Chapter Fourteen - Michael Keaton's Eyebrows

It took one afternoon for Frank’s mum to fall in love.

Frank knew himself that this was entirely possible. He had himself once experienced that phenomena of love at first sight.

When people asked him what this felt like, he said there were no great ways to describe it, maybe in books there were, but he hadn’t read the right books to quote these passages, and so all he could think of was that being in love was like having a really expressive face, like being Michael Keaton and all of a sudden having these dancing eyebrows that awake to convey the kind of emotions that the more well used parts of the body find hard to communicate.

‘He’s sleeping in my bed’ Irene said.

‘I almost found him on my doorstep, like the postman sent him to me, but it wasn’t quite that convenient, but not far from it. I met him on my way to buy some hand-cream. My hands are still dry - I think I like the reminder of it’

‘When will we meet him?’ Frank asked.

‘When he wakes up’ His mum replied.

‘I like letting him sleep in, when he can, sleep is a brilliant treat when you’ve sought to earn it. I like it better than I did. It helps to have someone with me. It’s nice to reach out in the night and feel the warm flesh of someone good next to me’

When Frank was younger, and when his mum was really struggling with ME, he would climb into bed next to her and hold her. She would never ask him to do this, but she always hoped that he would, and Frank understood this because he knew the importance of the things unsaid. The things unsaid are the ones that take hold of you without direction; they merge into the very fabric of our impulses, and find us doing things without a second thought.

‘I remember when you’d climb into bed and hold me’ Irene said to Frank.

‘Your nose would find a place on my neck like a nest it had made, and your warm breath would ever so slightly tickle me. Sometimes you held my hand and I would thank you for it, but you didn’t hear me because I said it so quietly, or maybe I didn’t even say it at all. My eyes would be wet and yours would be too, and I liked how we never got used to our tears; they always meant something, that something should change’

Frank’s mum had tears in her eyes as she looked at her son, who was what a vision in white could look like, there stood in white gym gear. Frank was her greatest achievement in life, and there was no sorrow in that accolade; her tears were all of pride.

Chapter Thirteen - Tipp-Ex

‘I made you a cake but I dropped it on the floor’ Irene told her son.

‘It’s alright mum! The sandwiches are fine’ Frank said.

‘I bit my nails down too much and now they sting like vinegar in wounds!’ said Irene.

‘I do that too!’ exclaimed Lorrie. ‘I do it and I hate it and yet I do it again and again’

Irene and Lorrie show each other their scrappy little nails. They compare them. There isn’t much in it.

‘Who’s are worse?’ Lorrie asks Frank.

Frank looks at the spread out digits ahead of him.

Lorrie’s have bits of Tipp-Ex on them.

‘Why do your’s have Tipp-Ex on them? Frank asks her.

‘Because I temped in an office where I got so bored that I decided to coat my nails in Tipp-Ex. I Tipp-Exed the phone too, and the letters that spelt out my name on the computer keyboard that I used, I Tipp-Exed out the letters and drew smiley faces with fangs protruding from them instead. I don’t know why. I find that when I’m bored I often do things that I don’t really understand why it is I do them, but I guess it has something to do with being in a situation that makes you feel bored in the first place, because really it should be hard to feel bored, y’know, when there’s so much to learn about’

‘I get bored of myself’ Irene said.

‘That’s the truest sort of boredom’ Lorrie replied.

‘I get bored of what my body can’t cope with’ said Irene.

‘And then I get bored of the things it can cope with’

‘I got so bored of eating once that I gave it up for a while, and after a few days I got bored with that too, and then I ate lots to stop being bored of not eating, but then I bored of solids and so I only ate soup, and then I bored of soup and only ate squirty cream, and then eventually I go so bored of how erratic my diet was that I came round full circle and started to eat normally again’

‘I was bored of your dad too’ Irene said to her son

‘When he left me, I was bored of him as the man for me to love, and as the man who should have stimulated my senses, but I wasn’t yet bored of him as the man I could call my husband - that, I was scared of losing, I was scared of not being in a boring marriage, because at least it was a marriage, regardless of its description, but then sometimes you understand why it’s good to feel so bored sometimes, because that feeling should make you find what it is that makes you feel less so, what rids you completely of it, and today I did just that, I expelled boredom from my life'

'How?' Frank asked his mum.

'I fell in love' She smiled.

Chapter Twelve - Jigsaw

Kyle lost the knees of his jeans to paving driveways. He wore knee protectors and boots with steel toe-caps. He had sound-proof ear-muffs, but he didn't call them ear-muffs. He wore high-vis too, when it took his fancy, which should have been always, but instead, was sometimes, like the sight of a rainbow.

