Playing Around Read Free Page A

later.’
    ‘I can’t. Once I’ve got the underground to Mile End, I have to get the bus down Burdett Road, and you know what they’re like on a Sunday.’
    Angie sipped at her tea, agonizing over the choice of missing the chance of sitting down to eat with Martin or of letting down her beloved Nan. And even if she did stay, she would probably be too embarrassed to say anything much to him. It was so different trying to talk to him lately, not like it had been when they were kids. But she really liked him. Not like that, of course, but it was just …
    ‘Come on, Squirt.’
    ‘I suppose if I missed the bus, I could walk from Mile End.’
    ‘Tell you what,’ Martin slapped the empty tray with his hand as though it were a tambourine, ‘I’m meant to be seeing someone from college about borrowing some books. I could go up there this afternoon and give you a lift on the Lambretta at the same time.’
    Angie’s mouth went dry. Was this like being asked out on a date or something?
    ‘I couldn’t let you do that, Martin.’
Oh yes she could
.
    ‘Why not? They live in Mile End. Bancroft Road. Right along by the college. I could drop you at your nan’s, then go on. And I do need the books today. I’ve got to finish some work I’m meant to be handing in by the end of the week.’
    Jackie pulled a Jammy Dodger apart, separating the biscuit into two, and thoughtfully licked at the filling. What was this all about then?
    Angie could hardly breathe. Her world had just turned upside down: misery to pure joy in a matter of moments.
    ‘You’d have to make your own way home, though. I don’t know how long I’m going to be.’ He paused. ‘So? What d’you reckon?’
    Angie stared up at him from the bed.
    ‘It means you’ll be doing us all a favour: keeping Mum happy by staying and having –’ he paused and looked pointedly at his sister ‘–
lunch
with us first, means she’ll be able to cook even more grub than usual.’
    ‘If it makes Mrs Murray happy,’ Angie finally managed to gasp.
    ‘Great.’ He smiled and winked at the poor little thing. What a life that kid had. He felt really sorry for her. She was so grateful for everything. If only she realized what a real favour she was doing him, giving him the excuse to get out for the afternoon. Living at home was driving Martin Murray stark, raving bonkers.
    ‘Busy last night, David?’ Sonia Fuller put down her cigarette and sipped her orange juice, as she flicked lazily through the
Sunday Times
colour supplement. Her attention was suddenly focused. She really had to have her hair done like that. An asymmetric cut would look wonderful with her jaw line, and would take at least five off her thirty-two – off her twenty-nine – years.
    ‘Actually, I came home around half ten.’ David, a look and soundalike for Michael Caine – the first thing, apart from all his money, that had attracted Sonia to him – calmly continued with his breakfast, despite knowing he had just dropped a bombshell right in the middle of the bizarre kitchen table that Sonia had ‘found’ in some ‘wonderful little shop in Chelsea’. Until he’d met Sonia, David had had no idea that ‘finding’ things could be so expensive.
    He shook another dollop of ketchup on to his plate. Regardless of his wife’s attempts to get him to eat muesli – trendy, overpriced hamster food, in his opinion – and to drink orange juice, David was still a resolutely fry-up and dark brown tea man, especially on a Sunday, and even more especially when he’d had his appetite whetted by anger.
    Sonia was no longer concerned with the shiny pages and their drooling displays of the latest, overpriced fashions.
    ‘Half past ten?’
    ‘Yeah, where were you?’ He dipped his toast into the yolk of his fried egg, knowing how much she hated such ‘common habits’.
    ‘I popped out for cigarettes.’ Sonia waved her hand breezily , as though the gold-tipped menthol she was currently smoking was proof of her