Fallout by Sadie Jones Read Free Book Online

feeling of the working men’s club; a disparately populated, dying place. Paul Driscoll pulled out a huge sodden map that had plainly been their unhelpful passenger; an enemy, torn and wrinkled.
    ‘HELL!’ he shouted and tried to fold it.
    ‘That’s a 1:25000 Ordnance Survey,’ said Luke.
    ‘What did you say?’ Paul looked round, surprised and aggressive.
    ‘You aren’t going to find your way around a town with a 1:25000 Ordnance Survey, are you?’
    ‘You can get out now,’ said Paul but didn’t mean it.
    The girl said, ‘I told him,’ grumpy and quiet.
    Paul rocked back and forth, moaning a bit. Luke laughed.
    ‘You’re well out of your way,’ he said, jiggling his foot up and down and beginning to enjoy himself.
    ‘Not exactly well lit, is it, your town?’ said Paul. ‘Like being down a bloody mine.’
    ‘Well, yeah,’ said Luke, ‘it’s better unseen.’
    The girl revved the engine.
    ‘Sterling Moss,’ said Paul. ‘So, please, in your own time, Luke whatever-it-was, where is this pub or don’t you know?’
    The girl’s hand flicked the indicator.
    ‘Go down here and turn right,’ said Luke, who liked them both. ‘Where have you come from?’
    The girl, Leigh, started to drive.
    ‘Staying in Sheffield tonight, but up from London,’ said Paul, crushing up the map and shoving it down past his legs.
    ‘Why?’ asked Luke.
    ‘To meet someone.’
    ‘Who?’ asked Luke.
    ‘Why?’ said the girl, and Luke caught a glimpse of her eyes in the mirror.
    ‘Why what?’ said Luke. ‘Left.’
    ‘Why’d you ask who?’ she responded, turning and accelerating at the same time.
    ‘Left again at the end here. I was just wondering who you were going to meet at the Bell End. I wouldn’t come from Nottingham for it.’
    ‘The Bell End?’ Paul gave a snort of laughter but recovered his bad mood as soon as he could.
    ‘Which way?’ asked Leigh, easing slightly off the gas as the Mini careered towards a wall.
    Luke wound down the window and put his face out into the rain to see. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘There’s Market Street at the end there, see? It’s past there. I can tell you the way. You can let me out here if you want.’
    The girl jammed on the brakes and they skidded into the kerb. Luke banged his cheekbone on the window frame, metal and loose rubber.
    ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Paul.
    ‘Or you can come with us, if you like,’ she said, still without turning. Her hair long and thick – dark – inches from Luke’s eyes.
    ‘Can he?’ said Paul, looking at her.
    ‘If he likes,’ said Leigh, looking straight ahead.
    ‘Well, it’s your bloody car.’
    ‘Thanks,’ said Luke, ‘I will.’
    She started the car again and Paul shrugged. ‘I suppose he might still be there.’
    ‘Who?’ asked Luke.
    ‘Don’t bloody start that again.’
    There was a slight movement in front and Luke thought that it was possible Leigh was laughing.
     
    The Bell End was chilly and stank of sour beer. The three of them, fresh from the rain, stood in the doorway; the youngest people in the imaginable universe, straightening their limbs out from the Mini. The talk, such as it was, had stopped when they came in. The barman was very short, peering at them through the beer taps, and apart from an old man sitting at the black piano and hitting the same three sharp notes on and off between sips of his beer, it was very quiet.
    ‘Jumpin’,’ said Paul, pulling a packet of Strands from his pocket and going over to the bar as he lit one.
    ‘Evening,’ said the barman, expressionless.
    Leigh stalked over to a table in the corner, ringed with glass-marks and a cut-glass ashtray heaped with fag-ends, and sat down. She didn’t look approachable so Luke hovered busily in the doorway for a while, until Paul said over his shoulder, ‘Drink?’
    ‘All right.’
    ‘Leigh?’
    She shrugged. Paul, unable to interpret this, waited.
    She glared at him. ‘No. Thanks.’
    Luke went and sat with her at the table.