The Cold and Bitter Glow (one)

1

Janice Johansson leant back in her chair, hand automatically moving to the topmost draw of her desk. She withdrew an eagerly awaited Capri cigarette, lit it and took a long drag. She let out the smoke slowly, watching the grey wisps dance to the ceiling. Smoking was not usually allowed in the offices, but it had been such a hectic day that no fellow staff or manager thought to scold her.

Something had gone wrong in the business’s income, something that Janice did not fully understand or care about, but her department had been blamed and threatened and called all sorts of things. Being the assistant department manager, she couldn’t get away with sitting there, phoning her friends. For the first time since she’d been promoted, she had had to work all day.

Work had become a sour subject for Janice. She had loved it when she first started – working as a mere shop assistant in her favourite clothes store. The pay had been terrible, but the pure thrill of serving and meeting others had made it all worthwhile. She had been the pretty and vivacious eighteen year old that the customers and fellow staff adored.

Of course, then she had met Matthew and he’d told her he loved her and said that she was special, and she’d not really cared about nameless shoppers anymore. She grew more serious, but had not lost her talents, so they’d thrown her up into management and hadn’t taken her down just yet.

She felt like one of those pretty little dolls that small children adored. They’d brush their hair and buy them dresses, being ever so careful of their porcelain skin and rolling eyes. Never would they dream of going to bed without kissing their doll goodnight. But then the girls would grow and wilt into the bodies of teenagers and the toys were left to rot on the shelves, or were packed into cupboards with teddies and Christmas decorations made in school.

Even at home she felt stuffed to one side. After a long and tempestuous marriage with the late Matthew McCarthy, she had emerged with two children, a face of makeup to hide the lines and an attitude that clearly could not be bothered to care for anything anymore. Her children couldn’t have been more indifferent about her.

Eighteen-year-old Joshua had completely abandoned his school - working behind a bar at night, and was out trading with drug dealers and smashing in cars by day. Janice couldn’t stand this – at his age she was living alone and making a life for herself, whilst he just expected a good meal everyday from her, and a complete willingness to let him run around and get into trouble.

And then there was Charlotte. How Janice had dreamt of having a daughter - a child she could teach not to make the mistakes she had, a child she could influence and dress up and love, a girl who would want to be just like her mother. But it had gone terribly wrong.

Charlotte - or Charlie as she vehemently preferred to be called – had never liked her mother’s company, even as a small child. But at least then she had patiently put up with her.

Now she would never smile and was perpetually leaving the house to be with that – that boy - whose side she never left. Morgan, Janice recalled, was a stroppy and extremely lazy male the same age as her daughter, and had never once said thank you or please in her house. Janice couldn’t help but feel she’d lost her only daughter to him.

Janice let her eyes trail the harassed looking workers passing her desk, studying their anxious expressions and twitchy fingers. They were lousy attempts at human beings in here, they all were. She doubted if a single person in the building had smiled genuinely for a year. The suits had not slipped but had torn and were symbols of employee’s restraints, whilst the hair was no longer bothered with and makeup was applied sloppier than ever.

The results of work, Janice had found out, could be dire.

She figured that she’d have never picked up smoking if she’d not ended up here. She’d figured that her husband would still be living and her kids would worship the ground she walked on. She figured that she wouldn’t want to return to /her/ parents and listen to their sycophantic adoration of each other. She figured a lot of things, but only really dwelt upon them when she was busy like this and had other things to do.

Just then, distraction arrived in the shape of David White, a tall and unbearable man with dreadlocks and saucer eyes of blue. He leant at her desk, raised a single eyebrow at the cigarette now being ferociously stubbed out on the mouse pad, and sighed. Janice dusted away the ash from her skirt and looked up at him questioningly.

She remembered first meeting David when she had been twenty. He was four years older than her, and had been the only person with life in the office. She had guessed he would lose it after a week, but to her and everybody else’s amazement, he hadn’t. He was exuberant, slightly dotty (which some put down to excessive cannabis smoking in school) and extremely annoying, even to those clinging to whatever signs of spirit they could find.

“Well, Miss Johansson, I’d have thought by now you’d have learnt to read,” he said, nodding in the direction of a large anti-smoking poster on the opposite wall.

“Piss off, David, you know it’s been a bad day for all of us,” she snapped back, voice rather horse from the shouting she had been forced into doing when a girl from the call centre had messed up.

He raised his eyebrows, but only smiled wider, perching himself on the corner of her desk. “Oh come on, Jan, you’ve got to lighten up someday or another – how about over a coffee or something?”

