I listened, there in the Nag’s Head in the flickering light of the Christmas tree, the glimmer of the tinsel, while Maurice told his story. And the strange thing was, once he’d told me the truth, it was like I’d known all along.
I sent Joe a message as soon as Maurice had left and stared at my screen for a few seconds, waiting for the little blue ticks to appear alongside it, but they didn’t. This wasn’t unusual – he could have been in a meeting, or in court, or even, for all I knew, at the detention centre speaking to Wesley. It was still frustrating – I needed to speak to him, to pass on the information Maurice had entrusted to me. But there was nothing I could do; I could only wait.
The pub was quiet: a few people were working; the mums with their babies were enjoying their lattes and date and banana muffins. There was no dominoes game. I suspected there wouldn’t be – not today. Shirley had finished her stocktake and left to take Juan to a physiotherapy appointment. Zoë was in the kitchen, plugged into headphones as she cooked. Drew was hunched over his laptop at a corner table, so I fetched myself a glass of water and joined him.
‘I’ve set up a crowdfunder,’ he said. ‘That Heart of the Community charity your mate recommended says that kind of thing – small donations from individuals, people running marathons with sponsorship, cake sales and shit – won’t raise much. Not nearly as much as we need. But it’s a start, right?’
‘It’s a start,’ I agreed.
He pushed the computer over to me and I looked at the page. ‘Save our local pub’ he’d written, and he’d included a load of information about the Nag’s Head that made it sound far more of an asset of community value than it really was. Already, someone had donated twenty pounds.
‘That was me, to be fair,’ Drew said. ‘I had to check it was working, didn’t I?’
I felt a surge of affection for my brother, whose only income came from working in the pub. But then, so did mine – I supposed I’d find myself donating twenty pounds too, another tiny grain of sand on the mountain we were going to have to build.
‘And check this out,’ Drew went on, opening the Nag’s Head website.
‘“Upcoming events”,’ I read. ‘“The Nag’s Head inaugural open mic poetry night. Five pounds entry on the door or book your ticket online – this one’s sure to sell out fast. One hundred pounds in prize money for the winning poet.” Poetry? Really? Doesn’t sound like much of a crowd-puller to me.’
‘That’s what you said about the games night. Poetry’s having a moment right now. It’s edgy as fuck. That online magazine I write for sometimes has tripled its mailing list in the past year.’
‘What, to two hundred?’
‘Three and a half thousand, as it happens. Don’t knock it.’
‘Twenty-second of December. That’s two weeks away. Reckon you’ll be able to get your masterpiece written in time?’
‘Done it already. Loads of them, in fact. It’s just a question of deciding which one’s most likely to bring the house down and win me the hundred quid first prize.’
I laughed. It was typical of my brother to be so casually self-assured, totally undaunted by the prospect of standing up in front of what would surely be a tough audience and reciting poetry he’d written – and to assume that there’d be more than about three other people prepared to do the same.
I wished I felt even a fraction of his confidence.
‘Well, clearly you’ve got it all under control.’ Feeling the buzz of an incoming message from my phone, I added, ‘I’m going to take a break. Grab something to eat. Okay?’
But Drew wasn’t listening. He’d already turned back to his screen, where he was promoting the hell out of the poetry night on social media.
I pushed open the door and stepped out into the cold. It was brighter now, but still overcast, and a cutting wind was sending empty crisp packets and crushed Coke cans scudding and rattling along the pavement.
I glanced at my phone, hoping for a reply from Joe, but the alert had been from my Scrabble app. Archie had made his move: QUOTIENT, on a double word score. Instinctively, I glanced through the window of Craft Fever and saw him behind the counter.
I pointed at the screen and gave him a thumbs-up, and he laughed, gesturing to the door for me to come in. There were no customers in the shop – and no Nat either – and I guessed he could do with some company. And, I realised, I could do with some advice. Archie had started his business from scratch; he’d understand the horrible sense of impending failure I was feeling about the pub.
