After the death of my beautiful Alicia, I got a craving for pate.

I don’t mean that pumped with preservatives, wrapped in plastic to last for longer than you, type of pate. No plastic surgery perfect shade of pink pate wanted here. I mean the real deal, chopped up pig pate, when the only way to get it is to hop in the car, drive to Dover, bob across to Calais with your sick bag nestling between your legs, eating a croissant that was made in Worthing accompanied by a £3.99 cappuccino because nobody serves any other kind of coffee nowadays and what’s with all that foam? Who out there likes that foam? And you hit the nearest hypermarche and walk a mile to get to the deli counter at the back and you take your ticket from the little machine and stand there, looking at your number, seventy-eight, seventy-eight, hoping that you get an assistant who’ll lower herself to speak English and won’t be too good looking, because erections in hypermarches are always painful for some reason: maybe it’s the temperature.

And while you’re dreaming of pale, coarse chopped pate with a sprig of spring green parsley on top, you
happen to glance up and the counter reads one hundred and six.

It’s the story of my life.

Incidentally, it’s also the story of today so far. I should point out that I’ve pulled myself together, obtained another ticket from that evil little machine, and am now patiently waiting for number one hundred and twenty-one to be called. I’m a survivor.

My brother Petie said that to me this morning as I stared at my dog-blood adorned Fiesta and realized that a tragedy had happened. He said, ‘You’re a survivor, Kenneth. You’ll get over this. Move on. The memory of Alicia Silverstone lying by the side of the road, only yards from your doorstep, her side bearing the deep dents of a tyre track, will fade, and you’ll find yourself wanting to conquer new territory. Maybe you’ll get another Cyprus Poodle? Or maybe you’ll realize how good freedom can be, and not want another Cyprus Poodle?’

Petie doesn’t know what the buggeration he’s talking about.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, how many erections can a man named Kenneth have experienced in
a hypermarche? Well, don’t be fooled by the name: I have a deeply passionate nature. Petie said that to me once, after he’d barged into the bathroom even though it was my allotted time span – 7.30am to 7.45am – and caught me in the act of making my morning salute to Halle Berry in her Catwoman costume; I have an A4 poster that I keep stored under my antibacterial face wash dispenser for just such occasions.

He said, ‘Kenneth, you’re too passionate for your own good. I don’t understand it, and Father never understood it, not even during those last cancer-ridden months. He wanted to get to know you and you insisted on talking about your deep love for that bloody Cyprus Poodle. You wasted that precious time with him, just as you’re wasting your life now, locked away in that bathroom.’

At that point our relationship began to go downhill.

Where was I? Oh yes, my magnificent Alicia. She was a pedigree you know, and without one iota of anything resembling doubt, the love of my life. Father bought her for me when he was first diagnosed with lung cancer. He told Petie and me the bad news around the kitchen table, and then presented us with Alicia.

The morning walk was always Petie’s little task, and the evening walk was my little task. Since we live in what could kindly be described as a built-up area, I’m always so careful of that busy main road which very effectively lowers the price of our semi, left to us in a joint capacity in our father’s will. I was always under the impression that Petie would be doing the same thing, I mean, pulling Alicia back from those lethal flash-bys of metallic paint and squealing tyres that indicate some twelve year old has stolen a set of keys again for his or her own amusement. We get a lot of these joy riders around our neck of the estate; anyway, I had noticed that Petie was not keeping Alicia sufficiently away from the kerb, and yes, I had come to that conclusion by spying on him from the upstairs bathroom window because our relationship had broken down to the point of no verbal communication after the Halle Berry incident.

But even though Petie was ill at ease with me and lacklustre in attending to Alicia Silverstone’s needs, that can’t possibly excuse such a monumental lapse in judgment. I mean, I leave the house at the same time every day. Monday to Saturday I attend my place of work, which is, incidentally, a handkerchief-making factory for which I do the accounts and routinely break the bad news that no profit has been made – ‘Not a sneeze!’ I say every month; a remark that always meets with the same morose expressions. I’m certain they haven’t even realized how much they’re missing my positive input today. Oh, and on Sundays I drive to Beachy Head to see if anyone is going to jump. I’ve
always wondered what that would look like.

So how could it be an accident? How could he have been so stupid as to tie Alicia’s lead to the back bumper
of my Fiesta and go inside for an emergency penny-spend, knowing that I was about to set off and my observational powers are none too good first thing?

Oh no, it wasn’t an accident. His motive soon became clear. As I took Alicia’s mangled corpse in my arms and laid it gently in the boot of my Fiesta, where it still currently resides, he said something to me that I will never forget. He said, ‘Although you couldn’t learn any lessons from Father’s death, maybe you’ll learn something from this one, Kenneth. Get out and live life. Travel. Don’t let Alicia, Halle, or skin ointments hold you back any longer. I’ll buy your share of the semi.’

Well.

He wanted rid of me.

I saw red. I couldn’t have stopped my actions then even if I had wanted to. The joint igniters of grief and outrage lit my fuse good and proper, and to be honest, everything from wielding the car jack onwards is a bit of a blur up until the moment Petie came round and expressed surprise at finding himself naked and chained by his private parts to the living room radiator with Alicia’s best leather leash. And a corking headache too, I should imagine.

But being back in control of my faculties didn’t make any difference. Petie deserved what he got. And I did decide that exacting equal retribution – an eye for an eye in biblical terms, so on and so forth – would be overkill, so all in all I was positively restrained by only thumping him thirteen or fourteen times with the car jack.

I realized almost immediately afterwards that I’d overdone it. He was losing a lot of blood and seemed to be experiencing real difficulty in the breathing department. It looked terribly laboured. Horrible to see.

That was when he said to me… well, I’m not one hundred per cent sure what he was actually trying to gasp out, but I think it was something along the lines of, ‘Oh God, Kenneth, please, please, please get help, call a Doctor, I beg of you.’ That’s what I would have said had our roles been reversed, which they wouldn’t have been as I would never have been so downright vindictive to tie Alicia to the Fiesta’s rear bumper, but the point is, I couldn’t very well summon medical assistance, could I? My actions were bound to be taken out of context: misinterpreted, so to speak. So I tried to come up with another plan, which was pretty much impossible given the decibel level being produced by my brother. It’s really a good thing the neighbours were all at work.

I didn’t manage to arrive at any firm decision in the thirty-seven minutes it took Petie to stop breathing. It wasn’t until I realized his body had become an extremely pale empty vessel and his soul had shuffled off to meet the great source of oneness in the universe that we humans refer to as God that a revelation came to me.

You see, I don’t think I was really even that angry with Petie, not really, or that I even really cared about Father that much, no, not deep down, not really.

But, you know, it’s not just that I don’t have respect for human life. It’s more that I’m no longer convinced that any of it is really more than a dream. And if it’s a dream, why does it matter? What does Alicia’s sticky, flattened body in the trunk of my Fiesta and Petie’s corpse, pounded into little more than a pink mush, really say to me?

What does it all mean?

At that moment one feeling swept over me and I was powerless before it.

It was a craving for pate.

I think I’ll get my pate, and maybe a really fresh baguette as an accompaniment, and then head off back across the channel. I might reach Beachy Head by nightfall. That would be the perfect place to have my snack. And after that I could consign Alicia’s body to eternal rest. Thrown over those majestic cliffs. What a way to go.

I’ve always wondered what that would look like.

What number are we on?

One hundred and thirty-six? Rats. I’d better get another ticket.