Keep It in the Family

...we're only ever our true selves when we think we are alone.

This is a place even angels avoid.

I’m the mortar that binds the bricks together,

The more neglected the better.

Even though I haven’t set foot under that roof for decades, I am forever part of its fabric. I’m the mortar that binds the bricks together, the pipes linking each tap, the wooden beams that hold up the roof.

my hips are moving like Shakira’s.

but I went because you do what your parents ask of you.

folie à deux. It’s a shared psychosis of people with too close an emotional tie. It allows delusional belief to be transmitted from one person to another.

I wonder how much pressure I would have to exert to rupture her windpipe and choke her to death.

No one under this roof believes in compassion. Empathy is an alien emotion here.

I WILL SAVE THEM FROM THE ATTIC.

So Buzz and Woody are leaving messages for us on skirting boards, are they?’ Mia snaps. ‘Finn, I’m not going to rest until I know what’s in those cases.’ And if I know my wife like I think I do, she won’t.

But I’ve grown to realise that when I don’t have blood on my hands, they are uncomfortably dry.

show me a mother who doesn’t want to spend time with her son and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t raised him properly.

If Dave is willing to do that to his son, what else might he be capable of?

You know what happened to him, a voice inside me whispers. I choose to ignore it.

wish George were with us. It’s been five years since I saw him and I hoped he might have come back and found me by now. At eighteen, perhaps he’s now enrolled in the army and unable to take leave because he’s stationed somewhere else in the world?

text Jakub to bring me more on site tomorrow

If George and I had been on a register that people had paid attention to, then things might have turned out very differently for us.

She doesn’t know I’m not on a call-out now. And she doesn’t know how much I lie to her or who I’m with now. I intend to keep it this way.

I once hired a private detective to try and locate George. But several months and a few thousand pounds later, there was no proof that he ever existed beyond my memory. Not even a birth certificate,

Maybe he’s still in the forces, his dark-blond curls now greying and cut military-grade short, his freckles perhaps fading with age. I picture him in his uniform, shiny medals with colourful ribbons attached to his jacket, rewards for successful tours of duty. But while I might no longer recognise him if he stood in front of me, I’d like to think that he is every inch the hero to others today as he was to me back then.

My particular type, Primary Lateral Sclerosis, is rarer and slower than other versions and I should be grateful that I might live ten years if I’m lucky. Now

Three years ago I was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. The

You know that stress and pushing yourself to the point of exhaustion can bring about complications.

Then I hesitate, taking one last look at the boy with the headphones. He will never know how unfortunate he is not to have met me.

Then I wash them down with a neat Jim Beam bourbon whiskey. It’s now early morning and, at this time, it’s either my last drink of the day or my first. I don’t feel so guilty when I think of it like that.

I have a life away from my marriage.