Gosford Bloody Tanner's Fault

I got up early again on Monday morning and after putting the coffee on and helping myself to a cup, I was out the door swinging on both crutches and heading towards town. I visited the two estate agents to arrange to look more closely at the two flats. I discarded the first, as too small and poorly accessed. The second was perfect, just two blocks from the fire station, so I put in an offer just below the rent asked for. I had enough for the rental deposit. I had switched my mobile off while I was with the estate agents, and remembered to switch it back on. There were messages from Mandy, which I ignored.

I swung around to the fire station and had a coffee with the lads, which was very enjoyable. I mentioned the flat and several of the guys had bits and pieces they could let me have, like spare crockery, an old microwave and a kitchen set of table and a couple of rickety chairs. Then I got on my crutches and headed towards the hospital. My mobile went off. It was Mandy. I answered. She wondered where I was because she was due to take me for my physiotherapy appointment. I told her I was on foot and only five minutes away.

Did I want picking up afterwards? Yes, that would be good, I replied and would ring her when I was finished. I wasn't tired or too sore, just out of sorts. I went through the physio without too much enthusiasm. The nurse checked me over afterwards said they would probably take off the cast in a week or two and I could return to work at least part-time for light duties, while still continuing the physiotherapy.

I switched my mobile on again and found a message from the estate agent, so I called him back and found my reduced-rent offer had been accepted and I could go in and sign a six-month lease. The estate mentioned that me being a fire fighter actually swung the reduction, that was a turn-up for the book and cheered me up no end. I called Mandy and asked if she could pick me up from the fire station in an hour. She said she would.

I signed the lease and popped in to see the lads to take up their offer of furniture. In the meantime they had asked around and one of the guys knew someone who had a leather settee and chair they didn't want. The fire station was often being offered old furniture, which we burned for training purposes. Watch Commander Alan Squires said the Blue Watch lads could use the van to pick up the stuff and help me get it into the flat. I could pick up the keys on Friday, so we agreed to meet up then. Alan told me to take a full week off after my cast was removed and then come back on day shift for a couple of weeks to help with the paperwork in the office before working with my Watch on light duties and training.

Mandy pulled into the fire station car park and made her way over to the office. It was early afternoon, warm and sunny, and she was wearing a thin tee-shirt and shorts and looked really hot. The lads of Blue Watch had their tongues hanging out while I introduced her to everyone. Naturally Alan offered to show her round and off she went with him. The rest of the Watch rounded on me asking what the hell was I doing moving into a one-bedroom flat when I had that at home. There was a lot of shaking of heads as I explained I was only at her place recovering from injury, we had been separated for over five years and she had a boyfriend, at which the general opinion was that I was a "poor bugger". Tell me about it.

On the journey home, Mandy mentioned that Alan had told her about the lads helping me move into my flat on Friday and when was I going to tell her?

"Mandy, we've only just got in the car, give me a chance."

"So when did you decide to move out?"

"Well, this weekend was a bit of a clincher," I said, "So I put in an offer for a short-term lease this morning and was accepted less than an hour ago."

"You are a bloody idiot, Jimbo!"

Not a lot I could add to that. It may have been hot out, but we didn't need the air conditioning on in that car for the rest of the journey. I wanted to ask her to give me a lift in the morning to the trading estate so I could order a washing machine but thought better of it. I might have to order something on-line. The kitchen in the flat already had a cooker, so I didn't need to worry about that.

The news that I was moving out on Friday didn't go down well with the girls, they were in tears that I was leaving again and why couldn't I stay? I assured them that I was living very near by and I should be mobile and driving again in two weeks and could still see a lot of them. They asked if they could stay with me sometimes and I had to explain that I could only afford a one-bedroom flat at the moment, but would try and get something bigger in the near future.

Josh was very quiet until Mandy mentioned that she had picked me up from the fire station, then he got very upset.

"You went to the fire station and you didn't take me with you?!" Josh exploded, "You gotta be the worst bloody dad in the world!" And then he stomped off to his room.