He was sleeping in Frank's mum's bed, in the after-thought of sex. His shoulders were large and avoided the quilt. He wasn't a staple of the bedroom, but he fitted in just fine.

Kyle had met Frank's mum Irene whilst finding her looking for a long time at his company's sign, positioned at the bottom of her neighbour's driveway, where it was Kyle was undertaking some work on elaborate cornerstones.
Irene had two curly bits of blonde hair resting on the apples of her cheeks as she looked at the sign which advertised all a man called Kyle Hicks could do - in a professional capacity, and in her counselling sessions Irene had been set a challenge by her counsellor, Marta, to approach someone new before their next session, to meet a man and ask him out for a drink.
Marta set these challenges with the expectation that they'd be dodged.
Marta was a pessimistic counsellor; a trait that meant her clients often stayed with her, for years.

Kyle looked at Irene, and Irene looked at his sign, aware that he was watching her. Irene tried to look as though she was looking right through the sign, but that didn't work, as she was hunched over and undoubtedly only looking at a sign which detailed the various types of paving a man called Kyle Hicks could do.

'It really isn't all that interesting' Kyle said to Irene.

'I seem to find it interesting though, don't I' Irene replied.

'You do. I don't know why, but you do' Kyle said.

Irene had stopped looking at the sign and instead put her gaze on Kyle.

'I was headed to the shop to buy some handcream' Irene said to Kyle.

'And you're not now?' He asked her.

'No, I'm not now' Irene smiled, and with Marta's voice in her head she asked Kyle over for tea.

'Do you like jigsaws?' Irene asked Kyle, as they drank tea together in her living room,
'Only with what you do for a living, it seems like you might'

'I don't know if I do' Kyle replied.

'That's a shame' Irene replied.

'Why?' Kyle asked.

'Because you'd be really good at them'
'Jigsaws'

Kyle's knees protruded from the denim around them. Irene's hair lay in her eyes. Mugs of tea gave their hands something to hold, and they needed them - things to be held.

Behind the netted window, the afternoon diminished. Mugs were substituted with the like of a knee.
And it was all very delicate, as they moved into place; like a jigsaw creating a bigger picture, they made sense together - Irene and Kyle.

Chapter Eleven - Madonna Smile

A red brick semi was home to Frank and his mum. All the curtains had netting on them. Some of the panes were broke. And the gate to the front garden was gone. Lorrie imagined Frank’s mum upstairs in bed like the sickly boy from The Secret Garden, scared of the light and of the outside world, but the front door was open and so she couldn’t be that scared Lorrie thought, and as she looked down at her feet, in the house where Frank grew up, she saw the word ‘Welcome’ covered in mud.

‘Will your mum mind me being here?’ Lorrie asked Frank.

‘She’ll be happy you’ve come’ Frank replied.

‘You make it sound like she already knows me’ Lorrie said.

‘She’ll know you’re a friend of mine and that’ll mean that she’ll like you’ said Frank.

Frank’s mum was in the kitchen, leaning against the worktop. She wore a knit top of canary yellow and had two lots of earrings in each year. She looked young Lorrie thought, and pretty. Her hair was dark blonde and she didn’t so much say hello to Lorrie as catch her by the shoulders and push her down into a chair by the dinner table.

‘Frank!’ His mum exclaimed, embracing him after pushing Lorrie down into a chair.

Frank hadn’t been home for more than two weeks. That wasn’t unusual. You could travel around in a car and camp and stay in b&b’s and hostels and still spend less than you would by staying put and looking forward only to the weekends, and sometimes Frank decided to do exactly that. He escaped.

‘You look good Frank!’ His mum beamed. ‘You look fit and healthy!’

‘I am mum. I’m good. I’m running still’ Frank told his mum.

‘And you look well for it! And you’re doing well out of it!’ Said his mother looking across at Lorrie as she did, with a wide smile on her face that paid great attention to the gap between her front teeth, something which looked good on an attractive woman, and Lorrie thought Frank’s mother was very much that, and not at all how she expected her to be.

‘This is Lorrie mum’ Said Frank

Lorrie and Frank’s mum said hello to each other in that late way people do when it’s clear they’ve already eyed each other up and decided they’ve already been acquainted. They had that kind of chemistry that comes about when there’s a great mutual appreciation laboured between two people, and in their instance, this was Frank.

‘She’s beautiful Frank’ His mum said, referring to Lorrie.

