The Fire Baby by Jim Kelly Read Free Book Online Page B

splintering with the movement.
    Mist that day. A swirling soup of it which opened up for half a mile and then descended like a cotton-wool blindfold. They’d stood in the solid whiteness of the day and held each other close.
    ‘A house,’ said Dryden. ‘We should decide. Move out of London and start a family.’ He kissed her hair but she hadn’t answered, and in the long silence a crow had called from the rooftop of one of the crumbling cottages.
    He wanted to walk on, towards Adventurer’s Wood, but she pulled him back. Something was wrong. He knew it then, and he knew it now. But what? A house and a family were what they wanted, but only after: after she’d done one last series of Clyde Circus , after he’d done one more year at the News. After – the word he hated most now, after Harrimere Drain.
    What did he doubt in those final hours they were together? Her love? Commitment? Whatever it was, it had disfigured that last memory, possibly for ever.
    It wasn’t as if money was a barrier to fulfilling their dream. One of the many aunts from Campania who had emigrated with Laura’s parents to help run the family restaurant in north London had left her a nest-egg: £80,000. It was all they needed out on the fen. It sat in Laura’s trust account, getting fatter, and it sat there still, administered by the solicitors and her parents. None of Laura’s family had mentioned the bequest since shortly after the accident, an act of faith which signalled their belief that one day he and Laura would buy the house, start the family, and begin again.
    Humph flipped open the glove compartment and fished out two bottles of vodka. He collected miniatures on runs to Stansted Airport. Some of his regulars gave them as tips. He handed one to Dryden, sensing that his friend wasdescending into a rare bout of depression. Since Laura’s accident they had maintained an almost constant mood characterized by either irrational exuberance or mutual indifference.
    ‘Cheers,’ said Humph, repeating a few random phrases in Greek.
    They’d reached Manea. At least that’s what the sign said, otherwise you wouldn’t know. It was the archetypal Fen town. Most of the houses lined the sinuous main street with back garden views that stretched twenty miles to the horizon. Manea had a claim to fame, a railway station. Unfortunately it was three miles outside town.
    Wilkinson’s stood on the edge of Manea. A triple set of mammoth MFI-style blocks with a windswept car park full of the kind of cars which spend half their life up on bricks, and the other half breaking the speed limit. Most of the workforce, which had to support a twenty-four-hour production line, were picked up by the company coach on bleak street corners in the middle of the night.
    Humph swung the cab in off the road and met an articulated lorry coming out. The stove pipe belched black exhaust as the driver swung the wheel with his forearms so that he could roll a cigarette and light up before he hit the road. He wore the sort of vest which only lorry drivers can, the colour of dirty snow with ash highlights.
    They parked under a sign which said: Wilkinson’s Celery Ltd. UK Headquarters. Below that another sign hung from one hinge: Research Department.
    The staircase was steel and ran in a zig-zag tower up the outside of the main block. At the top was a door with no handle but an entryphone, so he pressed the button and after ten seconds of crackle he heard the lock turn automatically. He pushed the door open and walked down a long neon-litcorridor to another single door, which was half glazed with milky-white glass reinforced with chicken wire. There was a strong smell of disinfectant and his shoes stuck to the featureless cream lino.
    He knocked once and walked in before anyone could stop him. A man in a shabby suit stood up from the only desk. He was a bit like a stick of celery himself. About six feet six, with white hair and narrow shoulders. ‘Mr Dryden? Ashley Wilkinson.