prize.’
‘I’m not going out there for anything. Not even to rescue a naked Hugh Jackman standing by my car,’ said Bridge, resolutely.
‘My friend and I used to go carol singing,’ said Robin. ‘We’d earn a small fortune, by kids’ standards anyway. We stood by the Jolly Butchers and tapped into the stream of benevolent drunks coming out of it.’
‘I’m not surprised, you have a beautiful voice,’ said Charlie.
‘I don’t, I sound like a goose having a seizure,’ he replied and swung a pair of twinkling hands around to his partner. ‘Now Charlie here, he’s hiding his singing light under a bushel.’
‘Well if we do go carol singing, I’ll volunteer to join up with Charlie,’ said Jack. ‘There, you heard it here first.’ He smiled and Mary thought that she’d seen him smile more in the past twenty-four hours than she had in the last six and a half years.
‘My, it’s weathery out there,’ said a half-sloshed Radio Brian. ‘The other BBC met office has announced that it’s minus twelve out there at the moment but the wind factor will make it feel like minus twelvety-two… I mean twenty-two. Oops.’
‘Did he just fart?’ asked Bridge. They all heard it. Brian’s ‘oops’ both highlighted and confirmed it.
‘Wind factor,’ said Luke. ‘It’s like the X factor only smellier.’
Which wasn’t the best joke in the world but somehow they all started laughing, feeding each other’s hilarity until their sides began to ache.
‘What I can’t understand,’ said Robin, wiping his eyes, ‘dear me, is if you went outside and it was minus twelve, which is bloody cold isn’t it, how much colder can it feel? I mean what’s the difference between minus twelve and minus twenty-two?’
No one could answer, no one even wanted to think about it. They were all too mellow, too comfortable and in Jack’s case, too content to even check his phone for any messages.
Chapter 16
Charlie and Robin fell asleep in the armchairs, lulled by the soft feathery voice of Radio Brian and his melodious Christmas tunes. Jack banked up the fire and then helped Mary carry the glasses into the kitchen to be washed. As usual she felt as if the surface of her skin buzzed with electricity when he was near to her. Someone, one day, would invent some spectacles and when people who were in love were viewed through them, they would be lit up with an orange glow, as if they’d eaten up five whole boxes of Ready Brek like the old TV advert used to show.
‘Can’t believe a pub hasn’t got a dishwasher,’ said Jack. Tiny as the kitchen was, it surely would be a standard piece of equipment. ‘I mean why would the owner invest in that huge German coffee machine that takes up half of the available work surface but rely on this minuscule sink to cope with all the washing up? Makes absolutely no commercial sense.’
Jack might not have looked at his phone for a little while, but his head continued to spin on the logistics of business.
It was certainly a kitchen not conducive to more than one person working in it at a time, or two who wanted to become better acquainted. Three could possibly lead to impregnation.
‘You wash, I’ll dry,’ said Jack.
‘Okay,’ said Mary, trying to sound a lot more at ease than she felt. Her brain knew she had less than no chance of a romantic liaison with Jack. He had done nothing other than keep her at his very long arms’ length for years and yet here was her stupid heart quivering in her chest at being so physically close to him. Her brother’s gently taunting voice singing ‘The Boy from Ipanema’ drifted into her mind. Jack really was him, long and lovely and about as attainable as Brad Pitt. Probably less so. Plus she could quite happily appraise Brad without her nerve endings doing weird things.
She filled up the bowl with hot water and a squirt of washing-up liquid. Jack went to the drawer filled with tea towels. All different designs, age-old presents to the landlord probably: Souvenir of Blackpool; a long poem: ‘The Italian Who Went to Malta’; the commemoration of Prince Charles’s wedding to Lady Di.
The profile of his back made Mary’s heart beat almost as fast as his front profile did. Her involuntary reactions were truly starting to annoy her.
Mary dunked the first glass, rubbed at it with a sponge, checked that the stubborn gluey wine had gone, gave it a quick rinse under the tap