“Don’t make me feel any worse than I am currently feeling,” Janice spoke harshly, as usual, but not without taking his question into consideration. However tempting it sounded to break from work, she was not about to do so with /this/ specimen of a human male. “And whilst you’re at it, you may try standing up, unless you want your ass to be covered in ash.”

“You’re a sly one, Johansson!” David chortled. He stood up and walked down the aisle of desks, still chuckling to himself and hitting his thighs in time with a song only he seemed able to hear. Shaking her head in disgust, Janice threw the remaining cigarettes into her handbag and stood up. Clarissa, the overly confident new girl, looked up like a hare sensing a predator.

“Oh, Janice, where are you going?” she called; making several more people look up in hope of a scene. It was widely known that Janice had despised Clarissa and her bubbly nature. Choosing to ignore the question, Janice switched off her computer and turned to leave. “Janice?”

“I’m going home,” she replied shortly, feeling the room droop with disappointment, and strolled out of the room, heels clicking stubbornly against the faux-marble flooring.

* * * *

There was no need to call “I’m home” when she walked in the door. Even if her children had been in to hear, they would have responded with a mere grunt, or else nothing at all. The living room lay in wait of her vacuuming and tidying away, and she still found the time to wonder in amazement how two people in the house about fifteen minutes could make so much mess.

The television had been left on, the breakfast crockery was thrown on the floor and several magazines were strewn about on the floor. Janice could just imagine them both eating in a comfortable silence, Joshua flicking through the channels, and Charlotte trying to decide what to bring to read through her lessons that day.

Janice didn’t mind their mess as long as they cleaned up after themselves. She had bought them up to be neat and tidy, but it hadn’t worked as well as she’d hoped it would. The clock told her that there was five minutes left before school finished, meaning Charlotte would be back in at least twenty to drop off her bag and go out to see Morgan.

Or perhaps tonight would be one of those that Morgan would spend the night at the McCarthy’s, for they seemed to have developed an every-other-night policy with each other’s houses. Janice felt slightly strange in calling her house the ‘McCarthy household’, for she had taken back her maiden name at her husband’s death. But the children had wanted something to remember their father by and they had chosen his surname.

After Janice and five minutes had finished with it, the room was back to it’s spotless self and she felt more accomplished than she had all day. With a satisfied smile, she made to walk and inspect the damage done to the dining room, before stopping dead in her tracks. She hadn’t noticed /that/ when cleaning up. It was sticking out from under a cushion, looking creased as though it had been stuffed there in a hurry.

Bending closer, she touched it with her fingers, but only very cautiously for she wasn’t quite sure if it was /clean/. For goodness sake, she had never touched anything of this sort before. Then, in a moment of desperate bravery, she dived into the deep end and managed to pick it up.

It was entitled “Bad Boy Weekly.” But the title caught her attention less than the picture of a very toned young man on the front cover.

Who happened to be naked.

She blushed without quite meaning to, as though stumbling upon a dark and dirty secret – which, she realised with a small and guilty squirm in her stomach, she had. After flicking through the first five pages out of a curiosity she was embarrassed at, she came to the correct conclusion that this magazine of men was aimed at other men.

Who, she thought suddenly, could this belong to? Charlotte of course was exempt from the suspects, being a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl who probably didn’t even know what the word ‘homosexual’ meant, it being the taboo it was at school. There were no other males ever in the house apart from Joshua and Morgan, the latter of which had never bought a single item with him.

So, could it be possible Joshua was the owner? Janice suddenly felt like crying. She’d gone wrong somewhere, not being at home enough, and had influenced her son too much perhaps, for him to turn to other boys. She felt guilty and unclean and tore the magazine without thinking. Then, battling with emotion and anger at both herself and her son, she threw what was left of the pornography away.

The kitchen and dining room too were in a state, but Janice didn’t care just now. All she could think of was her son being molested, or worse, /molesting/ a male. It hurt her enough to make her need to sit down. As she thought of all the things she could have done or could have said to change this outcome, the front door swung open and she was caught between admitting the truth to her daughter, or pretending all was fine.

Not unusually, Janice chose to keep quiet to her daughter, who she didn’t quite know what to expect from anymore.

“Hey, Mum,” Charlotte said, dropping her school bag to the floor. “Morgan is coming in a couple of hours, do you think you could…” but she left her question unfinished as she had glanced at her mother’s stunned face. “What’s up with you?”

“Oh – oh, nothing,” Janice lied, standing and putting on the most innocent smile she could imagine. “What were you asking?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Charlotte muttered, still looking rather suspicious as she sat down. Janice continued to smile in a maniac way until her daughter looked away, face now sporting the bewildered and superior look she had become so talented at giving. “I was just wondering if you’d be okay to make dinner for Morgan tonight, but I’m not sure if I want him to touch your cooking if you’re in such a wacky mood.”

