The One Plus One

6. Jess

The Feathers public house sat between the library (closed since January) and the Happy Plaice (11 a.m.–11 p.m., all year round), and in the right light, inside, it was possible to believe it was still 1989. Des, the landlord, had never been seen in anything but faded tour T-shirts, jeans and, if it was cold, a blouson leather jacket. On a quiet night, if you were unlucky, he would detail the merits of a Fender Stratocaster against a Rickenbacker 330 or recite with a poet’s reverence all the words to ‘Money For Nothing’.

The Feathers was not smart, in the way that the Beachfront bars were smart, and it did not serve fresh seafood or fine wines and family-friendly menus to screaming children. It served various kinds of dead animal with chips, and it scoffed at the word ‘salad’ (what it really liked was crisps: it stocked no fewer than twenty-eight varieties). There was nothing more adventurous than Tom Petty on the jukebox, a battered dartboard on the wall, and a carpet from which, in the mornings, the odour of beer and old cigarettes was so strong that locals had been known to arrive at work partially drunk because they had strolled past too slowly.

But it was a formula that worked. The Feathers was that rare thing in a seaside town: busy all year round.

‘Is Roxanne here?’ Jess pinned up a new strip of pork scratchings as Des emerged from the cellar, where he had been tying on a fresh barrel of real ale.

‘Nah. She’s doing something with her mother.’ He thought for a minute. ‘Healing. No, fortune-telling. Psychiatrist. Psychologist.’

‘Spiritualist?’

‘The one where they tell you stuff you already know and you’re meant to look impressed.’

‘Psychic.’

‘Thirty pound a ticket, they’re paying, to sit there with a glass of cheap white wine and shout, “Yes!” when someone asks did someone in the audience have a relative whose name began with J.’ He stooped, slamming the cellar door shut with a grunt. ‘I could predict a few things, Jess. And I won’t charge you thirty pound for it. I predict that man is sitting at home right now, rubbing his hands and thinking, What a bunch of muppets.’

Jess hauled the tray of clean glasses out of the dishwasher and began stacking them on the shelves above the bar.

‘Do you believe all that old bollocks?’

‘No.’

‘Course you don’t. You’re a sensible girl. I don’t know what to say to her sometimes. Her mother’s the worst. She reckons she’s got her own guardian angel. An angel.’ He mimicked her, looking at his own shoulder and tapping it. ‘She reckons it protects her. Didn’t protect her from spending all her compensation on the shopping channels, did it? You’d think that angel would have had a word. “Here, Maureen. You really don’t want that luxury ironing-board cover with a picture of a dog on it. Really, love. Put a bit into your pension instead.”’

Miserable as Jess felt, she couldn’t help but laugh. It was hard not to in the pub. The men at the bar were gentlemanly (as far as men who belched the alphabet could be called gentlemanly), the talk was cheerful, and it meant that for two nights and two lunchtimes a week she did not sit at home with a pile of someone else’s laundry worrying about things she could not control.

‘You’re early.’ Des looked pointedly at his watch.

‘Shoe emergency.’ Chelsea slung her handbag under the bar, and fixed her hair. ‘I got chatting online to one of my dates,’ she said, to Jess, as if Des wasn’t there. ‘He’s absolutely gorgeous.’

All Chelsea’s Internet dates were gorgeous. Until she met them.

‘David, his name is. He’s looking for someone who likes cooking, cleaning and ironing. And the odd trip out.’

‘To the supermarket?’ said Des.

Chelsea ignored him. She picked up a dishcloth and began drying glasses. ‘You want to get yourself on there, Jess. Get out and about a bit instead of mouldering in here with this lot of droopy old ballsacks.’

‘Less of the old, you.’

The football was on, which meant that Des put out free crisps and cheese cubes, and, if he was feeling particularly generous, mini sausage rolls. Jess had taken home the leftover cubes, with Des’s blessing, to make macaroni cheese, until Nathalie had told her the statistic for how many men actually washed their hands after going to the loo.

