The Folded Man by Matt Hill Page A

cameras like a moron. The epaulettes say official business, council most likely. Bloody pissing down outside. Rain on the tarmac comes across the speakers like hard static.
    Name’s Kenneth, Mr –
    Kenneth?
    From the North West Ambulance Trust.
    Day we on?
    Um, Monday sir. You’ ve a skin appointment with Dr Abbas at the CHU. Ten AM.
    Sorry?
    My name’s Kenneth, Brian. I’m with the North West Ambulance Trust.
    I’m not in, says Brian. He clicks to wide-angle outside. Kenneth’s big old pig sitting there, turning over. This one’s a tracked field cart with a red cross and a red crescent up its side. Really heavy weather. Probably the wettest in weeks.
    Sir –
    I told you bastards I don’ t speak to any of you ’cept Diane, and she’ s the sharpest pain in my arsehole as it is. Take me for a bloody mug?
    Sir –
    Plus I don’ t recall any appointments, and if I had any, Diane would’ve showed up first.
    But sir, I –
    Buzz off, will you? Take that bastard uniform and your tractor and hop it.
    Diane Kadam has been deported, Brian.
    You what?
    Seems her husband was funding ideals and nasty ­ideas the council don’t tolerate.
    Brian stares –
    I’m your case officer now.
    â€“
    Monday, bloody Monday.
    Â 
    The pig’s ride falls on the wrong side of smooth. Brian sits up front, Kenneth driving. In the back, a tin rolls from top to tail, sticking on old spilt liquids or pinging off the seat fixtures when they hang a sharp corner.
    These tractors do nowt for your piles, Brian says. Nowt in it for any of us. Gets right on my tits. Can’t smoke. Can’t eat. Probably can’t soil yourself in here case the council cries foul. And you’re all calling this a bloody ambulance now, are you?
    Two miles in, and Kenneth’s patient smile is wearing thin.
    Big boys don’t cry, Kenneth says. These half-tracks did their time when we needed them – seems a waste to give up on the old dears now.
    Just saying, goes Brian. Mess they’ve made of our roads.
    Rivers of blood need their mops, Brian.
    You’d know, would you?
    I saw my share.
    Well, like I meant it. Just saying.
    If you don’t like it, you could join the emigrants and shoot east for the warm.
    That right? And get myself cancers for bothering?
    Just an idea wasn’t it. If it’s bad skin you’ve got –
    Don’t make assumptions. You don’t get out of here on my kind of meal ticket. No job. No work in this place anyway. Specially not for cripples.
    Moan a lot for someone who’s so looked after, don’t you? Used to have pubs open all day for people like you.
    What the hell do you know about me or what I think?
    Just think it can’t be much worse with the sun on your back is all. Damp gets you in the chest, doesn’t it?
    Brian thinks of home. The meat for legs and the ­chances lost. His Thursdays without Diane –
    Life without Diane – without that brolly shaken up his wall. Back to bare bulbs and tinnies for breakfast –
    The rest of his life with this tail for a bottom half.
    Everything gets me in the chest, Brian says, with his eyes filling. Everything.
    He looks down at the meat. At the absolute principals of cause and effect. He sniffs.
    Now you want a nice conversation, Ken, you let a bastard like me smoke out your windows.
    But Kenneth shakes his head. Eyes front. Not on your nelly, sunshine. Not by the hairs on my chinny-chin-chin.
    Then get me in this doctor’s face and on my way.
    In the chest.
    Â 
    Ashton, anyway. They get there after a fashion.
    Ashton is the town that turned into the city’s main market district after what they did to Salford. It’s deathly quiet except on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, when the buses roll in and the day’s best deals roll out. Ashton’s the town that rose from a fire that gutted everything in 2004. Ashton, a monument to the city and the way it