Sarah and I had planned to get married some time before, but then little Jade had started to grow in Sarah’s tummy and all the money we had set aside went on baby stuff (which all parents will know costs a fucking fortune!) So, we were looking to do the deed in a few years – probably with our little girl as bridesmaid.
Now we didn’t have a few years – and probably not even a few months. So, without telling Sarah, I got all the paperwork in place and, just two days before Jade turned nine months old, I took Sarah (and Jade) to the Registry Office.
Her parents were there (mine were both long dead), as was her little sister, Sophie. Sarah beamed at me when she realised what was happening and then cried, since she was only wearing faded jeans, a t-shirt and a hooded jacket bearing the name of some crappy rock band that she was into.
Of course, I’m not that big a dick! I would never make someone get married looking like they’ve been dragged in off the street. Sophie and I had picked out a simple, but elegant, outfit for Sarah to get married in. She looked beautiful. I got Jade dressed up and then put on a penguin suit that I’d hired and we got married. It was a small ceremony, without the pomp and circumstance Sarah had dreamed of and that we had originally planned to go through but it was still the best moment of my life (after Jade’s birth, that is). I like to think Sarah was happy enough. I hope so.
Amazingly, Sarah managed to go through the entire ceremony, short though it was, without coughing once. Jade, dressed in her little white outfit, was an angel, throughout, although she would throw up on grandma’s shoulder as soon as the handful of pictures had been taken, which grandma never let her live down!
The new Mr and Mrs Anderson left the Registry Office and proceeded onto our honeymoon. Which was a single-person room at the local hospital. Sarah never left that shitty little room alive again.
All of which is not getting to the point and I know that. I just need you to understand that I wasn’t always a complete dick. Notwithstanding, about three months after Sarah died, Jade turned one year old. Happy Birthday, kid, Daddy’s gonna fuck him some arse.
Yeah.
His name was Simon, but that’s not really important. Simon was a colleague of mine who had taken over the bigger parts of the project I had been working on when Sarah had died because I was a) distraught and b) suddenly a single parent to a baby whose age was still being registered in months.
Simon was a godsend. He and I had an almost psychic connection. We had been brought onto a project to design the interior of a new office building for a major car company and I had been at the task for about three days before all things went to shit. Still, I had tried my best to continue, but it soon became obvious that I couldn’t carry on and complete the task on time.
So, in came Simon. Nice kid. Just turned nineteen. He and I had a long meeting about what we wanted to do, based on the requests by the car company and then he ran off with it. He and I would get together once a week to ensure that he was still on the right track and, as the weeks passed and I got more and more into my role as a work-at-home daddy, I started to take back some of the design work.
With Simon’s help, we managed to just about get finished on schedule, although the final few days had seen neither of us sleep very much in order to meet the deadline.
The presentation was due on Jade’s first birthday and there was fuck-all I could do about it. I tried to get them to move it, but with public holidays and the like all coming up, the meeting could not be delayed. I was offered the day before Jade’s birthday, but we were struggling to hit the deadline as it was, so I declined and just hoped she wouldn’t care. Her being just one year old meant that she had no fucking clue, of course, but I still felt like an absolute twat.
The presentation went swimmingly, as they say. The car company loved the designs and the way the offices flowed and all that Feng Shui shit that we incorporated into it (Feng Shui was big at the time) and we left happy in a job well done.
Simon wanted to celebrate. I wanted to get home to my little girl who was currently staying with grandma and grandad and probably being spoiled rotten.
So we compromised. Simon would come to my house (he’d been many times, it was nothing new) and I’d get my in-laws (Louise and Martin) to bring Jade home. They only lived about ten minutes walk away and I could have picked her up, but the Louise always said she and Martin (“especially Martin!”) needed to walk more and often used pushing Jade in her stroller as an excuse to do so. The weather was cold, but dry and they were more than happy to walk, so I let them.
We had a little celebration for Jade’s birthday, which was nothing more than a bit of cake (lovingly baked by Louise who never allowed Jade’s birthday to pass with anything less than a culinary concoction of her own) and a sing-song. Simon, whom Jade knew quite well, happily joined in. Then, as it would soon start getting dark, Louise and Martin left for home. I offered a lift, obviously, but without any expectation that they would accept and was not disappointed to be right.
Jade, being one, was soon tired and I packed her off to bed. This left Simon and I downstairs on the sofa with a half-opened bottle of wine on the table before us.
I still don’t know quite how it happened. We were talking about pointless shit – I had a rule about not discussing work stuff at home, unless I was actually working – and there was a football game on the TV that neither of us was really paying much attention to. I think I fell asleep. Fuck that; I know I fell asleep! Not for long – maybe five, ten minutes. But however long it was, it was long enough.
Simon had finished the wine bottle and, when I ran through everything in my mind later, it occurred to me that I’d had maybe a glass of the stuff, maybe a bit less. Simon drank the rest. Dutch courage, perhaps? Maybe. Maybe the guy was a piss-head.
Whatever the truth about Simon’s drinking habits, I awoke to Simon’s attractive, blonde head buried in my shoulder. He was asleep, with his mouth wide open and snoring, lightly.
I giggled when he snored and I sounded like a little girl when I did so. Simon snorted and woke up, slightly. “Hzzwzzftzzutiszz”, he said.
“Fifty-two,” I said.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Fifty-two.”
“Fifty-two what?”
“Listen, man, I didn’t have the first fucking clue what you said, so I assumed it was a question and I answered it!”
“What fucking question has the answer fifty-two?”
“What’s fifty-one plus one,” I replied and laughed.
“Fuck you,” Simon said, smirking at me.
“Maybe later,” I replied without thinking, only for me to realise just an instant too late what I had said. “Oh, fuck! Sorry, man,” I gabbled. “I didn’t mean…fuck!” I leapt from the sofa and stepped back in horror at what I had done.
I dropped my head for a moment and gathered myself. “Sorry,” I repeated, looking back at Simon. “That was my go-to reply when Sarah said ‘fuck you’ and… I just came out with it. I didn’t mean anything by it. Honest!” I was babbling now, and I knew it. I seriously doubted Simon would say anything that might get me into trouble and, besides, the world back then wasn’t quite as litigious as it is now, what with all the #MeToo shit over the past few years. Nineteen years ago, you could make an off-hand comment like that without your entire world being dragged out of your arse for it.