Page 5 of Ship of Fools

I would stay right here. On my own. Get a hobby. A life. Grow up a little and block Charlie on my phone.

You can see where this is going, can’t you? I didn’t block Charlie. He texted about a night out, some event at a private club in another town. I was rather proud of myself when I said no, lying about some family event I had to attend. Instead, I bought myself a 1000-piece puzzle and spent the weekend watching TV and sleeping. I was rather proud of myself, even though I never even opened the bloody puzzle.

The following week had flown by in a haze of people spending insane amount of money on last-minute new cars. Cars that would never in a million years be delivered before Christmas. I printed out expensive-looking gift cards for customers, on handmade festive paper. Sighed alongside the suppliers over deliveries we all knew were pushing the limits of what we could achieve.

People with money demand same day delivery on everything. It might work with Amazon, but it doesn’t work like that in the automobile industry. We have cars on file ready to go, but they are never anywhere near where the customer wants them. No, Sir, we cannot ship a brand new Volvo from Sweden, have it customised to your wife's favourite colour and have the latest sound system and satnav installed, and have it with you within the week before Christmas.

Not that I say that to our customers. I smile and I lie, then I shout down the phone to someone else and get it arranged. Then I pray.

I’ve prayed a lot this last week, the stress making my skin break out in spots, and my lips crack. There’s a cold sore brewing on my bottom lip, and most evenings I come home and fall asleep still wearing my work shirt.

I can’t even bring myself to wank. That’s how low I have fallen. How pathetic my life as an adult has become! At least I am trying. I am going to grow up. Find a real meaningful relationship, and—for once—I am going to do it on my own.

I don’t even believe myself when I say it out loud.

Luca

The front door to my parents’ house is wide open, with an acrid smell of burning wafting strongly in the air. You would think that things like that would make my dad run inside, shouting for my mother with the emergency services on the phone, but instead, he just laughs and slaps my shoulder and lets out a deep sigh. This is part and parcel of why I love my family. We are definitely not what you would call a normal family, or maybe perhaps we are just that. Normal.

I haven’t seen my parents in days, which is unusual, since I usually turn up here, to my childhood home, every single day for dinner, or just whenever I forget that I’m a grown up with my own kitchen and pots and pans a mere ten minutes’ walk away. I just prefer hanging out at home, getting fed and pampered, and reminded that in the midst of this shit life, I am loved to bits. “It’s important,” my mum says, kissing my cheeks and fixing some invisible stray hair on my forehead. It’s important to remember how lucky I am, and how loved my family are in return.

My dad met my mother in the school playground. Him, the arrogant, immigrant kid who barely spoke English, and my mum, a shy English rose who barely said a word. My dad said she was the cutest thing he had ever seen. He gave her a kiss on the cheek, and they were a thing before either of them knew it. Mum adored Dad, and Dad adored Mum. They still do, and they got married and bought the tiny house that we still call home. Dad cooks, works, and sorts out whatever needs sorting out, whilst Mum? Bless her, she is still the cutest thing, as she stands in the kitchen wearing just an open shirt, bra and knickers, wafting a tea towel over something that is still smoking on the top of the stove.

“What... were you trying to make, honey?” Dad says softly, with tears of laughter in his eyes, as Mum swats the tea towel at him. “And what happened to your... trousers?”

He’s still laughing, and Mum? Well, she’s half angry, half in hysterics, shouting that her trousers are covered in some kind of sauce, and that they were making this pasta thing on TV, and she thought it looked so simple that she couldn’t go wrong.

She obviously could, and I try not to cough as she comes over and hugs me.

My mum. Okay, she is still the cutest thing, with a mop of dark curls that she ties into a messy bun on the top of her head. She could almost pass for an Italian Mama, if it wasn’t for her large collection of pyjama pants and threadbare shirts that make up herentirewardrobe. And she can’t cook, either, to the despair of our entire Italian side of the family. “Nobody ever taught me how to be a Mum.” She usually shouts at us. “There’s no bloody manual for you lot, so don’t blame me for all your mistakes.”

So what, if we made mistakes? She always forgave them. And, if my mum can’t cook? She never behaved like all the other mums at school, anyway. She was never part of the coffee morning cliques, or the cake sales, or the Parents Association. Instead she was shunned and mocked in the playground, as she dropped us off in her dressing gown, with curlers in her hair. Or just wearing a silly hat. We loved it, loved her quiet reassurance as she ushered us into school, smiling sweetly as if nothing was wrong.

