You might call me a successful entrepreneur, or businessman. A lot of people would envy my position. I am in my late fifties, and you could call me a career-minded individual. My name is Tristram Foley. It used to be Gary, but Gary is a dull name. I didn’t change it officially, just told new people I met, and they knew no different. I’m not the most attractive person you’ll ever meet, but certainly not the worst. When I see myself in a mirror, I think maybe a seven out of ten. Some days an eight. I’m the type of person who looks like a doctor, or a bank manager. Slightly portly, balding, and always wearing a suit. I’ve spent most of my life in some form of work.

I was a management consultant director at an international banking firm, advising clients on all kinds of financial matters, such as pensions, savings, wealth management, and was in line to be appointed to the board of directors. I am not really one to tell of my successes. The fact that I was an accounts clerk at a medical institution. Or a senior business partner in an insurance firm. No, I’m not one to boast, but sometimes I just can’t help it. As you could probably guess, my CV would run into many pages, and knowing my bank account runs into six figures would make many, many people very jealous.

I can understand why, and who do I have to thank for where I am today? Of course, my parents.

So where are they now?

They are rotting in a care-home, and d’you know what?

Good riddance. I hate my parents. I really despise them …and yet, I love them.

You see, I was an only child, and what happens to those who are the only offspring? They become mollycoddled. Wrapped in cotton wool, the absolute focus of parent’s attention. Shaped and molded into the vision my parents wanted me to be.

I know what’s best for you. You must do well in school. Pass your exams. Do as you’re told. Don’t get in with the wrong crowd. Don’t talk to strangers. Do. Not. Talk. To. Strangers. They can be odd, and they can be idiots, and they could lead you astray. Fill your head with all sorts of rubbish. So when you’re in school, do not mix with scruffy children, or loud-mouths, or ones with spots because you don’t know where they’ve been.

When you pass all your exams, you will then go on to higher education, where you will study for all the top qualifications so you can apply for any job. A good job with a high salary. Maybe move into management positions, that sort of area.

We don’t want you coming out of university with something to embarrass us. If somebody asked us, what does your son do? Imagine the shame of telling them he’s on benefits. He stacks shelves. He’s a cleaner. He’s a traffic warden. No, we know what’s best. You need to earn good money in this world, or you’ll end up in a whirlpool like most other people, getting sucked down in the dregs of society. Having to scrape a living just to get by, to pay rent, to put food on the table, to pay bills, borrow money, pay interest, pay off loans. No son, that’s not for you. You do well with your education and life will be so much easier.

You’ve got to work for it though. So get your head down and pass those exams.

So I did. I was a good boy, and did exactly as I was told.

It’s a brave child indeed, who can defy their parents.

I was a model pupil, and I received straight A’s in all subjects, except physical education, where I received a B plus. Dad wasn’t entirely happy about that, but it was okay.

So it was onto uni, where I discovered my passion for music. Classical music mainly, and in particular the clarinet. I learned how to play, and joined the university orchestra, and told my parents that that’s the direction I wanted to go, to be a classical musician.

Silly me, I should have known. My parents balked at the idea. A musician! son, there’s no money there. It’s not going to pay the bills. Only the lucky few get to make money out of something like that. You’re going to need a stable job, then you can take it up as a hobby, but you need security behind you first. Don’t forget, we’re your parents, and we know what’s best for you.

Well, that was that. They shattered my dreams of becoming a classical musician, so I sold the clarinet I had bought, and knuckled down into being what they wanted me to be. When I left higher education, I got a job in a staffing agency, providing temporary workers for various firms.

Dad wasn’t exactly too pleased, but neither was he unhappy. That’s not bad, he said. For now, but you know you can do better. Onwards and upwards. Then I went to work for an estate agent as a sales negotiator, and received an Audi Quattro company car. My parents were ‘quite’ happy.

You could say I was one of those people whose life is their job. Who, in their enforced spare-time, think of nothing but work. On holiday abroad, ringing the office back in England to check everything was okay, reading and responding to work-related emails on my laptop. Perhaps that was one reason I never sought out a companion. A girlfriend or wife. They would divert my attention when my attention needed to be on becoming successful, would want my time when I needed to be earning.

Besides, I didn’t want to get involved with all that icky nonsense that couples get up to.

Plus kids…absolutely not. I had to focus on myself and pursue my ambition.

It was then that I realised that mum and dad were going nowhere. They were the resilient type, would probably reach their nineties or older before they died, and there was probably about twenty years to go before they got there.

Twenty years where I could be playing clarinet in orchestras all over the world. My dream realised.

Yet, they would not let me out from under their wings, even though I was fifty-seven years old.

So what could I do? How could I break free from their grip?

Murder was out of the question. Police didn’t take too kindly to that, and they would shatter my dreams even further. Playing in a prison orchestra was, well, extremely unrealistic.

So how could I get rid of my parents and realise my dreams? Quit my job and take up music.

Poison.

If I could slowly poison them, then maybe that would work. So during breaks at work, or when I could, I did a deep dive into the depths of the internet to find out what poison I could use that could be untraceable, or at least not get back to me.

It took a while. There’s a lot of nonsense there. A lot of waffle. A lot of stuff even I didn’t understand. Scientific jargon only a small amount of chemistry geeks would know, but nothing I could use. Seems the internet is not the haven of information that it’s made out to be.

