Read A Cupboard Full of Coats for Free Online

failure it presented every time.
    He could not get out of the car fast enough when I pulled up outside my house. Still tangled up inside the seat belt, stumbling in his haste, he leapt for freedom the moment I turned the ignition off. Then he ran up the garden path. By the time I caught up with him he had ripped three or four heads off the crocuses planted along the thin bed that ran the length of the path from the gate to the front door.
    ‘Ben, don’t do that please,’ I said as he started tearing off another. Ignoring me, he yanked it off anyway, adding it to the collection in his other hand.
    ‘Will you bloody stop!’ I said.
    When he looked at me, those enormous eyes were filled with tears. He held out his hand. His voice was tiny. ‘These are for you,’ he said.
    And I looked at the small, fresh, squashed bouquet held out to me, and for a second I could have taken his gift and smiled, then cuddled and whispered to my son, Forgive me. I love you.
    But the words that came out of my mouth instead were: ‘Great! Why don’t you kill every single flower you can see?’ And I looked away, into my handbag, searching for the keys as he opened his hand and let them fall, then rubbed his palms together to dry them.
    I opened the front door and held it wide for him to enter, following him inside and closing it behind me with a deep sigh. He walked into the living room, stopped, gasped, then looked at me. I passed him. Inside the room, Lemon was sitting on the settee where he had been watching TV. He was wearing his trousers and a string vest, with the maroon dressing gown slung casually over the lot. He looked comfortable. Too comfortable.
    ‘I forgot to say, Ben, I’ve got a friend staying with me.’
    ‘Is he your boyfriend?’ Ben asked.
    ‘No, he’s…’ – my man friend is what came to mind – ‘…a family friend. Lemon, this is Ben.’
    ‘Howdy,’ Lemon said to Ben, slowly scratching his head with a single forefinger.
    ‘Hello, Uncle Lemon,’ Ben replied in the monotone of a child answering the class register, and I wondered who had taught him that old-fashioned rule, to call adults ‘Uncle’ or ‘Auntie’ out of respect, and whether he had begun that lesson by calling some woman ‘Auntie’ in his father’s home.
    Lemon held his hand out and Ben took and shook it. Then he started to laugh.
    ‘Hey! Who give you joke?’ Lemon asked.
    ‘Lemon’s a funny name.’
    ‘That’s for sure.’
    ‘I don’t like lemons. When I lick them my eyes go squeezy squeezy.’
    ‘Next time, dip it in sugar first. Then taste.’
    ‘Is that how you eat them?’
    ‘Always.’
    ‘Lemon likes lemons,’ Ben said and laughed again.
    Lemon looked at me. ‘I see there’s more than one comedian in the family,’ he said.
    Though I could not think of a single joke I had cracked with Lemon, I gave him a tight smile and answered, ‘So it seems.’
    Ben walked over to the settee and was about to sit down. ‘Come on, Ben. You need to come upstairs with me so I can change you.’
    ‘Are you going now?’ Ben asked.
    ‘Not as far as I know,’ Lemon said. ‘I’ll be right hereso when you come back.’
    Then, as if he had just been given the best news he had heard in a long, long time, like maybe his team had just scored the goal that would assure them the cup, Ben punched the air and grinned.
    ‘Yeah!’ he said.
    If Lemon had been wearing a skirt, Ben would have been up underneath it. He followed Lemon around like he was a beloved relative who after having been missing for years and presumed dead, had miraculously been found alive and restored to the bosom of his family.
    The two of them played with their lunch, chicken nuggets, ketchup and chips – the only meal Ben was guaranteed to eat a bit of – as if they were both five-year-olds. Lemon laughed his head off at everything Ben said and, inspired by this, Ben hardly paused between words for breath.
    I listened as he told Lemon about Max in his class whose