Misspent Youth

“It’s late for that, Dad, by about ten years. Okay?”

“I’m sorry. I do my best.”

She wanted to scream at him, let out all her fury in one easy blast of vitriol and accusation. Looking at the shambolic man standing there with his pathetically eager expression held over his face like some kind of shield, the anger shifted to dismay and a sudden wave of exhaustion. There was no way she could ever understand what had happened to him, and through that, her. Their once-cozy house was degenerating along with the whole estate, where one in three families had no job and kids hung out all day intimidating anyone on the street. He never did any cleaning or cooking or gardening. The only real money she ever saw was a monthly allowance from her mother, the kind of money that nearly every other girl at school spent in an afternoon on a single outfit. Their only other source of income, the pitiful unemployment benefit her father received, vanished straight into the household account. Every week the domestic computer’s finance program would pay off the mortgage and local taxes. Then it would spend a few moments accessing the regional supermarket sites to update itself with their current grocery prices, comparing them with the necessities list she’d loaded in years ago. On Friday the Community Supply Service van would pull up outside and deliver their food for the week, a depressing cluster of supermarket own-brand packages and bargain offers.

There were times when she could remember her childhood, time spent with a man who used to take her out to the parks and play with her. A man who’d tell her stories, and read to her, and watch the children’s shows on cable with her. It was difficult to make the connection between that distant figure and the man standing in the kitchen.

In a way her father was the opposite of Tim’s. He always used to complain that Jeff never joined in much when he was a kid.

Jeff Baker.

Annabelle pushed that thought away before it had a chance to form. Right now she had enough problems trying to decide what to do about Tim. She was still furious with him over tonight. If things had gone according to her plans they’d be in bed together right now; and it might have been as good as it was with Derek.

Roger was still standing at the kitchen door, awkward at the silence.

“Dad, you know I’ve applied for university, don’t you?”

“I know. I remember, you told me. Just don’t do accountancy. You’ll wind up like me.” A nervous judder of a laugh.

“That means I’ll be leaving at the end of summer. Leaving home.”

His head bowed slowly. “I know. I’m pleased about that. It’s what you need. It’ll be good for you.”

“Okay then.” The slices clunked up out of the toaster, barely brown. She grabbed them.

“So, you’re all right then?” he persisted.

“Dad, yes, I’m fine. I just wanted a night in, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.”

An insistent bleeping from her PCglasses woke her up at nine-thirty the next morning. It was a txt from Derek.

By ten past ten she’d had breakfast, showered, put on some clean clothes and was out of the house on the way to catch her bus.

24. CELEBRITY STATUS

THE BARMAID AT THE VAULTS gave Jeff a wide knowing smile as she pulled three pints for him. He endured it awkwardly, impatient for the glasses to fill. It was like being taunted by school-yard bullies. Nothing you could say to make her stop, nowhere to go to avoid her gaze.

Once the last drop of beer came out of the pump tap he hurriedly dropped a hundred-euro cash card on the bar, and fled back to the table with the three glasses. “Jesus, does everybody know?”

Alan chuckled as he lifted his glass. “’Fraid so, old boy. There’s poetic justice for you.”

“How the hell is this poetic justice?”

“Without your memory crystal there would never be this god-awful Orwellian twenty-four-hours-a-day, every-street-in-every-town surveillance. We simply couldn’t store that much data, not on good old-fashioned hard drives. The insurance company would never have put that camera outside your flat. Your little friend could have gone home without anyone ever seeing. Instead, you came along with your great save-the-world-from-capitalism crusade, and now you can’t actually get crime insurance coverage unless there is a Big Brother camera pointing at your front door. Cheers!” He took a gulp of beer.

“Hey, releasing the memory crystal was never about politics.”

“You changed the world,” James said. “Now live in it. We have to.”

Jeff gave his friend a surprised look. There had been a lot of anger in James’s voice. For once the big man wasn’t happily slurping down his beer. Now what have I done? He’d come to the pub purely so he could get out of the manor. Life at home was not good right now.

“Could be worse,” Alan mused. “The world could have turned out like it did in Blade Runner.”

James took a long drink. “That would have been preferable.”

“What the hell is up with you?” Jeff asked.

“Nothing wrong with me. How about you?”

Jeff couldn’t figure this out at all. “I’m fine, thank you.”

“So we gather.”

“You’re not seriously upset about me meeting that girl, are you?”

James gave him a moody glare over the rim of his glass. “I don’t know, which one?”

“Come on, you two,” Alan said. He was looking between them with quite a degree of discomfort. “We’re not re-creating the end of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly here.”

“Good!” Jeff took a long drink, deliberately ignoring James. He knew now. Somehow his old friend had found out about him and Nicole. And what do you say to that? The man’s granddaughter. Small wonder he was so angry. He suddenly wondered if Nicole had come clean and told James herself because Jeff had kept canceling their meetings.

“I never could work out which one was supposed to be the ugly,” Alan said.

“Lee Van Cleef,” James said irritably.

Jeff had always supposed it was Eli Wallach, but kept quiet.

“So what did Lacey have to say for himself at your dinner?” Alan asked.

“Not much. He asked me if I’d say a few words in favor of his campaign.”

“Jesus, what did you tell him?”

“I said I’d think about it. Nobody got back to me about it after the evening, not even Lucy Duke.”

“You’re a civil servant,” James said. “They can’t use you; you’re supposed to be impartial.”

“I am not a bloody civil servant.”

“Government pays for you, you’re a civil servant.”

“That is such a load of crap.”

“Why? We paid for your precious treatment. And that whole bureaucratic con trick must have added a couple of percent to everyone’s income tax. Now we’re paying you again to work on their next pie-in-the-sky idea. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, they’re already leaking that top bracket income tax is going to hit seventy-five percent next budget. And it gets spent on the likes of you.”

“The high temperature superconductor is not pie in the sky,” Jeff said with forced politeness. “It’ll be a huge boon for everyone.”

“Except for the established energy suppliers,” James said. “It will ruin them, and for what purpose?”

Jeff cast a confused glance at Alan, who just shrugged. “What?”

“We don’t need your stupid government project,” James snapped. “We have enough energy, and if we need more the market will find ways of supplying it.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, we do not have enough energy. How can you say that, you’re the same generation as