Nobody Loves a Ginger Baby Read Online Free PDF

miles away instead of forcing it into a suicide attempt!’
    The good thing about the shouting is that at least Daphne has stopped crying. ‘Right, okay, you didn’t mean it, there’s no point in arguing. We need to get him to a vet, right now,’ she says.
    ‘Where is the nearest vet?’ says Pierce, scrabbling around under the phone table, ‘I’ll look it up. Vending machines, vermin control, should have phoned them in the first place, veterinary supplies, right, here is it, veterinary surgeons. Looks like the nearest one is Partick.’
    But the mouse’s breakdancing days are over. Daphne has already gently placed the green woolly jumper on the coffee table and once more started to cry. It’s no longer loud hysterical howling. It is a quiet submissive weeping that lasts a very long time.
    *
    Donnie hasn’t put a letter through her door and there are no messages on her answering machine. But she must keep her distance, play it cool, let him come out of it in his own time.
    He’s coming off the pills too quickly. His noradrenaline anddopamine levels are probably all messed up, she’s been reading up on it, he probably isn’t producing enough serotonin yet. The important thing is not to upset him, he said it himself and Daphne thinks about it constantly: anything could happen . Daphne doesn’t want anything to happen. She emails him every day, jokes off the Internet, to keep his pecker up. What harm can it do?
    A man walks into a theatrical agency.
    ‘I’m a talented actor, singer, dancer and comedian and I’d like a career in show business.’
    ‘Certainly sir,’ says the agent, ‘and what’s your name?’
    ‘It’s Penis Van Lesbian,’ says the man.
    ‘I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll never make it in show business with a name like that. The best advice I can give you is to change your name.’
    A year late the agent receives a cheque for fifty thousand dollars and a letter which reads: Dear Bob, here is your commission on my latest hit TV show. By the way, thanks for all your advice. Yours sincerely, Dick Van Dyke.
    She can’t sleep. The T-shirt she wears in bed is Donnie’s and smells of him. The sheets smell of him. From his pillows stuffed with a hot water bottle she makes a Donnie stand-in and cuddles it tight. She spends her night staring at the ceiling, wondering what he’s doing right now. How is he coping without her to wash his hair? And what about his twizzley bits? He can’t shave them himself.
    Never employ a dwarf with learning difficulties – it’s not big and it’s not clever.
    No one at college suspects a thing. She laughs and jokes with her colleagues whenever she can’t avoid them; she marks essays, arguing with her students and her boss over the grades. Except to work and to Asda, she stops going out. She wanders round Asda on her way home, not buying anything. She lets the machine take her calls and doesn’t return them.
    The smell of Donnie eventually fades. Now the bed only smells of Daphne’s nights alone; of sweat and oily hair and toe jam and lady juice and unwashed bum. It’s so pungent that sometimes she emerges from under the covers gasping for breath. But it’s comforting.
    It’ll blow over, she thinks. He’s never gone as far as chucking her before, that’s a shocker, but she knows it’s only the medication, or lack of it. Four years ago, before he started the antidepressants, Donnie sometimes spent the entire weekend in bed, sad and nervous , saying she should leave him, that he was no good for her. Daphne’s response was not to leave but to climb in beside him until he relaxed and fell asleep. He always recovered. This chucking her and having to be alone carry-on is just a new variation on his old black weekends.
    A man goes into the doctor.
    ‘Doctor doctor, I can’t stop deep-frying things. Last night I was going to have a nice salad when I had this overwhelming urge to batter and then deep-fry it. Before I knew what I was doing I had rustled up a beer