Terms & Conditions Read online

  For Jemma

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Terms & Conditions of Life

  Condition 1 Amnesia

  Terms & Conditions of Me

  Terms & Conditions of Senses

  Terms & Conditions of Coffee

  Terms & Conditions of My Wife

  Terms & Conditions of the Spleen

  Terms & Conditions of Malcolm

  Letter: A Greek Tragedy

  Terms & Conditions of Happiness

  Terms & Conditions of Impressions

  Terms & Conditions of Sex

  Terms & Conditions of My Office

  Terms & Conditions of Bees

  Terms & Conditions of Culling

  Letter: East Beats West

  Terms & Conditions of God

  Terms & Conditions of Doug

  Terms & Conditions of Codes

  Condition 2 Hypermnesia

  Terms & Conditions of Oscar

  Terms & Conditions of My Family

  Letter: No-News Flash

  Terms & Conditions of Objectives Meetings

  Terms & Conditions of Doors

  Letter: The King and Oscar

  Terms & Conditions of Organ Dealing

  Letter: Stefan the Swede

  Terms & Conditions of Ethics

  Terms & Conditions of ### ###### ##### #####

  Terms & Conditions of Saviours

  Terms & Conditions of My Office

  Terms & Conditions of Meetings

  Terms & Conditions of Remembering & Regretting

  Clause 2.1 Alice

  Terms & Conditions of Love

  Letter: Pure Meow

  Terms & Conditions of Change

  Terms & Conditions of Mushroom Soup

  Terms & Conditions of Sign Language

  Terms & Conditions of Breaking Up

  Letter: Dam Pizza

  Terms & Conditions of White

  Terms & Conditions of My Wife’s Job

  Letter: Cop or Criminal

  Terms & Conditions of Executive X

  Terms & Conditions of Executive X

  Letter: Ignore Signals

  Terms & Conditions of Tests

  Terms & Conditions of Kids

  Terms & Conditions of My Wife’s Parents

  Letter: Evolutionary Boredom

  Clause 2.2 Doug

  Terms & Conditions of Chances

  Terms & Conditions of The Master Actuary

  Terms & Conditions of Doug

  Terms & Conditions of Fear

  Terms & Conditions of Tests

  Terms & Conditions of Doing Something

  Terms & Conditions of Trying to Get Your Wife to Listen to You When You’re Falling Apart

  Terms & Conditions of Friendly Fire

  Terms & Conditions of Warnings

  Terms & Conditions of the Dead

  Terms & Conditions of Time

  Terms & Conditions of Arial Nine

  Terms & Conditions of Disappointment

  Terms & Conditions of Self-Sabotage

  Terms & Conditions of Dinner Parties

  Terms & Conditions of Dares

  Terms & Conditions of Dragons

  Clause 2.3 My little episode

  Letter: Supicious Molar and Phantom Pinkie

  Terms & Conditions of Belief

  Terms & Conditions of Seeking Help

  Terms & Conditions of Mediums

  Terms & Conditions of Denial

  Terms & Conditions of Facing Facts

  Terms & Conditions of Dead Voices

  Terms & Conditions of Revelation

  Terms & Conditions of Facing Alice

  Terms & Conditions of a Personality

  Condition 3 Reality

  Terms & Conditions of Habits

  Letter: Remember me

  Terms & Conditions of Guilt

  Terms & Conditions of the Devil

  Terms & Conditions of Acting

  Terms & Conditions of Quantifying Happiness

  Terms & Conditions of the Liver

  Terms & Conditions of Gluten-Free

  Terms & Conditions of Revenge

  Terms & Conditions of Molly

  Recipe For Mushroom Soup

  Terms & Conditions of Snail Mail

  Terms & Conditions of Tenses

  Letter: Catching up

  Clause 3.1 Revenge

  Terms & Conditions of Conning a Con Man

  Terms & Conditions of A Prenuptial Agreement

  Terms & Conditions of Dad

  Terms & Conditions of Hope

  Terms & Conditions of Oscar

  Terms & Conditions of Packing

  Clause 3.2 A suicide

  Terms & Conditions of Cassandra

  Letter: Give me back my spleen

  Letter: Thank you

  Short questionnaire

  Acknowledgments

  A Note on the Author

  eCopyright

  TERMS & CONDITIONS OF LIFE

  The condition of life is a complicated one in which the terms are rarely made clear.

