www.matthew-lambert.co.uk

The boy watched the man trundle down the street. As he watched, the boy felt a growing uneasiness - this man was large, very large, so large that it made the boy feel sorry for this man. The man, mid-stride, stopped his advance down the road suddenly and turned to a shop window. The man stood and gazed for a short while and then without warning turned again and carried on along his way. He passed the boy who followed the man's progress for a while and then the boy, curiosity pricked, went and inspected the shop window for himself. In the shop window the boy found many mannequins elegantly posing, showing of their false feminine credentials and the desirable clothes with a bravado that only comes with a manufacturer's stamped approval. On the left of the window display there hung a seven-foot tall photograph of a woman in a bikini, her blue eyes staring straight back out of the shop frontage straight into the boy's face. Her black hair tumbled down onto her shoulders and her skin was impossibly clear; She was so beautiful. The boy stood, and as if the woman was really there, looked into her eyes to see what emotions lay within her. He started to think about the man and how a man like that could never possess the love of a woman such as this. He felt so sad. He imagined how that lonely the man he had seen must be.

That night the boy went to sleep with a heavy-heart, wondering why the world was so cruel.

The man put his arm around his wife giving her a goodnight kiss . Tomorrow they would both return to the shop to see the very fetching dress he had spotted that day to see if it was to her taste. He slept well, content knowing that his wife loved him and that he loved her. They lay entwined in each others' arms blissfully unaware of the world, the troubles it contained, and the restless boy on the other side of town who had imagined but not known.