‘Not a fan of popping in there anymore, for obvious reasons.’ Mum pulls a face like she hasn’t a clue what I’m talking about. ‘You know, because of Amara.’
‘Ah, of course.’ The penny has dropped. I rang her crying when it all happened, hoping she might come round and look after me. Instead she passed me over to my dad, who asked if I thought Nicol had left me for the following reasons: because I’d put on weight, I wasn’t performing my ‘womanly duties’ often enough and maybe Nicol had been a homosexual the whole time.
‘How’s Amara getting on?’ This is said in the same tone she’d have used in the old days. There’s no emotion related to how Amara treated me attached to the question at all.
But then my emotions are barely attached to Amara as it stands. Her turning up on my doorstep has been obliterated from my thoughts thanks to Willie, and I’m grateful for it. Seeing her as she was on that morning – regretful, confused – is her problem alone to deal with, not mine.
‘I don’t think very well.’
When no follow-up is offered by Mum, I try to keep a conversation flowing. ‘Getting dinner, are you?’
‘Trying to. Need to get your father eating healthier after his stay in the hospital.’
‘Sorry, Dad was in the hospital? When? Why didn’t you tell me? Is he alright?’
I presume he is not dying as that would probably have been deemed important enough to share with me, but with those two it’s hard to be sure.
‘It was only severe gout. We didn’t want to worry you on top of you being unemployed and unlovable.’
‘Mum.’
The shop assistant has moved on to checking the dates on trays of Lorne sausage. She’s trying to side-eye me to gauge if I look as much of a loser as my mum has made me sound. For her benefit, I say a bit louder than is necessary, ‘I told you, I have a job. Not that I need to tell you every detail of my romantic life, but I think there’s a potential beau at work, too.’
‘Great news.’ Mum pats the top of my arm without enthusiasm. ‘It’s important to have a partner. Life without another half is only half a life.’
My existence without Nicol proves this theory completely wrong, but having a proper row with my mum next to a reduced chicken tikka pasty is too grim a prospect at any time, let alone today.
‘Tell Dad I hope he’s feeling better. I’ll see you later.’ Without turning to check, I know the eyes I can feel watching me walk away belong to the shop assistant and not my mother, who will be fully invested in a 35p pasta salad. By the time I’ve purchased my mini bottle of prosecco – Dave came through with the cash for my feet – Mum has left where she was. Wherever she went it wasn’t to find me.
Home, I remember a time when a full bottle of this brand was my payday treat to myself, alongside a takeaway with Nicol. As a man of principle, he’d never contribute to the payments for these treats, despite earning more than me in his job as an in-house graphic designer at a marketing company focusing on sustainable products and projects. Treat culture should not be encouraged, he said. The treat is every day when we are not bombed, have ready access to clean drinking water and sanitation, etc, etc. Our society has lost perspective on how blessed we truly are, we do not require regular rewards to strengthen capitalism’s hold on us all. Once he got to the end of that month’s version of his little speech on the matter, we’d sit and watch a box set and experience pure joy from existing in one another’s company, feasting for one night only in a way we would not for the rest of the month. Imagining frittering that amount of money away in one evening makes me view my past self the way society judges lottery winners who spend the lot. What extravagance. What a waste.
I want to sleep but I don’t allow myself to give in to it. This day is momentous. It marks the start of a new chapter in my life; it can’t end with me passing out sober and alone at 8:00 pm. Unwrapping the foil from the bottle, I’m disappointed to find a screw top. Twisting it off releases a sad hiss rather than the proud pop I’d imagined. There’s enough for two flutes, though, so I fill my glass and carry it and the bottle through with me so I don’t have to expend further energy when I desire a top-up.
Once the telly is switched on I get onto the couch and wrap the blanket around me, making myself sit up. If I lie down I’ll close my eyes and sleep. I run through the channels once, twice – nothing is appealing. I need the kind of TV show I can both view but not need to take in, my mind numbed by the moving and talking of people I have no connection to, like a screensaver for my brain. It seems prudent not to sit with my thoughts, dwelling on the fact that I am – partly – responsible for a death. Especially when it feels like that was actually an improvement on my plan. A dead landlord can do much less harm than a scared landlord.