‘She’s beautiful Frank’ Thought Lorrie, referring to Frank’s mum, but never saying a word, not until they’d gone. 'She has a smile like Madonna'

There was a loaf in the bread bin and some ham in the fridge. Sandwiches were made and ate, tea was drank. There were walking aids dotted about the house, and handles for lifting out of the bath. There were photos of Frank on the wall by the stairs. There were letters unopened. Ten pounds stuck to the fridge with a magnet. A drawer filled only with plastic bags.

There was also a man asleep in a floral quilted double bed.

He smelt of construction. He breathed out dust.

Chapter Ten - PAM

‘I remember Auntie Pam as a dalmatian’ Frank told Lorrie
'A definite dog' He continued.

‘She always had this dalmatian look fur coat on and she’d bring round Feast lollies for me and my dad to eat, but not for me mum, because the first time Auntie Pam brought Feast lollies round my mum didn’t want one, and that was that, the assumption was made that she'd never want one, and so my dad got two Feasts that day, he was beaming, and he went on about the day he got two Feast lollies for years after it, ridiculing my mum for not liking them, even though she did like them, it’s just that she didn’t want one that day - but my dad didn’t listen, and looking back, I think you could mark the Feast lolly incident as the day my parents' marriage fell apart’

‘I stopped eating Feast lollies when my dad left. I didn’t even like using the word feast because of him. I stopped having non ice-lolly feasts too, but I don’t think I ever really had those sorts of feasts anyway, and I’d hide the selection of the ice-cream man from my mum if we were ever out, she didn’t need to see the image of a Feast with a bite taken out of it, it would’ve reminded her of dad too much - he had a memorable bite - so we’d get Zoom lollies instead, always, that was our usual’

‘It was harder to hide dalmatians from my mum. Sometimes when she thought she saw one, and when she did see one, I’d tell her it was a skunk instead, or a piece of interior design caught on the wind. She liked Pepe Le Pew and Changing Rooms, so at least I thought, these were good false thoughts I was filling her head with. I’d check the TV Guide to make sure we weren’t gonna find ourselves in front of the box with 101 Dalmatians about to come on, and I’d keep up to date with fashion trends, looking at the latest copy of Bella, and what the 3am Girls had to say, all so I could protect my mum from any dalmatian trends set to be unleashed on us’

‘It was hard looking after mum, but I never resented it, I wanted to do it. I’d still go to school and I’d do alright, I was your slightly above average student if that’s how you mark intelligence. I don’t see it that way, most of my education at that age wasn’t examined and awarded upon'
'I’d brush my mum’s hair for her and watch films with her that I’d rented from the library. She liked sad movies best. This Sporting Life was one of her favourites, I think she found comfort in the loneliness of others, not that it made her feel good, but just that it made her feel less of a victim and more a part of something that was sad, but still, it was a part of something’

‘I wanted to protect my mum from everything, but one day when I was in the kitchen making tea with her, as she sat in her wheelchair by the oven folding freshly washed tea-towels, I saw her face drop, and the neatly folded tea-towels flew into the air like unruly fireworks bought from one of those dodgy pop-up shops that only sell fireworks'
'My mum was pointing at me, frantically, but turning her head away from me as she did. She couldn’t look at me, that was clear, and she was shouting at me to, ‘GET RID OF HER’ I stood there, filled with sadness. I tried to approach her, but when I did she kicked me and told me to ‘FUCK OFF’ I turned around, confused, looking I don’t know what for, when I caught my reflection in the glass of the cabinet where it was the fancy glasses were kept, and there in my reflection was the name PAM spelt out, clear as day; a yellow font of PAM spelt out in harsh capital letters that begged to be seen'
'I hadn’t been careful enough, I held in my hand a can of SPAM that I’d been planning to make fritters with for tea, I was holding it in my right hand, covering the S with the width of my fingers, and there I was to blame for bringing PAM back into our home again. Big meaty PAM. A feast of PAM. The kind of PAM that wouldn’t go away, not even when we had fish fingers for tea’

Chapter Nine - 'The Cobra'

Frank and Lorrie had been driving for a while. It didn’t seem to matter where they were driving to.
They both had their reasons for wanting to carry on as they were, as abstract thoughts shaped in human form, or just humans thinking abstractly.

Frank and Lorrie weren’t so special as to be considered otherworldly, they had all the documentation and memories that said they were products of 1980s England, and problems of the very same place, only moved on to the second decade of the millennium, which I guess we should call the ‘teens’ only we find it hard to, because it doesn’t sound right recycling the name of the decade when it was that the First World War broke out.

