“You’re kicking her out? Just like that?”
“Not at all. But you will have to make alternative arrangements over the next few weeks. Your mother is getting to the stage where she requires constant nursing supervision. We’re simply not set up for a service that intense.”
“Well, where is?”
“I can provide a list of medical centers that we recommend. Several of them are local; one is even run by our parent company. I took the liberty of checking. There are places available.”
“Oh God.” Sue put her head in her hands.
“The financial requirement involved is inevitably higher than the level you’re accustomed to here at the Hall. Is that a problem?” He sounded mildly surprised.
“Let me talk this over with my husband. We’ll be in touch in a few days.”
“Of course.”
And what the hell was Jeff going to say about this?
17. LINE ’EM UP
IT HAD BEEN YEARS since Jeff had ventured into a pub. A long time ago, before he lived in Empingham, his local kept his own pewter tankard behind the bar for him. Those were the days when he enthused about real ale and had regular sessions with his friends and colleagues of a Friday night. Twenty years ago now. Probably even longer if he was honest.
He’d arranged to meet Alan and James in Stamford for a boys’ night out, starting off at the Vaults on Broad Street. The whole event was a straight fix of nostalgia, although he wasn’t sure for whose benefit. A couple of his Europol team went into the Vaults first for a quick check and gave him the okay. When he walked in, James and Alan were waiting with expressions of mild derision.
“Your babysitting squad has approved then, have they?” James grunted.
“Please,” Jeff said. “If I get shot, it’s your tax money that’s been wasted. What are you drinking?”
James looked at his pint pot on the table, still three quarters full. “Bateman’s, please.”
“Same here,” Alan said.
Jeff went up to the bar to collect the order. Several people around the lounge were staring at him. There was an outbreak of heated whispering across the room. The barmaid was very attentive, a blonde girl who couldn’t have been twenty. When she smiled at him he tried to avoid looking at the zits on her cheeks.
James had almost finished his first pint by the time Jeff got back to the table. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
“What are you drinking?” Alan asked.
“Lager shandy,” Jeff confessed. “I’ve still got to be a bit careful healthwise.” A polite lie. He simply didn’t want to end up like…well, James, basically. He’d been down that road once before, thank you very much. Just one last pint and a stop at the all-night burger bar; week after week, year after year. When you were young it didn’t matter, your body could handle it. Cumulative effects were so small as to be unnoticeable. It was only in later life you regretted and cursed all those binges and excesses. This time around he was determined to be more careful, to take care of himself. Nicole had certainly complimented him on the shape he was in. It made him realize he was more frightened by aging now than he ever had been before.
“I hear you might be coming on board with us,” James said.
“On board?”
“Nicole gave me a full report of what happened.”
Superb self-control prevented Jeff from choking on his beer. “Oh, that.”
Alan laughed and nudged James. “See how a young girl can turn his head. He never signed on when you were running the company.”
Jeff gave them a weak smile. There was absolutely no way he was going to be able to tell James about this. It didn’t matter that Nicole had made all the moves; sleeping with a friend’s granddaughter had to be pretty close to the top of all-time Bad Things. “She made a good case for you to overhaul my finances. They need looking at properly.” He’d even fixed up a repeat meeting at the hotel for next week.
“Certainly bloody do,” James grunted. “Brussels keeps changing the rules. Bastards. You’ve got to stay five steps ahead of them or they’ll scoop up your entire salary. We’ve heard they’re going to increase Social Insurance to eighteen percent of overall income in a couple of years’ time. That’s on top of income tax. And you’ve got to be top rated on that, Jeff.”
“It’s a pretty frightening figure, yeah.”
“Two years,” Alan mused. “That puts it conveniently after the presidential elections.”
“Doesn’t matter, nobody votes for the president anyway. Last time it was barely a forty percent turnout, and most of them were from Luxembourg.”
“None of the candidates would ever mention higher taxes anyway, not even if they go negative,” James said. “That way they all benefit from deniability. Just like Area fifty-one in
“That was culpable deniability. Randy Quaid told the president about it.”
“Yeah, Quaid was playing Jeff Goldblum’s dad.”
“Second time Goldblum was in an alien invasion film.”
“Remake of the
Three girls walked in. Jeff doubted if the eldest was more than sixteen. All of them wore incredibly low tops and short skirts. They clustered around the bar, chattering away like a flock of sparrows.
“Jesus,” James muttered. “Where the hell were they when I was that age?”
“Their parents didn’t exist when you were that age,” Alan told him.
The girls all ordered vodka mixers. Jeff couldn’t remember what the legal pub age was these days. Was Europe currently being as liberal about booze as it was drugs (except tobacco, of course)? Whatever the age, it didn’t seem to bother the girls. When he looked at their legs that initial pulse of admiration withered slightly. None of them was particularly tall, and two of them were already mildly chubby. It was all attitude and clothes that made men turn and look. So unlike Annabelle, he thought. Now there was a genuine looker.
James stood up and drained the last of his pint. “My round, hurry up, chaps.”
“Same again,” Alan said.
“I’ll just have a half,” Jeff said.
James gave him a disgruntled look, and went off to the bar.
“This’ll be my last,” Alan said. “I can’t knock it back like I used to. It doesn’t matter how many genoproteins are buzzing round inside me, I’m not as young as I was.”
“Whatever you’re comfortable with,” Jeff said.
Alan leaned in across the table. “I still can’t believe that it’s really you, that this whole ridiculous procedure worked. I feel like I want to rip it out of you and use it on myself. If it was just a single pill or gadget, then I would do it. Jesus, Jeff, do you realize what you are?”
“I’m beginning to, I think.”
“Fucking lucky, that’s what. The luckiest man that ever walked across the face of the planet. You’re young again. You’ve got your whole life again. Life is always wasted on young people, they don’t know what it’s about. But not you, you already know. You know what to do to make it count, every bloody minute of it. And you’ve got Sue to go home to each night as well. Tell me that isn’t bloody tremendous.”
“Hey, come on, Alan. You’re good for another thirty years, and that’s just with today’s treatments. By the time you’re a hundred they’ll be giving you that single pill for rejuvenation.”
Alan contemplated the last of his beer. “Bull, Jeff. I’ve got the worst time of my life ahead of me, and our wonderful medical industry will stretch it out and out until I just scream for it to end.”
