‘You’ll be fine. We’re going to do staff training.’
‘Staff training.’
‘Half a day. Unpaid, I’m afraid. I’ve got a bloke coming.’
‘Unpaid?’
‘Just tap-tap-swipe on a screen. It’ll be like Minority Report. But without the bald people. Mind you, we’ll still have Pete. PETE!’
Liam Stubbs came in at a quarter past nine. Jess had her back to the bar and he leant over it and murmured, ‘Hey, hot stuff,’ into her ear.
She didn’t turn round. ‘Oh. You again.’
‘There’s a welcome. Pint of Stella, please, Jess.’ He glanced around the bar, then said, ‘And whatever else you have on offer.’
‘We have some very nice dry-roasted peanuts.’
‘I was thinking of something a bit … wetter.’
‘I’ll get you that pint, then.’
‘Still playing hard to get, eh?’
She had known Liam since school. He was one of those men whom you knew would break your heart into tiny pieces if you let him; the kind of blue-eyed, smart-mouthed boy who ignored you all the way through years ten and eleven, laughed you into bed when you lost your braces and grew your hair, then gave you nothing more than a cheery wave and a wink for ever after. His hair was chestnut brown, his cheekbones high and lightly tanned. He ran a flower stall in the market and whenever she passed he would whisper, ‘You. Me. Behind the dahlias, now,’ just seriously enough to make her miss her stride. His wife had left him about the same time as Marty had departed (‘A little matter of serial infidelity. Some women are so picky’), and six months ago, after one of Des’s lock-ins, they had ended up in the ladies’ loos with his hands up her shirt and Jess walking round wearing a lopsided smile for days.
She and Marty had lived like an irritable brother and sister by the time he left. Sometimes he said he was tired. Mostly he said she put him off with her nagging.
Jess sometimes thought she missed it, but she didn’t miss him.
She was taking the empty cardboard crisps boxes out to the bins when Liam appeared at the back gate. He walked up to her with a sort of silent swagger so that she had to back slowly against the wall of the pub garden. He had a smile on his face like they were both in on some private joke. He stood so that the entire length of his body was just inches from hers and said softly, ‘I can’t stop thinking about you.’ He held his cigarette hand well away from her. He was a gentleman like that.
‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’
‘I like watching you move around that bar. Half the time I’m watching the football, and half the time I’m imagining bending you over it.’
‘Who says romance is dead?’
God, he smelt good. Jess wriggled a bit, trying to get herself out from under him before she did something she’d regret. Being near Liam Stubbs sparked bits of her to life that she had forgotten existed, like those joke birthday candles that insist on reigniting long after you’d blown them out.
‘So let me romance you. Let me take you out. You and me. A proper date. Come on, Jess. Let’s make a go of it.’
Jess pulled back from him. ‘What?’
‘You heard.’
She stared. ‘You want us to have a relationship?’
‘You say it like it’s a dirty word.’
She slid out from under him, glancing towards the back door. ‘I’ve got to get back to the bar, Liam.’
‘Why won’t you go out with me?’ He took a step closer. ‘You know it would be great …’ His voice had dropped to a whisper.
‘And I also know I have two kids and two jobs and you spend your whole life in your car, and it would take about three weeks for you and me to be bickering on a sofa about whose turn it was to take the rubbish out.’ She smiled sweetly at him. ‘And then we would lose the heart-stopping romance of exchanges like this for ever.’
He picked up a lock of her hair and let it slide through his fingers. His voice was a soft growl. ‘So cynical. You’re going to break my heart, Jess Thomas.’
‘And you’re going to get me fired.’
He was the man you never dared take seriously. She thought he probably liked her because she was the only woman round here who didn’t.
‘I take it this means a quickie’s out of the question?’
She extricated herself and made her way towards the back door, trying to make the colour subside from her cheeks. Then she stopped. ‘Hey, Liam.’
He looked up from stubbing his cigarette out.
‘You don’t want to lend me five hundred quid, do you?’
‘If I had it, babe, you could have it.’ He blew a kiss as she disappeared back indoors.
She was walking around the bar to pick up empties, her cheeks still pink, when she saw him. She actually did a double-take. He was sitting in the corner alone, and there were three empty pint glasses in front of him.
He had changed into Converse trainers, jeans and a T-shirt and he sat staring at his mobile phone, flicking at the screen and occasionally glancing up when everyone cheered a goal. As Jess watched, he picked up a beer and downed it. He probably thought that in his jeans he blended in, but he had ‘incomer’ written all over him. As he glanced towards the bar, she turned away swiftly, feeling her brief happy mood evaporate.
‘Just popping downstairs for some more snacks,’ she said to Chelsea, and made for the cellar. ‘Ugh,’ she muttered, under her breath. ‘Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.’ When she re-emerged he had a fresh pint and barely looked up from his phone.
The evening stretched. Chelsea discussed her Internet options, Mr Nicholls drank three more pints and Jess disappeared whenever he got up to the bar, juggled debts and imaginary lottery wins and tried not to meet Liam’s eye. By ten to eleven, the pub was down to a handful of stragglers – the usual offenders, Des called them. Chelsea put on her coat.
‘Where are you going?’
She stooped to apply her lipstick in the mirror behind the optics. ‘Des said I could leave a bit early.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Date.’
‘Date? Who goes on a date at this time of night?’
‘It’s a date at David’s house. It’s all right,’ she said, as Jess stared at her. ‘My sister’s coming too. He said it would be nice with the three of us.’
‘Chels, have you ever heard the expression “booty call”?’
‘What?’