Fallout by Sadie Jones Page B

him, bright with rain – no picture, nothing literal, just her own jolted recognising stop at seeing him.
    He was giving them directions. His intonations were odd, almost as if he were speaking in translation. Not foreign exactly, no accent, but – Luke K . . . ? She hadn’t caught it. What sort of a name was it? They talked. It was funny the way he wanted to know their business and didn’t care what they thought, and she couldn’t fathom his lack of self-consciousness; his downright, open-wide friendliness – open but to her still unreadable.
    They found the pub. Paul left her alone with him to go to the bar, bought her the drink, made his call, and Leigh took comfort in the acceptable silence of women.
    When Luke asked her about the playwright, he had smiled at her and she had offered him the little piece of paper knowing it was warm, as if she were showing him a part of her self. Then Paul mocked him, feeling him out, making it funny that he hadn’t ever got out of Seston and hadn’t been to the stupid Playhouse – and her discomfort was so intense that she couldn’t watch, she’d had to leave. He was too guileless. His honesty was laid out to be picked at. It had felt as though she were watching herself, not him, put upon a table and dissected.
    There was no sentiment, no softness in her feelings for him. It ought to have been laughable, pleasurable, but it was so frightening. She was invaded. Undone. And it was exactly as she had feared; it was like falling. A lurching tumble into the dark. She had left them at the table and stood in the dingy pub toilet not moving, too scared to look at her face in the mirror and have the change in herself confirmed. Wanting to cry. There was no reason to care this much, no reason at all. She didn’t even know him.
    They left the pub, piled back into the stale, smoked-drenched Mini and Luke took them to Parker’s Pies, at the top of Market Street.
    ‘Is it always like this here? You’d think they’d dropped the bomb,’ said Paul.
    There wasn’t a single soul about, just the driving rain and the wind blowing some wet chip-paper against a lamp-post outside as they pushed open the door, making the little lace curtain tremble and the bell ring.
    ‘Not always.’ Luke was a little defensive. ‘It’s Tuesday,’ he said, pushing his hands into his coat pockets and pacing up and down the shiny wooden counter.
    He jumped onto it, leaning on his forearms with his feet off the ground, craning to peer into the back, while Paul and Leigh stood in the doorway.
    ‘ Thebes, city of death . . .’ said Paul.
    ‘Shut up,’ hissed Leigh, and turned to look outside at the street. She had just seen that Luke wore odd socks, one black and one grey, showing between his trousers and shoes as he hung off the counter.
    ‘Hel-lo?’ said Luke, just as a waitress emerged from the back, stuffing a frilly apron into a carrier bag, looking up at Luke and blushing.
    ‘Hiya,’ she said, flatly, then looked over at Paul and Leigh, suspicious.
    ‘Hiya, Mandy – serving?’
    ‘Closing,’ she said.
    Leigh saw Paul was trying not to laugh. She took his hand and gripped the little finger viciously, to stop him. It stopped him all right; it hurt, he looked at her in startled confusion.
    The round-faced pimply girl stared at Luke. Leigh had the idea they knew one another well – or that the girl thought they did.
    ‘I’m just off,’ she said. ‘Jim’s closing up.’
    ‘It’s not nine.’
    ‘It’s too late!’
    And with that she marched past them on short legs and left, slamming the door.
    Luke faced Paul and Leigh with his hands jammed into his trouser pockets, bouncing a bit from side to side, and gave them a sideways smile. ‘Not looking like pies, then.’
    They looked regretfully at the tables, neatly wiped; empty tucked-in chairs on which they would not sit. Leigh and Paul paused in the doorway of the squeaky-clean dead-as-night restaurant, then Paul seemed to make a decision. He