The bar filled, the match started, the evening passed without note; she poured pints in the commentary gaps, silent against the blare of the satellite television on the far wall, and thought, yet again, about money. The end of the month, the school had said. If she didn’t register by then, that was it. Jess could save for a year and see if she could try to get her in at twelve, but there was no guarantee that the scholarship would still exist.

She was so deep in thought that she almost didn’t hear Des until he dumped a bowl of Quavers on the bar beside her. ‘I meant to tell you. Next week we’ve got a new till coming. It’s one of those where everything’s written down. All you have to do is touch the screen.’

She turned away from the optics. ‘A new till? Why?’

‘That one is older than I am. And not all the barmaids can add up as well as you, Jess. The last time Chelsea was on by herself I cashed up and we were eleven quid out. Ask her to add up a double gin, a pint of Webster’s and a packet of dry-roasted and her eyes cross. We’ve got to move with the times.’ He ran his hand across an imaginary screen. ‘Digital accuracy. You’ll love it. You won’t have to use your brain at all. Just like Chelsea.’

‘Can’t I just stick with this? I’m hopeless with computers.’

‘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?’

Jess looked at her for a minute. ‘Nothing. Just … have a nice time.’

She was loading the dishwasher when he appeared at the bar. His eyes were half closed and he swayed gently, as if he was about to embark on some free-form dance.

‘Pint, please.’

She shoved another two glasses to the back of the wire rack. ‘We’re not serving any more. It’s gone eleven.’

He looked up at the clock. His voice slurred. ‘It’s one minute to.’

‘You’ve had enough.’

He blinked slowly, stared at her. His short, dark hair was sticking up slightly on one side, as if at some point during the last hour, he had started to slide down the banquette. ‘Who are you to tell me I’ve had enough?’

‘The person who serves the drinks. That’s usually how it works.’ Jess held his gaze. ‘You don’t even recognize me, do you?’

‘Should I?’

She stared at him a moment longer. ‘Hold on.’ She let herself out from behind the bar, walked over to the swing door, and as he stood there, bemused, she opened it and let it swing back in her face, lifting a hand and opening her mouth as if to say something.

She opened the door again and stood there in front of him. ‘Recognize me now?’

He blinked. Jess could almost hear the cogs of his brain working.

‘Are you … Did I see you yesterday?’

‘The cleaner. Yes.’

He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Ah. The whole door thing. I was just … having a tricky conversation.’

‘“Not now, thanks” tends to work just as well, I find.’

‘Right. Point taken.’ He leant on the bar. Jess tried to keep a straight face when his elbow slipped off. ‘So that’s an apology, is it?’

He peered at her blearily. ‘Sorry. I’m really, really, really sorry. Very sorry, O Bar Lady. Now can I have a drink?’

‘No. It’s gone eleven.’

‘Only because you kept me talking.’

‘I haven’t got time to sit here while you nurse another pint.’

‘Give me a shot, then. Come on. I need another drink. Give me a shot of vodka. Here. You can keep the change.’ He slammed a twenty on the bar. The impact reverberated through the rest of him so that his head whiplashed back slightly. ‘Just one. Actually, make it a double. It’ll take me all of two seconds to down it. One second.’

‘No. You’ve had enough.’

Des’s voice broke in from the kitchen. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Jess, give him a drink.’

Jess stood for a moment, her jaw rigid, then turned and emptied the optic twice into a glass. She rang up the money, then silently placed his change on the bar. He downed the vodka, swallowing audibly as he put the glass down, and turned away, staggering slightly.

‘You forgot your change.’

‘Keep it.’

‘I don’t want it.’

‘Put it in your charity box, then.’

She gathered it up and shoved it at his hand. ‘Des’s charity of choice is the Des Harris Holiday In Memphis Fund,’ she said. ‘Really. Just take your money.’

He blinked at her, and took two unbalanced steps to the side as she opened the door for him. It was then she noticed what he had just pulled from his pocket. And the super-shiny Audi in the car park.

‘You’re not driving home.’

‘I’m fine.’ He batted away her protest. ‘There aren’t any cars around here at night anyway.’

‘You can’t drive.’

