Fiver

“Easy, easy, for fucks sake Dan!!”
Mat slapped the side of the transit and the break lights flashed to say that the driver got the point.
“You managed to get from fucking France to here, don’t fuckin back it into the fucking garage”
Mat mouthed a terse reply through the driver’s window.

The cladding had already been on the house when the Robertson’s moved in, but somehow it just seemed to confirm to the rest of the close what kind of people they were. The house matched the family, transit vans in the middle of the night. Mat didn’t care. Even if he’d noticed that only in their window did the cross of St George hang during the European Championship, it signified nothing to him. He lived his life in a torrent of emotion, driven on by expletives and cigarettes. He was rarely sarcastic, often confrontational and asked lots of questions like “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” and, ironically, “Are you taking the piss?”

The van now inched towards one of the tall, white, unblinking herons that stood guard over the pool. They’d been the result of one of Karen’s Sunday afternoon shopping sprees.
“For a fucking heron?” had been Mat’s response when told of the price. Had he realized that that was for a single bird, Karen had expected the more common “Are you fucking mental?” Even so, they rarely argued about money. He liked to make it, she liked to spend it.
They’d met, when both fifteen, on a market. He, pairs of white socks in one hand, ladies briefs in the other, had been shouting suggestively at passers by. Middle aged women, hunched from the damp cold of the rotting Victorian market hall, had reeled in mock amusement from the sheer brazenness of this fuzz faced fifteen year old.
“Mrs., Mrs., here you go, give yer ‘usband a treat! Three for a fiver, three for a fiver!”
Unsurprisingly, Karen had succumbed to such pressure to buy and bought three pairs of briefs for a fiver. He had given her a free pair. Four days later, in her brother’s old bedroom, and while her parents were pushing a squeaky trolley around Asda, Mat and Karen had sex. He gave her her money back when the elastic went on her new knickers.

The heron survived to stare wide eyed into another day and Dan slid down from the driver’s seat, rolling his thick, fat neck from side to side and shaking his legs as if they were covered in water.
“Fucking long way” he said, watching Mat examining the watching herons.
“Uh, huh” was the only response to be offered.
Both men, jeans, trainers and t shirts, made for the rear of the vehicle. Almost as if waiting for the other to act first, they stood expressionless facing the grimy double doors.
“Go on then” said Mat, in a rarely used pre-fuck fuck-free whisper usually reserved for Karen. Keys, fished from sagging jeans, slipped into the lock and magicked the treasure chest open. Both men took a step back and surveyed all.

50,000 cigarettes, 86 bottles of Irish whiskey, 256 litres of beer, 4 digital cameras, 80 pairs of men’s designer jeans in a variety of sizes, 1 box of smoky bacon crisps, 10 flower garden tea towels, 3 tins of magnolia paint and, nestling amongst the denim, a mushroom shaped wooden seat for the garden.

Fifteen feet above them, as Karen tossed and turned in a half empty bed, Mat decided to make sure that she never saw the mushroom. Before you fucking know it there would be fucking fungus all over the fucking garden. What’s the fucking point in that? He had a feeling that the herons agreed.