Fly in the Ointment Read Online Free PDF

which you’d want to hang about. I watched the bus sail over the rise and vanish. It had been a shock to see my son take that sort of abuse – even from a young woman as angry as this one – and not fight back. He’d always seemed to know how to defend himself when he’d had grief from me.
    But then again, he wouldn’t be the first man in the world to think that if he was having sex with a woman he was obliged to put up with almost anything.
Could
he be sleeping with her? She had looked noticeably older than him, but that could be at least in part due to her harshly dyed hair. In her grotesquely garish shoesshe’d looked a bit of a slag, and it was hard to imagine Malachy climbing into bed and actually
wanting
her. But then again, he wasn’t much of a catch himself. Over the last couple of years his skin had worsened and he’d started slumping. The drugs had drained the freshness out of him until at times he looked, even to his mother, a bit like a teenage pensioner.
    That night I did what I had promised myself I’d never have to do again, and phoned Mrs Kuperschmidt. She did her best to console me. Her wash of statistics swept on, but only into one ear and straight out of the other, for there was nothing about Malachy to give me reason to believe he might be one of the lucky ones she kept on mentioning who would bounce back again some day, as right as rain.
    But I was comforted by her insistence that there was nothing I could do. ‘And, Lois, never forget that there are
degrees
of losing a child. Right now, you and Stuart must be at about your lowest ebb with Malachy.’
    You and Stuart?
I realized suddenly I hadn’t mentioned he had left the house. For some daft reason it seemed important to finish the call before she cottoned on and started to attribute my son’s freshly destructive surge to recent strains in our marriage. Instantly I stopped trawling for comfort and tried to convince her that she’d done thebusiness. ‘Sarah, I know you’re right. I suppose I simply needed to hear it one more time from a professional. Malachy’s the only one who can deal with his problem.’
    â€˜That’s right. Until he actually asks for help—’
    We parted with the old remembered flurries of ‘Thanks so much’ and ‘Any time at all.’ I put the phone down. Almost at once it rang again and, thinking that one last snippet of advice might have occurred to Mrs Kuperschmidt, I felt obliged to answer.
    A voice so rough that I could barely make out the words snarled a threat. ‘You tell that fucking son of yours that Wilbur wants his money.
Now
.’
    All the old terrors flooded back. I slammed the phone down. It rang again. I picked it up. Before the viper at the other end could spit out a single word, I shouted, ‘Just you listen to me! My son hasn’t lived here for
months
. I don’t even know where he is. So don’t ring this number again.’
    I slammed down the phone. It rang again and again, till I unplugged it. Of course I couldn’t sleep. At three in the morning, making a pot of tea, I plugged the phone back in its socket. Less than an hour later its shrill insistent ring began again. God help me, this time, as I pulled the plug out of the socket, I thought back to the scene under the bridgeand wished with all my heart that Malachy’s tarty and vile-tempered companion had put her body weight behind the hitting business properly, and pushed that little bastard, my own son, in the canal to drown.

6
    AND SO BEGAN a week of jumping at shadows, sensing footsteps behind me wherever I went, and noticing every car that stayed behind me for more than a single turning. I caught men’s eyes in the street and felt cold waves of paranoia. Could this be some friend of Wilbur’s? Even Wilbur himself?
    On Saturday night I looked out to see a scruffy young man leaning against the fence across the street, staring