  My name is Frank Shaw and I write contracts for a living. I’m not proud of what I do. In my bleaker moments I believe I’m the death of an essential part of humanity. People once sealed deals with handshakes. I replace handshakes with expensive ink. I swap the human touch with cold contracts. What anti-matter is to matter, I am to trust – I’m anti-trust, the dark force committed to destroying life’s faith, hope and wonder. Put simply – I’m a corporate lawyer.

  I specialise in fine print, which places me on one of the bottom rungs of my business. I’m the legal equivalent of the guy who sweeps up hair at the barbershop. You probably didn’t read my terms and conditions today, when you bought something off the internet and clicked ‘Agree’; or when you signed blind some contract giving away your rights, your life, a pound of your flesh.

  My masterpiece is the work I did on the modern insurance policy. I wrote it fresh out of law school when my brilliance was still radiant. Its genius lies in the fact that it’s unbearably dull. Few can read it all the way through and none ever get to the small print. That’s the loophole I hang you with – the policy seems to weave a golden safety net catching you as you plunge through life’s tragedies but my sharp fine print rips the net to shreds. For if the devil’s in the detail, I’m the devil’s ghost-writer, typing cautionary tales in font so small they’re rendered invisible. You can barely see them and when you do it’s too late.*

  * So I warn you now – read the small print.

  I speak from bitter experience. After my car crash I learned that terms and conditions don’t just govern my work – they’re also the tight rules underwriting my life. However, directly after the crash – lying broken in bed – I remembered little of this; all I knew for sure was that something awful had happened.

  CONDITION 1

  AMNESIA

  TERMS & CONDITIONS OF TRAGEDY

  If some strange and terrible thing happens to you – that’s tragedy.

  If some strange and terrible thing happens to someone else – that’s just entertainment.

  TERMS & CONDITIONS OF ME

  I’m not the man I used to be.

  I awoke to people – who professed to be my family – telling me I was going to be fine.

  How can I be fine? I’ve no idea who the hell you people are!

  They tried to outrun the truth, to smother reality with hope, by chanting, You’re fine, Franklyn, absolutely fine!

  Watching my forgotten family I realised that denial is like running on a treadmill with the monstrous thing you’re denying waiting for you to tire, fall, and shoot back into its hairy hands. But I knew the truth – I was far from fine. The monster had me. And for a time I lay in its dark s
ilent embrace. When I did talk, it only made matters worse.

  ‘Who are you people?’ I asked.

  One of them replied, ‘I’m your wife, remember?’

  My second question really put a stop to them saying I was fine.

  ‘And who am I ?’

  With so few clues as to who I was, it was hard to be me. I wanted to say something to assure everyone that I was the same old Frank and that everything was fine. (But I wasn’t and it wasn’t.) And I certainly knew when I said something wrong. Their faces leaked little rivers of worry and they’d look at me askance, as if I’d fallen out of focus, as if I’d said something unsuitable. Which was exactly the problem: I no longer suited myself. (Failure to fulfil a contract is called impossibility of performance and that was my trouble – I kept saying things pre-crash Frank wouldn’t say.) The only thing I remembered for sure was that before the crash people just called me Frank. But after it they reverted to using my full name – Franklyn. I lost a personality but gained a syllable.*

  * Slim compensation indeed.

  TERMS & CONDITIONS OF SENSES

  Mine no longer made sense.

  When I saw my face I didn’t recognise myself. The mirror reflected a pulped stranger: bloated eyes adrift in blood, shattered fence of teeth, gross mushroomed cheeks. And my new world wasn’t much prettier either. It was a place wedged with warnings. Machines released shrill cries calling forth fast-moving medics. Signs on floors shouted, Slippery When Wet! Screams rose from distant corridors only to be snuffed out. My drugs came with lists of warnings as long as Russian novels. A red button declared, Press in Emergency!