In all his apparent distraction Frank had as a matter of fact been driving in the direction of his other home, the one he wasn’t driving in, the one where his mother lived, because it was her house, but their home.

Frank’s mother was a bad cook and her name was Irene. She suffered from ME and when at its worst she had lived practically in one room because of it. Frank’s dad was called Stewart and Frank hated him. Frank didn’t want to hate his dad, but sometimes you have no choice but to do just that, and when his dad left his mum Frank was glad, he just wished he could've given his dad back the genes he’d passed on to him, too.

Before Frank’s dad left his mum, Frank’s dad would call Irene ‘The Cobra’ because sometimes she’d be so ill that she had no energy to even stand upright, and so she’d have to crawl her way to the bathroom because of it. Sometimes Frank’s dad would even stand there and watch her whilst she’d be using all her strength to push herself along the carpet, and he wouldn’t help her, he wouldn’t even ask, and Frank’s mum would get burns from the carpet, and be crying along her way, not because of the physical pain, that was something she’d learned to cope with, but she’d be crying because her existence wasn’t that of a woman any more, but more that of an insect, a ladybird at best.

On the day Frank’s dad left the family home, he took all of Irene’s best clothes and jewellery with him, and said that as these things had been bought with his money it was only right he should take them back. He even said he had a certain woman in mind who could breathe some life back into them.

The woman was closer than anyone thought, and a twelve year old Frank looked on as his father drove away from the family home, with a woman he’d been told all his life to call his, 'Auntie Pam'

Chapter Eight - Barry Lyndon

Frank hoped Lorrie now lived in a place where there were only windows on a ground floor level, and Lorrie said he shouldn’t worry, she now lived in a basement, but not, at least not consciously, because she ever thought she’d jump out of a window again. Lorrie’s reason was much more simple as to why she lived in a basement, the flat was cheaper, and that was that.

‘I have parts of windows in my flat, the bottom parts, but I can’t open them, the flat above me can, but not me, and so I get this odd climate that doesn’t reflect the outside world at all sometimes. I think I like that about it. It’s as though I have travelled not just downstairs to come home, but have taken a journey to somewhere beyond. I enjoy that feeling. I like the way the light streaks in, missing so much of my flat and illuminating this one spot where I like to sit and read. It makes the order of my furniture look strange because I’ve put this one chair in the middle of my living room floor where it is that the light falls. I keep books under this chair; that’s where my collection’s kept. I like natural light so when it comes in sparse it feels all the more valuable, and I know to feel happy for its presence. I remember reading about that movie, Barry Lyndon - I adore that movie. I remember reading an interview where the interviewer asked Kubrick why it was he used only natural lighting, and Kubrick said ‘Because it’s the way we see things’ and I loved that, because I really want to take things in, and really see them, and connect with them, and when I watched that movie I couldn’t take my eyes away from this man transforming before my eyes, even when I wanted to, I couldn’t, the composition of the scenes as ruled by the light led my eye to where it said to go. And so it is I can understand when people say they see a light calling to them, when they’re near death – a guiding light I guess it is. I don’t think I could refuse it, not because of faith, I want to have that, but it doesn’t stick; I just don’t think when it came down to it that I could beat a light of so much intensity and purpose - I think such a light would make me keel over with awe’

‘Does this mean you’re not scared of death?’ Frank asked

‘Of course I’m scared of death. If anything I’m more scared, well, at least based on your opinion of how scared I am. These people who say they’ve seen the bright light of what comes after this life have beaten it, just before it accepted them completely, they managed to refuse to let it completely take them, but I’m scared, so scared, because I know if I see such a brilliant light I’d be too curious and awe struck to not take that step; and maybe it’s guiding us to something wonderful, or maybe to nothing at all, but once I see that light, I know I’m never coming back, no second chances, no brilliant recovery, just gone, a thing like silence’

Chapter Seven - Breakdowns

‘I envy cars’ Lorrie tells Frank

‘They don’t hide their breakdowns for a convenient moment. If they were like us they’d wait until they were in a garage or at least parked off road before they did it, break down that is’

‘I’ve tried to have most of my breakdowns in my bedroom, but sometimes it just isn’t possible.’

‘One breakdown I had forced me from my bedroom window because of a pair of knickers!’

