Guilty Feet Read Online Free PDF Page B

until some bugger agreed to pay our wages.
    Only I didn’t, of course. I imagine everyone entertained the same kind of mad idea, briefly, but in the end they didn’t do or say anything either. It was just a fact of life these days. Tech companies folded and there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it.
    They don’t come much more steady than my father. He’d worked for British Gas for thirty-three years, and even he had been affected. He’d taken out a technology-based ISA only three months ago and so far it had quartered in value. My mother never stopped griping about it, making Dad feel an inadequate, reckless fool for doing what she’d encouraged him to do when it looked as if they might make a fast buck.
    At least I’d only lost a couple of weeks’ wages.
    Since no one even suggested we went for a farewell drink together, we eventually began to disperse from our collective stupor. Staff had come and gone so frequently at Pisus UK that I didn’t know any of them all that well, and to be honest it wasn’t going to break my heart knowing I’d never see any of them again. With the possible exception of the Child Sid, that is.
    I sought him out from the disconsolate, disbanding throng and gave him a Marco-style hug. He seemed pretty stunned, but not unhappy.
    ‘Do you fancy getting something to eat?’ he said, and it didn’t seem too bad an idea.
    ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken or Burger King?’
    ‘How about going mad and doing Pizza Express?’
    When I hesitated, thinking about my already overstretched budget, Sid seemed to read my mind and insisted on paying. And I hesitated no longer.
    He had a Soho and I had a Caprina—fancy names for very small, but very good pizzas. We’d managed to put away the best part of a bottle of their finest house red by the time they were placed in front of us. And I’m not very good with red wine on an empty stomach.
    I could hear myself slurring as I asked Sid if that was his real name. And I knew I was in a bad way when he said that it wasn’t, that his real name was hard to pronounce at the best of times and that I had no chance in my particular state. I hadn’t really taken it on board before, but it suddenly clicked that Sid’s dark hair and eyes were due to the fact that he had Asian blood in his veins. But it was his age I was really curious about.
    ‘How old are you?’ I asked, carefully now, after I swallowed a morsel of my Caprina.
    He didn’t smile very much, didn’t Sid, but he managed one now.
    ‘How old do you think?’
    I put my knife and fork down and considered this. I also considered the fact that everyone seemed to eat their pizzas sissy-style in Pizza Express, with knives and forks, instead of the usual tear and finger method. And, because I didn’t like to draw attention to myself, I was doing the same.
    ‘I presume you’re over school-leaving age,’ I ventured, ‘and you’ve worked for Pisus UK for nearly six months, so you’ve got to be sixteen and a half, I suppose.’
    ‘I might find that quite insulting if I didn’t know you were drunk.’
    ‘I might find that insulting if I didn’t know you were as well,’ I replied, quick as a flash. ‘Well, go on,’ I said, ‘put me out of my misery.’
    He gave me what my mother called an old-fashioned look.
    ‘I’ll be twenty-two in January, but when I tell my dad I’m out of work I might not make my birthday.’
    ‘That’s a bit unfair,’ I said. ‘It isn’t your fault the company folded.’
    ‘My dad will think differently. He’ll say if I was as good at my job as I tell him I am I could have saved it.’
    ‘Has he always been that unreasonable?’ I asked, feeling a bit sorry for Sid now. Maybe having an unreasonable father was the reason he always looked so glum.
    ‘The fact is I think I could have saved it if I’d been allowed to do what I wanted to do.’
    I’m sorry to say that I laughed in his face. ‘You’ve having me on,’ I said, when his expression remained