Chapter 6 - New start

I was not surprised to get the invitation to Sally and Geoff's wedding. Sally and I conversed by email all the time, so I knew roughly when it was coming up. I had even visited the couple three or four times in the past couple of months and found that Geoff and I got on like a house on fire. I knew, I was absolutely certain though, if I passed out on their settee I would wake up in the morning with one of his works of art on my bum. That was never gonna happen! Sally had tucked a note in with the invite saying she was having the girls as two of her three bridesmaids. She had a small family herself, an older brother with a two-year-old, who was to be a page boy. Naturally, Josh and his mother were also invited to the wedding rehearsal the day before and the wedding, the letter continued, saying perhaps I could help out by bringing Josh up with me?

Of course I could but first it would mean talking to Mandy.

With our relationship once more strained, we were at the point where either I collected the kids by staying in the car and honking the horn, or she dropped them off at my place, again without getting out of the car.

I had a small house at Paulsgrove on the mainland, fifteen minutes' drive away, having busted a gut to scrape together enough for the deposit. It was an auction bid, the Victorian mid-terrace house having been wrecked by evicted students, all the windows and doors broken, washbasins, bath and toilets smashed, flooded out because all the taps had been left full on during the process of eviction. With the help of Blue Watch I turned it back from four flats into a 3-bed house again with a basement gym. The Watch didn't have to help, they could've lived a hellish existence with a total grouch for a boss if they wanted too, their choice entirely!

During my rehabilitation, once I was able to drive and train to get my fitness and mobility back, I got involved in local intervention fire education, training junior fire fighters. That kept me too busy to mope at first and then, surprisingly, I ended up really enjoying it. So I continued doing this during every spare moment I got, even when I returned to full active duty. I became an ambassador for the scheme and promoted it all round the country, including my old haunts in Lincolnshire and Humberside.

That was why I returned to the area so often, calling in on Sally and also the Murrays, apparently Darren missed me and called me his best friend. Mind you, I later found out that anyone who gave Darren their undivided attention for a while was his best friend! I got on quite well with Annabel and Gordon and looked forward to the spring when both the Murrays and the Arnolds were expecting their happy events.

So I left it a fortnight before calling Amanda, it being about four weeks to the wedding in mid-December.

"Hello!?" Mandy answered her mobile brightly. We had exchanged mobile numbers months before. I suppose it was useful in case we needed to contact each other quickly if we had an emergency with the kids. I say exchanged, I gave my new number to Josh and presumably he passed it on.

"Hi, Amanda," I said, "It's Jim-"

"I know, I have your number in my contacts."

"Oh, right," I said.

I don't know why I have the bloody thing anyway, I only ever use it to speak to Josh since he got one for his birthday. Everyone else I keep in contact with by email.

"I wanted to speak to you about Sally and Geoff's wedding next month-"

"You're cutting it very fine, Jimbo, I'd almost given up on you."

Oh! Back to Jimbo, now is it? And as for giving up on me, we'd both done that long ago.

"Well, I'm happy to fit in with whatever plans you have, perhaps take Josh off your hands, etcetera."

"Perhaps you could come over one evening, have dinner with us? Now that we've got our dining room back." She laughed as she said it. I wasn't really in the mood to laugh with her.

"Well, I'm on nights at the moment, so I just have a breakfast early afternoon and we have our main meal at the station about two in the morning."

I really didn't want to eat with them and have Mark sneering across the table at me, where he was living with and making love to my wife, even if she was just that in name only.

"Perhaps you could pop in on your way home from school?" I suggested, knowing she didn't work in the city, but further along the coast to the east.

"Mmm, OK, can't tomorrow night, but the night after alright? About 5.30-ish?"

"Yes, that's perfect."

"Good for me, too. See you then, then, take care, Jimbo."

"You too, Mand, bye."

I never really got on with making cakes, the odd sponge pudding, which I could disguise with lashings of custard, but I do make a mean double chocolate chip muffin, which the kids (including Blue Watch!) always love, so I made up a batch of them.

