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could make something really brilliant, Bartholomew. That old lean-to – the glass one – that’d make a great café. Vines in the ceiling, sand on the floor, newspapers on wooden tables. And if you got rid of all the plastic crap, that corner of your warehouse could be a farm shop. Bung in a kids’ playground in the lower field.’
    ‘All that takes money. I’ve got no money, Rube. I’ve got bank loans up to my eyeballs and piss-all income. That’s why the fishing gnomes have to stay.’
    She slumps back, jutting out her lower lip. ‘Lottery maybe.’
    He stands up.
    ‘No wonder you don’t have a name,’ she says. ‘You don’t really know what it is yet.’
    ‘I’m going to put some music on. See if I can inject some atmosphere into this place.’
    The pints roll on, Ruby downing them as they come. She’s a terrible drinker – can’t take it at all, because she drinks so seldom, so she soon starts to sway with it, putting her head on his shoulder, laughing too loudly. She was right about a name for the place. In the two years since opening, he’d been functioning under the trade name ‘Garden Centre’, always with a view to rebranding it eventually – a strategy that drew uniform derision from anyone with experience in business. His mother kept suggesting ‘Have a Hartle’, which kept him awake at night.
    ‘Have a Hartle! Christ, that’s bad!’ shouts Ruby, slamming her pint down on the table so that a wave of it sloshes over the side of the glass.
    ‘I know,’ he says.
    ‘We can do better ’an that.’
    ‘I was thinking something youthful and urban – just one word,’ he says. ‘You know, like Planted. Excepted that’s taken.’
    ‘Or Soiled.’ She laughs. ‘Come off it, Bartholomew. One word is pretentious.’
    They look out across the bar in silence.
    ‘Worth a Trowel?’ says Ruby. ‘Pot Luck? All You Need Is Lush?’
    ‘If you’re not going to be serious . . .’
    ‘I’m just thinking out loud. Let’s think about your stock.’
    ‘Well, um, there’s some hard landscaping, you know, paving stones and stuff, bricks, gravel, compost. In the warehouse there’s fertilisers and plant food – like fish, blood and bone.’
    ‘I don’t think fish, blood and bone is going to draw in the crowds. Tools?’ She burps with her mouth shut. ‘’Scuse me.’
    ‘Spades, forks, aerators, hedge trimmers. This isn’t getting us anywhere. And anyway, this is about the tenth time we’ve gone through it.’
    ‘Maybe we should be thinking elegant rather than cool. It’s on Ray Street, Ray of Hope! Hoe Ray Me?’
    ‘Oh god, this is rubbish,’ he says.
    ‘No, hang on. Alive and Digging!’
    ‘Alive and Digging?’
    ‘As in the U2 song.’
    ‘Simple Minds actually. No one’s going to get that.’
    ‘P’raps not. Dig . . . dig . . . Can You Dig It? Dig When You’re Winning! The Dug Out. Diggery Pokery.’
    ‘Please stop.’
    ‘Thanks very mulch.’ Ruby is now slurring. And hiccuping.
    ‘Let’s get you home,’ he says, standing and putting on his padded jacket.
    *
    Ann sits heavily down in the passenger seat and enjoys the support against the base of her back. Lauren’s car is always immaculate. Still smells of car showrooms even though it’s not new by a long chalk. Nissan-something. Not like the fifteen-year-old draughty thing Joe drives. You could be sure of a cold bum and poor visibility in a Hartle vehicle.
    ‘Amazing performance from Brenda,’ she says.
    ‘You’re telling me,’ says Lauren, peering at the road. ‘That woman ’s barely hit the board in a year, and suddenly . . .’ She pulls out slowly, both hands on the top of the steering wheel, her body hunched over it. ‘Come to think of it, that woman’s barely seen the board in a year, never mind hit it.’
    Ann listens to the rhythmic thrub of Lauren’s windscreen-wipers and looks over at her friend, whose face is outlined with a greenish glow from the dashboard. Loose flesh on her cheeks, sagging below