I pushed open the door and stepped into the bright, warm interior, with its smell of malt and honey.
‘Morning!’ Archie stepped around the counter and hugged me. He smelled amazing, too, of whatever aftershave or hair pomade he used – something dry and woody. ‘How’s the day been so far?’
‘A bit rubbish,’ I said. ‘We got the Christmas tree up, at least.’
‘I saw when I opened up this morning. Festive. What can I get you? Coffee? Water? Is it too early for gin?’
‘That’s a tempting offer, but it definitely is. Water would be great.’
He handed me a glass and opened a packet of crisps.
‘Try these. They’re a new thing – black truffle flavour. I guess they might be a bit Marmite, but I love them.’
I took one. ‘Oh my God, that’s amazing. Black truffle crisps – who knew?’
‘What a time to be alive, right? They do a caviar flavour too, but I reckon that might be a bit much. You should get them for the pub – I’ll give you the guy’s card.’
‘Thanks. Only I’m not sure there’s going to be a pub for much longer.’
‘Huh?’
I took another crisp and a gulp of water, and then I poured out the whole story. It was strange – when I’d regaled Heather, Zoë and Drew with the threat of closure from Fabian Flatley and Shirley’s apparent indifference to it all, I’d been factual, even positive, focusing purely on what could be done to keep the business alive. But now, sitting there on the polished church pew next to Archie, I felt only despair.
‘I mean, we’re doing what we can. A crowdfunder, and we’re going to try and launch a community shareholding scheme. But it just seems hopeless. I don’t know if it’s worth even trying.’
Without warning, I felt a massive lump in my throat, and tears stinging my eyes.
‘Shit, Alice.’ Archie leaned over and put his arm around me. ‘Hey, don’t cry.’
I don’t know what it is about those words, but they have the same effect on me, every single time. If I’m in danger of collapsing into a sobbing heap and someone says, ‘Don’t cry,’ and is kind, it sets me off, every time. And it did then.
I found myself burying my face in his soft corduroy shirt, weeping like I’d never stop.
‘Ssssh,’ he murmured. ‘It’s okay. Come on.’
Gently, he helped me to my feet and led me behind the counter and through a door. Through my tears, I saw a small desk with a laptop on it, and something halfway between a biggish armchair and a tiny sofa. A love seat, I guess you’d call it.
‘Can’t have people crying right in my shop front,’ Archie said, his arm still around my shoulders. ‘Bad for business. People would think I’d sold you off beer and refused to refund you.’
I managed a laugh, then sobbed even harder, and Archie sat me down on the love seat and held me close, not seeming to care that I was soaking the front of his rust-coloured shirt with my tears.
‘It’s all going to be okay,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, it’ll be all right. It seems like the worst thing in the world right now, but it’s not. You’ll get through this, Alice. You’re amazing and strong and brilliant. You’ve got this. I promise.’
His words didn’t mean a whole lot – not really, not as words. They were empty things, the only comfort he was able to give. Because what else was he going to do, PayPal me half a million pounds? But that wasn’t the point. He was there: warm and safe and comforting. And I let myself be comforted, rea
lising even while I cried how much I’d needed this release, this outpouring of all the tension and tiredness that had been building up inside me over the past months and had been brought to a head by worry about Maurice, Wesley and the very survival of the Nag’s Head.
I cried until I couldn’t cry any more, and then Archie tore off several squares from the roll of kitchen towel on his desk and handed them to me, waiting silently while I blew my nose and mopped my eyes. It was just my luck, I thought, that whenever I saw Archie I was windblown, tear-stained or swooning like a heroine in a Victorian novel – and then I wondered why on earth I cared about that.
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve got no idea what that was all about.’
‘Quotient was a pretty awesome word, especially on a double. But I never had you as such a sore loser.’
I laughed again, and this time I found I couldn’t stop, any more than I’d been able to stop crying a few minutes before. My laughter set Archie off, and soon the two of us were helpless with giggles, squeezed hip to hip on his comfortable chair. Every now and then one of us would gasp out a silly, random comment and set the other off again.
