candyfloss

I had just done my lengths of the pool after a good session in the gym and I trudged into the sauna, a bit leg weary, a touch tired but the sauna was empty and I was immediately revived. I love it when I get the sauna to myself. All I need is the first half minute and I’m happy. So I squirted the top two inches of the bottle onto the coals and clambered up to the top deck. The heat haze nearly took off my epidermis and I lay back against the scalding wood and breathed in the sweet smell of candyfloss.
I lay like that for a while when a woman came into the sauna and climbed up, at the opposite end, of course. She saw me looking at her so she squirmed down like she was trying to settle into a sandy beach. Then she wrinkled her nose.
‘What’s that stink?’ she said, getting up on one elbow and looking at me.
I was going to explain but she was off out the glass door. She maintained the etiquette of the sauna by closing it very deliberately behind her, but not before muttering ‘Weirdo’ as she waddled off to the far other side of the plunge pool where I could see her talking to Wayne, the pool attendant. Whatever she was telling him it concerned me because she was pointing across at the sauna, gesticulating forcefully so that her batwings flapped and the rolls of fat round her stomach wobbled. Two young girls went by, pointing and giggling. I thought of Homer Simpson.

Wayne stuck his head round the door. ‘Al, you’ve been pouring the isotonic drink on the coals again. The customers are complaining. Yeah?’
He shut the door and the automatic sprinkler fizzed and the sauna filled with the scent of Norwegian fjords. More people came in. It got busy. I lay back and tried to recreate the candyfloss but it wouldn’t come so I listened to the drone of inane conversations around me.
They say taxi drivers get to hear a lot of stuff. Maybe they do. But just lie back in a busy sauna with your eyes closed for half an hour and you’ll hear plenty. Dates, dreams and dares. Exes and excuses. Shopping and shagging. Work and wages. Sad really. Half of them don’t even know they’re alive.
The two young girls came back along the poolside. 13 or 14. Homer Simpson. They came into the sauna. Homer Simpson. There was no room and they hesitated at the door. The guy next to me got up to leave and offered them the wet patch he’d left. They nudged each other and jumped up. There really wasn’t enough room. Even when the fat woman at the end of the row rolled off and went out I could still feel the very edge of her bikini drawstring trace the side of my thigh. I squeezed myself further into the corner. Homer Simpson. Homer Simpson.

‘You going to the fair tonight?’
‘Up at the park, innit?’
‘Up at the park?’
‘By the Lane?’
Yeh’
‘You going, yeh?’
‘Yeh’.
‘You going?’
‘Yeh’.
‘Tell your mum, yeh’
‘Yeh. You tell yours.’
‘Yeh’

When I opened my eyes again the sauna was half empty, the girls long gone and I was about a pound lighter. I got out, went to the shower stall and tipped the bucket on the chain. The cold was electric. I swam to the other end of the pool then showered; hot water and lots of soap, shampoo, conditioner, towel dry, moisturiser, dressed and off home. But it was parent and toddler night so I didn’t exactly hurry. In the showers, for example, some of the dads let their kids roam around naked and unattended while they preen themselves. So there I was rinsing the conditioner out of my hair and when I opened my eyes a three year old was standing there eyeing me intently. Homer J. Simpson. Soon as I got in I called the social worker.

‘You going to the fair tonight?’
‘What, there’s a fair? In the park by the Lane?’
‘Yeh. You said we should go. When there’s a fair? CSS? Controlled Situation Scenario?’
‘Oh, yeh, yeh I did, didn’t I?
‘It’s tonight. By the Lane?’.
‘Yeh’

She picked me up at eight. The night was just cooling. The blue bleaching out of the sky. Half an hour later it would be dark. A police chopper blipped across the lingering light. The air was chill. I’d put on the old ‘Fun Lovin Criminal’ hoodie and my faded jeans. She grimaced a bit. She got out the breathalyser. She got out the testing kit. Standard routine for the controlled scenario. I went to the bathroom. I gave her the still warm container and she plugged it into the hand held. I blew in the mouthpiece and she saved the readout. I held out my arm. She rolled my sleeve, she checked my ankles, backs of my knees, she was pretty thorough. She called the centre on her mobile to get the release codes for the tag. They texted them by reply. Then she took me by the arm and we strode out of the flat together. Then she saw the graffiti on the stairwell.
‘Is that fresh?’
It was a welcome/warning message to the new tenant in flat four. It was mis-spelled but graphic nevertheless.
‘Somebody tells them’.
She didn’t say anything about that.
‘They must do’.
She just looked at me. I just looked back. She touched the edge of my ponytail.
‘Been to the gym again?’
I flexed by way of reply. Bench presses. Lots of them. I kind of hoped she might be just a little bit impressed. Instead she asked if I’d been to the therapist that week.

