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witty' play on words, the exact infuriating comment that Daniel would have made. He was a bastard.

What kind of man doesn't let his wife, the person he merely months ago promised his heart and devotion to, have the one thing that will make her life complete. Well not really, a slight exaggeration perhaps; it was, after all, just a karaoke machine.

Bastard.

Larry was Mark's brother. Mark was an international chartered accountant. Mark was in Venice having tea; Larry was in Essex driving a truck. This is because Larry was a truck driver. Larry had never planned on being a truck driver, it never featured in his childhood dreams and ambitions. Ever since he went to one with his late mother, Larry had wanted to own and run a Cabaret Restaurant. It would have deep red walls, velvet curtains, a stage with shiny wooden floorboards and a magnificent array of dazzling lights. Unfortunately for Larry, things had not quite turned out that way, and now he was driving a truck. He farted. He had given up on his dreams and become a truck driver, may as well act like one.

But he tried to keep his dream alive. Even now he could picture the awaiting audience perched atop the steering wheel, a four-piece band playing in the cup holder and a flood of brightly feathered dancers streaming out of the dilapidated air conditioning vent. So caught up in his dream was he, that he didn't even notice the bump as he ran over the woman who should have had a coat on.

As she lay there, feeling nothing, red seeping into the frozen ice around her, the woman without a coat wondered what her chances of survival were. She wondered if the fact that she was wearing clean underwear made those chances higher or lower, or was that only for busses? She realized she couldn't move and assumed that her spine had snapped. She remembered a science show she had seen last night on the BBC; about how the nerve endings fire and spark trying to reconnect after being severed. She thought about that for a few seconds, and then realized that she was now in a rather serious situation. She had been hit by a truck and was lying with a broken back and was hemorrhaging and it was cold and she didn't have a coat and she was almost sure she was going to miss her tram.

She knew whose fault this was.

Learn more about this author, Ben Winsor.
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