The End

I was up into the opening hours of Christmas Day after everyone else, involuntarily glancing every few minutes at the fireplace below the hanging stockings. It isn’t even a real fireplace and there is no chimney, so I’m not sure what my eyes were hoping to catch.

My belief in the existence of Father Christmas was rudely shattered one year when my mother burst into my bedroom at one am, throwing my presents onto the foot of my bed and saying ‘There’s no point in pretending anymore, is there?’ Both my siblings are older than me and I suppose my mum and dad had just become tired of the whole ordeal. Although, to be fair, I was thirteen.

Last night I was holding a microphone plugged into my laptop and attempting to record an audiobook version of my late novel with the intention of selling it on iTunes, with or without Harper Collins’ backing. I was, of course, also drinking whisky and I remember little of the process after chapter three. Listening back to it this morning, wearing a garish, hot, itchy jumper my sister Sharon gave me, I am disappointed with the results. My flat monotone becomes more erratic as the story progresses until I am babbling incoherently. It is, frankly, shit. I will send the novel to a professional next week - David Attenborough, perhaps - and try to drum up some interest.

We are at Sharon’s for Christmas. She has the biggest house in the family because her ex-husband possesses a successful company and enough guilt to pay handsomely for Sharon and their kids’ lifestyles without having to see them. Sharon is constantly elated because she never liked men very much but wanted kids and security and now she has both without the man. She certainly doesn’t need a new kitchen from me.

Brian, of course, showed up alone. He claims that he has several women he sees casually, and we all gleefully make fun of him whenever he says this. It is a rare bonding exercise for the family – albeit at the exclusion of one of us - and we seize the opportunity frequently. In fact, all our joyful moments are at the expense of one of us; Sharon’s suspected borderline lesbianism, my father’s habit of marrying any woman who shows an interest in him, my little sci-fi nonsense novel. To be honest, I believe they cross the line with me, and it is genuinely hurtful.

My father has brought a new flame along. She is disappointingly nice. Somehow it seems wrong that he is walking around happy when my mother is dead. But it makes things easier to have someone we can like. We all tell her they’ll be married in a few months if she’s not careful. This makes her uncomfortable.

I tell Cheryl that she should have one of my sister’s cigarettes. A couple of weeks ago Cheryl smoked her first cigarette for three years on a night out with friends. At first I was annoyed but after realizing that it might be nice to have a few bonus years of bachelorhood at the end of my life, I have been encouraging her to take up the habit again. Brian, Sharon and I are already involved in a three-way sibling death-race featuring food, cigarettes and alcohol, but there’s always room for late entries.

“I don’t want one,” she hisses.

“Spoil sport,” I say.

Sharon’s dinner is uncharacteristically delicious and I gorge myself on sausages and turkey and stuffing and potatoes and my annual Brussels sprout.

Afterwards I unpack my Wii and the family takes turns to play the bowling game. My father’s girlfriend lets her controller slip out of her hand as she bowls and it shatters on the TV screen. She is mortified and secretly I am pleased to have a foothold of some kind over her. My five year-old nephew, George, has a supernatural ability at the game and embarrasses us all.

Afterwards, the kids fight in the front room over their new toys and the adults sit in the living room, half-watching a film and slowly digesting the meal but constantly topping ourselves up with chocolate.

Brian sits slightly apart from us and says very little. I realize that I will never understand anything about him and I accept it.

Sharon buzzes around, topping up drinks and offering snacks around and filling all the conversational lags that threaten to become silences.

My father seems happier than I can remember him in many years, and he surprises me by quietly saying to me, “It’s a bit violent your novel, isn’t it?”

“It is a bit, yeah,” I say.

“Makes sense at the end, though."

“Good,” I say. “Thanks.”

And then I go to the toilet and splash water on my face and realize that I am genuinely emotional for the first time since I saw Edward Scissorhands.



Later, in the guest bedroom, Cheryl lies on the bed, half-drunk and exhausted. I slowly empty my pockets onto a chest of drawers.

“When are you next working?” Cheryl asks me.

“New Year’s Day. Six am early shift.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah. Although if I’m still drunk I find the first half of the shift goes a lot quicker.”

“I’m so glad I have the holidays off this year,” she says. “Saturday can we just stay at home all day and lie on the couch?”

“Maybe. Sid texted though. I might be having my first rehearsal with Down Wit’ It that day.”

“Oh. Fun.”

“Yeah.” I sit on the bed and pull my jeans off and then suddenly lose all the energy required to do anything more.

“Are you okay?” Cheryl says.

“Yeah,” I say. I sit and stare at the wall for a long time.

“What’s wrong?”

“I think I’ve just hit middle age,” I say. “Right then. Thirty seconds ago. I thought it was when my back went out last year but no. This is it. This moment of realisation.”

“What realisation?” Cheryl says. I can hear her popping the cap off some kind of cream she smears on her face.

“It’s too pathetic to talk about, really. I just… I always wanted to be different. I know everyone does but I did too, and I kind of thought that I was different, that I would actually be one of the people who did something interesting. And then I went and did all the ordinary things anyway. I actually got married. I mean, how boring, how average, can you get? I’m a thirty-two year-old man, married, who doesn’t own a house, who has to work for a living.

“I thought that getting a novel published would validate everything in my life. That it would excuse my bad behavior – past, present and future – and that everyone would look at me in a different light. But it hasn’t changed a thing. Maybe if I had sold a million copies but not…three hundred or whatever it was.”

“That can’t change who you are, what you do,” Cheryl says to my back. “Only being a better person can make you feel better about yourself.”

“I know. I just…thought I’d feel fulfilled, maybe. That I would have achieved my life’s goal and could live the rest of my life satisfied somehow. But it never stops. There’s no…completeness. Life just plods on in its mundane routine.”

Cheryl puts her hand on my back. “The things that make you happy are always closer to home. The most basic human needs and urges. The cycle of life. If you want to give your life meaning then maybe now’s the time for us to start trying to have a baby. A little son or daughter to pass everything on to and pour your life into.”

“I’m not sure if I’m that empty yet,” I say.

“It would make me happy. To move back to America and start a family near my parents. If you can never be content, if you’re going to be miserable no matter what then at least give me the opportunity to be happy.”

I sigh and lie down next to her. “Okay. Throw your Pills away, then.”

“So romantic.”

I kiss her, and then, for better or worse, I give in to her again.