her nothing and the sooner our ordeal is over, the better. I can’t afford to fill the tank up. It’s as simple as that. The flashing light is urging me to speak up, begging me to get rid of Zara and get to Griffo’s dad’s before the car comes to an embarrassing halt.
The windscreen wipers go into overdrive. I pull into a slip road and park up outside a row of shops consisting of a newsagents, a betting shop and a takeaway called Pizza Perfecto that isn’t yet open for business. I tell her simply that I can’t take her to London and give her no excuse. I feel one hundred per cent shitty. But I remind myself that if Zara hadn’t pissed on my chips, then I wouldn’t be pissing on hers. Christ, there’d be no chips to piss on at all if she’d just been watching the bloody road this morning.
I wait for her tears to come. Instead, Zara starts to rub her hands together.
‘It’s freezing in here,’ she says. Taking the liberty of fidgeting around with the various dials and buttons beneath the radio, she finds the heating and turns it up full blast. She’s completely ignored everything I’ve just said to her.
‘Zara?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Did you hear what I said?’
She nods.
‘I can’t take you to London,’ I reiterate, my words delicate.
‘I’m not stupid, Jim. I knew you weren’t going to take me.’
‘You did?’
‘Yeah. I mean, why would you do that? Really? What’s in it for you?’
I’m stumped. ‘Nothing. Exactly.’
‘It’d be weird if you did that.’
‘It would.’
‘So just drop me off at a train station. If it’s not too much trouble.’
But, it is. It’s indeed too much trouble. Driving from the outskirts of Liverpool to Lime Street station means hitting Friday traffic, which also means not making it to Griffo’s dad’s without having to fill up. And the way she said if it’s not too much trouble. Christ, it’s wound me up in corners I didn’t even know I had.
No matter what way I look at it, I’ve got two choices: I can either ask Zara to pay for the petrol, which is humiliating, or I can swing by my flat and take the money from the biscuit tin.
And both choices suck.
It sits on top of the microwave in my kitchen.
Technically, it’s not even a biscuit tin. It’s an empty Quality Street tin, the last chocolate eaten sometime between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day twenty-odd years ago. As a kid, I used to put my spare change – or my slummy, as my dad would call it – in there, because it was more transparent than a piggy bank. I liked to see my money, not guess how much might be in there. That way, there was no disappointment. Back then, the slummy saved would be spent on my favourite magazine, or with enough will power, games for my Sega; Sonic, Golden Axe. They were replaced by hardback books, videos, and eventually DVDs, my vast film collection still presented across three shelves in my bedroom (in alphabetical order, too).
These days, the slummy is saved for less entertaining essentials such as bleach and toilet roll, a pint of milk. I dip into the biscuit tin more often than I’d like, so I’m not holding out for a miracle, just enough to keep my dignity intact. There might be enough in there for a bit of petrol, but nowhere near enough to get my ma to the airport, never mind bloody Florida.
‘Where’s the train station from here?’ Zara asks when we pull up outside the chippy, the busy flyover rattling overhead and sheltering us from the rain. Wide eyed, like Alice in bloody Wonderland, I’m guessing that a girl like Zara isn’t used to places that are so unattractive.
‘It’s not around here,’ I say. ‘I just need to nip in and get something.’
‘Nip in where?’ Zara looks around frantically across the dashboard.
‘There,’ I point to the chippy.
‘Wong’s Fish Bar?’
I nod.
‘Why? Are you hungry?’
I can’t tell her this is where I live, but honestly, I do not understand why. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, nothing whatsoever. The flat I rent is decent. Small. My leather settee purchased on Ebay is in good nick; wooden blinds; an impressive wall of bookshelves. A turntable sits on a second-hand tile-and-teak coffee table with a collection of vinyl filed at its side. I’m no slob, and other than not changing my bed sheets as often as I probably should, the place is clean. But, from