BEAUTIFUL THING
By Jonathon Harvey
JAMIE
You aint the first. She’s not a slag or nothin’, but you aint the first. There was Colin the barber, Alfie the long distance driver, and Richard the barman.
She turn you on?
She’s thirty five!
Mum said you was a painter. I know why she chose you. She wants the lounge doing. Only put the paper up last year and she already hates it. Bloke what selled it her said it her said it got velvet in it, but it aint, it’s imitation velvet. She feels gutted. Like that, my mum, goes off things fast .
When I was ten, my mum met this bloke called Richard. He was a barman like her. I used to... pretend he was my dad. Didn’t realise he was only about eighteen. I used to tell people...and that.
Pause.
And then one night I went in the kitchen for a glass of water. And there’s my mum, sat on the floor, tears pouring down her face. Two black eyes. I never saw Richard again.
Pause.
I used to sit on his knee. He used to put his arm around me when we walked down the street and that. Called me trouble. And then...it’s weird innit? When somin’ can just stop like that. But things do don’t they? They just stop happening. Don’t they? Feelings and that. The way...the way you feel.