“Don’t grumble, Charlotte. I’ve had a bad day.”

“Yes, inputting numbers sounds /so/ difficult.” Charlotte rolled her eyes, studying her painted fingernails glumly. “You get to do easier stuff than I, and get paid for it. You should consider yourself lucky.”

“Oh, yes, school would be torture compared to my office, Charlotte, you’re absolutely right,” Janice sighed, trying to sound sharp but merely sounding worn out. “Now, I can make dinner for Morgan of course, I have to do it most nights anyway. It’d be stranger for you to ask me if I won’t make dinner instead.”

“Well, I’ll tell him not to come then, if it’s so much trouble!” her daughter laughed humourlessly, looking up at her with wide eyes. “If I don’t ask you if you’ll make it, you get mad and say I give you no notice. Well, now I have. So please, don’t complain.”

Janice bit back several retorts, for she could just not handle another problem today. She sank into the chair opposite Charlotte and studied her, wondering whether she’d gone wrong with /this/ one too. She had dyed dark red hair that had been cut to hang over her face, something that annoyed Janice terribly. She hardly considered her daughter ugly and saw no reason for her to hide her face away.

She was by no means like the depressed moneyless children who haunted the streets nowadays. She didn’t wear much makeup except the odd splash of colour on her lips, and even then it was only when she could be bothered to apply it. Her music taste wasn’t power chord after power chord, even if Janice didn’t like it. And she didn’t go out to concerts with her school friends to get drunk either; all of her time was spent with Morgan or scribbling away in that absurd notebook of hers.

“Don’t glare, Mum. It gives you a double chin.”

* * * *

Joshua had the night off, and had promised to eat with his family after not doing so for eight months. Janice had found this so special that she’d planned the meal a week in advance, ensuring everything would run smoothly. She’d bought the food, cleaned the house and had ironed her best clothes the night before.

But everything was going wrong.

No matter how hard she mashed, the potato was lumpy, thick and unpalatable. She had burnt the sausages already, and it seemed the kidney pie was going the same way. Her dress, which she’d foolishly changed into /before/ cooking the meal, was stained with allsorts of food and red wine, which she’d been sipping on for quite a while to shake off her temper. Charlotte hadn’t helped in the slightest, but was watching TV in the living room, awaiting Morgan.

And all that Janice could think about was Kinky Kenneth on page four.

With ten minutes before Joshua was due to arrive, there was a soft knock at the door, which Janice heard Charlotte answer. A few seconds later, Morgan had entered the dining room, talking animatedly. He didn’t register Janice standing, very flustered, in the kitchen.

He had dark brown hair that fell mercilessly into his green eyes (it suddenly dawned on Janice why Charlotte had had that haircut the week before) and was taller than Charlotte, walking with a kind of casual elegance that Janice mistook for a slouch. She found him rude, arrogant and simply impossible to like.

“How long will dinner be?” Charlotte asked, coming to the kitchen doorway and wrinkling her nose at the very unmashed mashed potato. Janice closed her eyes to prevent them rolling, took a deep breath and glared at her daughter.

“In about ten minutes. But it could be done a lot quicker if I had some help.”

“So call a caterer,” her daughter muttered. “I don’t see why you’re making such an effort. Josh won’t be bothered, he’ll not turn up.”

“Yes he will, Charlotte, stop it. He’ll come and we can have a nice meal all together for once,” Janice sighed, finally deciding that lumpy potato was better than no potato and putting it in the oven. “Now quickly, get the table set.”

“Oh, fine.” Charlotte gave in, though not without a tone of bitterness, and began rummaging around the cutlery draw. Janice frowned. Everything was in, the table was being set, and the house was clean. What was missing? Joshua was due and everybody else was here.

Janice realised then what was wrong. She couldn’t shake the thoughts of a perverted son from her mind. She couldn’t help but wish she didn’t have to face him; she wasn’t ready yet. With a glance at her daughter she wondered if she could suddenly feign illness and leave the three teenagers to eat the meal without her. But she lost this thought immediately – this was a problem, a sickness, and it was up to her as a mother to make her son better.

However hard that would turn out to be.

* * * *

“What was Mr Buck saying to you?” Charlotte asked, resting her head on her hand and swirling her fork in the mess of food upon her plate. “He didn’t sound very happy.”

Morgan looked up from his meal, which he’d been forcing himself to eat seemingly out of politeness, with the surprised expression he held whenever anybody spoke to him. He cleared his throat, for he was not very talkative around lots of people and hadn’t spoken for about half an hour.

