A Friend of the Family Read Free

that before and you know how things always turn out – you go into mental meltdown, I try to make you feel better, we end up staying together.
    Things started off so great for you and me, Mon. Meeting you was one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me and coming to Oz with you was the greatest adventure of my life, but it’s over now. Finished. I’ve never really managed to make you happy, Monica – you know that and I know that. I think you’ll agree with me when I say that our relationship really ended ages ago. I don’t know what’s kept us together for so long. I think it might be a combination of fear and habit. You were such a strong person when I first met you, Monica, but you’ve let me make you weak. I can’t hold you up any more. You’ve got so much going for you – you’re so funny and cool and clever. It’s only your own insecurities that are holding you back – and me. You can make a go of things in Oz, I know you can. You’ve just got to get out of your shell and into the world, become the person I met in Leicester Square all those years ago.
    I love you, Mon, I really do. You’re one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known, but it’s time for me to go home and it’s time for you to get on with your life without me. I wish you happiness and success. I’ll think of you for ever, Mon. Good luck.
    Ned XX
    PS: Enc: $250 for the next month’s rent. I’ve also left you my football and my PlayStation, and the Fatboy Slim tickets are in my top left-hand drawer. There’s some hash in the coffee jar next to the phone. I’ve sold my car to Spencer. And if you find my Titleist golfballs you can have them.

Unbridled Parental Joy at Prodigal Homecoming
    It was a perfectly miserable April morning when Ned finally came home. The city cowered glumly under a thick grey blanket of cloud and the air smelt of damp brickwork and diesel.
    London, thought Ned, staring at the back end of a used-car depot through the misted-up window of a black cab. Look at it. Just look at it.
    It’s so beautiful…
    The cab sped seamlessly through the empty streets of south London, stopping pointlessly at deserted traffic lights, gliding across roundabouts. Ned smiled as the Crystal Palace mast hove into view – a symbol of homecoming since the day he was born.
    A few eerie, solitary figures moved through the mist that hung over Brockwell Park; early-morning dog-walkers and out-patients from the Marsden. A man in a red waterproof jacket practised t’ai chi under a just-budding horse-chestnut tree. Down Norwood Road, past West Norwood Cemetery and up on to Beulah Hill. And there it was: number 114. A two-storey Georgian villa, a bit like a child’s drawing of a house. Steps up to a greying stone portico, large, stripped-oak front door,sash windows on either side. It was looking tattier than ever. Flaps of cream stucco peeled from the walls, last year’s autumnal fall was still heaped in mulchy piles up against the front wall and rivulets of green mould streaked the paintwork.
    The old bubble car that Tony had bought with his first pay-cheque when he was seventeen sat half-shrouded under a sun-bleached tarpaulin on the front lawn. In front of the bubble car sat Sean’s Vespa, once the apple of his eye and the centre of his universe, now a mildewed and pitiful-looking creature, slouched defeatedly against an old set of Formica-topped drawers. Edwardian, Victorian and Georgian chimney stacks sat in a kind of Stonehenge arrangement on the other side, and between the detritus all manner of robust-looking weeds had taken root.
    Ned had once brought a friend home from university who lived in the area too. He’d looked rather uncertain as Ned ascended the front steps, jangling his door keys. ‘You live here?’ he’d said. ‘Uh-huh,’Ned had said. ‘Shit – I always thought this place was a squat.’ Which was, Ned could see with his newfound objectivity, exactly what it looked like.
    He slung his rucksack