Hugo could sell Nigel to a glue factory and Maggot would still say, ‘It’s just like Hugo said, really, Aunt Alice.’
‘He’s welcome back,’ Hugo assured her, ‘once his tantrum’s blown over. If you don’t mind, Jace? Nigel didn’t mean what he called you.’
‘I don’t mind at all.’
‘Here’s another idea.’ Aunt Alice knew she’d been stalemated. ‘Your Aunt Helena’s low on coffee, and your father’ll need a strong mug when he wakes up. I’m volunteering you to go and get some. Jason, perhaps you’d show your non-stick cousin the way, since you’re obviously such allies.’
‘We’ve almost finished this game, Mum, so—’
Aunt Alice set her jaw.
Isaac Pye, the landlord of the Black Swan, came into the games room at the back to see what the fuss was about. Hugo stood at the Asteroids console, surrounded by me, Grant Burch, Burch’s servant Philip Phelps, Neal Brose, Ant Little, Oswald Wyre and Darren Croome. None of us could believe it. Hugo’d been on for twenty minutes on the same 10p. The screen was full of floating asteroids and I’d’ve died in three seconds flat. But Hugo reads the whole screen at once, not just the one rock that’s most dangerous. He almost never uses his thrusters. He makes every torpedo count. When the zigzagging UFO comes he lays in a salvo of torpedoes only if the asteroid storm isn’t too heavy. Otherwise, he ignores it. He only uses the hyperspace button as a last resort. His face stays calm, like he’s reading a quite interesting book.
‘That’s never three mill’yun!’ said Isaac Pye.
‘Almost three an’ a half million,’ Grant Burch told him.
When Hugo’s last bonus life finally erupted in a shower of stars, the machine did bleepy whoops and announced the All Time Top Score’d been topped. That stays on even if the machine’s switched off. ‘I spent a fiver getting up to two and a half mill’yun the other night,’ grunted Isaac Pye, ‘an’ that were the bullock’s bollocks, I thought. I’d stand you a pint, lad, but there’s two off-duty coppers in the bar.’
‘That’s good of you,’ Hugo told Isaac Pye, ‘but I daren’t get caught on a drunk-in-charge-of-a-spacecraft rap.’
Isaac Pye did a Wurzel snigger and ambled back to the bar.
Hugo entered his name as JHC.
Grant Burch asked it. ‘What’s that stand for, then?’
‘“Jesus H. Christ”.’
Grant Burch laughed, so everyone else did. God, I felt proud. Neal Brose’d tell Gary Drake how Jason Taylor hung out with Jesus Christ.
Oswald Wyre said, ‘How many years did it take you to get that good?’
‘Years?’ Hugo’s accent’d gone just a bit less posh and just a bit more London. ‘Mastering an arcade game shouldn’t take that long.’
‘Must’ve taken a pile of dosh, though,’ said Neal Brose. ‘To get that much practice, I mean.’
‘Money’s never a problem, not if you’ve got half a brain.’
‘No?’
‘Money? ’Course not. Identify a demand, handle its supply, make your customers grateful, kill off the opposition.’
Neal Brose memorized every word of that.
Grant Burch got out a pack of cigarettes. ‘Smoke, mate?’
If Hugo said ‘No’ he’d damage the impression he’d made.
‘Cheers,’ Hugo peered at the box of Players No. 6, ‘but anything except Lambert Butler makes my throat feel like shit for hours. No offence.’
I memorized every word of that. What a way to get out of smoking.
‘Yeah,’ Grant Burch said, ‘Woodbines do that to me.’
From the bar we heard Isaac Pye repeat, ‘“I daren’t get caught on a drunk-in-charge-of-a-spacecraft rap”!’
Dawn Madden’s mum peered at Hugo from the smoke-fogged bar.
‘Are that woman’s boobs for real?’ Hugo hissed at us. ‘Or are they a pair of spare heads?’
Mr Rhydd sticks Lucozade-yellow plastic sheets over his windows to stop the displays fading. But his ‘displays’ are only ever pyramids of canned pears, and the plastic sheets make inside his shop feel like a photograph from Victorian times. Hugo and I read the notices on the board for second-hand Lego, kittens needing homes, good-as-new washing machines for £10 O.N.O. and ads promising you hundreds of extra pounds in your spare time. The cold-soapy, rotting-orangey, newsprinty smell of Mr Rhydd’s hits you the moment you’re inside. There’s the post office booth in one corner where Mrs Rhydd the postmistress sells stamps and dog licences, though not today ’cause today’s Saturday. Mrs Rhydd’s signed the Official Secrets Act but she looks quite normal. There’s a rack of greetings cards showing men dressed like Prince Philip fishing in rivers saying ‘On Father’s Day’ or foxgloves in a cottage garden saying ‘For My Dearest Grandmother’. There