When he was nine years old, Jake Townsend woke up to find his father gone and his mother sitting at the kitchen table, drinking. When he asked, she simply said ‘your father has left us for another woman’. Until then, Jake hadn’t given any thought to whether either of his parents was unhappy. He couldn’t remember a time they really argued. They had disagreements, like most people, but no knock-down drag-out fights like some of his friend’s parents had. By the time he was eleven, his mother was going out on the weekends, getting drunk, and coming home for him to take care of her. By the time he was thirteen, it no longer excited him to undress his mother and put her to bed. It had become just another job for him to do, like taking out the trash. But his life and attitude changed in his last year of high school when he met Carol, a striking girl who sat next to him in homeroom. Thus began his first love affair…
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