Late Night Delivery

"No no, it wasn't li..." Crack, ♫ Move 'em on, head 'em up, rawhide, ♫

"Well I hope you'll be happy with him, look after him when they let him out of hospital." She sniggers, "they tell me he will need a lot of looking after, you'll have to dress him, feed him, even wipe his fat arse. Your husband has done a damn fine job educating him."

She looks over to me and says sweetly, "thank you."

"Ahhh, excuse me, but as I told dick tective brain surgeon last night, if I had done it, he wouldn't still have his bollocks. Naahh, I'll wait 'til he's back on his feet before I let him know how much he has pissed me off. Umm, tea or coffee?"

"Coffee please," she says with a smile.

We leave the bitch and go sit in the kitchen, the innocent and cheated partners to talk of many things, of sleazy shits and faithless slags, of marriages and things.

Of why the cheats are lying twats

And the tarnishing of our rings.

We speak for a while, several times I hear Anne come out to the hallway and then go back into the living room, perhaps she doesn't enjoy listening to us sharing our hurt and betrayal.

When we feel we have said enough, I walk her to the door and say goodbye, I follow her out and drag the mattress around to the back garden. I pick up the slags clothes and other bits and bobs and pile them on top.

When I fetch the green petrol can out of the shed I hear her scream, "nooooo," again. I start pouring the contents over the pile as she runs to me.

"Have you got a light?" I ask her, and then add, "Not the red one you hang outside when I'm not here."

"No no no no, please don't, don't burn my stuff, please no."

"I've got one job to do that I was leaving until after this was burning, I'll do that first, but when I get it done I'll come back and burn whatever is still here."

"Please Doug, don't do this, I'm sorry for... I love you."

"Yeah, sure you do."

I do Doug, I didn't mean it... I didn't think..."

"Didn't think, what, didn't think I'd find out, didn't think it mattered, no you fucking bitch, you didn't think I mattered, well fuck you, now pick up your shit, and get the fuck out before I throw you on the pile with the rest of the crap."

I go inside and a few minutes later, I'm looking up solicitors. I settle on one, but it's not open today so I will have to wait until Monday.

I go back outside, to find Anne has picked most of her clothes and other shit up and gone, breathing a sigh of relief, I set the mattress alight and pick up any bits she has dropped and throw them on top.

Fourteen months go by before I receive the decree absolute, changing my status to single. Anne's brats are now six months old and they are definitely not mine so I haven't got to pay for the little bastards, which is nice. Pastor Donald Stebbings is still trying to get his wife to forgive him, personally I think he just wants a familiar hand to wipe his arse because he can't do it for himself yet.

As for detective Brian Small, seriously that is his name. He has never found out who did it although he did pull me in a couple more times to help him with his enquiries, but I wasn't very helpful, there are a few things I didn't tell him.

I didn't tell him that my mate Stu called on me a couple of weeks earlier.

I didn't tell him that she had answered the door to him dressed in a sexy negligee and told him to get on his bike, or that Stu had hung around by his bike for a smoke and to call another mate and just happened to see the Pastor roll up and get greeted by Anne.

I didn't tell him that Stuart met me up in Newcastle with a very quick motorcycle, a hayabusa if you're interested, or that we switched vehicles and I got home as the pastor was finishing worshipping at my wife's altar and I definitely did not tell him how I explained a couple of the ten commandments to him, or that I rode to a prearranged spot, took of the coveralls I wore for the ride down etc. How I then met Stuart in a lay-by a few miles down a dark country road and swapped vehicles again before I went home.

* parcel, drove and drift are names for a collection of pigs

As herd of cattle

Flock of birds

And wunch of bankers.