Mandy ran from the car in the rain when she arrived. I had been keeping an eye out for her and met her halfway with the umbrella, that got me a nice smile for my pains. I took her coat and bag and hung them on the post at the foot of the stairs and led her through to the tiny kitchen, where I had already put the kettle on to boil. I finished off making the pot of tea while Mandy had a look around, going into the sitting room. She hadn't been inside since I got the place. I caught up with her, peering at the back yard the auctioneers described as a "good-sized garden laid to lawn". It was no bigger than a postage stamp.

"Nice little place you've got here," she commented with another of her easy smiles.

It wasn't a nice place. It was a basic ex-council house in the middle of a crowded sink estate. My fences on two sides were brand-new, erected by Blue Watch under my supervision as a training exercise, the other two were falling down. I had already decided I was going to bite the bullet and replace the other fences in the spring even though they were not my fences, for peace of mind. No garage, just a designated parking spot. In one of the six parking bays opposite the house was a burnt-out car, no doubt a stolen car probably taken by a near-neighbour who wanted to get home after a night out somewhere and torched it to destroy any evidence. The fire service would not have been called to put it out as that would have defeated the object, so it would be left to burn down to the concrete. We were still waiting for the council to tow it away, knowing on average it takes them six weeks to do it, then there'd be another wrecker left there within a fortnight.

Still, this house was all I could afford.

"Ooo, are these your famous muffins?" she said, having pulled one apart and popped a morsel in her mouth.

"Yeah."

"Great, I'm starving, been on my feet all day doing auditions for the various productions going on and missed my lunch."

"I've made a whole batch, you can help yourself to another if you like, and take the rest back with you."

I picked at one with little enthusiasm. It always upset me seeing her, remembering that I had loved her since I was about 9, and she was now somebody else's, in fact she hadn't been mine for a long while.

"Thanks."

Another smile and she grabbed a second muffin. I poured the tea.

"Arrangements for the wedding?" I asked, as I handed her the cup and saucer, the arrangements for the wedding being her reason for being there and reminding me of what a disaster my life had been. The tea set of five cups and six saucers came from the change in my fortunes and for the economy to pick up again, or Christmas, perhaps.

"Yes, arrangements," she said, accepting the tea with one hand and delicately brushing a few dark brown crumbs off her lips with the other. "I can't come to the wedding rehearsal as we have a performance of the nativity play for the years six and seven children Friday night, so I'll either come up during the night, if not too tired or follow up in the morning. So ..." she paused, "If you drive up with the children and my mother-"

"What!?" I said, "I'm not driving up with-"

"Honey," she interjected, "She can't drive all that way, you know she hates long journeys and she's not long after her operation, but she can share one hotel room with the girls and you can room with Josh. It'll be good for the family, it's time you and Mum buried the hatchet."

"Fireman's axe," I said, trying to force a grin so it sounded more like a joke than what I was really thinking, "I'd like to bury it in her head!"

"You don't mean that Jimbo-"

"I do, I really do, she's poisonous, your Mum."

"Well, I think you should put in some effort to be nice to her. She has been very complimentary about you recently."

"Oh, she harping on at Mark then, with me out of the picture?"

"No, of course not. Anyway, Mark has been out of the picture for ages now."

"Why's that? I thought you were getting on like a house on fire."

"No, he was boring, so we stopped going out."

"Oh" I raised my eyebrows, "A free agent now, then?"

"No, I've been seeing John for a couple of months now."

"Great, so long as you're not lonely." I chewed out my words.

"No," she admitted, "Never lonely. You?"

"Nobody special. Too busy for anything long-term," I said, "Got a lot on at the moment."

"Of course."

We sat quietly sipping tea until it was all gone, or cold.

"I suppose we ought to get our situation ... sorted out, you know, finalised." she looked up from her cup and I looked up from mine. I noticed she didn't say the "D" word, so I wasn't going to either.

"You know how I feel about it," I said, "You get the ball rolling whenever you want, and I'll sign anything that is reasonable."

"That's alright, I'm not in any hurry."

"Me neither."

"So, about Mum?"

"Yes, yes, no problem. She's not as big a pain in the bum that she used to be, I have to say."

I packed the muffins into a bag for her and saw her off with a wave.

