to you today and every day, Rachel. Nothing but the best is good enough, eh? Nothing but the best.’
He’d enjoyed the pain of having that tattoo. A bit like Phil, I thought – it comforted Dave to know what was hurting for once. It was all about putting it somewhere. The pain, I mean. You have to put pain somewhere, whether it’s into a slot machine or into your skin or into your veins. I could add that Dave’s a bit of a knob, but I think that’s self-evident from what he said, isn’t it? Nothing but the best? Sod off, Dave. It’s a boozer, not the ruddy Hilton. I didn’t say any of that, obviously.
‘Oh, Dave, that’s smashing is that,’ was what I did say and set about cutting up some lemons.
For the rest of the day, I kept my head down, but customers don’t serve themselves, do they? Our pub is what you’d call a community pub. Our clientele are a little older and we never get any trouble, not even at the weekend, as the younger crowd tend to go elsewhere. Most of our punters are regulars: Sid, who comes in at quarter past four every single day, overalls covered in paint splashes – pint of mild, always one, never more, never less; the couple that show up every Monday lunchtime for the buy one get the second one half price steak and chips offer, pint of lager for him, half for her, and never say a word to one another; and Lena, who generally gets in at about five, half five for her first gin and tonic, always in the high heels, the tight clothes, and always alone. If I do a late shift, I generally see her leave at around ten o’clock, though where she goes I’ve never asked. It’s not my job to know their business; my job is to create a friendly atmosphere for them, and that’s what I did that day like any other. Only that day, as the punters came and went, my head filled with their fears and boredom, their money worries and tiredness levels, their petty bitterness and secret longings, and most of all their howling, fathomless black wells of loneliness. Not that any of them said any of that aloud. By five, my head was aching with it: all that angst, all that anger. All that damn despair.
I’m not asking for sympathy, by the way; I’m asking you to understand what I did to that poor girl, that’s all. It was unnerving, all this intuition. I felt like a radio tuned to several different channels at once. But I was trying to take Lisa’s advice and see it as a gift. Human beings need to connect with each other. What else are we in this life for, if not? I was water. I’d always been water, flowing around those I loved and, quite often, those I didn’t. But now I was waiting for fresh drops to swell the depleted puddle I’d become.
For that week, all I did was go to work and come home again. That was enough. By the time I got in at night, I was too exhausted to do more than walk Archie round the close for his wee.
‘Did you see anyone at that time? Anyone you knew?’
I think for a minute. ‘I only saw a couple of neighbours. Mostly I was looking at the lights coming from the windows, the families sitting round the table or watching television together. Mrs Lang from number twenty-four was putting a bag of rubbish into her dustbin. I tell you what, she is a very unhappily married woman indeed. Oh, and I waved to Ingrid, who was closing her curtains.’
‘So you weren’t going any further than your own crescent?’
‘No. Well, I did go as far as the Spar, which is at the end of the estate before you get to the bus stop on the main road, and I suppose I should tell you that I tied Archie up outside, went in and… I nicked a packet of biscuits. Just to see if I could get away with it. Which I did. But the following Saturday was my first really long evening walk. And I swear to God, when I met that young girl, the one in the paper, all I wanted to do was talk to her. Jo. Well, you know her name. But that was the start of things stepping up – I can see that