On This Day
1st July
Richard Breakman is forty-three years old and has a soft belly that would not look out of place on a toddler. A milk belly, his mother might call it, in that pleading way of hers that she uses when something distressing appears on the nightly news. Richard visits his mother Ava every Sunday. He parks his small Fiat Punto outside her redbrick bungalow and lets himself in. Sundays are his bewildered days. His face is set in an expression of shock and Ava, who has only seen him on Sundays for the past year, has given up asking him how he is or why he looks so surprised. As far as she knows, this is Richard’s normal appearance now.
It is not Richard’s normal appearance. Today, for example, is Monday and he looks quite different; terrified, in fact. He is wearing a pair
