Plastic Read Free

when the men in his family hit thirty-five they all start to look like something out of Sofa World, and only notice you when you stand in front of the football and lift their legs to vacuum.
    Gordon and June. Our names went together like Marks & Spencer or Burke & Hare. One never appeared without the other. Before we got married, Gordon didn’t behave like a Gordon. He was more of a Dan or Jack. He was full of grand ideas. He gave me the impression that he wanted to get tattooed and spend a year in Goa before owning a chain of stores that sold personalised sound systems, but after one sniff of an air-conditioned office he was ready for a nameplate on his desk. I didn’t have any grand plans, but I wanted a baby boy. The pregnancy was a surprise and he married me because his mother insisted, and he forgot he ever had dreams, but he remembered to blame me.
    Everything continued to stay normal until just over a month ago, when our son would have been ten. That was when we had the really big fight. I thought I knew all there was to know about a man. They didn’t appear to be much more complicated than video recorders, it was just a matter of programming them correctly. It turns out they’re more like Swedish ovens; certain buttons used in combination produce entirely inexplicable effects.
    It was a special occasion, and I wanted to buy Gordon something special to mark the day, so I decided to borrow the car because the trains were playing up. He kept a spare key inside the mallard. We have this china duck on the mantelpiece. Gordon won’t let me drive his car, not because he thinks I’m a bad driver, he just thinks I’ll crash it and kill someone, so I’ve always taken the train, but they were running late so I risked his new Vauxhall.
    I didn’t tell him I was going to borrow it. I thought he wouldn’t find out if I put the seat and mirror back. I like shopping in London even though the parking is enough to make you stab a traffic warden through the eye, but I decided to head to Croydon because I get bored driving. Except when there’s a radio play on, and even then the sound effects annoy me, especially opening doors and tinkling tea-things.
    The Vauxie’s air conditioning made a terrible rattling noise when I turned it on. I lay down on the seat and shone a torch through the vent on the passenger side but couldn’t see anything, so I unscrewed the panel under it and disconnected the hose. I know how to do basic car maintenance because my father ran a garage and I used to watch him. I still couldn’t see what was making the noise, so I connected the nozzle of my vacuum cleaner to the hose and put it on blow. I was looking down the vent, which was probably a bad idea because something shot out and hit me in the face.
    More accurately, it stuck in my forehead. I felt blood trickling into my eyes. I went back into the house and ran to a mirror. It was a diamond earring, elegant setting, a good-sized blue-white oval stone, and it wasn’t mine. And it was stuck between my eyes. I looked like an Indian woman.
    How does a strange diamond earring get into the air vent of a car only driven by your husband?
    Let me tell you about Gordon. He’s insensible to the grace of living. Desk and office, house and garden, no mysteries that can’t be solved with the contents of a toolbox. I suppose I’d always known about his affairs. It wasn’t the first time he had been unfaithful. He’s not particularly attractive, he’s a little overweight and drifting within range of Pringle jumpers, so I think when the offer of sex came up he just took it.
    He believes everything he reads in the tabloids, especially about immigrants ruining the country. I’ve always wondered what would happen if he met a sexy immigrant, he’d probably blow a fuse puzzling over the paradox. He travelled a fair amount, so there were hotels, and of course his car, which functioned like a combination office and bedroom. I’m pretty sure they were doing it