It was when I was at a colleague’s leaving party. Well, I say party. More like just a get together in a nearby pub. The type where all the staff get an invite, and only a few actually show up. No one cared too much about this person. Meticulous, dour, with an air of superiority.

I decided this time I would go along. I was having trouble thinking of ways to off my parents, so thought I would show willing, and stay for an hour or so after work.

Another colleague brought along his teenage son who sat most of the time slumped on his mobile phone, and of course, at some point, the attention comes to me.

So Tristram, what have you been up to?

By this time I’d had half a shandy, but I was still sober. Sort of. Enough to know how to say what I said.

‘Well, I’ve been thinking of murdering my parents. I’m thinking of poison, but I don’t know what to use,’ I said with a smile on my face, and everybody laughed, and of course, I said it in such a way that I was obviously joking. To them I was, but I was desperate for any methods.

Without hesitation, it was the teenage boy who had been dragged here reluctantly that said:

“Rhubarb leaves. Boil them in a kettle. That’ll remove oxalic acid, then put it in their tea, as it’s tasteless. Enough of it should kill them after a few hours”. The others all looked at him for a few seconds, then carried on with their so-called merriment. Clearly, he was joking.

Right?

So I decided to try it. Every Sunday I go to the house for a visit, being a good son. I go around to update them on what I’ve been up to.

Yes, they are proud of me, but not to the level they really wanted. Like if I was an Olympic athlete that had won silver, they would probably say: ‘Well done son, we’re proud of you…but, it’s not quite gold is it?’

At one point in every visit there would come the time when I would go into the kitchen and make them tea. Perfect time to boil the leaves in the kettle and pour it into their cups.

The leaves were easy to smuggle in, but how many to use. One leaf? Five? I didn’t want to kill them, just have them removed from my life so I can truly spread my wings.

I decided on two leaves. Not too many, and not too few.

So I made them their brew and took the steaming cups into the living room and watched them sip away as I told them how I interpreted the statistical data regarding the company’s potential performance on the stock exchange, and if you must know, I don’t think it would fare too well.

I wondered if I would need to build up the poison in their systems over time. Watch them fade away.

Turns out though, the poison works straight away, and I sat there and watched as my parents coughed and spluttered, retched and vomited, doubled up with stomach pains, trying to breathe, and them both suffering slow haemorrhages as they twisted around on the living room floor.

I held my mobile phone in hand, in no rush to call for an ambulance, but, knew I had to, so I did, and that was that. Along came a whole load of hassle, of paperwork, of police questions, suspicion, and downright sheer annoyance. Red-tape nonsense. Fill this form in, make this appointment, sign here, sign here, sign here…because it turns out the oxalic acid, along with the potassium in the leaves, in my mother anyway, led to fluid build-up, and pressure on the brain, leading to cell damage, which is similar to what happened to my father. His haemorrhage starved his brain of oxygen, leading to the eroding of brain cells, including those of memory, so he doesn’t recognise me anymore.

Now they are both in the same care-home, and the ironic thing is, neither of them know each other. They’re strangers in there. So that was an extra little bonus for me, plus the fact that I have access to all their money, so it’s all being paid for with their savings, and one day I went in and looked my dad square in the face, and you know what? He seemed to look right through me. Didn’t know who I was.

“Now I can realise my dreams, Dad,” I said, “you will no longer hold me back, so goodbye, and fuck-you”. I looked at my mother as well. There was some flicker of recognition in her eyes, but neither of them could talk, so it didn’t matter, and I left that place with the intention of never going back.

I was free.

I had enough money to get by, so quit my job and bought a clarinet. I knew that I could find work easily if need be, and probably go back to my job even if I was replaced. Basically, I’m convinced that if I told the boss I wanted to come back, whoever my replacement was would be sacked on the spot.

So I practiced the clarinet. Turns out I picked it back up quite easy, but what is not easy is finding groups or places to play. Finding opportunities is quite difficult. I went back to the university to try and join them, and was given rather short shrift, told that I needed to be a student or hired in through an agency. I can’t just come in and join, even though I used to be a student there.

I was very tempted to write a letter to a solicitor about that, but instead wrote a stern review online.

Still, I was out of options, until I found an amateur classical music group that met weekly, who already had someone who played clarinet, but the group was quite versatile, and each member could turn their hand to any instrument. Well, I say could, they at least had a go. I tried the harp, and the saxophone, and they were okay, but I stuck with the clarinet mostly, and after a few months of going to the group, I was invited to join them on excursions out to various venues. Playing outside a supermarket for charity. Playing for visitors getting off a cruise ship down at a terminal, and in parks at various events and festivals. Nothing what I was truly expecting. I wanted to play the bigger theatres. I wanted to go abroad, to wow audiences and earn plaudits and praise for my talents.

Until it hit me.

The realisation struck me as if I’d just been slapped. They were pipe dreams. Dreams that were very unrealistic, even though I’d taken several steps in their direction.

You see, the thing was…

Was this really what I wanted to do with my life? What did I really aspire to? Playing classical music to big arenas was a nice dream, but not as a career. More a hobby. Something to do on the weekend.

I asked myself, was my heart really in it?

I thought about it for a while, until my brain handed me the answer.

No.

What I really yearned for, was to be a successful businessman.

Turns out my parents were right. They knew what was best, correct, and right for me. They always did. Had my interests at heart.

I wanted to please them, to make them proud, but I think I failed.

Even now, all I want to do for them is obey…obey…obey.