‘You see those knickers meant a lot to me because of a guy I really liked, I’ll be honest, a guy I truly loved, called Ciaran Reegan who confessed that those particular knickers left a mark on his memory when he’d seen me in them years before, and had gotten me out of them so that they were there on his bedroom floor, and this was in student halls where nothing equalled the vibrant pink shade of my knickers that were there on the floor being observed by posters of Pavement and Scott Walker’

'We had sex, really good sex; the kind when you can’t even speak afterwards, and afterwards, when I left Ciaran’s room and went back over to the other side of the halls where my room was, I realised I'd my clothes on inside-out, and hadn’t even remembered to put my knickers back on. They were still there, on Ciaran’s floor, all pretty in pink’

‘His friends from his block were at this point coming in and out of his room, but nobody moved the pink lacy knickers, but everyone looked, and everyone knew, and somehow from a pair of knickers they assumed that I was great in bed’

‘I know all this because Ciaran told me about it when I went back to his room later that day for more of the same. In one day he'd become my world. We’d kissed in an indie club after he’d complimented me on being the most punk looking girl in the place. He didn’t like punk music and I wasn’t conforming to any punk style. My hair was black then and I liked studs and heavy eye make-up. But his line had worked and I did fancy him, and straight away I knew I felt more for him than any other man I’d ever met, and granted I was young, I was twenty, but that feeling really meant something’

‘We went back to our halls and I told him I’d meet him back at his room as I had to go back to mine first. What I had to do was make myself look as desirable as possible even though I already knew we’d sleep together’

‘In the club our hands had found each possible entrance to each other’s clothes, we’d been the spectacle of the nightclub, but it was all very real. I could have resigned myself to being in love with Ciaran after our first kiss alone. This was new territory for me, before Ciaran I might have been called a cold lover’

‘At the mirror by the sink in my bedroom I applied more make-up even though I knew it wouldn’t last, and I traded my black underwear for the lacy pink duo I had. This would be their first sexual outing, but thankfully not mine. I felt glad that I knew what I’d be doing, and gladder still that I’d had enough booze to try things I hadn’t already’

‘When I went back to Ciaran’s room later that day we listened to Patrick Wolf. I lay outstretched on his bed on my front. He’d asked me to put the pink knickers back on for him, and I did, and I didn’t speak a word as he watched me in the lowlight as he stood by his bedroom window; smoking, inhaling, breathing me in like I was the same pleasurable ill kept inside the sticks of his cigarettes’

‘We fucked to Leonard Cohen, and even though we should've, we didn’t use protection. I knew I could sort that out, and I did, and I didn’t even feel stupid about it, because all I wanted was to be as close to this man as I could be. I wanted him to swallow me up whole because I couldn’t begin to imagine my world now, without him in it. But instead we watched how our bodies made each other’s feel, right in the very whites of our eyes’

‘It had happened. I had fallen in love’

‘But things didn’t happen for us as I’d hoped they would, and the day after our first day together I found out Ciaran was already in a relationship. I felt sick. I couldn’t fall out of love – I’d only just fallen in love. I couldn’t study or behave like the person I wanted to be. I broke down. I left uni. I removed myself from having to be around and hear the name Ciaran Reegan, but still, I remained in love’

‘It was horrible’

‘I don’t remember the day I stopped thinking about Ciaran, but it happened, until he found me on Facebook and wrote me the message:

‘I never forgot the girl in the pink underwear’

‘I didn’t jump for joy or think this was fate as I read the message. I didn't think that our timing had been all wrong before, and now this was it, here, beginning in a Facebook message, our chance to carry on what we had begun, all those years ago. I didn’t cry or think you bastard, you utter fucking bastard. In truth I felt turned on, like I never had since my time spent with him'

'I went to my chest of drawers, to the drawer where my underwear was kept, and I sifted through knickers and bras until I found the pink pair of knickers I was looking for, the pink lacy pair. I slipped the knickers I’d on, off, and I put the pink pair on, and ahead of my mirror I stood with my skirt hoisted up, so that I could see all the way up to my waist. They were a little tight, the knickers, but still, they fitted alright’

‘It was ridiculous. I was ridiculous’

‘I looked around for something to make it less so, but all I had were vitamins, so I took a whole bunch of Vitamin C tablets and deactivated my Facebook account, but it wasn’t enough, and so I opened up my bedroom window, and with no regard at all, I leapt from two floors up down towards the garden.
Maybe it was my gymnastic skills, but I wasn’t hurt one bit’

‘My friend Jane came over later that day because I asked her to, and together we burnt the pink knickers in a wheelbarrow, wearing sunglasses as we did so, because they're our favourite accessory, and do instantly make you look so much cooler'
'Jane said it was normal to throw yourself from a window because of a man, but absolutely not normal to keep knickers as an item of nostalgia'
'I think she was being nice'

'I think she was too' Frank piped up, as he navigated the loop of a roundabout making his copy of Crime and Punishment fall to the floor from the tilt of the turn.

