"Just what is so funny?"

Elspeth said, "Just sounded sort of gay is all-you prying your treasure from Neal's b.u.mhole."

"I'm so glad I was able to lighten the mood."

Neal looked at me with sad eyes. "Doctor's orders. I'll keep you posted, Ray."

f.u.c.ker.

And that's when things stopped being merely bad and became catastrophic.

Dear The G.o.ds, Yes, it's me! Yes, that's right, Raymond Gunt. Hope you've been well lately, causing a few storms, frightening the occasional simple village folk ... life's great when you're The G.o.ds. Thunder! Lightning! f.u.c.king irreparably with Raymond Gunt's life! Whoops ... did that slip out? Sorry. Feeling a bit emotional is all, but I was wondering, now that we're having a small chat, could you focus your attentions on the people around me, rather than on me? Not that I want others to suffer. More like I, myself, would just like to live in a bit of comfort. If that means a lessened quality of life for those around me, so be it. As you can see, I am a reasonable man.

Yours, Raymond Gunt

42.

So, here's the thing.

Having adjusted somewhat to the fate of my red plastic, I was going about my day, having adventures like any of us do-in this case, contemplating a not unpleasant menage a trois with Elspeth and Tabs (Hooray! Finally! Took long enough!)-when a sound from the tent area, and from my deepest memories, ripped through my soul like an industrial meat slicer.

"Raymond Gunt? Raymond, are you here? I know you are. I can smell fear in the air." It was a woman's voice, crusty and loveless, seasoned by a lifetime trapped on a conveyor belt of f.a.gs and discount booze.

Neal, Tabs and Elspeth stared at me with raised eyebrows. All colour must surely have drained out of my face, sunburned or not.

The voice continued, "Or should I say Herry Potter? How the f.u.c.k could anyone be stupid enough to spell 'Harry Potter' with an 'e'?"

"Anyone you know?" said Neal.

"You feeling okay, Ray?" asked Elspeth.

From around a coconut bush appeared the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e-congealing slag known as my mother, dressed in the shabbiest of high-street summer style, smoking two cigarettes, her pair of bingo wings flapping, looking for all the world as though she'd just popped out the front door ready for a day of shoplifting with her best friend, Sheila.

"There you are, Raymond. Fiona said you'd be here."

f.u.c.king h.e.l.l. This is just the sort of thing Fiona would do, the miserable b.i.t.c.h.

Neal and the two girls wore the innocent but ent.i.tled expressions of car pa.s.sengers whose half-hour delay in stalled traffic has earned them a good long gawp at the blood-soaked crash that interrupted their journey.

"h.e.l.lo, Mother. Welcome to Kiribati."

"Look at you, Raymond, all dressed up like a pervy version of the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz."

"Mother, this is Neal, Elspeth and Tabitha."

Mother stared at the trio like a grifter a.s.sessing fresh marks. "h.e.l.lo, then."

"Has Fiona set you up in nice digs?"

"She's done more for me in one day than you've done in a lifetime, useless son that you are. Brought me down here for a holiday, out of the kindness of her heart."

"That's Fiona, all right-give, give, give."

Mother glowered at me. "Are you taking the p.i.s.s?"

"Yes, Mother. I'm taking the p.i.s.s."

I heard Neal whisper, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it?"

"Okay, then, Mother, if you're finished ..."

I could tell she was about to launch into one of her invectives in which politics and religion and utterly ambiguous personal foibles coalesce to create a sort of satanic meatball of misinformation. "I am not finished. By changing one vowel in the name 'Harry,' you desecrated the imagination of every child and of every child-grooming pedophile who ever entered the Potter universe of mugwumps and pixie-wixies or whatever else that that billionaire woman is always writing about. Childhood is sacred, Raymond, sacred."

"Mother, that made no f.u.c.king sense. What do you want?"

"Fiona very kindly invited me down here for a leisurely South Pacific vacation, and all I've found so far is tinned luncheon meat and some ghastly fungus that has turned my minge into a Halloween house of horrors. I want my holiday, and I want it now." She dropped her two dead cigarettes onto some highly endangered plant and crushed them with her heel.

Silence.

"Well, Mother, you certainly know how to win over a crowd."

"Raymond Gunt, you are a bad, bad son. I rue the day I ever dreamed of bearing offspring."

"Do you?"

"I do."

"Well then, guess who is about to stop making payments on your breast enlargement surgery."

"You wouldn't!"

"Wouldn't I?"

Neal said, "Ray, really? You paid for your mum's implants? You're a good son, you are."

"Thank you, Neal."

Mother was running scared. "Raymond, they can't take my implants away, can they? They're already inside of me."

"Yes, Mother, yes they can. If I don't keep paying, they will systematically hunt you down wherever you try to hide. They will pounce on you from behind, armed with Stanley knives, and they will rip you open right there on the cobblestones."

