The Boy Who Fell to Earth Read Online Free PDF Page B

violent behaviour. To break the routine, I sometimes took a little jaunt outside to retrieve my many possessions which Merlin had thrown out of the window. Another leisure pursuit involved watching children evaporate away from my son by the swings. The sandbox invariably became a quicksand box. Angry parents, whose heads spun to stare at me judgementally, would half-hear my explanation before trailing off, fearing some AIDS-like contagion and abandoning me to a numbing silence. I spent the rest of my carefree ‘me’ time being told by shop owners that my son was a ‘spoilt brat’ and was no longer welcome in their stores, the crisp reprimand in their voices forbidding further conversation. If only there were a self-help book for social lepers.
    I wrote ‘to do’ lists so that I’d stop jolting awake in the middle of the night because I’d forgotten to defrost the leg of lamb for the next day or to plan tomorrow’s lesson on Sylvia Plath appreciation. I was developing my own Plath-ology – a desperate desire to take anti-depressants. There’s nothing wrong with taking Prozac, I convinced myself. Even God-fearing Moses took tablets, and look at the side-effects
he
had.
    But my biggest note to myself was to stop yearning to put my head on my beloved husband’s dearly missed prime pectoral real estate … And then, more than anything else, trying not to mind when, aged four, Merlin said his first word since losing his speech at eight months. And that word was ‘Dad’.

3
    UFO – Unidentified Fleeing Object
    THE WOMEN IN your life are your human wonder-bras – uplifting, supportive and making each other look bigger and better. My loving sister and mother kept me buoyant during this fraught time. Which is quite a feat when you consider Merlin’s fifth year of life. Basically, things went downhill so fast I was amazed that the Olympic Bobsleigh team hadn’t rung me for some top training tips. When Jeremy emptied our joint account, I realized that love really does end in marriage. My husband had never struck me as mean. He had always been the first to put his hand into his pocket … Unfortunately, now it was to play pocket billiards. The man I adored with all my heart had turned into the kind of guy who would stab you in the back and then call the police to have you arrested for carrying a weapon.
    The first item on my ‘to do’ list was to kill UFO – Unidentified Fleeing Object, otherwise known as the Man I Mistakenly Took for My Loving and Committed Husband.
    When Jeremy, who was now living in Los Angeles, filed for a divorce a year later, my hand flew to my forehead and I actually staggered backwards a few feet, like a heroine from a silent movie. I looked at the dashing arabesque of his signature
– Jeremy Beaufort –
on the dreaded document, which proclaimed that he wanted to dissolve our marriage. Then I vomited. All over the hateful, heartbreaking paperwork.
    For the next few months, I tried to make my way through the Kafkaesque miasma of files and scraps of paper which is divorce court. But getting divorced is a vile maze of trapdoors, grilles and hatches. The locks and switches are coin-operated by lawyers. There are horrible spikes everywhere which lacerate your psyche. I joked to my sister that the day you consult a lawyer is the first day of the rest of your life savings. She replied that a divorce lawyer helps you get what’s coming to him. But it was hard to laugh, being so painfully true. The man I had loved body and soul for seven years of my life was busily rearranging his finances to minimize payments to his only child. My uninspired, lacklustre lawyer said that Jeremy had diverted funds to another company which it would take a lot of time and money to trace – money I didn’t have. But, surely, Jeremy’s fast cars and Armani suits, and Audrey’s dazzling, bling-tastic appearance, which was off the
kerching
-o-meter, were pretty good signs that my hubby had a healthy dose of affluenza?