Chapter 5

Alex had different friends to Lara. It wasn’t a big deal. They just weren’t the same. When they got married, he made a point of making sure that they didn’t become a weird couple that socialised together with the same group of people. Neither did he want to constantly be ‘out with the lads’ and never see his wife. He had found a happy medium by not really being an ‘out with the lads’ kind of guy and not getting on with Lara’s friends. All except her brother.

 

Millie wasn’t someone that he’d call a friend of his, but she was the one that he loathed the least. He did, however, completely and utterly abhor Millie’s 3 year-old, Elliot.

 

It wasn’t that he hated kids. It was just that he hated the way they depended on adults, he hated their need for constant attention, he hated their incessantly sticky fingers and he hated the way they smelt of biscuits and faeces. Maybe he’d feel different if the kid was actually his. Or maybe he’d live his life surrounded by adults and die a bitter, twisted and childless old man.

 

Elliot and Millie arrived around midday. Alex was still watching Shipwrecked and so had to run and get dressed ridiculously quickly. It didn’t help that Lara was at the door like a shot and he was only just into the bedroom when he heard “Alex will be down in a minute. He’s just freshening up” followed by Elliot whining that he wanted to go in the garden and play football.

 

Cue the only man in the house.

 

He said his ‘hello’ to Millie and noticed what terrible things caring for a toddler did to a person. Her hair was greasy and scraped back into a pony tail and her dress sense was atrocious. She looked like she’d covered herself in superglue and dived head-first into a charity shop bargain bin.

 

Alex got quite into this way of thinking so while he was being dragged outside by Elliot, he stubbed his toe on the step. It burned with a pain that only Satan was capable of inducing and so crossed the lawn muttering “f**k, f**k, f**k, f**k…”

 

“Naughty words.” Elliot was looking up at him with an expression that his mother used to wear when Alex he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.

 

“Erm…it’s not a naughty word...for me…it’s only naughty if…you’re…five or under.” Elliot was three. Not stupid.

 

“Mummy says it’s naughty ‘cos when, when, when I was at nursing-ery, I bit Billy Jenkins and he said it and he got told off”.

 

“Well…” How was he going to get out of this one? “Look, you don’t tell Mummy or Aunty Lara and you get fifty pence.” His lips were sealed.

 

Then Elliot threw his football onto the grass and rolled it, with his hands, to Alex. He kicked it back and got told off by the boy for cheating because they were playing ‘Elliot Ball’.

 

So Alex sat on the lawn and continued to roll the ball back and forth with Elliot and, strangely, he quite enjoyed it. He liked how something as simple as a moving ball could keep him entertained for over half an hour and the biscuit smell was growing on him.

 

Elliot had just told Alex that he was quite good at Elliot ball when he jumped up proclaiming that he needed a poo.