‘We’re in the middle of nowhere, in case you haven’t noticed.’ He gestured at the sky. ‘I’m miles away from everything, and stuck here, in the middle of fucking nowhere.’ He leant forward, and his breath was a blast of alcohol. ‘I’ll go very, very, slowly.’

He was so drunk that peeling the keys from his hand was embarrassingly easy. ‘No,’ she said, turning back to the bar. ‘I won’t be responsible for you having an accident as well as everything else. Go back inside, and I’ll call you a taxi.’

‘Give me my keys.’

‘No.’

‘You’re stealing my keys.’

‘I’m saving you from a driving ban.’ She held them aloft, and turned back towards the bar.

‘Oh, for Chrissakes,’ he said. He made it sound like she was the last in a long line of irritations. It made her want to kick him.

‘I’ll get you a taxi. Just – just sit there. I’ll give you your keys back once you’re safely inside it.’

She texted Liam from the phone in the back hall.

Does this mean I get lucky? he replied.

If you like them hairy. And male.

She walked back outside and Mr Nicholls was gone. His car was still there. She called him twice, wondering if he’d headed off to a bush to relieve himself, then glanced down and there he was, fast asleep on the outside bench. The angle of his limbs suggested he had simply keeled over sideways from his seated position and passed out.

She thought, briefly, about leaving him there. But it was chilly, and the sea mists were unpredictable, and he would likely wake up without his wallet.

‘I’m not taking that,’ Liam said, through the driver’s window, as his taxi pulled into the car park.

‘He’s fine. He’s just asleep. I can tell you where he’s got to go.’

‘Nuh-uh. Last sleeper I had woke up and vomited all down my new seat covers. Then somehow perked up enough to do a runner.’

‘He lives on Beachfront. He’s hardly going to do a runner.’ She glanced down at her watch. ‘Oh, come on, Liam. It’s late. I just want to get home.’

‘Then leave him. Sorry, Jess.’

‘Okay. How about I stay in the car while you drop him off? If he’s ill, I’ll clean it up. Then you can drop me home. He can pay.’ She picked up Mr Nicholls’s change from where he had dropped it on the ground beside the bench, and sifted through it. ‘Thirteen pounds should do it, yes?’

He pulled a face. ‘Ah, Jess. Don’t make it hard for me.’

‘Please, Liam.’ She smiled. She placed a hand on his arm. ‘Pretty please.’

He gazed down the road. ‘All right. But if he’s sick it’s thirty quid for the lost earnings. And you’ll have to clean it up.’

She lowered her head to Mr Nicholls’s sleeping face, then straightened and nodded. ‘He says that’s fine.’

Liam shook his head. The flirtatious air of earlier had evaporated.

‘Oh, come on, Liam. Help me get him in. I need to go home.’

He lay with his head on her lap, like a sick child. She didn’t know where to put her hands. She held them across the back of the rear seat, and spent the whole journey praying that he wouldn’t be sick. Every time he groaned, or shifted, she wound down a window, or leaned across to check his face. Don’t you dare, she told him silently. Just don’t you dare. They were two minutes from the holiday park when her phone buzzed. It was Belinda, her neighbour. She squinted at the illuminated screen: Boys have been after your Nicky again. Got him outside the chip shop. Nigel’s taken him to hospital.

A large cold weight landed on her chest. On my way she typed.

Nigel says he’ll stay with him till you’re there. I’ll stay here with Tanzie.

Thanks Belinda. I’ll be as quick as I can.

A drumbeat of anxiety began a tattoo in her chest. Mr Nicholls shifted and let out an elongated snore. She stared at him, at his expensive haircut and his too blue jeans, and was suddenly furious. She might have been home by now if it wasn’t for him. It would have been her walking the dog, not Nicky.

‘Here we are.’

Jess directed him to Mr Nicholls’s house, and they dragged him in between them, his arms slung over their shoulders, Jess’s knees buckling a little under his surprising weight. He stirred a little when they reached his front door, and she fumbled through his keys, trying to find the right one, before she decided it would be easier to use her own.

‘Where do you want him?’ said Liam, puffing.

‘Sofa. I’m not lugging him upstairs.’

‘He’s lucky we lugged him anywhere at all.’

