In Pieces Read Online Free PDF Page A

favourite time to strike. Like tickling salmon, he described it. Taking them when they were most vulnerable. Belly up, half-drunk on lager, and starting to forget themselves.
    The Feathers wasn’t a bad pub. It attracted a mixed bunch: balding young bankers trying to stay awake and biding their time before moving up the road to Chelsea; paunchy, jobbing builders from the North East missing their families, shooting their mouths off and waving fifty pound notes around; chintzy divorcees pretending they were still young; a scattering of raucous tarts game on for a big night out; and, of course, Jimmy and Si—the only professional footballer and journalist among the regulars, but, in common with most of the clientele, non-native Londoners.
    Like the bankers and the tarts, Jimmy and Si didn’t hang out with their school friends, most of whom had stayed in their home town and now spent their spare time playing darts and snooker. Another trait shared with many Feathers’ regulars was a degree of insecurity; they might be doing okay today, but the future was uncertain, even threatening.
    It always amazed Si that people made it past forty. How did they do it? So complicated, confusing. Mortgages, endowments, marriages, kids, tax returns. Even organising a holiday could appear a challenge at times. Did it all become blindingly clear at some stage? wondered Si, awe-struck. Or was everyone else simply born knowing how to deal with life?
    Jimmy felt this less acutely, but occasionally he also expressed the idea. ‘I mean, what happens afterwards? No, not after I’m too old to play soccer but after
everything
? I mean, shouldn’t we be doing something about it now instead of faffing about like this?’
    But in the face of all this terrifying doubt, Si and Jimmy had found one island which offered temporary refuge: The Feathers.
    Sometimes, after last orders, they went on to a party. On this particular evening, Brenda Bassett suggested the venue. Brenda used to work behind the bar, before getting a job as a Public Relations assistant. But she still came in for a drink. ‘It’ll be great, free booze, beautiful people, even famous ones…’
    â€˜Famous? Like who?’ Jimmy raised his eyebrows.
    â€˜Oh, I don’t know. You shouldn’t be so…’ Brenda searched for the word. Jimmy waited, watching her, amused. ‘So
pedantic
,’ she concluded triumphantly. ‘But there will be ’cos this guywhose house it’s at is pretty flashy. He drives a sports car, and he’s on the radio. I met him through work.’
    Jimmy smirked, but Brenda didn’t seem to notice.
    Brenda was all mouth—always had been, even three years before as a sixteen-year-old wearing make-up and boasting about what she’d done with her twenty-three-year-old boyfriend the night before. ‘You see that mark there… No, not there, there, on my knee? Yeah, that one. That’s where…’ And so on, trying to impress them all as she pulled the pints.
    Yet, despite her crudity, Brenda was an attractive girl in a raw, sexy kind of way. She rarely wore skirts larger than a handkerchief and had the legs to carry them off. Her tops were invariably too tight and allowed her breasts to reveal themselves impressively through the thin material. Combined with her raunchy laugh and undistinguished but acceptable face, she had something which made most men enjoy her company—Si had once described it as her ‘mistress quality’. She was an archetypal Other Woman.
    Si had known a girl like Brenda at school. He’d shared illicit cigarettes with her and a crowd of others during lunch breaks and used to watch her inhaling carefully, imagining what she’d be like on her own. Just him and her. She used to take a mouthful of smoke expertly and, pouting smudged lipstick, blow out the blue-grey stain into the insipid air, which shone with a billion drops of cold, lemon