“Well,” he started, before pausing, and starting again. Janice sighed - he sure was dim. “He’d found a whole load of weed in the corner of the field and someone had told him it was mine. Which it wasn’t,” he added hastily.

“Some kid left it there?” Joshua spoke up. Janice looked down at her untouched food. She’d wanted him to stay silent so she wasn’t forced to analyse his words, searching for clues about his sexuality. “Where is it now? Did you manage to get it?”

“Joshua!” Janice said sharply. She may have lost her son but she was not tolerating such open disobedience. “Charlotte, don’t play with your food.”

“It’s all it’s good for,” she replied under her breath, “but anyway Morgan, did you get in trouble for it?”

“Nah, I just told the idiot that it was Jerry Thompson and left it at that.”

There was a silence then, in which Charlotte nodded thoughtfully, Joshua took a large gulp of his juice and Janice drummed her fingers on the table. It was a habit she’d had since being a small girl. She didn’t do it when impatient or bored, but only when she was terribly nervous. And she was more than nervous now; she was actually scared of the confrontation.

If she just softly asked him if it was his magazine after tea, there was not much chance of him snapping, was there? He could deny it, but Janice had learnt after her marriage with Matthew to know when people were lying. She could see it in their eyes, and Joshua’s were so like his father’s.

After everybody admitted that they had eaten as much as they could and Janice had spent fifteen minutes clearing away and washing the pots, she decided that sooner would be better than later this time. Charlotte and Morgan went up to her room, leaving Joshua and Janice in an uncomfortable silence.

“Well, Joshua, how’s your day been?”

Josh shrugged. Janice began to breath slightly quicker, feeling as though this conversation could take a while to get round to the magazine. She tried again. “Is it nice to have time off work?”

“Not really,” he sighed, though it was more of a grunt, and slumped down onto the living room sofa. “There’s decent food there.”

“Oh…oh, well yes tonight’s dinner was a bit of a disaster.” Janice attempted a joking smile, which turned into a pained, desperate grimace.

“You’re telling me.”

Janice knew that she had to spit it out, or she’d never be able to bring herself to say it. So, after taking a couple of deep breaths and attempting to rid herself of her stomach of wriggling worms of nerves, she spoke in a rather higher voice than usual;

“Did you leave anything at home before you left? Anything…personal?”

Joshua looked at her suspiciously. He looked so much like his sister at times like this. “What like? If you’ve found any weed don’t blame me – you heard Morgan, I bet Charlie and he are getting high right now.”

“No – no, no drugs. Nothing like that,” Janice sighed, biting her lip (though she couldn’t help but wonder what her daughter was doing upstairs). “I just found – found a magazine.”

“A magazine? What, you reckon I’ve been reading Charlotte’s girly magazines? Oh please.”

“This wasn’t Charlotte’s magazine, Joshua,” Janice said, rather coolly, for she felt for sure that Joshua was just messing her around. Confidence shot through her body and she decided to finally be blunt. “Gay porn, Joshua. A magazine full.”

She expected him to burst into tears and beg for forgiveness, or else shout at her and be a little too defensive. What she did not expect was him to burst into hysterical laughter and have to clutch at the settee arm for support.

“This isn’t a laughing matter Joshua!” she said, in a ridiculously high and emotional voice. “I want to know if there’s something wrong with you, tell me now!”

“Oh, Mum.” He sniggered, wiping away genuine tears of mirth from his cheeks. “Oh /Mum/.”

And with that he turned and left not only the room but the house. Blinking with bewilderment, Janice sat down at the sofa. She felt stunned. Why would somebody react like that? Was her suspicion really that preposterous? But even as she wondered this, her mind was setting something else in motion.

He had laughed to mask his guiltiness. It /had/ been his magazine, this /was/ his secret, and she /had/ gone wrong. Feeling weak with all of these thoughts, and all of the wild emotions, she slumped onto her knees and held her head in her hands. This was too much. She felt sick, sick with the sickness she had let her son be infected with. She clutched the carpet for support, so as not to just collapse onto the floor with this weakness.

Her finger brushed against something and she looked down cautiously. There were small scraps of the magazine left from when she’d destroyed it. Wiping away tears that had not yet fallen, she took a couple of deep breaths. She would have to get through this, she found just have to –

Damn. She was crying.

It isn’t fair, she thought miserably, that a grown woman couldn’t control her tears. Crying sort of – sort of /jumps up/ on you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. She sniffed, and attempted to pick up what was left on the floor.

Charlotte had entered the room without her realising, and was perched on the sofa arm, watching her mother sobbing and crawling around on the floor. She raised her eyebrows, bent to inspect what it was her mother was scrabbling at, and fought a desire to laugh.

“Mother? There’s a penis on the floor.”

**