Mother burst into tears.

"Christ, don't bawl."

"I love my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, Raymond! They're the only things of mine withstanding the horrible hand of time!"

Though it went against all my instincts, I walked over and put my arm around her, causing my entire musculature to involuntarily shudder. "There, there. I promise to continue making the payments."

She honked an oyster of phlegm into the coral dust. "Oh, Raymond, I take it all back-you are a good son. I'm just so stressed out from travel. Oh Lord, now I've farted-and my nose is running. I need a tissue."

Elspeth gave up the Playboy Bunny fluff ball attached to her tender rump. Mother honked a cargo of deep-sea creatures into its pristine softness.

Elspeth, Neal and Tabs stood transfixed.

"Why you and Fiona never had children is beyond me, Raymond. You'd have made a fine father."

"Thank you, Mother, but Fi's not really the nurturing type."

"You just never gave her a chance."

"Mrs. Gunt," said Neal. "Why don't you stay with me in a proper house? You'll like it very much."

"Really? Neal, is that your name? Thank you very much. They put me up in a tent, without even a telly to keep my mind off my woeful situation. A house would be lovely."

"Neal," I interjected, "I thought I was supposed to be moving into the house."

"No, you're staying behind the house in the hut, Ray. Your mother can stay in the business centre, on a beautiful sofa bed, with an ensuite bathroom and a big-screen colour telly."

I was suddenly invisible to my own mother, as she suction-cupped her right tentacle onto Neal's left b.u.t.tock. I was livid. It was time to find Fiona and figure out just what sort of master plan she had in mind for me.

To get her attention, I shouted, "Mother, would you be so good as to tell me where the delightful Fiona is ... perhaps honing her talons on a ma.s.sive medieval granite knife-sharpening wheel?"

"She's in the big red tent, I believe, Ray. But don't go barging in. She's getting a ma.s.sage from one of those ladies who likes ladies, if you know what I mean."

"Charming."

"The ma.s.seuse has skin like the back seat of Granddad's old Vauxhall. And she's probably got a c.l.i.t like a golf ball."

"Yes, Mother. Delightful."

A Siberian wind blew through my heart at the thought of Fiona being pounded like so much bread dough by some careerist bull moose. But I needed to find out the scope of Fi's treachery. What else could she have in store for me?

43.

Indeed, I found Fiona in the red tent getting pounded by what looked like a lorry driver with t.i.ts. When I opened the tent flap, the ma.s.seuse looked up at me like I was the devil. Beneath her mitts lay Fiona, like so much bread dough. I said, "Oh, h.e.l.lo, darling."

"Oh, it's you." Fiona craned her neck around to make eye contact with her lorry driver. "He's harmless. Raymond, this is Chaz."

"Lovely to meet you, Chaz."

Fiona screamed at me, "Stop staring at Chaz's t.i.ts-she's a d.y.k.e, you simpleton! And I don't even want to know how you ended up in your ridiculous outfit."

Chaz grunted and reached for a towel to wipe lotion from her hands. "Want me to call security?"

"No, thank you, Chaz, dear. This is my ex-husband."

Chaz froze in mid-motion. "Seriously?"

"Don't act so shocked, Chaz. He didn't always resemble a pemmican scarecrow. In fact, there were a few moments-not many, mind you-where he was pa.s.sably okay-looking."

The stupid b.i.t.c.h was trying to b.u.t.ter me up, but I was having none of it. "Darling, I'm here on a fact hunt."

"A big fact hunt?"

"Yes, an enormous fact hunt."

"A heaving, pulsating, throbbing fact hunt?"

"No, more of an oozing, quivering, tender fact hunt."

"Is this fact hunt needy and desperate and looking for someone to teach it the ways of the world?"

"Indeed. Naughty fact hunt. Bad little fact hunt."

There it was-the old magic between me and Fi, happening again.

Chaz threw down her towel and stormed out. "You people are sick."

"If you say so."

I threw Fiona a shirt. "Did you really have to drag Mother into whatever your game is?"

"Your mother deserves a holiday, Raymond. She's had a long hard life."

"She's had no such thing. She's been a benefits scrounger as long as I can remember. What she doesn't scrounge, she wheedles or steals, as you very well know."

Fi sat up and attempted to take on her domineering stance. "A bit of compa.s.sion for the woman, Raymond. Come with me to the production trailers. You may as well see where you're working."

We left the tent and followed a path towards a trio of rusted-out trailers like the ones you see in American horror movies in which a family of four is brutally bludgeoned to death, their carca.s.ses picked clean by wild animals and insects, only to be found years later by hillbilly meth makers who use the bones as doorstops while converting the remains of the trailer into an incestuous copulation den filled with smashed beer bottles, f.a.g ends, misspelled graffiti and bullet holes.

"You still haven't answered my question, Fi. Why did you bring Mother down here?"