‘Imagine if you’d got MUZJIKS.’
‘Oh shit, that would have been terrible.’
‘My life wouldn’t have been worth living.’
‘Or ZA. With the Z on a triple.’
‘ZA? What the fuck is ZA?’
‘Slang for pizza. Ninja two-letter word right there.’
‘Oh my God. I’d have had to ring the Samaritans. Who the fuck calls pizza za anyway?’
‘People who win at Scrabble.’
We both doubled over again. Then, just as I was about to point out that he was still twenty points adrift in the game, thanks to my killer play of JESTER in the previous round, and that the best he’d been able to come up with so far in that game was LAGER, we heard the ping of his shop doorbell.
‘Bollocks. Let me get that. Stay here, Alice, I’ll be right back.’
I shook my head. ‘I should go. I’m only on a break.’
We stood up, and as we did I realised again how very close together we’d been.
‘Will you be okay?’ he asked softly.
‘I guess. Yes, of course I will. Thank you for being here.’
He pulled me close again and dropped a kiss on my forehead, so feather-light it was hardly a kiss at all.
‘I’m always here.’
As we emerged back into the shop, I heard myself saying, ‘Cheers, Archie. Appreciate your advice.’
And, after only a second’s hesitation, he replied, ‘My pleasure, Alice. That gin’s the real deal, everyone loves it.’
As I left, wondering uncomfortably why we’d both felt the need to dissemble, I heard him greeting his customer and asking what he could do for her. I hurried back to the Nag’s Head, feeling limp and almost elated, the way you often do after a good cry. But I suspected that it wasn’t just the crying that made me feel that way. It was something else: something dizzyingly exciting and also terrifying, like being at the top of a ski slope waiting to let go and allow gravity to take you to the bottom.
Twenty-Six
It felt really weird to be approaching the Billings Pitt Furzedown office again. I remembered all the other times I’d walked through those doors: gibbering with nerves when I came to be interviewed for the trainee position; thrilled and daunted on my first day; punishingly hungover and wearing odd shoes on the day that Joe had come to my rescue, wrestling with emotions too complicated to face the day after Gordon had made me a job offer. And, of course, any number of other days, too ordinary to remember at all, once it had ceased to be a mysterious glass tower and become just the place where I worked.
Thinking of Gordon, I felt my footsteps slowing and I looked around me, apprehensive, as if he might suddenly appear through the glass doors, his briefcase swinging from his hand, his phone clamped to his ear. But there was no sign of him, and I hurried past the building unnoticed by any of my former colleagues.
I wasn’t going into the office today – or any other day. I was meeting Joe for a drink at the wine bar down the road, which used to be the favoured watering hole of all the trainee solicitors, mostly because if you ordered two large glasses of wine, they’d throw the rest of the bottle in for free. Looking at the groups of young men and women in their smart-but-cheap suits, bulging laptop bags slung over the backs of their chairs, knocking back their drinks at speed while gossiping loudly about their colleagues and less loudly about their clients, I judged it was still the place to go for post-work drinks on a Thursday.
And Thursday, it seemed, was still the new Friday.
Pushing open the heavy glass door, I was met by a roar of conversation, voices bouncing off the bare walls, glasses rattling on the steel tabletops, phones trilling everywhere. Perhaps, I thought with a shiver of dread, I’d end up back working in the City in a few months. If my plan to save the Nag’s Head failed – and it felt as if it was doomed to – what else could I do?
I’d find myself employed as a newly qualified solicitor in a different firm, probably a less prestigious one than Billings. I’d have a desk and a company email account, and my life would go back to being chopped up into six-minute chunks, my value calculated by how many of them could be billed to clients.
I’d spend my Thursday nights in a place like this, getting drunk with people I worked with but didn’t necessarily like very much, because Fridays were for real friends.
I looked around the crowded bar, but I couldn’t see Joe. I wasn’t expecting to – I was ten minutes early and he’d warned me that his five-thirty meeting was likely to overrun. So I bought myself a glass of wine and, with ninja skills I thought I’d lost, narrowly beat a blond-haired guy in a suit to the last remaining spare table.
