Blood Ties: Family is not always a place of safety. Julie Shaw

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СКАЧАТЬ it’s getting busy now,’ she said, glancing back across through the foyer to the tap room as a couple of new people came in. ‘Pictures probably turned out, and in a bit, she’ll be swamped with –’ She stopped, feeling her face flush. Terry Harris was standing watching her from the foyer. He was with a mate, but he’d stopped, and had obviously been waiting to catch her eye. He grinned and waved, and she immediately lowered her gaze. But at the same time …

      ‘You know what, Dad?’ she said. ‘Think I’ll head back to the bar after all. Can I take this?’ She raised the glass.

      ‘Course you can, love. I told you. But –’

      ‘No, it’s fine, Dad. I don’t mind. You know what Mam’s like. I’ll go and help Mary, or she’ll be hollering for you instead, won’t she?’

      Kathleen picked up four empties in her free hand, and then pushed through the door, back into the foyer. Terry was still there, now watching the reels of the bandit spinning. He stopped when he saw her and reached to pull the taproom door open for her.

      ‘Here,’ he said, taking the empties. ‘Let me carry those for you.’

      ‘No, it’s fine,’ she told him. ‘Honest.’ But it was to no effect, since he already had them anyway.

      ‘Nice to see you down here on a weekend,’ he said, smiling back at her as she followed him to the bar itself. ‘You don’t normally work on a Saturday night, do you?’

      No, but I’m glad I’m down tonight, she thought but didn’t tell him. ‘I’m not really working as such,’ she said. ‘It’s just that my mate’s ill and I’m at a loose end, and –’

      His eyes widened. They were dark-lashed but pale. An unusual greeny grey. ‘Ah, so that means you could maybe have a drink with me then, doesn’t it? If you’d like to,’ he added, turning to look at her as he plonked the empty pint glasses down on the bar.

      She thought she’d like that a great deal. And not just because she was keen to talk to him about Darren. But Mary was getting busy. And there’d be fat chance, if she did go and sit down with Terry, of Irene not ordering her to go and help out anyway – or at least, given it was Kathleen’s night off, and she had no business doing so, making an enormous ‘thing’ out of her sitting down with Terry.

      But you never knew. In a bit she might be teetering on her usual brink – either too pissed to care, immersed in stirring the cauldron with her cronies, or too pissed to stand, in which case she’d disappear off to bed.

      ‘That would be nice,’ Kathleen said, and hoped he could tell that she meant it. ‘But I really should give Mary a hand first. Just for a bit … I’m coming, Mary,’ she called across.

      But it seemed Mary didn’t want or need her help. Or perhaps there was something more. She certainly glanced behind Kathleen, towards Terry, as she approached.

      ‘Thanks, love,’ she said, her tea-towel-covered hand moving rhythmically around the inside of a pint glass. ‘But I’m fine at the moment, honest. Why don’t you pull yourself a drink and then go have a sit down with Terry. I can always shout you if I need you, can’t I?’

      ‘Good idea,’ Terry said. ‘You’re hardly ever out from behind that bar, Kathy. Come on. Come sit with me a bit. Rest your feet.’

      ‘You make me sound like a little old lady,’ she said indignantly, as she pulled herself a half and topped it up with lime cordial. ‘I can rest my feet when I’m dead, thanks.’

      ‘Alright. So we’ll stand up, then.’

      ‘Now you’re just taking the mick.’

      ‘No, seriously. I spend that much time on my backside … Still, now we’re here.’ He gestured to an empty table he’d found, on the far side of the pool table, miles from Irene. ‘Unless you want to challenge me …’

      ‘I could too.’

      ‘I’ll bet.’

      ‘Seriously, I’m good.’

      ‘Seriously, I’ll bet you are,’ he said again, smiling at her over the rim of his glass. ‘So we’ll have to make that a date, won’t we? Anyway, pour tu, mademoiselle,’ he said, pulling one of the chairs out and gesturing to it theatrically, while she tried her best to relax and to not keep thinking date, he said date …

      And she did relax. Almost immediately, too, even though she knew Irene was sneering across at her. Even though she knew they’d be gossiping about her. Let them, she thought. Let them say what they want. She didn’t care. Pour tu, he’d said. French. The familiar form of it. She remembered that from her French lessons in school. Terry and her Uncle Ronnie went to France quite a lot, she knew, driving all the way down south and taking their enormous lorries onto the ferries. It sounded so glamorous, even though Terry had more than once told her it wasn’t. That she’d have to take a look inside one of his lorry cabs some time. That it was probably about as glamorous as keeping pigs.

      He was chatting about it now, about a recent trip to Paris – him and Ronnie; some anecdote about a missing wallet, or was it pallet, or something, at any rate – and she was perfectly content just to listen. To listen and, in fairness, to drift a little, too. What she wouldn’t give, she thought, to wake up every morning and not know where in the country – or even the world – you were going to end up. In a lorry cab. With him.

      ‘It sounds magical,’ she told him. ‘Paris! How could Paris not be magical?’

      ‘As wondered by a girl who has clearly never had the good fortune of spending three hours going the wrong way round the Périphérique!’

      Périphérique. Even the word sounded magical.

      He stopped speaking then, and rolled his empty glass between his palms. ‘I’m rabbiting on a bit, aren’t I?’ he said, looking suddenly sheepish, disarming her. ‘Nine to the dozen. Sorry. I’ve a tendency to do that when I … well.’ He coughed. ‘How about another half?’

      ‘No, it’s fine,’ she said. ‘It’s fine. And, no. This’ll do me for a bit. But you go and get yourself one. And I’ll put some music on, shall I?’ she added, the silence between them suddenly so loud. Though hopefully not as obvious as the blush she could feel already inching up her chest to her neck.

      ‘Good idea,’ he said, and headed off, then seemed to check himself and turned around again. He was wearing a loose shirt, a checked one, with the sleeves folded back. Terry never looked like he cared much what he wore – Irene had once commented on it, in her usual negative fashion – but far from thinking him a ‘scarecrow’, which was obviously how she saw him, Kathleen found it attractive. She liked the way he didn’t care. That he didn’t spend time dandifying himself all the time. She loved how her dad was always so smart, but he was older. Terry dressed young. He was young. Perfectly young enough for her. Their eyes met. Had he noticed the way she’d been looking at him? ‘Here,’ he said, fishing in his jeans pocket for change. ‘For the music.’

      He placed it in her hand and as he did so, she felt it. Just the touch was enough. Just that almost imperceptible tremor that told her he was nervous too. Which told her something even better. That perhaps her thinking hadn’t been quite so wishful after all.

      It СКАЧАТЬ