Posted by Monica Cardenas on 20 May 2022, in News, Showcase, Writers

By Laurence Kershook

"Payback" was selected as the finalist of the 2022 Byte Shorts Showcase. 

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I clearly remember that night, when Libby first explained to me how useless I am. ‘You’re fucking useless,’ she said. ‘And you always were.’ Simple as that.

Funny, she never mentioned it before. I mean before we met these new friends at my firm’s Christmas do: Bert, a George Clooney lookalike with a cosmic sales record; and Maureen, a human resources consultant and life coach. We hit it off straight away, even though, as they told us, they had a detached house in the neighbourhood’s poshest street, while we live on the local council estate. They even invited us to their New Year’s Eve party. It was blinding! Everyone was pissed, and going round kissing everyone else! But then Libby shoves this bloody lump of coal at me and tells me to get outside and walk it round the house and bring it back in. And I say, ‘What? No fucking way!’ So she freezes me out for the rest of the night and for the next week.

Eventually, though, things do get better. Until one night Bert, driving home in triumph from our Salesman of The Year dinner, rams his Range Rover into a lorry and Maureen’s killed instantly. Naturally, he’s shattered. And Libby’s heartbroken. But me, I can see that he’s banjaxed by the sheer unfairness of it. Because I understand Bert’s sort: they believe the bad things in life just shouldn’t happen to them. I know that he’d only ever wanted our friendship to remind him how far he’d come, compared to people like us. So now he wanted a payback.

In no time at all, he’s dining out on his tragedy. Literally. Every night now, he’s eating with us. And he sobs as he tells us how much he misses Maureen. And when Libby slides the tissues across to him, I see their fingers touch. 

Soon, she’s stroking his hands. And rubbing his back. But purely as a caring, sympathetic friend would. Which I’m too fucking useless to understand. Which is what she told me that night, just before leaving me and moving in with him. 

I don’t know why they locked me up. They know Bert was lucky the first time not to get done for drunk driving or even manslaughter; and stupid to get rat-arsed and total his Range Rover again, and this time to top himself and also Libby. 

I keep thinking about that New Year’s Eve and that bloody lump of coal. The last thing Libby said to me was: ‘You’re so fucking useless, you wouldn’t even do that one little thing for me!’ 

So that, really, is why she left me. Not for being useless. No, she went off with Bert, and to her death, on account of that little lump of coal. And honest, never mind how many times they ask, I never went near that Range Rover. And anyway, even if I did I couldn’t have done anything to it. Not me. No, I’m far too fucking useless.

Laurence Kershook is a novelist and author of The Broygus, a history of a Jewish East End family torn apart by events spanning three-quarters of the twentieth century and one family member’s determination to see the hurts healed and the conflicts laid to rest.