Ice and a Slice Read Free Page B

was outside again. The roadworks team had downed tools and disappeared. People in suits were hurrying along the pavements, juggling their mobiles with takeout coffees – lunch on the run. A Big Issue seller was arguing with a black cab driver about change. On the opposite side of the street, a man with mad black hair and a scruffy denim jacket was staggering out of The George. When she’d phoned the helpline, the girl who’d answered had told her the drop in centre was opposite a pub. “Bit ironic,” she’d said.
    Ironic wasn’t the word for it. She gazed back at the drunk. He could hardly stand up by the look of him and it wasn’t yet one o’clock. He lurched against the wall of the pub and almost fell.
    She felt an unexpected wave of sympathy, which she hastily suppressed. He was a proper alcoholic – she didn’t even think about drinking in the day. How could she possibly be the same as him?
    Everything around her looked normal, but she didn’t feel normal inside. She felt as though a part of her world had been jolted off its axis. It was ridiculous; she was still the same person she’d been when she went into S.A.A.D. She didn’t ever have to go back. Even though she’d made another appointment – she could cancel it – they just needed twenty-four hours’ notice. Then someone more deserving, more in need of their services could take her place. Like that man across the street. He probably didn’t know the place was here. Perhaps she should go back in and tell someone and they could hook him in and dry him out or whatever they did to people with real problems.
    Remembering her mobile, she switched it on and a text message flashed up on the screen.
    Hi hun, long time no c. When can u do lunch? Tanya Xx
    She lit a Silk Cut and phoned her. It was a relief to hear her friend’s voice, a thread of normality through the weirdness of the day.
    “So how’s it going, SJ?”
    “Fine, absolutely fine,” she murmured, giving the usual response. The required response. No one ever expected you to say anything else, did they? It was just politeness to ask. One of those stupid English traditions. You’d say you were fine if your leg was dropping off. “How’s you?” she asked. “Keeping busy?”
    “Mad busy. As ever.” Tanya was an accountant, although she was as far from the stereotype as it was possible to get. “How about you? You up for lunch some time?”
    “Yeah. Sure. Hey, I don’t suppose you fancy lunch now, do you, Tanya? Are you in your office? I’m near Chinatown – say if you’re busy.”
    “I’m never too busy for a girlie lunch.” Her friend laughed throatily. She had the sexiest laugh on the planet and it wasn’t a cultivated thing. From her wild red hair to her outrageously short skirts, nothing about Tanya was cultivated. Tanya’s laugh put some perspective back into things and SJ relaxed a little. She hadn’t been aware she was so tense until she felt her neck muscles unknot.
    “I’ll meet you in All Bar One in around ten minutes,” Tanya was saying. “Mine’s a white wine if you get there before me. Standard – not one of those bucket-sized glasses you drink. I’m seeing a client this afternoon.”
    “Okay,” SJ said, feeling guilty and thinking of the form she was supposed to fill in. She was pretty sure people with drink problems, even minor ones, shouldn’t go into wine bars. It was the equivalent of a dieter going into a cake shop and drooling over the cream donuts – far too much temptation. Bollocks, she could have a Diet Coke. It wasn’t like she needed to drink.
    Minutes later, she pushed through the plate-glass doors of the bar. To be honest she didn’t much like All Bar One . It was a bit too well-lit, a bit too fresh faced and samey. But then to be fair she didn’t much like bars of any description. She preferred old fashioned pubs like The Red Lion, which was where she taught Poetry and a Pint on a Wednesday night. The Red Lion was all beams and dark