“Coming back?”
“Later,” I said. Only today I wasn’t so sure.
“That Lozza looks a bit like that Harding woman, don’t ya think?”
I felt my heart leap. I shrugged. “Hadn’t noticed.”
“You seeing her again?”
“Lozza? No.”
“Good. She’s a stuck up cow anyway, don’t like her.”
I opened the gate, smiling as Casey took off like a bullet. She waited at the end of the road, down on her front legs, tail going. “Gotta go, Vick. Thanks for the toast.”
“Don’t be late back, yeah? Can watch TV or summat.”
She best not hold her breath.
***
Sophie
“Are you listening to me?”
I put down my fork, turning my attention to Dad. He was bleating on again, and no, I hadn’t been listening. Roast dinner was surely never worth all this shit, and yet here I was, every bloody Sunday.
“Three months, I get it,” I sighed. “But I’ve got initiatives running, a new estate to manage, I can’t just up and leave. I guess the Hardings’ grand entrance into the glittering world of showbiz will just have to scrape by without me.”
“It’s not show business,” he snapped. “It’s theatre, and art, and culture. But of course your initiatives for the drug addicts and reprobates far outweigh anything we have to offer.”
“I like my job.”
“Leave it for now, George,” Mum said. “Not at the table.”
The beautiful soundtrack of cutlery. I stared out at my parents’ garden. You’d never believe this place was in London, not from the grounds. Money can buy just about anything, except decent family communication it seems.
“We don’t need you, anyway,” Alexandra chimed in. “The Southbank development is my baby now. Hang with the druggies all you like, I’ll be hobnobbing with class. Artists, you know... and critics, and art dealers, and people from Culture magazine. You can come along to opening night and weep with jealousy.”
Like that would ever happen. I’ve never been jealous of Alexandra once in my entire existence, despite her being the princess in the tower.
“Not the point,” Dad barked. “We’re a family business. Family. We should all be onboard.”
We weren’t a family business. A family business is like a twee family bakery, or having a family trade or some crap like that. Dad owns Hardings Property and Lettings, the largest but one agency in the country. He has over two thousand people working for him, including my snotty sister, so quite why it was so important that I, black-sheep Harding, should have to be on the payroll as well, mystified me. Principle, Mum said. He’s so principled. So bloody pig-headed, more like.
I resumed my meal, picking at my peas while I waited for it. I thought I’d made it, that maybe for once he’d defy history and let it go until dessert, but no. Of course he wouldn’t.
“Well, maybe it’s time we spoke about the rent on your apartment, then...”
Oh how I love Sundays.
***
The thrill of defiance. A cheap thrill, admittedly, but nonetheless, signing out of the office before Christine’s midday briefing was just the perk I needed on a Monday morning. Nothing like a super important, utterly routine estate walkabout to start the week.
I breathed in the dank, cold air of East Veil skate park, scribbling a note to call in maintenance. More syringes than usual. Must have been a real junkie smash up.
Some idiots had torn the benches apart, used one to smash the glass at the bus shelter across the street. A traffic cone covering a lamppost, and someone’s old trainer wedged in the top. Give me strength.
Al Brown was already outside his fish and chip shop. He waved as I walked on by, sweeping broken glass from the doorway. Dum Cunt in big black letters, daubed over his windows — an irony if ever I saw one. Definitely not one of Callum Jackson’s masterpieces. I kept a beady eye out, surprisingly excited at the prospect of finding one before clean-up had their way with it.
My legs felt a little seasick as I stepped from the alleyway into the tower one garage block, but the place was empty this time, no sign of life. Faintly, ever so faintly, you could still make out the top of the T where Callum’s message had been. I skirted the edge of the garages for a better view, landing a heel straight into a used rubber. Fucking brilliant. My heel speared through, dragging it along the tarmac as I danced a jig, trying to shake the grotty thing off. Nothing says romance quite like a discarded condom.
Like I was in any position to pass judgement on romance. At least there was a rubber, a responsible choice about contraception if not about location. Can’t have it all, I suppose.