chapter 1
I grew up in an identikit suburban middle class housing estate on the outskirts of Colchester a Roman built town in the county of Essex famous for its castle and its squaddie population.
My mum and dad would take me to all these antiseptic show homes with their plastic fruit, shiny sickly estate agents and the perfect interiors, made to dupe the family man buyers. These new estates represented the Coca-cola of housing each one the same but selling themselves on the basis that if you bought it you would fit the middle class demographic expected of a fake booming 80's economy. Front garden mown in parallel lines, back garden the same more trees, patio---- for barbecues in the summer, dinning room big table- all set out for gatherings, kitchen- all mod cons, utility room- washing machine comes as standard. Perfect.
They bought one.
First day in, 12 years old , knock next door, suss the neighbourhood- looking for the nearest boy to play with.
“Hello my names Ben, I just moved in with my mum and dad next door, we are your new neighbours, the estate agent man said you have a son my age”
“yes of course, hello Ben” answered the 30 something single mother, she looked just like the lady off the new house brochure in the show home. Alluring, clean, blond, what I believed american women looked like, she sleeps in Tupperware. Coming from a family of dark haired roots, Jewish until 1910 until someone married out, blond women fascinated me, they were so exotic. I looked at her feet, painted toe-nails on bare feet I had rarely seen them. For me her feet and the odd snog on the soaps was the closed I had yet got to porn or feeling slightly aroused. “He is upstairs playing with his cars, do you want to come up and say hello?”
I looked up from her feet and nodded.
I walked in, took my shoes off and instantly noticed how soft the carpet was on my feet, no wonder she walked around bare foot I thought, I followed her upstairs and there was little Thomas on his hands and knees lining up match box cars in a traffic jam formation, it was a perfect collection, all in pristine condition.
“Thomas this is Ben he has just moved in next door, why don't you let him join in playing traffic jams?” Thomas carried on as he was, I took this as an open invitation, so got down to the floor with him.
“Hello, I'm ben I just moved in next door, what you playing?”
“Traffic Jams”
He still didn't invite me to play. There were two odd things about this game, firstly, no ordinary boy still plays traffic jams when they are 12, secondly and most unusually at least 6 of the cars were still in their boxes, Thomas seemed to ignore this fact and use them as he would the other cars driving the boxed cars around the room, he didn't even make the vrooooom noise. Silently he shuffled the cars through the soft soft carpet, and I sat there awkwardly and watched. When Thomas went to the toilet I felt a sudden urge to take one of the cars. I had never really stolen before but its was too tempting, they were all immaculate I had to have one. The particular one that caught my eye was the beautiful little Aston Martin DB5 like the one James Bond drove in Goldfinger, a film in which the image of a gold painted Shirley Eaton was also responsible for my one of first sexual feelings towards the female form. I thought well enough not to take one of the boxed ones as he would surely have noticed and besides this one had a rearview mirror missing so I knew it couldn't have been one of his most treasured items. I slipped it in my trouser pocket without a thought, guilt didn't cross my mind. I don't even know why I did it, I had long forgotten my matchbox car collection. But for some reason the way he kept things so immaculate, his relationship with his mother, his perfect hair, symmetrically beautiful face, all these things made me take the car.
Me and Thomas's relationship pretty much went on this course for sometime, he never refused my entry and I had no-one else to play with for the summer. We were both only children, it was the school holidays and the estate at this point was only just filling up with new families. He was only friends with me because I was there, he didn't need to talk to me, and I didn't bother him, I was only friends with him to get out of my house and sit on his soft soft carpet watching him with a disturbing fascination like a victorian at a freak show and to every so often try and get a glimpse of his mothers toes, although as the summer went on her ankles also became somewhat alluring.
Thomas never noticed the missing Aston Martin, or maybe he did but never fancied the confrontation, or maybe he never liked it anyway he didn't really have many fancy sports cars I used to like in his collection, it was mostly family estates, emergency vehicles, little inner city cars and tractors.
Thomas never left the house that summer on his own or with me for that matter, I only saw him leave the front door with his mother. It wasn't until our first day at secondary school together that he was made to fend for himself.
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