It’s Christmas Eve and I’m having a good day. The trees are bare against the grey blanket of clouds. One or two leaves hang on like spare hankies and a tattered carrier bag spiked on a branch rustles in the wind. There’s no one around in the park at this time of morning, none of the leery men who hang around calling me darling and sweetheart. This massive V formation of geese honk past over my head and I can hear their wings slapping the air. Like a squadron of bombers on a victory flypast after a war that’s been fought against evil and the good come out heroic and they get to fly in formation past the king and queen and generals and all the other pompous twats saluting them. And these geese are just pumping out their honks they’re just glad to be flying and flapping and I think they’re honking stuff to each other like hey you on the end stay in position, eyes right, OK you young’uns watch that tree don’t get cocky and I want to join in.
That’s a good day for me, noticing stuff and thinking all kinds of stupid shit. I’m OK if I can get what I need if I can get out and about and talk to the people I need to. I don’t ask for much these days. I used to be different I wanted everything, a house a family a car a bank account nice clothes good job I wanted it all. That was my future. An Oyster card-carrying A1 fucking regular career woman with designer babies and a nanny and a sharp business suit and smart phone and personal trainer and a bit of cosmetic surgery if I wanted it, a butt reduction or boob job or some Botox.
For years that’s how I saw myself in some distant future but it was all getting farther away. One minute I was a pretty 12-year-old in blazer and tie
school photos the next I was in the park thinking about geese and how to get my next bottle of vodka. Oh yeah and there was some man-husband in the background maybe a banker with a clean-cut look in a dark sensible suit and aftershave wafting around him but solid you know not hot and sexy just there solid in the background and yeah older than me and you’re gonna say a father figure and you’d be right cos yeah I had a father but no father figure. See I know the difference. One is a solid guide for you through life and one just gets drunk and hits your mum and never finishes anything he starts, he’s painting the ceiling one day and gets half way through and starts drinking and it never gets done and your mum moans about it and he just says don’t look at it and he’s got enough to worry about without painting fucking ceilings like the rent arrears and the money lenders and he just opens another beer. And now I’m thirty fucking three.
So it’s a good day and I’m in the park. I’m on my way to see someone I need to talk to but I’m having trouble remembering exactly where to go. The geese have long gone and it’s the afternoon and there are young mums with buggies and toddlers tossing bread to ducks and doing that funny run toddlers do, you know staggering on stiff legs with their arms bent up and they can’t stop laughing as they run towards their outstretched mums’ arms. The pond is silvered like a mirror etched with black branches, what’s that word for it? Yeah, mesmerising. My phone battery is dead so I go looking for a phone box.
I ask these women with their kids. “Hey where’s a phone box?” And they’re not really friendly to me in fact they do that thing people do their eyes look at each other a bit nervous and they say try over by the Underground station and I say “Which one?” and they say the name and point past the pond and the ducks and I walk off and I don’t hear them speak behind me they don’t carry on talking about stuff as people normally do, I’ve killed their conversation and I don’t look back but I know they swap looks. Haven’t they ever seen a woman in a grey trackie and hoody before? OK my hair needs washing and my teeth are in a bad way but who do those bitches think they are anyway?
Yeah the teeth need some work I can’t remember when they started giving me trouble something happened in a police station and I lost a tooth and then other teeth got loose and you know those dreams you have when all your teeth are falling out and you catch them in your hands and you wake up in a panic, well it was like that only real life. I asked my counsellor once what that dream meant and she said it was about fear of losing your looks, fear of rejection and getting old. Ha fucking ha. My mum used to take us to the dentist and I was scared but she said it wouldn’t hurt and she’d buy us apples on the way home and tell us to brush our teeth twice a day and then we’d not need fillings. Well I don’t need fillings now. She lost teeth too. He made sure no other man wanted her.
The clouds have gone and there’s pink orange light behind the trees like an old tie-dye T-shirt I used to have. It’s starting to get dark and I haven’t found the Underground station. I’ve been picking up fag ends and asking for lights and I thought it’s probably time for me to go to a meeting cos this is it the time of day when I have to have a drink and I know it’s better to meet others and talk about taking steps in another direction. Then I see a phone box I must have walked past it cos it’s right behind me.