The therapist is fresh out of college. He’s scared of me. I’m his first. After three weeks of intensive CBT, four sessions per week he told me to have an image ready to call up whenever I got the urges. We went through quite a list. He also suggested that I must have a trigger. He was quite pleased with himself about that. I told him he was trigger happy. He shot me a look. I just laughed, blew on my fingers and winked. That’s when I knew he was scared. Worse than that, he was nervous.
Once, he went out of the room to take a personal call on his mobile. I made two grand on the info I lifted from his desk diary alone on the strength of that. Tosser. He was the sort who’d put himself through psychotherapy so that he could deal with his own ‘issues’ first.

We got to the fairground. Her arm tightened, then relaxed, tightened, then relaxed. Kids went by, their progress charted by the force on my arm. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, like a sphygmomanometer.
‘You taking my blood pressure as well now?’
She smiled and let go. That’s when I saw them. And that’s when she saw the helter-skelter.

Ok, I’d been inside for a spell. That’s where I got the habit. Books, magazines, newspapers…….anything really. Reading material was precious to me like phone cards were currency to the rest of them. Then I got a lucky break: library job. Bingo. Result. Whatever. The librarian was short of someone to help with cataloguing. I helped. I did well. He moved me to checking records. I did well. He moved me to maintaining computer records. I did well. He told me he knew someone on the outside who might be able to use a proof reader. He asked me if I knew what a proof reader was.
‘Someone who can spot a queer from a distance?’
The library work finished soon after. I got my release soon after that. Out on licence. Into the ‘safe house’. Onto the register.

‘Ok, here’s what we do. While I queue for the ride you go over there and buy us some candyfloss, yeh? I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes. Right?’
‘Right’.
Over her shoulder, ‘The pink stuff’.
Under my breath, ‘Yeh, the right stuff’.

I’d been there three weeks. Checking in at the local cop shop daily. Then I got a letter from a publishing house in London. It contained a contract and a sample of work to proof read. I proof read. I sent it back, with the contract signed. They sent me stuff sporadically. It was ok. For a long time nothing would happen then there’d be loads of it. Bit like watching a game of cricket in that respect. The money was decent. Course all I got was the technical and scientific manuals. Boring as fuck but easy to read. Health and safety. Local government. A bit of Open University.
Then I got ‘The Assessment of Need and the Calculation of Risk: Challenges for Child Protection’ by Sarah Dove. A rush job. Full proof reading required. By yesterday. I sent it back the next day. I got a thank you note with my next pay. For some reason they seemed to think I had a special affinity with the world of social work and I got more of the same over the next few months.
That’s where I got the CSS scam from. Some of it you couldn’t make up but the CSS had a gloss of respectability. And initials always sound good. But acronyms are better.
I recognized some of the case studies in the text books. It was all anonymised for time, place and person but I could tell. And I could tell that some of the analysis was shoddy, the data dragged together, the outcomes and conclusions unreliable. And they were making policy based on this crap.

She waved at me from the top of the helter-skelter. I waved back. She’d passed me her handbag to hold on to while she swirled round the tower. I fished out the mobile. 5643. The re-secure code was always just a reverse of this number. Lazy fuckers. Somebody ought to have a word.

‘You want some candyfloss?’
‘Fucking pervert!’
They linked arms and walked away to the dodgems and the rest of the gang who hung out round the beer-off. Chavvish young kids who couldn’t speak in sentences. I could still feel the touch of the bikini like a brand in my flesh. In their place stood a kid about seven or eight. Blond. Big eyes. Alone.
‘You want some candyfloss, don’t you?’
She nodded and held my hand. Victims always choose themselves. Volunteers really.

We went on the Ghost Train. There were lots of kids, alone in pairs and with and without their families. Lots of screaming. Lots of noise. She sucked on the candyfloss and screamed and held me tight. I shut my eyes. Homer Simpson. Homer Simpson. Homer Simpson. When I opened them a skeleton leapt out from the wall. There was a flash of artificial lightning and I could see what I’d done. The whole Ghost Train was screaming.
I jammed the mobile into the wheels of the carriage and kicked out a panel of the back wall of the ride. Propane gas cylinders. A generator. A crowd barrier and half a mile of open parkland. I could hear the screams of the Ghost Train behind me. Screams of pure joy, fear, terror. I could hear them change tenor, pitch, volume, intensity; gain focus, sharpen. I can always hear them. The moon hung in the sky like a rictus.

And I ran.

And I ran.