He was just a large, stuffed chimpanzee with an endearing grin, that’s all he was.
He had always been popular, with the whole family. Of course, he was hers. The six-year-old daughter who had chosen him when she first saw him in the shop. This was all well and good until that day… It had started in the morning. His wife was walking their daughter to school. He was going in to work late. He had a meeting with the boss where he had to justify his request for a pay rise. He’d been going over what he would say in his head when he took the monkey and set it up in front of him. He sat practicing his lines for several minutes. It didn’t go well. The toy just sat there grinning. Cursing, he put it back in her room.
Not long after he had left for the bus, his wife retuned. She had a meeting of her own. The lady she cleaned for had called to ask her to go round for a talk. She knew what it was about. The day before she had accidentally nudged a precious little figurine off the shelf while dusting; it had smashed into so many tiny pieces. Naturally, she had left a note apologising. That was all she could do. The house-owner didn’t sound at all happy when she called. She didn’t want to lose her job, they were struggling as it was. Over and over, she thought about what she would say. Eventually, she took the monkey and placed it in front of her. She went through the whole scene several times before bursting into tears. She pushed the toy under her arm, picked up a tissue and put it back in her daughter’s room.
She found her daughter bawling her eyes out at the front gate when she collected her from school. She had broken up with her best friend and they had said really horrible things to each other. All the way home her mother tried to console her, but she wouldn’t stop crying. At home, the girl just wanted to go to her room and be left alone. Her mother figured this was the best thing for her and left her undisturbed. The monkey, held very tightly, heard all about it… several times over.
It was around three in the morning when the monkey climbed out of the girl’s bedroom window. He dropped to the ground and made his way carefully along the street until he got to the building site. He climbed into a large skip and buried himself down, as deeply as he could.
He didn’t know when the skip was due to be collected or where it would go, but anything was better than what he was leaving behind.