Madge wasn't going to be too much of a problem. She had mellowed over the past couple of months. She'd had to have a knee operation in October and, as it was a couple of weeks before half-term I had to take her to the hospital and pick her up about six hours later and, other than half-term week when Mandy took her, I had to take Madge to physiotherapy once a week, which we fitted around my shifts. No great hardship for me as I was on first names with everyone down there, so I was kept amused during the wait. But twenty minutes each way with Madge was different to three and a half straight hours through the evening rush hour. I wasn't looking forward to it.

Mandy's new boyfriend, John, was another matter, as well as the divorce now rearing its ugly head. Well, she had raised the subject, then quickly dismissed it as of no consequence. If that was the case then why raise it in the first place? Of course I knew it was going to happen someday and there was absolutely no reason for us to stay married. I hadn't worn my wedding ring for over five years, although I noticed that Mandy wore both her wedding and engagement rings today. Perhaps she only wore them to school to ward off the predators?

I drove up to Grantham the weekend before the wedding, for Geoff's stag do. A quiet affair, in his hometown of Hull, with half-a-dozen of his mates. We shared a hotel room. We drank a lot of beer and, yes you've got it, I woke up in the morning with a sore bum.

When I checked in the morning, I looked in the mirror. The bastard had written "Prduct of Hull, accept no sudistutes" in two lines on the righthand cheek of my bum, the pissed bugger. Yes, he had left the "o" out of "Product" but, to be honest, at the time I hadn't noticed the mis-spelling of "substitutes", it looked right in the mirror. It was another week or so before I cottoned on. I've had it removed since, of course, by laser surgery, just a faint smudge remains.

I picked up the kids first on Thursday afternoon, straight after school and put them in the back. Josh kicked up a fuss at first, as he wanted to sit in the front rather than sit in the back with his silly sisters, as he put it, but Madge needed the leg room because of her knee. I let him sit in the front on the way around to Madge's house, on condition that he would be cheerful for his grandmother and not sulk. He promised but I knew what he'd be like, he was a chip off the old block and I'd been sulking for years!

Madge was all smiles, but then she had been for a few weeks now. She even went as far as to squeeze the back of my hand when I changed gear the first time, I nearly buggered up the gears.

"Isn't this lovely," she breezed, with a big grin on her face, "And how are my favourite grandchildren?"

"We"re fine, Nan!" chorused the girls in harmony, "We're your only grandkids," muttered the chip under his breath. I had to smile.

It was just gone four when we left the island, with the drive estimated to take about three and a half hours, plus at least one half-hour break for refreshments, fuel and perhaps one more toilet stop, I thought we would get into the hotel by eight or quarter past. Bit late for an evening meal for the kids, so I told Madge that we would play it by ear and stop for a toilet break first and meal break second. She seemed happy with that.

As it turned out, by the time we got north of London, about halfway through the journey, the three kids declared they were hungry, so we stopped at one of the motorway services with multiple food serving areas. The kids naturally wanted fast food, while I wanted something a bit more adult-orientated. Madge concurred, so I put Josh in charge and gave him some cash and sent them into their preferred restaurant and Madge and I went into another for something a little healthier, although as it was all open-plan we could keep an eye on them from where we were sat.

Being self service, I fetched the food while Madge sorted out the table and collected the cutlery etcetera.

"So, have you heard that Mark is not in the picture anymore?" opened Madge, shortly after I sat down.

"Yeah, Mand said she had swapped him in for a new guy."

"New guy?" said Madge startled, "I didn't know about any new guy!"

"Yeah, John I think his name is, been seeing him for a few weeks, apparently Mark was too boring."

"Sorry, I didn't know. Amanda doesn't know what she wants. Well, she wants you back but she's not going the right way about getting it."

"She doesn't want me back, she makes that plain every single time we meet."

"And how often do you meet?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow.

"As few and far times between as possible!" I grinned.

"And that's because?"

"She breaks my heart every time I see her."

We sat silently, picking at the remnants of our dinner, looking up at where the kids were, enveloped by our thoughts. Josh was playing on his hand-held, but looked up when the girls waved at us and lifted his hand briefly with his crooked smile.