Windy and me were digging the back garden of another new kid who’d just moved in to Horseshoe Walk. This time it was on the other side of the garages, opposite my house. I didn’t play with Windy normally because he hung around with the little kids, so I’d been a bit taken aback when he knocked on my door and asked me if I wanted a job. Sitting in our conservatory that day he’d also showed me how there were naked ladies hidden in magazine adverts if you looked at them the right way – Martini and Cinzano bottles were the best. We found pictures of Mrs Cropper in Mum’s Women’s Own too. Not naked, but modelling fancy dresses which was weird when you considered what a complete tip her house was. He told me his cat had come back as well after disappearing for twelve months, rattling their letterbox late one night to be let in just the same as she always had, although there was something strangely different about her now, he said, fixing me with his wide puffy eyes. Windy wheezed like an old tap on those rare occasions he played football with us, or handled a spade, but I began to think I’d underestimated him.
Continue reading “A Builder’s Tan by Mark Czanik”