There’s a man in there and shit it must be the only one for miles around. So I’m waiting for about ten minutes, sitting on the pavement, and what the fuck is he doing in there who talks on the phone in a piss stinking phone box on Christmas Eve for longer than two minutes?
I’m walking up and down, stopping so he sees me, glaring and all that, like this is a public phone box you know. He looks at me and I realise I know who he is, it’s that guy who lives over the road with the weasel face and you know what he does? The little shit turns his back to me.
So I’m yanking open the door and I’m like “Hey, I need the phone. Hurry up.” And he puts his hand over the phone and he’s hissing at me, “OK OK take it easy please, I’ll be done soon.” And he pulls the door closed on me and turns his back again. What the fuck? And then he’s putting more coins in the phone and that’s when I realise what he’s doing with his other hand near his trousers he’s touching himself.
I’m knocking hard on the window and he puts the phone down and I pull open the door and he’s mumbling and I can’t hear what he’s saying and he tries to walk past me and it sounds like he’s calling me a bitch. So I let go of the door and give him a little slap on the back of his head. “What are you doing?” he says and he goes to slap me back but he’s only little and I put my arm up to block him and give him a little slap with my other hand. “Call me a bitch again,” I say. And he starts whimpering “What are you talking about?” he says. He’s covering his face with his hands and he’s turning away from me so I help him on his way with another little slap on his head. I don’t care about using the phone anymore I just want to get away from him and find a drink. So I give him a little slap and walk away.

I get back home and it’s dark. I look up at the sky and it’s a mass of tingling stars. Weasel face is getting out of his car opposite the flats. He sees me and stares right over, like he’s done nothing wrong. And I’m screaming, “Hey, what are you looking at? You weasel fuckface pervert, I know what you do. I know what you do in phone boxes.”
He says nothing he gives me this look that says he hates me so I think I’ll cross the road and give him a little slap for that look he’s giving me and wipe it off his face for good. “Leave me alone,” he says and goes in his house and I go “Leave women alone, pervert.”
And I can’t stop thinking about him in that phone box touching his weasel trousers with his weasel fingers and perving down the phone to some poor woman or worse to a kid who’s picked up the phone when her mum is wrapping presents on Christmas Eve. So I change into pyjamas I find next to the mattress on the floor and I drink vodka and I can’t sleep and I wander round and look out the window and the weasel’s house is lit up with a Santa and reindeer on the roof and there’s a light on downstairs and I see the weasel moving around and it’s 3 a.m. What the fuck is he doing? And I can’t stand it and then I’m outside his house in my bare feet and I’m thinking what to do and I’m about to yell to the whole street that there’s a weasel pervert living in our neighbourhood when I have a better idea.
I’m round the back of his house and it’s dark in the kitchen so I break the glass in the back door and reach through and turn the key and open the door and slash my hand and blood is running down my wrist and the light comes on and there’s the weasel blinking in the light with a cordless phone in one hand and his pyjama trousers gaping open and I swear I can see his weasel dick winking at me.
So I give him a little slap with my bloody hand and tell him to call the pigs if he dares ‘cos I’ll tell them all about his pervert weasel phone calls. So now he’s got blood on his face where I gave him the slap and I slap him again just ‘cos it feels good to see him suffer even though it’s my blood on his face.
And then there are other people in the kitchen, small people in Christmas pyjamas, and shit I didn’t know he had weasel kids. And a weasel woman is screaming, “Get out of my house I’ve called the police”, and the weasel kids cling to the weasel’s legs. And I back away and feel glass under my feet and I don’t want to cut my feet as well as my hand but it’s too late so I leap to one side and I must have given a little slap to both the kids ‘cos they’re both on the floor in the glass and I go to help them only the weasel’s wife gets in the way and I put my foot out to stop her from getting cut and she ends up getting a little kick in the face. All the weasels are covered in blood now and I run back out through the door and keep running through the streets and I’m back in the park sitting on a bench. It’s getting light and I hear police sirens and geese and I look up, they’re heading straight for me. I stand up and they slap their wings against the air above my head and they honk at me loud and clear. I tip my head back to watch and they give me a look like they’re saying “You down there. Something has to change.” And I have a better idea.