Dollhouse

FLASH FICTION:IT WAS Joe, him and his wee girl. He made the house for her when she was at school, something to do now that he was on the dole.

His da built ships but there’s none of that now, so he built this dollhouse, out of sheets of wood. It was modelled on his own, his family house, his father’s house here in the docks.

It started as a joke. We were just drinking, having a few cans in his garage when Joe left to go get her from school. He had the house packed into a box for her to find in the morning, the furniture was separate. He had the wee bits in different boxes.

Billy said it as a joke and then we stopped and thought and all laughed. “What’s a Belfast House without a mural on the gable?” That was it; we had the house out and in an hour we had King Billy and his great white horse on the gable wall. We copied the tattoo Billy had on his arm. I can draw a bit and John’s not bad. It was good, if I say so myself. We slipped it into the box, loose like, so the paint wouldn’t smudge, and then left before he came back from the school run.

But Joe never called. Not that night or the next day. We knew we had gone too far but nobody would ring him because whoever called would have to take the blame and we agreed, as we fumbled and scratched ourselves and smoked fags, that we were all in it together. We all agreed that Joe would think it funny but Sarah was different. We never drank at their place when she was around. She was different at the start but then came the baby and the wedding and Joe having no work – it all changed her, but Joe, sure Joe was the same.

He didn’t come to the club on Friday night or call to watch the game on Saturday. We started to realise that he was our routine, his house every day, his garage for a smoke and a few cans. Without it, we had to think, the slow reality of no work, no prospects, no future.

So, we decided, we needed to go to see him together. We waited until Monday when we knew she would be at work. I rang the bell, we heard somebody move inside but nobody answered. I went around the back but the garage was locked. Billy put his face up to the window but he could not see anybody inside. There were birthday cards over the fireplace but no sign of the dollhouse.

We walked away, down the narrow lanes, out to the docks. The gable walls are painted in shipyard scenes here ready for the Titanic Museum opening.

We didn’t look up but walked on with our hoods pulled up as if the great shipbuilders were looking down in silence and judging us.

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