Everythingwas wrong, but we thrived on it. Our lunchboxes were filled with all the wrong things, our sandwiches never looked like the other children’s, and we hid the home-made cakes she tried to make, more often or not they were inedible anyway. If my dad had to work late, she would serve us instant chocolate pudding for dinner, but she would make out like it was a five-course gourmet meal served on our best china with napkins on our laps.

What Mum lacked in parenting skills, she made up for in imagination. Our garden was a constant adventure of projects she never finished. Our rooms were mostly a catastrophic mess, and our school uniforms and clothes were picked up from local car boot sales, a mish mash of styles and embarrassing outfits, that would make Mum laugh and Dad shake his head. He never once complained, and us kids? We loved our mum too much to rebel. Until my oldest sister grew up and got a job and bought her own clothes, and my little sister screamed blue murder over her hand-me downs. Mum took them shopping after that. Me? I couldn’t care less. I still don’t.

My parents loved us. We travelled, we ate, we discovered, and we adventured, but most of all? We laughed, and we were loved. There was never any pressure to succeed academically. Yet, I did well at school, went to college, and, well, I always knew I would work with my dad, and that is what I did. Apart from branching out on the side of the business, where my dad didn’t have the right up-to-date skills. We now have fully trained multiskilled staff to cover any side of car mechanics and electronic systems, and whilst the business will never make us millionaires, we pay the bills, and we weather the storms.

Our customers are fiercely loyal, and we have the fact that our racers are superstitious to thank for that. Dad knows their cars, and the drivers trust him. Taking a car on the track that hasn’t been worked over by Don Germano? Well, I know for a fact there are drivers who would refuse to race. That’s my dad though. He can talk the talk, walk the walk, and he loves his family, blood or not.

He loves me too, as he pats me on the back, and sends Mum up to have a shower. I haven’t seen him for days, as I have been up at Lambert and Gloss every day, working away on that rust bucket of a vintage car. The buyer is an idiot, and the car? It needed scrapping, not turning into a monster. Because that is truly what we are doing. The specs have changed four times already, and now the immaculate white leather interiors are being dyed a horrific lilac, and my perfectly cut replacement dashboard is being spray-painted into something I can’t even put words to. But in the end? I am just there to follow the spec, and deliver what the customer wants. I am not there to ogle Andreas Mitchell, whatever it is that goes on in my head every time I park my car outside Lambert and Gloss.

I haven't seen him, and not for the lack of trying. I take the long way around to the workshop at the back, hoping to catch a glimpse of him in the showroom. He’s never there. He never comes down and checks on the progress of our work either, despite my best efforts of asking the head mechanic to get him down to ensure we are following the brief. Still, Andreas Mitchell has been nowhere to be found.

I suppose that is a relief, because my messed-up fantasies do not need any more feeding with ridiculous images of that man. He already monopolises my thoughts as soon as I close my eyes at night, with all kinds of messed-up scenarios where I usually end up fucking him until he screams. Or I scream. There is usually screaming involved, of the real variety too as I ejaculate into my bedcovers.

I have done a ridiculous amount of laundry over the last couple of weeks.

So, apparently, has my Dad, as he loads up another batch into our rust bucket of a washing machine, as he hands me a rag and a bottle of kitchen cleaner.

“I don’t know what has gotten into your mother. She has this strange thing going on about cooking for Christmas this year. It’s... she should just stick to what she knows, because the… I don’t know. There’s a tray of aubergine bake in the fridge. I just need to make space to…” He’s moving plates and cutlery around the kitchen worktop, no doubts the remains of breakfasts, and lunches over the last couple of days.

Mum? She’s not a domestic goddess in any shape or form, but you will probably be surprised to hear that she runs an extremely successful cleaning business from our kitchen table. Not that she cleans herself, but she employs a little army ofstaff, who clean like goddesses and provide care services to the elderly neighbours. Because things like that, is what my mum does well. She cares for her clients, she adores her staff, and overpays them to the point that she barely breaks even at self-assessment day, but everyone loves her back, despite her dirty teacups and stained joggers.

She also cares for us, because she’s our mum, and she loves us.

“So, have you got yourself a nice man yet?” Mum teases, as she swans into the kitchen in her dressing gown, her hair wrapped in a towel.

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