Zodiac's toy by John Jones (best free ereader .TXT) 📖

her a lot, and even when she was with him they would bicker and argue, and sometimes he would be out all night and not tell her where he had been.

I don't want him back, she thought. Not this time, but there was a little amber light of caution deep inside her mind that said: 'Maybe', and she guessed it would be the same this time. When he found the grass wasn't as green as he'd thought it was, he knew he had a family to return to.

He always takes advantage of me, she thought, and the children. They guessed he would return, but he wasn't exactly father-of-the-year. He let Mandy take care of everything, and they kind of hardly knew him. He was like a guest that came to stay, wouldn't play with them much, take them anywhere, or engage in conversation that lasted more than a minute. In fact he would just ignore them a lot of the time except when they got under his feet and he would get angry.

Nope, not this time if he comes crawling back. I've had enough. I'm not a doormat.

'Don't be a doormat' she thought, remembering the card she had got from the funfair Oracle. It was in the glove compartment along with other things she didn't particularly want to keep or throwaway.

She retrieved it and read: '...when your emotions threaten to overwhelm, do not be a doormat'. She nodded at this.

Okay, she thought. Carl, don't come back, we're finished.

With her tears subsided, she was about to leave the car when her phone pinged for a text.

It was from Vanessa.

'I've got a new boyfriend' it said, along with a picture of her and the viola player hugging and smiling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 16

 

Caroline was hunched over her computer analysing whether or not to buy in insulated dog kennels and if the budget could stretch that far as nobody seemed to be buying the garden storage boxes so perhaps they could be a replacement.

She rested back in her creaking chair and checked her personal phone. There was a text message.

'He's left me again'. Caroline sighed and knew she would have to ring Mandy and have the same conversation she had had many times. Convince her he would return, then tell her to finally kick him out, but knew she wouldn't, and would buckle under the pressure, and the record would be played over again:

'I'm definitely leaving him this time'.

'No you're not. You'll just take him back like you always do'.

'Not this time'.

'Nope. He'll come crawling back and you'll say no, but he'll pressure you and pressure you until you give in and back he comes because he knows you're a walkover and he'll keep doing it until you grow enough confidence to dump him for good. He needs to realise he can't keep doing this. Get another boyfriend, and kiss him in front of Carl. If he sees you with a new man then he'll know you're for real'.

Then she added: 'But not Lee. Don't get with Lee. Rather Carl than him'.

She rang Mandy, who was just about to enter the nursery.

"What's happened?" Caroline asked.

"He's left me again. I don't think he'll be back this time".

"I'm sure he will be". The conversation continued for around fifteen minutes, during which her phone beeped for another message.

"...ye, I'm definitely gonna start looking for a new man. I'll set myself up on a dating website. Oh, did you hear from Vanessa? She's got a new man".

"What? no".

"Anyway, got to go I can hear crying toddlers". She hung up, and Caroline checked the new message.

'I've got a new boyfriend' it said along with the picture. Caroline wanted to ring her, but with being at work she knew another personal call was a no-no. Sometimes she made exceptions though and would disapprove of others doing it, but it was rather like temptation to eat sugary or fast-foods. Maybe just this once it’ll be okay. She never felt guilty in the few times she would do it. Others probably did it all the time, and business wouldn’t suffer, and what her colleagues didn’t know couldn’t harm them, but she had emails to answer and staff to supervise, so she simply texted her back:

'Lucky you' with a smiley-face emoticon. She stood up and went to leave the office when she received a reply.

'His name is Franklin, and he plays the viola. He's lovely'. Plays the viola, thought Caroline.

She texted back:

'He looks nice. I would like to meet him. Ask him if he will play at my wedding'.

No sooner had she put the phone back on the desk than it pinged again.

'He said he would love to'. That was quick, she thought.

'Are you in bed with him now, dirty slag?'

A message pinged back. Two emoticons. A smiley face and a thumbs up. Caroline smiled and shook her head. She texted Wayne.

'Vanessa's new boyfriend will play viola at our wedding'.

 

Wayne's phone was in his coat which was hanging up. He was in the cafe kitchen cooking up hash browns with tofu scramble. Two student waiters were serving out as it was quite busy. Steam billowed over him as he stirred the scramble. One of the waitresses opened the door and called in:

"Wayne! someone to see you".

"What?"

"Someone to see..." The waitress was pushed past and Lee stood there. She frowned and said:

"You can't just..." but Lee gave her a look that meant she quickly went back to work. Fear began to course through Wayne as he came around to stand by him.

Lee held out his hands in a gesture of appeasement.

