Bye-bye, freedom – she now bothers me night and day
Jem Clarke is in his very, very early fifties, is five foot zero inches tall and has never left the family home in Cleethorpes, which he shares with his parents... My friend Demi has recently lost two cats. Now it’s cheaper for me to visit her – her loss has cut the tuna-steak admission fee. So I’ve been using her house as a bolthole from my caring duties. Otherwise I am shackled to my mother by her ‘care’ wristwatch – or Old Batphone – which vibrates whenever she presses her witchy pendant. She buzzes it for pointless reasons: ‘Turn the fox garden ornament 45 degrees so it shows less of its bottom’; ‘Find your father and tell him I don’t need him.’ Demi’s house is near enough to mean I can physically see my own (well, my parents’ own). If mother sets it on fire in some cigar and cashmere...
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