3. Reduced to Scraps

3

Reduced to Scraps

‘I was really hoping to get three hundred.’

The rotund bearded man with the glass eye sighed. ‘I understand your situation,’ he said, in a private school accent that defied the horror of his appearance. ‘But I need a car for my ill mother. You know, it wouldn’t be just that you were doing me a deal, you would be potentially adding a couple of years to someone’s life. Wouldn’t that make you feel like you had some kind of purpose?’

Josie gave the man a resigned smile. ‘All right. Two-fifty.’

‘Could you not just go to two-twenty?’ He winced. ‘I just felt a twinge in my hip, and remembered that I need to get a replacement.’

‘Come on, they’re free on the NHS.’

‘Yeah, but the extra money could be spent on installing bars in my toilet, or go towards a stairlift. Wouldn’t that make you feel proud?’

Josie rolled her eyes. ‘All right. Two-twenty.’

‘Do you think you could go down to a clean two-hundred?’

‘No!’

In the end, Josie walked away from her beloved Volvo with two hundred and twenty in used banknotes. With a jovial grin, the man had offered her a lift to the bus stop, but Josie refused, walking there herself with her head down, clutching in one hand the thank-you letter from a student which she had managed to find in the pocket behind the driver’s seat. On the way, she had deposited all but ten pounds into her bank account, a day before the lawyer’s payment was due to go out by direct debit, essentially completing the clean-up job that Reid had begun when he had decided to finalise their divorce.

Still, once the house was sold, she would at least have some money. The dust of her humiliating divorce hadn’t yet settled and he was already causing her trouble, hassling her by email about house prices, wanting a quick sale, wanting to reduce the asking price to something that would leave Josie with little more than a handful of spare change. Enough to replace her car, maybe take a holiday, but without any chance of ever getting back on the property ladder.

To celebrate cutting off another limb of her former life—and because the gas burner in the flat’s kitchen made a worrying hissing noise—she bought fish ‘n’ chips on the way home. Then, because she really didn’t want to sit in the flat on the threadbare sofa that may or may not house a mouse colony, staring at the wall with the last wreckage of her life in boxes around her, she took her package of food to a little park on the corner. There, she sat on a bench in front of a small pond, where a handful of ducks glided gently around a half-submerged sofa someone had thrown in, leaving it sticking out of the water at an angle like a sinking orange ocean liner. As she watched a duck hop from one armrest into the water, Josie wondered about pulling it out; after all, that part of it she could see was in better repair than the sofa in her flat.

By the time she had unwrapped the food, a biting wind had got up, making each chip cold before she could get it into her mouth. An old woman pushing a shopping cart filled with plastic bottles offered her a five-pound note to get herself something warm to drink.

‘If you go to the offy on the corner of Williams Road, tell them Old Marge sent you,’ she said with a gap-toothed smile. ‘They might throw in a free bar of chocky with a bottle of the good stuff.’

Josie actually hesitated a moment before declining with thanks.

At least Tiffany should be graduating soon, she thought, munching solemnly on a piece of oily fish as Old Marge pushed her trolley away down the path. It might have all fallen apart, but at least we got our daughter an education.

She was going to be a doctor. Of everything that had happened in her life, that her daughter was going to be a doctor made her truly proud. Tiffany had passed all her exams, and now just had to complete a period of residency to be fully qualified. She was due to start in September, and only had to choose where she would spend her residency period. Tiffany had been talking about London, and while Josie agreed in principle, she had been hoping for Bristol or Bath, somewhere a little closer.

A piece of old newspaper billowed across the park and wrapped itself around her leg. Josie plucked it off, about to screw it up before tossing it into a nearby little bin, but a large picture near the top made her pause long enough to read the headline:

Bristol-based singer-songwriter Reid Euphrates announces nationwide tour

On the back of a viral video, popular local musician finally makes good

The picture of her smugly grinning ex made her stomach churn. She recognised the picture; it had been taken at a free charity concert about ten years ago, one for which Reid had quit his part-time job in order to rehearse, further squeezing their finances, and for which he had been paid approximately nothing.

The article went on to detail how an old song off one of her ex-husband’s many Josie-funded, close-to-zero selling albums had become a viral hit on a social media website, and as a result was sitting at number two on the national music charts. Fourteen of his other songs had jumped up into the Top 40, and he was being touted as Bristol’s answer to Ed Sheeran. The sudden change in fortune was estimated to be worth roughly half a million pounds.

Josie stuffed another cold chip into her mouth, chewing it like a dumb, stupid cow waiting in line for the abattoir. The newspaper was dated a week ago, one day after their divorce had been finalised, and Josie had been ordered to hand over her life savings as ‘compensation for loss of earnings during the period of marriage.’

Now Reid was on his way to being a millionaire.

And just because there was always something else that could go wrong, one more arrow to land, one more rock to be thrown, the final line felt like someone swinging a big left hook to put Josie down for the count:

Just recently, Reid announced his engagement to wealthy heiress Lady Evangeline of Suffolk.

Lady Evangeline Euphrates-Barnacle.

At least Josie found herself with a reason to smile. She leant back, staring up at the sky in complete and utter defeat, then wincing as a raindrop hit her flush on the eyeball. As she blinked it away, her phone beeped in her pocket. Hoping it was good news from Hilda, she pulled it out and opened the message.

Mum … I’ve got something to tell you, and I’m sorry but you won’t like it. I’ve decided not to take up the residency this year. Dad’s asked me to be his manager. Isn’t it great that he’s suddenly getting success, after trying so hard for so long?

Josie couldn’t find the energy to reply. Old Marge was on her way back, pushing her trolley, humming to herself.

‘Is that offer still open?’ Josie said, as the old woman reached her, bottles rattling in the trolley.

Old Marge grinned and held out a fiver. ‘Don’t forget to give them my name,’ she said.