With no other options, I go through the process again, back through the channels, and then I find it. Like the warm glow of a fire to a person who has been out in the cold, there is Malcolm on one of the high-up channels that shows repeats of daytime shows from ten years ago. At least, I think it’s Malcolm. He’s not much older than me here. Clean-shaven, clear-eyed, genuinely enthusiastic to be standing outside a grimy bungalow in Rotherham, his hair spiky and highlighted in a way that was trendy then, no animalistic qualities about him at all. I wonder, if he knew what his life would become, if he’d be so smiley as the new owner of the bungalow talks about all the money he’s going to make renting it out. This landlord is eerily similar to Willie – tall, bald, red-faced. Knowing what I know now, probably primed for a serious cardiac event should he be frightened. Or maybe I’m projecting Willie onto him because I can’t stop ruminating on his death, no matter how much I try not to. Despite it all, I can’t shake the idea that Willie is not the only landlord who should be punished.
Malcolm moves on to another house that has seen better days and is about to be bought by some cretin who already has a house they live in but needs another because they are a greedy bastard. Malcolm is telling us it’s in a ‘very popular street’ in Carlisle when it all becomes clear. There aren’t loads of Scottish houses onFixer Uppers Go Under the Hammer, but there’ll be enough. They’ve made hundreds and hundreds of episodes over two decades. If I targeted those landlords for retribution, nothing would tie me directly to any one of them, so long as I didn’t make a total mess of things.
What’s more, this show offers a case for the landlords to prove whether they deserve to be punished. Out of all of them, as unlikely as it seems, statistically there have to be one or two who do deeds that benefit society so don’t deserve to be scared. I mean, I can’t think what those redeeming deeds could be right now, because withholding shelter at reasonable prices from the wider population is heinous, but still, maybe a good one exists and I wouldn’t want to stop them from continuing. Especially as they’re probably the only one.
Lookalike Willie is proving my point here by displaying his badness on national television. The transformation of the drab Carlisle house is complete. He has painted every room cream – a colour whose yellow tone means it hardly goes with anything but which landlords insist on using, I imagine because of cheapness. As well as extensive painting of walls – oh, the effort – he’s replaced one (1) floor, which was the lino in the bathroom. Otherwise, the house remains as shite as it was when he bought it. Young Malcolm, all bushy-tailed and not yet worn down by the repetitive, depressing nature of his job, quizzes Lookalike Willie on his minimal refurbishing work.
LOOKALIKE WILLIE
For me, it’s all about maximum yield for minimum effort.
There it is – undeniable proof he deserves retribution. Alas, when I google, I discover Lookalike Willie died of a brain tumour four years ago, which is both great news and a huge shame. But there are plenty like him without tumours shortening their reign of tyranny over renters. I’ll go after them instead.
16
My choice not to dwell on Willie last night was absolutely the right idea. After a long, deep sleep, my dreaming self has sorted itself out. I wake with a solid belief that Willie’s death was unfortunate, but in the pursuit of ideals and societal change it’s justified. His passing the equivalent of an egg thrown at a politician on the campaign trail, or the mild inconvenience of waiting in traffic because a march for a worthwhile cause is passing through the road you wish to take. In the grand scheme of things, Willie being dead is trivial. When everything is over and done with, it will not even be a footnote in the history of the change in how property in this country is managed. I get it now, why Nicol was so high and mighty. It’s not his fault he’s been doing it all wrong. He shouldn’t be trying to get things changed, he shouldbethe change.
The first thing I do once I’m padding about the flat is turn on the radio and put it to a local channel. If Willie is thought to be murdered it will surely make the news round-up. I wait and wait, endure the overly chatty DJ, the anticipation of the news like waiting for my Standard Grade results to come through the door. When the jingle of it plays I notice the wobble of my chin, the nerves pulsing through it, my teeth nearly chattering. My stomach heavy and gurgling. The first story is about the king visiting an event later today in Glasgow, the next is about the price of energy rising. A Tory MP has been arrested for rape, there’s a cup match on this afternoon and a player says he’s ‘looking forward to the game’. Then it’s over. No mention of murdered men in parks at all. The loss of Willie is insignificant and, apparently, not considered unusual.
When the station is back blasting Franz Ferdinand, I turn it off and then wander to the living room window, peer down on the street and find it’s the usual load of parked cars and no people. No police van lurking, nobody checking on what I’m up to. I crank the window open a smidge to get some fresh air in; the smidge becomes smaller when the cold of outside hits me. The sun is shining an orange-tinted glow on everything. I absolutely believe I have gotten away with what happened in the park.
Once I’ve had breakfast and washed, it’s time to begin. I get out my laptop, break the spine on a notebook I found in the hallway cupboard o’ shite, having stolen it in a last act of defiance after being released from the solicitors, alongside a pen I stole from there too because I strongly believe in stealing stationery from employers. I search for ‘Fixer Uppers Go Under the Hammer Scotland’ and scroll through the results, prepared for the task of finding the right landlord in the right location with no links to me or Perfect Property Solutions to take the best part of the weekend. It ends up taking two minutes.
