thought.
‘Thank goodness you’re making a fire,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s not very warm in here, is it?’
Robin swept a throw up from one of the chair backs and deposited it on Charlie’s shoulders. ‘Here, this will do until the flames take hold.’
‘Oh, Robin, you do fuss,’ said Charlie, mock-annoyed.
‘It’s a good job I do, isn’t it? I would prefer people thought I cared about you more than your money,’ Robin threw back at him.
‘So you say.’
‘How dare you, Charles Glaser.’
‘Ha. Sorry about us having a spat in front of you, Jack.’
It wasn’t a fight, thought Jack. He’d seen fights between people who were supposed to love each other and this was at the other end of the scale. The shouting, the accusations, the violence… No, this wasn’t fighting here today.
‘Luke up yet?’ asked Robin.
‘He was in the shower when I came down.’
‘Ah, good morning, girls.’ Charlie beamed at Bridge and Mary as they appeared at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Sleep well?’
‘I did,’ replied Mary.
‘Yes, not too bad,’ Bridge answered at the same time.
Mary didn’t like to say that Bridge must have slept very well because she’d been snoring. Not too loudly, but the sort of snore a contented sleeper made.
‘I’m going to make breakfast for everyone,’ said Robin, clapping his hands along with the announcement. ‘Bacon, eggs, sausage, beans, lashings of coffee if I can find it all.’
‘Full English,’ said Charlie. ‘Drenched in tomato sauce, thick white toast slathered in butter.’
‘You’ll get what you’re given,’ said Robin. ‘Porridge if I can find some. Or a nice yogurt.’
‘You care too much. Pretend you hate me and give me something fried,’ returned Charlie with his best disarming eyelash-flutter, which Robin duly ignored.
‘Where’s Luke?’ asked Bridge.
‘I’m here,’ said a voice from up the staircase. The sound of footsteps, followed by the man himself. Wearing his trademark grin, as per usual.
Bridge swallowed. She hadn’t had much of a chance to look, really look, at Luke yesterday other than to see someone bedraggled, damp and grateful to be alive, but here he was, showered and fresh, lean, healthy and fit as a Wimbledon men’s singles finalist, albeit one with sticky-out mad scientist hair. He looked taller than his actual five foot ten, his shoulders wider than she remembered and as if he had aged in the best sort of way, like a lanky teenage boy grown into his limbs. Her brain wasn’t making sense with how it was thinking but something inside her was admiring him too much, feeling too much.
‘I’m going to cook breakfast,’ said Robin, after wishing Luke a good morning. ‘Bacon, eggs, you know the sort of thing. That suit?’
‘I’m vegetarian,’ replied Luke. ‘So if you can work with that?’
‘I’ll come and help you, Robin, I’m a veggie too,’ said Mary.
‘Are you?’ asked Jack.
There was no reason for him to know, of course, but still his question felt like a painful flick against a sensitive part of Mary’s skin. Does he know anything about me apart from my name? she thought suddenly.
* * *
‘So, here we all are,’ said Luke. ‘Doesn’t look as if any of us are going to be driving anywhere soon, does it?’
Jack lit a match, placed it against the newspapers he had ripped apart and scrunched up. A stack of twenty-five-year-old News of the Worlds among them; the salacious headlines made for interesting reading.
‘Anyone tested their phones?’ asked Luke.
‘Yes, and zilch,’ said Bridge.
Jack nodded to affirm. ‘Landline is still dead too. I checked when I got down here.’
‘Looks like we need Radio Brian then,’ said Charlie and crossed the room to switch him on. ‘It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas’ rang out from the speakers.
‘That’s the only thing with radio, there’s no fast-forward button,’ said Jack, standing up now and proudly viewing his fire tasting the logs.
‘The trouble with anyone born after 1980 is that they have forgotten how to wait for things,’ said Charlie, gently admonishing him. ‘Let Brian play his song; you can’t go anywhere, so enjoy the delightful voice of Perry Como in the meantime.’
Perry Como. Jack remembered his dad playing Perry Como vinyls on his record player, always skipping over the track ‘How Insensitive’ because the words were too hard to listen to, someone with ice for a heart finishing a relationship with a partner. It was as if his mother was singing it about his father via Perry Como’s vocal cords.
‘And you’re listening to BBC Radio Brian. That’s Brian Bernard Cosgrove, not the British Broadcasting Corporation. Coming to you from the