He glared at me for a second, then grinned and said, ‘Fair dos. Let me buy you your next drink.’
‘Thanks, but I’m meeting someone.’
‘It was worth a try. Have a fun evening.’
He grinned and slouched off to stand at the bar, and I was left trying not to laugh. It was so long since I’d been approached by a stranger in a bar, I’d completely forgotten what it felt like. That moment of disbelief – what, he fancies me?
I didn’t want to go back there, either.
‘Hey,’ I heard Joe’s voice behind me, ‘was that guy hitting on you?’
‘I guess. Kind of. He just offered to buy me a drink.’
‘And you said no?’
‘Course I said no.’
‘Rookie error. You could have saved yourself eight quid.’
I laughed and he leaned in to kiss me. He looked tired, I thought, which wasn’t surprising given his day had started twelve hours before. Although everything about him was familiar – his dark blue suit, his slightly askew pink tie, the tiny marks the glasses he wore in the office had left on his face, even the smell of the shower gel he used after his lunchtime workout in the gym – in that moment, he felt like a stranger, too.
It was just the weirdness of being back here, I told myself. The sense of dislocation – almost of having travelled back in time to my old life.
It was definitely nothing to do with what had happened between Archie and me. Because nothing had, my brain insisted. I’d been upset and he’d comforted me, like any friend would. That was all.
So why did I feel like the place on my brow where Archie had placed that brief, barely there kiss was marked permanently, for all to see? Especially for Joe to see?
‘I’m just going to grab a drink. I’ll be two seconds.’
‘You’ll be lucky,’ I said, eyeing the crowd around the bar.
‘If I’m not back in half an hour, send help. I’ll get you another while I’m there.’
I sat down at my hard-won table and sipped my wine, ordering my thoughts while I waited. Maurice’s story, while it had made perfect sense when he’d told me, was complicated, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t get it wrong, or leave anythi
ng out. I wished I’d made notes, like I used to do in meetings with clients. But that would have felt too cold and impersonal – like I was Maurice’s solicitor and not his friend.
I tried to remember the dates he’d given me, but they’d all got jumbled up in my mind, because so much of what he’d described had happened so long ago – long before I was even born. But that didn’t matter. I hoped it didn’t, at least. What mattered was whether Wesley would be willing to admit the truth to Joe, to a judge, to the whole world.
‘Christ.’ Joe put his glass of red wine and my fresh one of white down on the table between us and pulled a packet of crisps out of his suit pocket. ‘They only had cheese and onion. It’s mayhem in here.’
‘Thursday, right?’
He nodded. ‘And payday. Thanks for coming all the way into town.’
‘That’s okay. I wanted to see you as soon as you were free.’
He took a gulp of wine and ripped open the crisp packet. I took one, thinking of the posh truffle-flavoured crisps I’d tasted earlier, with Archie. How could the memory of a snack feel like a betrayal?
‘Yeah, so,’ I said in a rush. ‘Maurice came into the pub earlier. He wanted to talk to me about Wesley. He said he went there yesterday, to visit, and it was horrible.’
Joe nodded. ‘It’s a horrible place. God knows I’ve been there enough times to get used to it, but I never have.’
I reached over and squeezed his hand. ‘He’s lucky to have you representing him. I know you can’t discuss his case with me, but can you at least listen if I discuss it with you?’
Joe sipped his wine. ‘I don’t know. I mean, I guess so.’
‘Because Maurice told me something that might help Wesley appeal against the removal order. If he instructs you to, obviously. I know based on the information you’ve got right now, there’s not much chance that an appeal would succeed. It seems clear-cut. He’s got no papers, nothing to prove when he arrived here. No naturalisation’s taken place, there’s no indefinite leave to remain, he’s got no birth certificate and no passport.’
Just Saying: An absolutely perfect and feel-good romantic comedy Page 23
