A Fairytale Of Wetherspoons
By Alison Wassell
Alan is in a foul mood to begin with. He leaves work early, eschewing the office party, and dumps his Secret Santa in the nearest bin. It’s a pencil sharpener in the shape of a man sitting on a toilet. He suspects Kayla, the trainee, who’s never liked him. He drew Maureen, his line-manager, for the second year running, and gave her a pair of gloves from M&S that his wife received last year and has never worn. They were perfectly nice gloves, he thinks, and deserved better than the disdainful sniff Maureen gave them. Stuck up cow.
The train he planned to catch is cancelled, and the next one isn’t due for an hour, so he decides to wait in the Wetherspoons next to the station rather than freezing his bollocks off on the platform. He buys a bottle of Shiraz and asks for two glasses, because he doesn’t want anyone thinking he’s a sad sod drinking alone on the Friday before Christmas. He’s not used to alcohol in the day, and after the first glass he feels the beginning of a headache. Everything seems slightly out of focus too. He hopes he’s not coming down with something.
He's sure he sees Beth at the table opposite, five years old and grinning defiantly with grease on her chin, eating with her fingers even though she’s been told to use her knife and fork. Then, all of a sudden, she is twelve, maybe thirteen, sullen and silent, shovelling chips into her mouth as she stares at her phone, her hair a curtain shielding her face.
A couple of years older now, she is making a show of herself, red-faced and sobbing, pushing her plate away, just because he said the dress she’s wearing might look better if she lost a few pounds. Over at the bar she is thinner, harder, preloaded most probably with cheap booze and finding everything hilarious, her skirt barely long enough to be decent. Knowing he’ll regret it later, he pours another glass.
Behind him, clearly pissed, she’s telling her friend she went no contact years ago and doesn’t regret it. She says it again, louder, as though he’s meant to hear, spitting curses like olive stones onto her plate.
Over in the corner she has kids of her own. She’s serene, smiling, smug, still thinking this parenthood lark’s not as hard as they make out. She’ll learn, he thinks. Someone who could easily be her sidles up to the bloke at the next table, presses her thigh against his, tells him he looks like he could do with some company. Not her. Please, not her.
She is everywhere and nowhere, all of them and none of them. He feels hot, faint, dizzy. As one, past, present, future Beths swarm towards him, accusing. Bad dad, bad dad, bad dad. He holds up his hands. He did his best, but he knows it wasn’t enough, and he knows his wife blames him, although she’s never said, at least not in words. Kirsty McColl is slinging insults at Shane McGowan, and none of them come close to the ones Alan acknowledges, if only to himself, that he deserves.
He pours out the last of his wine and knocks it back like a pint of lager, gets to his feet and tries to look sober as he leaves. Outside, a slip of a girl asks if he can spare a pound for a cup of tea. She’s definitely not Beth, wrong height, wrong build, wrong colouring. Someone’s daughter, though. He takes twenty quid out of his wallet and puts it in the pocket of her parka, wishes her a merry Christmas. Maybe she’ll spend it on drugs, but that’s up to her. Who is he to judge, after all?
His phone pings as he’s boarding the train, shoulder-to-shoulder with what feels like half the world’s workforce. It’s standing room only, all the way home, and he’s too squashed to take it out of his pocket until he gets off. Standing on the platform, he reads the message, over and over, wondering if the wine is making him see things. It’s been three years, after all. Make that three years, eight months, two weeks, four days. Merry Christmas, Dad, and a single kiss. It’s a start, he thinks, as he taps out his reply.
Author: Alison Wassell is a writer of short and very short fiction from St Helens Merseyside. Her words have been published by Fictive Dream, The Phare, The Disappointed Housewife, Gooseberry Pie, Frazzled Lit, Bath Flash Fiction and elsewhere. She was highly commended in the 2024 Bridport Flash Fiction Prize.