Chapter Six - Lost Souls

The new friends head out to Frank’s yellow car, a Fiat something or other.

Lorrie catches sight of the copy of Crime and Punishment there on a makeshift shelf by the back seats.

Frank unlocks the car and moves a pile of CDs from the passenger seat and gestures for Lorrie to sit down, she does, and returns the pile of CDs to her lap as she sifts through records by Doves, New Order, The Radio Dept, Bjork and PIL, telling Frank she likes all of them.

It makes Frank feel good that Lorrie likes them, because validation of what we like by people we like makes us feel good inside.

‘This record came out when I was in high school’ Lorrie tells Frank as she singles out the album Lost Souls by Doves.

She takes the CD out of its case and looks for the okay from Frank to put it on. He gives it.

And in a stationery car at the seafront, they listen to Lost Souls.

‘I love this album’

‘I remember my brother coming home with it from a visit to HMV in Manchester. I remember the way we bought CDs then, it was so exciting, there was a ritual to it – buy CD, listen to CD as soon as you get home, lie on your bed while you listen to CD and look at every single picture on the album sleeve intently and with admiration, and always think - I'm so thankful that this record was made’

‘I can honestly say that in my teenage years I felt more anticipation for the first listen of an album I was so looking forward to than the kiss of a boy I liked. I never fell in love with a boy as a teenager, but I fell for a chorus, a riff, a dreamy tone, over and over again’

‘I was in high school too when this record came out’ Frank told Lorrie.

‘I was in my final year and I’d never loved the repeat button on my stereo so much. After a while the actual button came off, the function still worked, but the button just hung around my room until one day it became lost’

Lorrie pulled the visor ahead of the passenger seat down, where she checked her face in its small mirror. Her sunglasses were still kept on, her pale eyes remaining evident through their ombre lenses.

In profile Frank watched her as he turned the key in the ignition to drive. There was no traffic, but Lorrie’s eyes were busy.

The music played on. The tone was sad.

They drove in no obvious direction, on a wide open road, like two thoughts caught on the cloak of day, they were drifting. 

Chapter Five - Crime and Punishment

‘Where's home?’ Lorrie asks Frank, meaning where's home for you Frank? And he knows this is what she means.

Frank points outside the coffee-shop window, and more specifically at an ordinary looking car, in a not so ordinary shade of yellow.

‘It isn’t what you might call a proper home’ Frank says

‘But I feel more at home in that car than I do in the house where I grew up, which consequently, is where I still live - if you don’t count my car - but I really think you should count the car, there’s Listerine and everything in there, there’s a shelf with one book on it, I keep trying to read it, Crime and Punishment, and it’s not that it’s bad, because I think it’s incredibly good, what I’ve read so far anyways, it’s just I wish from time to time maybe there was even a blank page to look at, because it wears me out, and that’s usually when I go running, and so you see, I never really get so far through the book, and then I have to start right back at the beginning again, and you know something else? There are too many people with names beginning with R in that book, but maybe that’s a Russian thing, maybe I’ll meet a Russian one day who will tell me that’s completely normal, and maybe they’ll shout at me for my tired concentration and make me finish the book. I think I need this kind of intimidation to be perfectly honest. I do enjoy the running though, and I thank Dostoevsky for that’

Lorrie is smiling as she says,

‘It’s a nice thing how a stimulus that was meant to provoke a certain frame of mind can provoke something completely different in someone, but hey, at least when you're provoked to do something you know that you're still moved by it in some way. Dostoevsky would probably be adequately satisfied by your taking up of running, really. And to have a book-shelf all in the name of one book, well now that's quite grand isn’t it - perhaps you’d find it easier to finish reading Crime and Punishment should you surround yourself with works of lighter weights of fiction, that way you’re not singling out the novel you believe will destroy you so evidently, because right now it seems you’ve made it your enemy, and you are quite literally, running away from it!’

‘You really kinda are something else, dyou know that?’ Frank says to Lorrie

‘In your shades and all your agile beauty and even in how you faint and the endearing way you aggressively made friends with Peter there, and me, how you were with me, letting me hold your hand even though you knew what that could mean. You remind me of a girl I never met, who could be described as being somewhere between Dick Tracy’s Tess Trueheart and Juliette Lewis in Natural Born Killers, and before you even say it, I know you’ll tell me that you don’t agree’

But Lorrie pipes up and says,

‘I only disagree because I can’t agree with a thought that is so personal to you, but I like your frame of reference, and would like to see your home now please, the one you keep on wheels’ 

Chapter Four - Wimbledon

They drink coffee in a coffee shop called Joe's, but the man who serves their coffee isn't called Joe, because his name badge says he's called Peter.