  My body was incessantly panicking, urging me to press the button all the time. Initially I did press it all the time. They disconnected it. Then I started screaming, Help, help, I can’t remember who I am! They injected drugs, which muffled my panic below a hundred blankets where no one could get to me. I wished they’d reconnect the button. I missed it.

  My terror was heightened by my muddled hormones. The accident had smashed my separately labelled jars – Sad, Happy, Mad – into a sloshing chaos of wild fluids. I wanted to laugh, cry and scream all at once, all the time. Also, the nerves that once ran along separate pipes to my ears, eyes, nose and mouth were plaited into a confused braid. So I saw green and tasted fish, heard screaming and saw blue, smelt cheese and heard music.

  Dr Mills assured me that this synaesthesia was simply my brain’s attempt to find new ways back to old memories. My sense and sensibilities were so scrambled that when Dr Mills drank a coffee I saw the steam rise like a deep bass note vibrating my tangled senses and triggering a feeling, a deeply embarrassing feeling – a crush. As I listened to Dr Mills’ coffee, I realised that feelings are stickier than memories.*

  * Violently shake your brain and memories float off like pollen, but feelings – they grip on like Velcro. So my first real feeling wasn’t about my brothers or my wife or family – it was about my beautiful barista.

  TERMS & CONDITIONS OF COFFEE

  Its taste never lives up to the promise of its aroma.

  This sticky, curly, embarrassing feeling – this silly crush – snagged my first real memory. I remembered that I hated coffee but I was madly in love with the coffee lady from the café in our office block. Her chocolate-brown hair poured down her face and her bosom was forever rising up towards me. I recalled spending many hours trying to think of witty, interesting things to say to her.

  This one time, when it was just the two of us in the café, I said to my beautiful barista, ‘Your coffees are amazing.’

  She smiled. Her lips don’t thin when she smiles, they fatten, and as she frothed the milk, a speck flew up and landed on her breast. It was right then that I decided to do the most impulsive thing I’ve ever done in my safe little life – I leant across the counter and wiped the speck away. She looked as if she was about to slap me, I flinched, she grabbed my head, pulling my face to within a whisper of hers, and in the flustered moment she covered me with espresso kisses, her breath warm, rich, full of love, her body bending towards me as her breasts . . *

  * Disclaimer : of course, none of this actually happened.*1

  *1 My frazzled brain was blending fantasy with reality. The truth was far less Mills & Boon. In fact – if I’m remembering correctly – I barely ever spoke to her. Yet I’d return to my desk brimming with joy; but as my cappuccino cooled, a sadness settled in and every day I’d sit with a cold cup of coffee thinking, What the hell am I doing with my life?*2

  *2 And every day a tiny voice would reply, ‘Not a lot.‘*3’

  *3 This melancholy memory was the first sign that all was not well.

  TERMS & CONDITIONS OF MY WIFE

  Alice is my wife – allegedly.

  My alleged wife, like many of my visitors, seemed very nervous when she came to see me.

  Why? Were they worried I wouldn’t recognise them? Maybe they were hopeful they’d be that special person – the key – the one whose mere presence would miraculously unlock me? Or was it that people were nervous because I’d been a complete bastard?

  Was Old Frank a real twat?

  I discovered early on that no one would tell me what I had really been like. When I asked my wife, she offered only the vaguest sentences; words that could have described a billion other people: ‘You were, are . . . a nice chap and funny, really driven and . . .’

  It was like that awful ‘Personal Section’ in curriculum vitaes – my CV personality. So I accepted that I was the only one who could really discover who I once was – I knew no one would ever tell me the unvarnished truth.*

  * No one would turn to me and say, You were such a cunt-face, Frank. You hated life, detested your friends, and you were often found in parks furiously masturbating.

