doughnuts.
Free-writing, mind-freeing.
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“Can you turn those headphones down please?”
I wondered what his Saturday mornings were like? Did he just wake up naturally handsome, and then go down to his sunlit kitchen to brew his expensive coffee? Maybe I’d learn to like coffee, I could at least prete… “I SAID TURN DOWN THE HEADPHONES SEAN”. I got a fright as mum slapped my leg. My dream weekend wakeup, gone. Today it was Matt Damon. We’d watch the new Bourne Supremacy film and I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
She’d already cried once today so I turned off my MP3 player (Natasha Bedingfield’s new album if you’re interested), and followed the huge motorway pylons as they whizzed past the car, imagining I had to jump from one to the next to keep up with my mum’s car. I don’t know what would happen if I missed one, but I made sure in my mind that I never did.
The Savage Garden album that was apparently superglued into the car’s CD player rolled through the same songs for the hundredth time, so I was pleased to see we were close to Thom’s house, just as Crash and Burn started to play again.
“Grab my bag babe, and don’t forget the doughnuts!” She gave me a wink and squeezed my knee.
The wink. She does that a lot when we’re out. It’s a bit like a lock to a fortress gate. She does it as a way to keep all the emotion from that day tightly hidden behind it. I know something serious arrived in the post again this morning because when I gave her the letters she had to speak to Kathryn, the lady with the funny accent from the solicitors. I’ll find out eventually. I double-checked to make sure Natasha wasn’t playing, so I had battery for later, and picked up the twelve-pack of double chocolate doughnuts we’d bought from ASDA last night.
Now Thom… I don’t know how we’re friends really. We never decided to be. Our mums just know each other and meet up sometimes to talk about the letters they get in the post. I once heard Sharon, Thom’s mum, say that our dads both deserve each other for what they’d done to them and that she doesn’t care if they’re found in a gutter. Me and Thom don’t talk about that stuff though, he likes football but I mainly just want to play on his Playstation.
“Eve, get here love, get here, what an absolute… .” Sharon grabbed hold of my mum and turned her head towards her ear with the last word. It sounded like one I definitely hadn’t heard before, but I guessed they were discussing this morning’s letter. I wonder what he’d done now. One thing I like about Thom’s mum is that she always, always, had Vimto in the house. Not Asda’s own version like we’d have, but the real one. She smokes a lot though, so there’s always a really strong smell on the cups. That’s one thing my mum really doesn’t like about her.
Thom didn’t get up to say hello as he was deep in a match of Tekken, so I got us both a doughnut and took over the Vimto that his mum made for us so I could play a match when he was done.
“YOU’RE TELLING ME HE’S CLAIMING THIS TOO?!”
I’d not heard Sharon shout before. It looked like Thom hadn’t for a while either as the controller was now on the floor and he looked at me for the first time since I got there.
I peeked around the kitchen door and saw the doughnuts rolling around the floor as Sharon was lighting up a cigarette, pacing around her small, baby pink kitchen. I gazed at the doughnuts as they finally came to a standstill, leaving little chocolate trails on the speckled pink tiles behind them.
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