She pushed him briskly into the recovery position. She took his glasses off, threw a nearby jacket over him, and dropped his keys on the side table that she had polished earlier that day.

And then she felt able to speak the words: ‘Liam, can you drop me at the hospital? Nicky’s had an accident.’

The car sped through the empty lanes in silence. Her mind was racing. She was afraid of what she might find. What had happened? How badly was he hurt? Had Tanzie seen any of it? And then, under the fear, the stupid, mundane stuff, like, Will I be hours at the hospital? A taxi from there would be at least fifteen pounds. Bugger Mr Nicholls and his stupid vodka.

‘You want me to wait?’ said Liam, when he pulled up at A&E.

‘Could you? I’ll only be two minutes. I just need to find out how bad it is.’

She was out of the door before he had even stopped the car.

He was in a side cubicle. When the nurse showed her in through the curtain, Nigel rose from his plastic chair, his kind, doughy face taut with anxiety. Nicky was turned away, his cheekbone covered with a dressing and the beginnings of a black eye leaking colour into the socket above it. A temporary bandage snaked its way around his hairline.

It was all she could do not to let out a sob.

‘They’re going to stitch it. But they want to keep him in. Check for fractures and whatnot.’ Nigel looked awkward. ‘He didn’t want me to call the police.’ He gestured in the general direction of outside. ‘If you’re all right, I’ll be getting back to Belinda. It’s late …’

Jess whispered her thanks, and moved over to Nicky. She placed her hand on the blanket, where his shoulder was.

‘Tanzie’s okay,’ he whispered, not looking at her.

‘I know, sweetheart.’

She sat down on the plastic chair beside his bed. ‘What happened?’

He gave a faint shrug. Nicky never wanted to talk about it. What was the point, after all? Everyone knew the score. You looked like a freak, you got battered. You still looked like a freak, they still kept coming after you. That was the immovable logic of a small seaside town.

And, just for once, she didn’t know what to say to him. She couldn’t tell him it would all be all right, because it patently wasn’t. She couldn’t tell him the police would get the Fishers, because they never did. She couldn’t tell him that things would change before he knew it, because when you were a teenager your life really only stretches in your imagination about two weeks ahead, and they both knew that it wasn’t going to get better by then. Or, probably, any time soon after that.

She took his grazed hand and held it in both of hers. ‘It’ll be okay, you know,’ she said quietly. ‘It does get better than this. You need to keep hold of that. Really. It does get better.’

His gaze slid briefly over and met hers, and then he looked away.

‘He all right?’ said Liam, as she walked slowly back out to the car. The adrenalin had leached out of her, and Jess’s shoulders slumped with exhaustion. She opened the rear door to fetch her jacket and bag, and his eyes, in the rear-view mirror, took it all in.

‘He’ll live.’

‘Little bastards. I was just talking to your neighbour. Someone ought to do something.’ He adjusted his mirror. ‘I’d teach them a lesson myself if I didn’t have to watch out for my licence. Boredom, that’s what it is. They don’t know what else to do with themselves but pick on someone. Make sure you got all your stuff, Jess.’

She had to half climb into the car to reach her coat. And as she did, she felt something under her feet. Semi-solid, cylindrical. She moved her foot, reached down into the footwell, and came up with a fat roll of bank notes. She stared at it in the half-dark, then at what had fallen down beside it. A laminated identity card, the kind you would use at an office. Both must have fallen out of Mr Nicholls’s pocket when he was slumped on the back seat. Before she could think about it she stuffed them into her bag.

‘Here,’ she said, reaching into her purse, but Liam raised a hand.

‘No. I’ve got it. You’ve enough on your plate.’ He gave her a wink. ‘Give one of us a ring when you want picking up. On the house. Dan’s cleared it.’

‘But –’

‘No buts. Out you get now, Jess. Make sure that boy of yours is okay. I’ll see you at the pub.’

She felt almost tearful with gratitude. She stood there, one hand raised, as he circled the car park, so that she heard him as he shouted out of the driver’s window: ‘You should tell him, though, if he’d just try to look a bit more normal, he might not get his head bashed in so often.’