Starting Over. Tony Parsons
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Starting Over
Tony Parsons
For Yuriko
That was the last time the girl Wendy ever saw him. For a little longer she tried for his sake not to have growing pains; and she felt she was untrue to him when she got a prize for general knowledge. But the years came and went without bringing the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy was a married woman, and Peter was no more to her than a little dust in the box in which she had kept her toys. Wendy was grown up. You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up.
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan and Wendy
Table of Contents
Part One The Canteen Cowboy V The Careless Boy
Part Two Zen And The Art Of Swimming Pool Maintenance
She doesn’t feel comfortable driving this car. It is too big, too unfamiliar, too much her husband’s car. And the woman on the sat nav just will not shut up.
‘If possible, try to make a U-turn…try to make a U-turn.’
It is late now. She doesn’t know this neighbourhood. The big BMW X5 rolls past strips of worn-out shops, ugly superstores, unlit yards protected by razor wire. And everywhere, there are the children. In groups of three or four or more, standing by their bikes, the light from their phones glowing in their fists, their faces hidden inside their hooded tops.
‘Try to make a U-turn…’
‘I’m trying!’ she shouts, suddenly aware that she has had perhaps one glass of wine too many.
Eyes follow her. At least that is how it feels. She is too well dressed for this area, the car too conspicuously expensive. She should have taken her own beat-up little runaround. But her husband had pressed the BMW X5 on her, telling her she would feel safer.
Yeah, right.
The terrain changes. Suddenly the exhausted shops and the superstores and the herds of sullen youth have gone. There are no signs of life here. These are streets full of – what are they? – warehouses. Old warehouses. Big, black buildings with long skylights that have been smashed. They look as though they were deserted years ago, as though they are rotting, as though they are waiting to be swept away and built upon. The big car barrels through the dead streets. She is perhaps a few miles from home but this no longer feels like her town.
‘Try to make a U-turn…’
‘Oh, try to put a bloody sock in it!’ she cries.