'It'd be easier if we all had to wear name badges' Frank says to Lorrie,
'Living, it'd be easier'

'Easier how?' Lorrie asks

'Easier because I'd have a reason to grab someone's attention instantly' He replies
'Look, if I keep shouting Peter, that guy has to come over, right'
'Peter'..
'Peter!'...
'PETER'....

Peter doesn't come over, instead he thinks about how much he hates it when customers use his name because they've seen it spelled out on his name-badge. He finds it intrusive. Kinda rude. In such instances as this Peter thinks about how nice it must be to have the kind of job where hearing your name shouted out inspires feelings of self-worth and confidence. The kind of job where people don't just shout out your name in pure admiration, but the kind of job where you get the prefix of 'Go!' added to your name. 'Go Peter!' 'Go Peter!' That would be awesome he thinks, and he imagines applause.

'Cock!' Lorrie shouts, and Peter looks over, not because he is one, but because it's at least better than hearing his name called out by some customer who's taken the liberty of taking the meaning of his name, the name chosen by his doting mother at the time of his birth, to mean something along the lines of, slave.

Lorrie waves at Peter, and Peter shrugs, thinking: I do not understand why I am here to serve you.

Lorrie and Frank sit by the window of the coffee shop and watch the day progress around them.
Peter asks if they would like anything else, because as they watch the day progress, they run out of coffee pretty quickly, and customers aren't supposed to sit in the coffee shop if they are not profiting the coffee shop.

'Sit down and join us' Lorrie says to Peter

'I'm not supposed to do that' Peter says

'Ahhhh Go on Peter!' Lorrie says 'If your boss comes along we'll say we asked you to sit with us, which is true anyway, and believe me, I can't lie, not any more'

'It's true' Frank says, 'She can't lie, she told me so, and I believe her because I have this gut instinct which tells me so, and you can't beat your gut'

'Do me a favour' Peter says

'Anything' Lorrie and Frank chime.

'Shout Go Peter! with absolute conviction that I served you the best damn coffee of your life. If you do that, then I'll sit with you'

'Go Peter! Go Peter! Go Peter!'

They sing it (with supreme conviction). Beating the wooden table where they sit as they do. Lorrie waving her sunglasses in the air like a well to do fan at Wimbledon. Frank resembling a chuffed ball-boy at Wimbledon who's just claimed the ball from the winning ace of the men's final as his own.
But this isn't Wimbledon, this is Joe's Coffee Shop.
But Peter's elated as he runs loops around the independent (but not very pretty coffee shop) where it is he earns minimum wage.
He's punching the air. He's picking up a can of lemonade from the fridge. He's shaking it up and he's pulling open the ring-pull to be met by a mess of carbonation and fizz that goes all over his face, but he loves lemonade, and in this moment, Peter loves his job too.

Go Peter!

Chapter Three - Trench Coat

They threw Frank's tracksuit in the sea together, and there it floated outwards with the tide, like pond-life. Some things aren't worth keeping in life, and this seemed one of them; what wasn't one of those things was the kind of friendship that keeps you asking questions, and Lorrie and Frank were full of them.

Lorrie had been a successful childhood gymnast, that was the answer to question number four of Frank's:

'What were you best at when you were ten years old?'

Lorrie detailed that even though she had been talented at gymnastics that she didn't so much enjoy it because she didn't like how tight everything had to be, tight hair, tight leotard, tight smiles and tight little thoughts that made for tight victories.
She described for Frank the day she left her gymnastics team:

'I turned up for training in a trench coat and said I wanted to do something new, and so I cartwheeled with my hair down and snarled at everyone. After four cartwheels I sat myself down on one of the mats and ate myself a cheeseburger which I'd bought on the walk in, it tasted good even if it was squashed-up and luke warm. I was asked by my coach if something had happened, and i told her I'd gotten my period, and she tried to look like she knew how that felt, but the struggle in her eyes told me she couldn't remember, and I was lying anyway, because I was at that age where you lied just because you could. I was thirteen. I never went back to training again. My coach Mrs Brady called my house for weeks after that day, trying to get me to change my mind. She would tell me i had 'it!' She would tell my parents I had 'it!' too, and my brother, even though he didn't care to listen. Then my parents would tell me I had 'it!' and my friends, the annoying ones, they'd tell me I had 'it!', and so i decided I wouldn't be friends with these people any more, because they obviously didn't listen to me, because if they did they would've heard me say, near a thousand times, that i didn't know what 'it!' was, and that I had no interest in knowing what 'it!' was, because I was different now. I thought wearing a trench coat might have made that clear to people, but I was wrong. I'd be wrong about a lot of things at that age, so it happened, but at least I could lie and say that I wasn't. My parents had gotten too old to lie and be convincing about it. There's a small window in life to be an effective liar and in my opinion it runs from the age of about 12 to 24, I appreciate this estimate may alter from person to person, but in consideration of the people I've met in my life, I find this to be a pretty accurate estimation'

How old are you now? Frank asked Lorrie.

'25' She said.
'Let's go grab a coffee, I'm cold'

Chapter Two - The Angel of The North

Frank enjoyed the grand spaces you could claim as your own should you wake early enough to do so. It was often hard to beat dog-walkers to it, but wintertime made it easier, it put people off like cold-sore kisses.

Frank once spent five hours alone in the company of The Angel of The North, where beneath one of her wings he sat inside a sleeping bag zipped up over his head with only a little space for his face to poke out from. There were two things Frank could do effectively looking like that, the first was an impression of a mummy, the second was an impression of a worm, but with nobody there to judge, he never was sure which impression was best.

It was a shame Frank thought, to not share such moments as this with somebody else, because things not shared can seem so unreal - and like the flight Frank took in the arms of The Angel of The North herself, the unreal can become so real when nobody thinks to ask you otherwise.

Lorrie awoke. It was still morning and the pier was empty except for Frank sat there next to her, still in his white attire, looking like a borstal teen in gym gear. Lorrie stuck her fingers in the gaps between the planks of decking either side of her. She looked ready to take off on a magic carpet ride.

Did I faint? She asked Frank

Yeah, I think so, you fell so slowly that you looked so peaceful with it, like your body yawned you to a position that lacked any tension. You looked completely happy.

I'm sorry, She said

Don’t be sorry, why would you be sorry? Frank asked

Because I'm sat on your tracksuit and you’re cold.

But I'm not cold, He said

And Lorrie looked at his nipples and up at Frank’s eyes and they both laughed and Frank helped Lorrie up, and when on their feet the sea-breeze did tug at them and Frank took Lorrie’s hand and told her to stay, and no more did they struggle, and through the lenses of her sunglasses, Lorrie saw a man who should never wear a tracksuit ever again. 

Chapter One - Sunglasses

It was winter when she bought that year’s pair of sunglasses. They were baby-blue rimmed and angular; bought from a stall on the pier of the English Riviera.

The winter sun was strong. The tide was high. Lorrie Binding was on her own and alone, wearing her latest pair of sunglasses.

A man in a tracksuit ran past her and sighed. He wasn’t tired. His sigh was for Lorrie.

Lorrie stood by the handrails of the pier and looked outwards away from land.

The man took off his tracksuit, only an arm’s length away from Lorrie, but nobody tested this distance to see.

The sun was strong, but sure, it was cold; it was true winter.

Underneath his tracksuit the man wore white shorts and a white tee shirt.

In sprints he ran to the end of the pier and back to where his tracksuit, a gaudy shade of green, lay heaped on the decked floor.

Lorrie took looks that were long like the sea; the frames of her sunglasses framing coastal beauty.

The man continued to sigh for Lorrie, and each sigh was audible on each return sprint to the spot where he’d undressed.

On the beat of each sigh Lorrie would lean further forwards, further against the handrail, closer towards the sea. It was rhythmic.

The man had potently erect nipples, but did not feel the cold. What he felt was lust for a girl who flirted herself towards the seabed like it was saying, ‘Welcome home’

With her body now held vertically towards the sky, Lorrie did make a handstand on the rail where hands should not make such daring moves.

It was then that the moment came when the seventeenth audible sigh of the sprinting man did provoke Lorrie to faint, and on to the decking she crumpled, her long brown hair striped in sections against the green of the man’s tracksuit, like humbug sweets.

Lorrie’s sunglasses fell still, through the air, their lenses clouded.

They were caught by the grip of a man dressed in little, a man dressed in white.

His name was Frank, he’d always wanted to meet an attractive girl in such curious circumstances, and as he placed Lorrie’s sunglasses rightfully back onto her little nose, he let her sleep a while, because he could feel her pulse, and it was strong, and maybe when she awoke, he’d be her hero.