The King of Vienna

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I called her Vienna, because I pretended she meant nothing to me, but that hadn’t stopped me from writing a song about her and warbling it at the top of my voice in strangled, desperate tones anytime I could get a way with it. Okay, so I hadn’t written a song about her and I had never thought of calling her Vienna until now, but I had pretended she meant nothing to me, when really I was gaga about her. I’d had to pretend she meant nothing to me because she was, in the words of another song, my best friend’s girlfriend. Only unlike that song I didn’t even have the consolation that she used to be mine and I knew she would never be.

Well not strictly true, she’d been mine in my imagination but even there it was a tempestuous love/ hate relationship. I suppose I’d been protecting myself from heartbreak even in my make believe world.

I’d loved everything about her, the way she seemed to waltz when she walked, the way she made heads turn when she walked in the room, the way she made people laugh while keeping a straight face and the twinkle that had set up home in her eye. I’d had to watch as my best friend kissed those tender lips and ran his fingers through her golden hair. I suffered as saw those eyes light up when he walked into the room. I began to hate him as much as I adored her. I was regularly daydreaming that he was run over by a bus and I would be the one to mop up Vienna’s tears. Come on, don’t look at me like that, we’ve all done it, haven’t we?

Anyway, one day on platform 7 waiting for the Barry train my dream came true. We were larking about, play fighting when oh god, Neville slipped just as the Penarth train was coming in. It wasn’t going very fast but it wasn’t a fair contest, his head made a hell of a noise as it smashed against the train.

I was mortified, more heartbroken than Vienna. It was her that was mopping my tears not the other way around. She’d lost a teenage love affair that deep down she knew wouldn’t last.  I’d lost my lifelong best friend.

The funeral was a nightmare, not only because of the wailing of Neville’s mother or the sickening, heartbreaking reality when the coffin slid away but because at the end of it all the police handcuffed me and took me away too.

Damn you CCTV, they showed me the video and to be fair I was banged to rights. What I thought had been a subtle little push, appeared on the grainy screen as an aggressive shove, proving that the death of the king of Vienna had been no accident.

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