It starts with a swell of uncertainty that rises in the gut, an unmistakable tumble of nerves that announces itself in every heartbeat.

Like fishermen who cast out their lines and look to the dark foreboding sky and troubled seas, or the loser who sits at the roulette table, his kid’s college fund converted into plastic discs rotating in sweaty palms, one can only hope for intervention, a dash of luck. Anything to make the next few moments bearable and deny the misfortune that is soon to befall. But nothing comes of it. You’re a bird feather tumbling on the winds of chance.

When she screams from her orthopaedic chair that he’s a blind fucking fool with shit for brains, dark clouds descend over me once more, the ocean in my gut,unruly.

Above my head, size ten feet press down heavily on each floorboard in what was once their bedroom. If not for the plasterboard and wooden joist dulling the sound, I’m sure I would hear my father’s venomous mutterings between every creak and moan of wood too.

“It’s next to the wicker cabinet!!” screams my mother at the ceiling. In return, the deep stifled voice of my father presents itself to her like some Greek God, “Like fuck it is!!!”

“I swear to Christ!!! I know it’s there!! Are you looking next to the wicker cabinet?!!!”

“YES!!! And the fucking thing isn’t there!!” he screams back.

“I’m coming up…”

My mother’s body mass is much heavier than her bones can take, more than most bones can take, so great work is made of leaving the chair. I watch for a while, disgusted with myself for not helping her, but equally disgusted with her melodramatic and clearly overstated manoeuvres.

“Doesn’t bother him… that my feet are… hurting today, does it?”

Taxing as it seems, she remains unwavering in her attempt to leave the chair’s stronghold. This I have to admire.

To stop myself from telling her how silly she looks, I say “I’ll go.”

Upstairs my father is lifting up bottles of perfume, my mother’s freshly laundered underwear, and little trinket boxes fashioned from silk.

“She’s got so much SHIT on this table,” he says, “I’m surprised she can find her bastard reflection in the mirror!“

Next to his hand, I see it, the small digital camera my mother asked my father to find over ten minutes ago, the same one he should have brought downstairs, so I could download their holiday photographs onto the computer. This is something they find too challenging to learn off their own backs. Neither of them work, and they pretty much do nothing all week other than bicker and fight at each other, yet anything that involves lifting, or “new technology”, well, that’s put aside for when I visit.

“It’s here, “ I say picking up the camera.

My father’s face is plagued with rage.

“What the fuck!!! How the fucking bastard hell is that near the twatting wicker basket?!”

I shrug and make my way out of the bedroom. On the landing, I hear my mother climbing the stairs, her footsteps putting to test the wood beneath. When she reaches the top, her face is redder than a baboon’s arse.

“Where was it?” she asks, her voice more breath than words.

“On the table,” I say.

I hear my father approach the door to the bedroom. “AH!! Come up have we? Good! Now you can tell me why the bastard thing wasn’t where you said it was!”

My mother moves sluggishly past me and I think twice about following her, but for fear of an almighty massacre, I decide it best to keep an eye on them both. In the bedroom, my father is hitting the space on the table where the camera was.

“Here!! That’s where the fucking thing was!! Right bastard there!!! Now, you tell me, how the fuck was that near the wicker cabinet when the bastard wicker cabinet was all the way over on the opposite end of the twatting table?!!!”

Bending down slightly, my mother taps a smaller wicker cabinet under that table, directly below the spot my father has been hitting for the pass thirty seconds. He looks down at it, his hands shaking, his breathing turned rapid.

“That’s the wicker cabinet, you dumb fuck,” says my mother in childish mockery.

His hands reach up to his hair, and what little remains there, he runs fingers through. For a few moments, it sounds like he’s talking in tongues. None of his words make sense, his syntax unrecognisable. Then he turns to my mother and lets rip, “YOU’RE FUCKING TELLING ME I WAS SUPPOSED TO KNOW THE TWATTING DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THAT WICKER CABINET FROM THAT OTHER ONE?!!! IF YOU DIDN’T HAVE SO MUCH SHIT ON YOUR DRESSER I MIGHT HAVE STOOD HALF A CHANCE!!! LOOK!!” He picks up a picture frame containing my wife and I, then an old picture of him and my mother with fake smiles. After that, he moves on to an address book and shopping receipts. Then medication bottles and jewellery boxes. Each one he picks up, he slams down rocking the table on its legs.

“If you break any of them, I’ll never forgive you!!” screams my mother.

“Like I care!!”

“You’re a child!”

“You’re a scruffy pig!”

“Bastard, you know my weight isn’t my fault!!”

“Who said anything about your weight?!!”

“You called me a pig!! Are you a liar as well as a bastard?!!”

“I’m neither you fucking witch! I called you a pig because you’re messy!!!”

“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this…”

“Here comes the waterworks!”

“Help me Danny, help me get away from that monster!!!”

“I’m the fucking monster?!! That’s rich!”

My mother grabs my arm. It seems her legs have become much worse since all her screaming. I’m guiding her to the door when she looks at me, her eyes magnified by tears, her chin pinched together with the strain of emotion. “He doesn’t care about me, or you, that bastard!”

“Don’t poison the boy’s mind!!” cries my father from behind us.

“I don’t need to, he already knows what you’re like.”

“Fuck this!!”

My father pushes past us both and almost runs down the stairs.

“That’s right, run off like you usually do. Don’t give a monkey’s shit that I might want to go out later!”

After the front door slams shut, and my mother is back in her chair, I go to work downloading the pictures onto the computer. A few minutes after the transfer, I open the first picture and see an azure sea belonging to a strange country. The next: a warm sandy beach punctuated with pretty blue and white parasols. It is then I see a picture of my mother and father; they’re sitting on wicker garden chairs, thick verdant grass crawling along the sides of their feet. A table lit by a single candle adds warmth to their already sunburnt faces. Nothing appears different from any other picture I’ve seen of them, except for a small gesture: my father’s hand is held over my mother’s, a simple touch unbroken by restraint. In all the pictures of them together, I never once saw such affection from either of them. And part of me, for whatever reason, wondered what actually happened before that picture was taken to make that moment so intimate.

I pondered on this all the way home, and again when I finally slipped into bed with my wife. To this day, I have never asked about the picture. To call upon a reason from either of them, I think, may spoil the illusion of the tenderness portrayed. For me, nothing means more than the simple fact it exists, and that within that picture they look happy, if only for a moment.