38

MARION MOON WASN’T sure Donald was ever going to get over the Frannie Hatton thing.

Stepping on a dead woman’s face in the half-dark was bad enough, but the subsequent questioning and searching and suspicion had almost finished her husband off.

‘It’s almost finished me off,’ he sighed several times a day when she least expected it. Staring at his uneaten dinner; in the ad-break of Countdown; waiting for the cat to come in.

The Big Sheep had been very patient with him, but after six weeks of calling in sick, they finally had to give him an ultimatum. If he didn’t return to work by Monday, they’d have to find someone to replace him. Permanently. Donald told them that he understood and he’d do his very best – and then hung up the phone and cried for everything he’d lost and was going to lose.

‘Come on,’ said Marion after an hour or so. ‘We’ll go litter picking. That’ll cheer you up.’

It was a universal truth that however tragic and unfair life got, nothing ever seemed so grim once it was tidied up a bit. So Donald changed out of his pyjamas for the first time in three days, and he and Marion took their pointy sticks and Day-Glo vests and their big green plastic bags over to Instow beach, which was always a safe bet for blue rope and used condoms.

And parking tickets.

Donald raised his pointy stick up to his face to examine the third one he’d found in fifty yards. And all of them unopened. Therefore unpaid. That was a lot of council revenue being denied the taxpayer right there.

‘I’ve got one too,’ said Marion.

‘Cheeky monkeys,’ said Donald. ‘Probably think by throwing them away they won’t have to pay ’em.’ He speared another one, closer to the sea wall that separated the beach from the road, with its line of parked cars.

‘In fact,’ he went on, ‘in fact, they’ll have to pay double.’

Marion said nothing. But in a minute she’d say, ‘Why’s that?’ and let Donald tell her that it was because of computers linked to the DVLA in Swansea.

This was how their marriage worked: this measured back-and-forth of Donald knowing all, and her requesting knowledge. It wasn’t that she really didn’t know things, of course; Marion knew plenty. But most importantly, she knew that Donald liked to take the lead and tell people things, and so she saw no harm in following and being told. It was a habit she’d fallen into in the early days of her marriage just to avoid petty disagreements, but which she’d have found hard to break now – even if she’d wanted to. She joked about it to her friends occasionally, but now that that back-and-forth hadn’t been there for six weeks, she missed it.

They’d been the hardest six weeks of Marion Moon’s married life. It would have been easier to pull a two-headed lamb out of a virgin ewe than to cheer Donald up since he trod on Frannie Hatton. The whole affair had knocked the stuffing out of him, and had made Marion realize that the stuffing was the best bit of her husband.

But now, on Instow beach on a blustery, spitty day in late October, it felt almost like old times, and Donald already seemed perkier.

So a minute after he said that in fact the driver would have to pay double, Marion said, ‘Why’s that?’ and jabbed a cigarette packet. They were a rarity nowadays because branded cigarettes were so expensive. Most people who were really devoted to getting cancer had to roll their own. Rizla packets, plastic water bottles and knotted black bags filled with dog poo – these were the litter pickers’ new stock in trade.

Marion looked up, wondering why Donald hadn’t said Computers linked to the DVLA in Swansea, but Donald was standing upright, peering at something over the sea wall.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Marion.

‘They’re all off the one car,’ said Donald.

‘What?’

‘They’re all off the one car, I reckon. All these tickets. Come see.’

Marion trudged through the soft white sand to the sea wall and peered over it to the line of parked cars.

Directly opposite them was a yellow car with two broad black stripes down it.

‘Mark II Capri,’ said Donald. ‘Duncan had one of those.’

Duncan was Donald’s younger brother. He’d had one of everything at some stage. Now he had one ex-wife, one daughter who didn’t speak to him, and one stupidly big house so encumbered by negative equity that it was actually subsiding under the weight.

There were three more parking tickets under the windscreen wipers, fluttering their slow way towards freedom on the beach.

Donald tore open one of the tickets on his stick and confirmed that it did indeed come from the Capri.

‘See?’ he told Marion.

‘I do,’ she nodded. ‘I do see. Well spotted, Donald.’

With a new spring in his step, Donald strode off the beach, round the sea wall and over to the Capri, with Marion in tow.

‘One a day, by the looks of things,’ he said. ‘I should call the council.’

‘What for?’ said Marion dutifully.

‘Well, to let them know about the car. All these bits of plastic blowing about aren’t helping the situation, are they?’

Donald shook open a new green bag and stuffed all the parking tickets in it and then tied it to the aerial, where it flapped about like last place in a balloon race.

‘I mean,’ he went on, ‘what’s the point of a warden just sticking a ticket on it every day? Owner’s obviously not bothered. It should be towed away. Impounded. Owner fined. But instead it’s sitting here on two flat tyres, being used as a rubbish bin by some idiot in epaulettes filling his quota. No joined-up thinking, see? Bloody local-government robots.’

He’d worked himself up into a pedantic fugue, and Marion couldn’t have been happier.

Donald just wasn’t Donald without a bee in his bonnet.

When they got home, Marion made tea while Donald called the county council’s highways department and then their environmental services department. Then he rang the district council’s car-recycling department. Marion noticed that he was on the phone longer each time, over-explaining and under-listening to make sure he got best value for his council tax.

She’d made Donald’s favourite – lamb chops on mashed potatoes – and when it was ready she went into the hallway to summon him to eat.

Marion stopped dead.

Donald was on the phone, talking to the Big Sheep.

Marion stood and cocked her head to hear him better, and felt a long-lost smile start to stretch her face.

He was telling them he’d be at work on Monday, come hell or high water.

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