Last Orders Read Free Page A

all wispy and weak and thin. It's not like the writing you used to see on that board at the front of the shop. Pork Chops - Down in Price.
    I say, 'Could have been worse, Amy. You could already have bought that bungalow and be just about to move. Or you could have just been settling in and—'
    She says, 'It's like he almost got his own way, anyway.'
    I look at her.
    'To work on till he dropped.' She folds the letter. 'In the end /was the problem, /was the obstacle. Didn't you know? When I knew he was serious, when I knew he really meant to pack it all in. I said, "What am I going to do about June?" He said, "That's just the point, girl. If I can give up being Jack Dodds, family butcher, then you can give up going on that fooPs errand every week." That's what he called it: "fool's errand".'
    She looks again at the water. 'You know how when he had a change of mind, the whole world had to change too. He said, we're going to be new people.' She gives another little snort. 'New people.'
    I look away across the garden because I don't want her to see the thought that might be showing in my face: that it's a pretty poor starting-point, all said, for becoming new people, a bungalow in Margate. It's not exactly the promised land.
    There's a nurse chomping a sandwich on a bench in the far corner. Pigeons waddling.
    Maybe Amy's having the same thought, maybe she's had it. Not the promised land.
    I say, 'You sure you wouldn't want to come?'
    She shakes her head. 'Got my reasons, haven't I, Ray?'
    She looks at me.
    (I suppose Jack had too,' I say, tapping the letter in her hand. I let my hand move up to give her arm a little squeeze.
    'The seaside, eh Ray?' She looks again at the river. 'Yes, he had his reasons.' Then she dams up.
    The nurse has blonde hair, tied up nurse-fashion. Black legs.
    'Anyway,' she says, 'I don't think we could've done it. When you totted it all up. When you took away what Jack owed on the shop.' Her face goes just a touch bitter.
    'We'd have been a fair bit short.'
    The nurse finishes her sandwich, brushing down her skirt. The pigeons waddle quicker, pecking. They look like scatterings of ashes, bits of ashes with wings.
    I say, 'How much short?'

Old Kent Road
    We head down past Albany Road and Trafalgar Avenue and the Rotherhithe turn. Green Man, Thomas a Becket, Lord Nelson. The sky's almost as blue as the car.
    Vince says, 'Goes along sweet, don't it?' And he takes his hands off the wheel so we can get the feel of how the car takes care of itself. It seems to veer a shade to the left.
    He said he thought he should do Jack proud, he thought he should give him a real treat. Since it had been sitting there in the showroom for nearly a month anyway, with a 'client' who couldn't make up his mind, and a bit more on the clock wouldn't signify and it don't do to let a car sit. He thought he should give Jack the best.
    But it's not so bad for us too, for Vie and Lenny and me, sitting up, alive and breathing. The world looks pretty good when you're perched on cream leather and looking out at it through tinted electric windows, even the Old Kent Road looks good.
    It veers a shade to the left. Lenny says, 'Don't go and give it a dent, will you, Big Boy? Don't want you to lose a sale.'
    Vince says he don't dent cars, ever, least of all when he's driving extra steady and careful, on account of the special occasion.
    Lenny says, "With your hands off the wheel.'
    Then Vince asks Vie what they do in a hearse when they have to go on a motorway.
    Vie says, 'We step on it.'
    Vince isn't wearing a black tie. It's just me and Vie. He's wearing a red and white jazzy tie and a dark blue suit. It's his showroom clobber, and he's come from the showroom, but he could have chosen some other tie. He's taken off his jacket, which is lying folded on the back seat between me and Lenny. Good-quality stuff. I reckon Vince is doing all right, he's not so badly placed after all. He says now they're feeling the pinch in the City they pop across