Adam walks into the kitchen as his mother says, ‘If it wasn't for Adam, I’d have fucked off years ago.’

His heart begins to race, as it still seems to when he hears these exchanges.

It is 7pm and his father is leaning against the sideboard, a glass of beer in his hand. He is still unchanged from work and his glazed eyes suggest to Adam that this isn’t his first drink of the night. Nor will it be his last.

His mother is preparing some sort of pasta dish. In one hand she holds a wooden spoon and in the other a large whisky. She is unsteady on her feet as she turns her back on Adam and his father.

As usual, Adam feels he has to say something, anything, to deflect the direction in which this evening is heading; as if anything he can ever say could have this power. The evenings have been preordained for years now.

‘What’s for tea, Mum?’ he says. ‘It smells nice.’

‘The usual shit,’ she snaps, her back still turned.

Adam feels a familiar lump in his throat. He’s been so careful around her recently - so tentative in all he’s said and done - that this response seems so unwarranted; so unfair.

‘Don’t talk to him like that,’ Adam’s father says. His words are warning, but his tone is that of a man who’s long given up.

‘Piss off, John. Piss off back to the pub and stay there. That’s all you’re good for, isn’t it? Propping up the bar with all those other dossers.’

His father slams down his glass and his voice is louder this time. ‘Don’t fucking start that again-,’

Adam feels tears threaten and he wills them away, ashamed that at 14 he’s still not mature enough to control his emotions.

It’s a Wednesday evening in the middle of July and still light outside. Through the open porch door comes a waft of barbecue from a neighbour’s garden. Adam hears the chatter and laughter of a happy family. A normal family.
He crosses the kitchen and pulls the door shut. Not that the neighbours haven’t heard all this before. He’s seen it in their faces. And of course, thanks to Layla Romina at number 9, now everyone at school knows about the state of his homelife. Even the time his mother locked his father out of the house last Christmas.

From the porch, Adam watches his parents arguing as if he’s at one of the two-hander plays he’s been studying in Drama.

He wishes that this was a play. That they were the actors and he the director and scriptwriter combined. How different things would be if he could control their actions and their dialogue. How different things could be for all of them.

But of course, this power will never be his. They are his parents and he is their son, their audience.

An audience of one for a play that is about nothing but heartache.