Earful

If he could just return the kid, then everything would be alright. He could drop him on the doorstep, ring the bell and, with a little luck, be back in the car and on his way before Mary, the kid's mother, could get to the door.

Yeah, that would have worked, he thought. But now, looking out of the kitchen window of the grubby little flat where they had spent the last couple of days, he realised things had taken a turn for the worse.

It looked like being a nightmare of a journey, he had planned to complete it in the early hours of the morning and to be done before sun up, but now, because he had overslept, he faced an almost two hundred mile drive in bright sunshine without so much as a cloud in the sky.

“ Right Marty, get that breakfast eaten, I've got to get you home, so don't be taking all morning about it.”

He poured the cereal into the bowl and added milk and a couple of heaped spoonfuls of sugar.

“With added vitamin B and D.” Marty proudly announced, pointing out the blurb on the cereal box.

“ Nevermind all that malarkey. Get your coat on and get in the car.”

He hustled the small boy out of the kitchen and handed him his coat.

“ Nylon lining," Marty informed him, after studying the label.” Designed in England. Made in Ban…Bang..Bangladesh. What's Bangladesh?”

“ It doesn't matter, just put it on and do up the zip.”

He frogmarched the boy from the house to the car parked outside, waiting at the kerbside.

He unlocked the car and Marty climbed into the front passenger seat and looked around.

“ Laburnum Road, Yaris, Airbag.”

The man got into the car and started the engine. Christ he thought, this is going to be a bit tricky. Maybe he could put a hood over the kid's head? No, he'd be spotted by some nosey pedestrian, that was always the way things went wrong. If only he'd thought it through, he could have got some of those sleeping tablets his girlfriend used.

“ Foxglove Road, Ring road, motorway.” his young passenger continued his running commentary.

Typical. Why do I always think of these things when it's too late?

“ Motorway ahead. No L drivers. Vehicles under 50cc. Slow vehicles…”

By now he would take the bloody tablets himself! Oh well, he gritted his teeth and squeezed the wheel in a death grip. Why couldn't I have been born deaf?

“ Ford Transit, Sierra…”

He stomped down on the accelerator, the thousand cc engine screaming in protest as the car reached a heady seventy eight miles an hour.

Better watch it,he thought, certainly don't want to be getting any attention from the motorway cops. I don't want to have to explain the kid to the five-0.

“ Birmingham M6.”

Maybe I could come off at the next service station and stick the kid in the boot. That could work, but what if he pukes up, or dies or something? How could I explain that away? His mother would go batshit and call the rozzers.

“ M42. Invalid-carriages, pedal-cycles.”

Finally he settled for turning the radio up loud. Really loud.

“ Hockey Heath. That's where my mum lives.”

He eased up on the gas and lowered the volume of the radio.

“ Lavender Lane. I live here.”

He pulled up outside a pavement fronted terrace house and turned off the engine.

“Listen Marty, Go and ring the doorbell okay. I've got to get going.”

“ Right, I love you Dad. See you next weekend.”

“ You bet.” He ruffled the boy's hair and let him out of the car before racing away.

As he drove up the slip road to the motorway he cursed his ex- wife once more.

Nevermind the lying and the infidelities.Taking the boy to the opticians had been the worst thing she had ever done.