their wedding day. Their son’s birth was supposed to convince Ken of the innate need to share family joy but in his baby years Andy’s father was a sporadic presence. He flitted between family and flirtation, maintaining his bond to the former by attending certain of their meals and occasionally favouring his wife with his night presence. Kitty was very concerned that her husband would not return at all if she created any form of fuss or dared to ask questions as to what she and Andy could expect of him. She had to be good or she would be left.

Now as she walked up the concrete path towards a door through which she had never been carried she did not try to conceal evidence of her tears. Ken would be engrossed in whatever daytime televised programme had inveigled his semi-retired mind.

Alright, Ken? Kitty gathered up some dutiful resolve to try to rebalance herself.

She heard something that might have been akin to a verbalisation. Kitty sighed and went through to the kitchen. She had washed up before going to visit Andy so that the breakfast frying pan did not greet her return with the reek of congealed animal fat. She had tried to please Ken with a variety of boxes from the ever-widening array of morning goods but nothing sufficed unless it had been fried. Tempted as she was sometimes to pour crisped rice into boiling oil and serve it on white toast she dared not tease.

Kitty’s heart sank and her body palpably drooped as she faced the task of creating lunch. She stared at the contents of her larder in the hope that something interesting would appeal to her creativity since the motivation of being appreciated had long since gone into hiding along with her lace-trimmed bras and high-heeled shoes.

CHAPTER 3

His body told him to rest but in spite of its manifesting yawns Andy wanted to go out. It would be Friday night at Profusion. Lots of bodies. Fatigue was not something to which Andy was accustomed, given his lack of directive as to when he should be awake or sleeping and his penchant for resting at all hours of the day. If he drank enough alcohol he could override his body’s desire to crash. He knew that he could ask some of his business associates, as he called them, for the whereabouts of some amphetamine but he looked down on them too much to do anything that would pull him to muster in their ranks.

Much as it grated for him to make any effort as regarded aesthetics it would make Andy’s life easier not to negotiate the hurdle of women’s response to his attire. Not being bothered one iota about what they thought of him, if he at least was not repellent it would facilitate his ends. Andy looked in his wardrobe for clothes that had visited a washing machine in the previous six weeks. His ironing lady, Kitty, had brought round his laundered shirts and flattened out the creases formed in the cracked old bag that her dry hands had carried to his home. She had hoped that these shirts would surround a body that sat in front of an interview panel or at least an officer at a Job Centre. Andy had claimed that a back injury prevented him from working but no doctor had ever ratified his complaint.

Cigarette in mouth, Andy fumbled through the hanging items in his wardrobe, aware of a stench the origin of which he could not fathom. He blamed his mother for lousy washing and pulled out a grey, slightly shiny shirt. If he covered it in enough aftershave or body spray no one would notice the bizarre smell. Picking up a can of deodorant, part of one of his sources’ special deliveries of mixed toiletries, in one hand he placed the shirt on his bed. He pressed down the nozzle and simultaneously coughed, spluttering his cigarette onto the floor. His eyelids nearly met their brows as Andy expected ignition. He quickly stood on the smouldering hole where it had begun to incinerate the ageing wool carpet. Landing away from one of the more threadbare areas it left a noticeable mark. He cursed the need to light another cigarette given the price of them and picked up the rather squashed one that he had spat out. He swore whilst attempting to