  But my nervous wife did drop some clues which made me realise that my memory wasn’t entirely deleted. (Where my short-term memory was a burnt-out office, some long-term memories were safely backed up in a warehouse far away.) So when my wife told me I had a brother called Malcolm, two words bobbed from my amnesiac soup and I shouted triumphantly, ‘Fuck this!’

  She laughed, ‘That’s right. Malcolm liked saying that. We’ve tried to track Malcolm down, but he’s off travelling, God knows where . . .’

  My wife kept talking but I wasn’t listening: I was, for a moment, mesmerised by my own hand and I could only really focus on one thing at a time. (My concentration was the most under-staffed department of my broken brain; it was just one guy frantically adding to an endless To Do list unspooling behind him like toilet roll.)

  ‘. . . you listening, cotton-brain?’ she said, but winced at what a bad thing that was to say to a brain-damaged person. ‘Oscar? Your older brother? Remember? Oscar?* Tall . . . He’s um . . .’ As I watched her strain to describe Oscar, I realised that people knew friends and family so well that they didn’t really see them any more. (Everyone becomes invisible.)

  * Oscar? Um? Nope, no Oscar here – try Lost & Found down the hall past the Department of Déjà Vu.

  I, on the other hand, was overpowered by details. My blurred vision meant that features shot out of people’s faces like caricatures – Dr Mills’ bald head; Alice’s black bob – but what I lacked was the glue to stick the right feature to the right person. So in my woozy underworld Dr Mills appeared with Alice’s black bob, or Alice with Dr Mills’ bulbous nose hanging grotesquely off her face. (Legally, confusion of goods describes a situation in which the property of two persons becomes inseparably mixed – I suffered confusion of features.)

  I must have flicked in and out of sleep because Oscar was suddenly there, sitting stiffly beside my wife, as if he’d popped out of thin air, or in his case fat air, as – it turned out – he was an extraordinarily large man. The two of them were tense, sitting in silence, one fat, one slim, both watching me. I noticed that they never talked to each other directly and I sensed that they hated one another.*

  * So palpable was the rage between them that I saw it as an iride
scent white light.

  Oscar had a bag of plums, and he said, ‘Franklyn, having another snooze, eh? Brought you these. People always bring grapes. I upped it, brought you plums. Basically giant grapes.’

  And a rancid green smell oozed from somewhere.

  Oscar picked the price sticker off a plum and rolled it around his fingers. I took a plum and admired it: taut skin marbled with thin crimson veins running deep into the dark flesh within – this perfect design overwhelmed me and I said, ‘Can you believe this?’ to which Oscar, still staring at the price sticker, barked, ‘I know! £2 for a few plums! It’s daylight fucking robbery!’

  I must have looked confused, because Alice and Oscar realised I wasn’t talking about the price. They laughed hard and loud, forcing the tension around us into temporary submission.*

  * And dimming the fierce light between them.

  My wife said, ‘That was so funny, Franklyn.’

  As the laughter faded – and the tension regained its hold – I became overpowered by the foul green smell. Oscar looked at me hard as if expecting me to say something. He was ill at ease. I smiled; my shattered teeth sparked a flicker of disgust on Oscar’s face as he said, ‘Do you remember much about your little episode, Franklyn?’

  Little episode!

  My wife’s hand shot across the divide between them and grabbed Oscar’s knee. He jumped a little.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘What little episode? I was told I was in a car accident.’

  My wife smiled – her hand released Oscar’s knee and the gap between them flared bright – when she said, ‘Nothing, nothing, nothing at all, Franklyn. You were rather tired . . . stressed and tired, before your crash, that’s all . . .’

  But the sharp silence that followed – which I saw as a violet scream – suggested they were hiding something from me. Exhausted by my sensory cocktail I lay back and stared up at the white ceiling. The violet scream faded, the green stench paled, and I sank into a colourless sleep.

  TERMS & CONDITIONS OF THE SPLEEN

  You can live without it but it makes life just a little bit harder.

  Mornings began with Dr Mills giving me an update on my condition. It was almost comical – were it not tragic – the way he sat with his glasses hanging off the end of his nose detailing my grim anatomical itinerary.