Wrong number #4

“Con­science, my old chum, my bosom buddy, my pal, my con­fid­ant, my … so how the devil are you? And more to the point, where in the name of all that’s holy have you been, eh? Eh? Eh? I have been doing some frankly sick­en­ingly depraved and despic­able things, many of which would make your eyes water, and have I heard from you? Well, have I? Have I buf­falo, that’s what. You never write, you never call, you never email. I even tried look­ing you up on Face­book. But noth­ing. Not a word. So I sat here — sat, lay, sus­pen­ded myself upside down from the ward­robe, and many other pos­i­tions besides — indul­ging in pleas­ures of the flesh whilst ingest­ing vari­ous highly hal­lu­cino­genic sub­stances. The kind of beha­viour that would not only make my poor father’s hair curl, but would undoubtedly cause it to fall out, and yet you remained silent. Unusu­ally mute, by your stand­ards. No mur­mured whis­pers of san­ity, reason and right­eous­ness to set me back on the straight and nar­row — don’t inter­rupt, I said — so it’s hardly sur­pris­ing that I now find myself infec­ted with all man­ner of … mother? Mother? Sorry about that, you soun­ded rather faint and pathetic. Under­stand­able, yes. In the cir­cum­stances, yes. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there today. Feel­ing a bit under the weather, that’s right. A ter­rible cough. Splut­ter­ing up stuff. But how was it? Did you all man­age to give father a good send-off? And the vicar men­tioned the money that dear old dad raised for the local cricket club? Oh, that’s good. Good. Yes, well, it was prob­ably a blessed release at his age. Did he suf­fer much at the end?”