Читать книгу That’s Your Lot - Limmy - Страница 13

Jason sat at the kitchen table, eating his breakfast. It was the same breakfast he’d had every day for the past three months. It was a bowl of porridge, made by his wife Mary.

He didn’t like it.

His favourite cereal was Frosties, but he wasn’t allowed to have that anymore. He’d been stuffing his face too much recently, not just with Frosties but with everything, and Mary blamed it on what he was having for breakfast.

She told him that what was happening was that he was starting the day with a sugar rush. He was starting the day on a bad foot. Then he’d come crashing down an hour later, and crave more sugar. She said that was why he was snacking throughout the day, eating chocolate and crisps and whatever else he bought at the shops on his way to work. It was why he was fat and always tired.

So it would be porridge now. And he wasn’t even allowed salt in it either, because salt was bad for you. It would be porridge oats and hot water, with a splash of milk on top, if he wanted.

Soy milk.

That was how he started every day. Every single day. He’d go to bed, knowing that the next day would start that way. And in the morning, he could barely bring himself to climb out of bed.

He couldn’t take it.

He asked her if he could maybe have Frosties as a weekend breakfast treat, as a wee reward for managing to stay off it during the week.

But she said no and told him to stick with it, he’d thank her in the end.

He told her he understood that she was trying to do a good thing, but he asked her to consider if it was any kind of life to deprive yourself of the things you like, just for the sake of being a few pounds lighter or having a bit of extra get up and go.

But she told him he was fat and tired, how was that any kind of life?

He said all right, all right, he’d do it, and he asked her how long it would last. A couple of weeks? A month? Or was it when he got down to a certain weight? He could do it as long as he knew that there was light at the end of the tunnel.

She said that there was no reason for it to end. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she said. But he never did. And it was driving him out of his mind.

But then, one morning, something happened.

‘Look at this,’ he said, holding up a spoonful of porridge that he’d just lifted out from his bowl.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Come around here and look.’

‘What is it?’ she asked again. ‘It isnae a fly or something is it? If it is, I don’t want to see it.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Just come here and look. It’s funny.’

‘Funny?’ she asked.

She wondered what could possibly be funny about porridge, so she stood up and walked around to his side of the table. She looked into the bowl of porridge, and then at the spoon. There was nothing funny there.

She asked: ‘So what is it?’

Jason raised the spoon and turned it slightly. ‘D’you not think that looks a bit like Charlie?’

She began walking away, without looking at the spoon. She couldn’t be bothered with this.

‘Look!’ said Jason, smiling.

She stopped and turned. Curiosity got the better of her. She walked back to Jason’s side, knowing that it was a waste of time. But she was curious.

She looked at the spoon, ready to say ‘No’ and walk away. But you know what?

‘It does!’ she said.

She leaned closer to it, and tilted her head from side to side to view it from different angles. She laughed. ‘It actually does!’

She looked for her phone to take a picture, she was going to send it to Charlie’s wife Deborah. But she couldn’t find it.

Jason smiled at the porridge on the spoon, then pointed at one bit with his pinky. ‘Do you see that bit there? That’s his hair. Do you see it? How much does that look like Charlie’s hair?’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s the spitting image.’

And it was. It was the double. Charlie had thick, wiry fair hair that looked all wavy and bumpy like a cloud. Or like a lump of porridge.

Mary looked at it for a while longer, then she lost interest.

She walked back around to her side of the table and sat down. And it was back to business as usual, as quickly as that. George went back to eating his porridge. They finished their breakfast, left the house, got into their separate cars and went away to work.

A few days later, something else happened.

Mary read about it when she and Jason were having breakfast. Deborah had posted an update on Facebook.