"Just to let you know mate," he said, raising his voice over the cooking. "I apologise for what I said the other day. I'm not gonna do anything. You were probably worried out of your mind. You don't need to be. Ray put me up to it. Blame him. If you wanna get married to Carol, be my guest. Nothing to do with me. Just sayin' I'm sorry, okay?" Wayne nodded, fear still coursing through him.

Lee turned and headed for the door, Wayne followed him and said:

"That's alright, Ray's apologised."

"Has he? well, okay".

"Would you like a complimentary black coffee?"

"No ta mate, got to meet me fuckin' probation officer". Then he left, but the fear took its time to leave Wayne's system.

 

Lee's appointment to meet his probation officer was in the back seat of a purple Volvo outside of a police station.

Billy Price was 22 years old but looked younger, and had only been a probation officer for six months. He was full of enthusiasm, almost as if he did the work as a hobby, and wore black and white clothing, as if attending an interview, but probably wore them as his casual gear as well. He sported short blonde hair and had ruminatary aspirations to go into politics where he could see himself as a bureaucratic official with a sense of influence and authority.

"So, everything alright? Your mental health is good. I mean it seems good". He also liked to talk, and asked questions which he himself then answered. So Lee reigned in any animosity he held towards him, said what needed to be said, sat with his arms folded trying not to listen as Billy waffled on and on.

"...now with regards training and rehabilitation I have what is called the 'Blossom programme' because you blossom out like a plant. You grow from what you were into a new and better person. It's a rehabilitation charity based not too far from the prison. Plenty of others have gone through it and loved it". Billy produced a booklet and handed it to Lee.

"Fine, I'll think about it,"

"No," Billy said, "it's mandatory. You'll start when they have a space available, so I will let you know, and book you in for our next appointment".

"Fuck," Lee muttered, and left the car.

 

Somebody had been sick in Shane's bath, but as Victor scrubbed away, tidying all the flats after last nights revelry he felt a twinge of satisfaction as he did. The place was being cleaned his way. Ray and Shane were at the park nursing the fringes of their hangovers. Lee was out somewhere wherever Lee goes whatever Lee does, so he had all four flats to himself and could clean to his heart's content. His own and Ray's flat were gleaming, but Shane's was proving tricky. There were new stains on the carpets to join the ones Shane himself had put there over time.

He wondered if Ray had acquired an interest in astrology because in his flat there were zodiac cards strewn throughout the place. He had gathered them in a neat pile and put them on the kitchen counter.

He had been to the shop to get cleaning equipment. His own expense and had set up the one hoover between them.

After a good hour, Shane's flat was as good as it was going to get and he dragged the hoover into Lee's flat.

He decided to start in the bathroom, and caught himself in the mirror. He only had a thin shirt and could see the pincers of the crab poking out.

Opening his shirt he looked at it again and rubbed it, but knew it was going nowhere. He had not come across a felt-tip pen. Whoever did it had taken it with them. His chest was red raw around the outline where he had scrubbed, but the crab stayed, as if it was a tattoo.

Why would someone do that? he thought. I'll ask Lee to see if he knows who did it, but getting it off was the main thing.

As he beavered away, he eventually came to the bedroom and knew where Lee kept the weapons, lifted the mattress to find them still there.

The money, however, he found in his bedside cabinet in neat piles. Lee really was poor at hiding things, he thought, but knew better than to move anything of his.

He liked Lee, but knew, like Shane and Ray his boundaries were up and down. Lee would sometimes have an outburst of anger, and over the years Victor had been punched in the face three times. Ray six and Shane five. They had crossed his line at the time, and violence was Lee's way of telling them that. Yet sometimes he would get frustrated about something that was nothing to do with them, and take it out on his friends, sometimes with smacking and shoving, and 'Get out of my fucking sight!', but a lot of the time he was fine, simply simmering on low gas and could be friendly for a while, so they didn’t always have to tread on eggshells around him, but knew they had to tread carefully because his boundaries could be anywhere.

Victor was one of those people that had at one point been coasting in life. His path laid out before him heading into the high-rise. He went to college to learn languages, but with Lee and Ray's influence he basically fell into line. He could not catch up with his work, and with being a teenager, influences that were nothing to do with languages came at him from all sides, and he was helpless.

Smoking, drinking, having a good time with mates was all that mattered, but there was always that bird in a cage, fish in a bowl wonder he had. There was a big wide world out there, but here I am. Trapped. What if...?

What if I had gone to college, learned languages and got myself qualified? Where would I be now?

What if in school I had made other friends? Ones who prefered education over hedonism, who prefered to hold a pen rather than a cigarette.

Still, the path of his life had led him to now, to Lee's flat, to staring at the money with slight temptation to take it and run. He guessed if Lee had better prospects he would drop his friends like a stone, may not even say goodbye if a good proposition came his way, but it hadn't, so kept his friends around him because