door, bringing with him the sound of traffic and a cold flurry of snow and wind. There would have been traffic noises, too, not so long ago. This was Grimsby’s premier shopping street; a bustling community of independent traders made prosperous by their nearness to the fish market and docks. No longer. It’s a dead street, all plywood and graffiti, To-let signs and metal shutters. Were she a Grimsby girl, it would upset Angie to see a once proud highway reduced to such penury, but she has only called this town her home for a handful of years, and gives the area’s disrepair and ignominy as much consideration as her own.
‘Today, son.’
Dean reaches under the counter and pulls out two glasses. They’re still warm from the dishwasher, so he runs them under the cold tap for a moment. He’s only young but is learning quickly.
‘Come on, son. There’s a lady dying of thirst here.’
Satisfied the glasses are cold enough to spare him any abuse, Dean turns to the pump and fills both pints. Places both on the counter. Takes the four pound coins from Bob’s outstretched hand.
‘Cheers, Bob.’
‘No bother, lad. You showing the game tonight?’
‘Nah, it’s on satellite. Price of the licence is a joke.’
‘They showing it in Wetherspoon’s?’
‘No clue. Probably.’
‘Hard to compete, son.’
‘We’ve got better beer.’
‘You have that.’
Angie raises her glass in a hand that hasn’t shaken since her second pint of the morning and takes a long swallow of beer. Feels the familiar trickle down her gullet; the pleasant sensation of cool liquid turning to comforting, meaty warmth in her sloshing belly. She takes another swallow. Relaxes, knowing that for the next few minutes at least, her problems are solved. That she’s just another customer in a quiet old-school pub, sipping a pint and listening to a bloke talk bollocks.
Takes another drink, then makes a mental note to slow down. She doesn’t know where her next drink is coming from. Doesn’t know about her next meal, either, but doesn’t care quite so much.
‘You all right then, Angie love?’ asks Bob as Dean returns to the beer fridges and begins noisily stocking them with bottles of Carlsberg.
‘Bearing up, sweetheart. Bearing up.’
‘You’re an early bird today.’
‘Had some shopping to do. Thought I’d treat myself.’
‘You deserve it, love. Nice to see you.’
She looks at her latest benefactor. He’s in his late forties and not much taller than her. He’s wearing knock- off designer jeans, scuffed at the knees, and mucky white trainers, with a blue fleece under a faded brown suede jacket that has distinct charity shop credentials. He’s not a bad-looking man. Shaggable, if that’s what it takes. She tends to take a pragmatist’s view of her fleeting unions. Decides on a whim whether to endure a bit of sweat and sticky knickers in the name of a few more pints.
‘You had your hair done, Ange?’
‘No, love. Got caught in the snow. Just dried curly.’
‘It’s cute. Ringlets, like. Very angelic.’
‘That’s me, Bob. Little angel.’
They smile and chink glasses, and she takes another gulp, suddenly confident another drink will be forthcoming. Once, she would have recoiled at the thought of comparing herself to one of the Lord’s chosen seraphim, but when God abandoned her, she let Him leave, and the cross she wears around her neck is the only reminder of the fact she was once a church-going Christian who prayed only for safety and sufficiency, and offered her soul in return.
She swallows the liquor.
She’s made something of an art form out of this. There are half a dozen pubs on her daily circuit, and she can usually wangle two or three drinks in each one. She always buys her first drink in each, but rarely has to dig into her purse for the ones that follow. If she’d ever taken up the offer of the posttraumatic stress counselling, she might have analysed her need to spend so much of her time in pubs, in an environment that almost claimed her life. But Angie doesn’t have time for introspection. She found out what was inside her when the man with the knife began his work. And she’d seen nothing she wanted to see again.
‘Looking dapper yourself, Bob,’ she says, placing a hand on the back of his. ‘Pleased you came in. Was just me and the old boys for the past hour.’
Bob gives her a grin. ‘I’m meeting Ken in the Bear, if you want to join us. He’s all right, is Ken.’
Angie gives him a ‘maybe’ kind of grin, but she’s pretty sure she’ll pass. Although there’s a small chance Bob and Ken will compete for who can be more chivalrous when it comes to keeping her glass full, there’s a better chance that the crowd of old boys who buy her drinks in the Bear will take exception at seeing her with the lads best known for drinking in Wilson’s, and keep their wallets closed next time she puts a hand on their thigh and tells them they’re looking smart.
The door bangs again and Angie looks round. She and Bob are the only customers left. She doesn’t remember seeing any of the old boys go and heard no goodbyes, but her thinking is fuzzy enough at the edges that, if asked, she couldn’t swear how many punters there were when she came in. She remembers a big boy, reading a newspaper, and perhaps old Arthur, with his thick glasses and polyester trousers, but was that today or yesterday? She doesn’t even have time to begin wondering whether it matters before she’s decided that it doesn’t.
‘Did you hear about John? Silly bastard.’
‘No, love. Go on. I love a story.’
She sits and listens to Bob as he begins to tell her about what John did in the Red Lion on Saturday night, and doesn’t even have to make a show of finishing her drink to earn herself another one. Halfway down it, she begins to feel the urge for a smoke, but fancies she can keep it at bay. In the next pub on her circuit, she’ll head straight to the beer garden and make a show of looking in her handbag for her cigarettes until one of the smokers takes pity on her and offers a fag. Then she can save her own for this evening. Smoke them in front of the telly while drinking supermarket vodka and using up her free minutes texting saucy messages to the landlord of the White Hart, who can’t seem to get through a late shift without baring his soul about how he and his wife are only together for the kids, and that it’s a woman like her, a real woman, who should be in his bed.
She doesn’t know what he sees in her. What any of them see in her. At forty-three years old, she’s not exactly pin-up material, though she does wear her purple leggings, denim skirt and loose-fitting jumper from the sale rail at Asda with a certain sassiness that, when added to the red lipstick, dark hair and large, dangly earrings, make her oddly easy on the eyes. She’s tactile, too. Flirty and friendly. A good listener, apparently, though she rarely says anything other than ‘you deserve better’ or ‘she doesn’t know she’s born’ when roped into conversations about the failings of her gentlemen’s other halves.
It wasn’t always like this, of course. Angie Martindale was a miracle, once. The doctors said so. Police. Press, too, even though she was never named in any of the reports. She was the one who got away. The survivor. The one he couldn’t kill. She hasn’t reached the stage in her alcoholism where she will tell the story in exchange for drink but there are times, when her glass is empty and nobody is giving her the eye, that she feels like unfolding one of the newspaper clippings she keeps in her handbag and telling Grimsby’s hardcore drinkers that in a pub like this, a decade and a half ago, she was brutalised and raped by a man whom a judge called ‘evil’ and whose dead blue eyes still stare through her on the nights she falls asleep too sober.
Her telephone vibrates in the pocket of her denim skirt. She apologises to Bob for the interruption and pointedly silences the phone.
‘You could have taken it,’ says Bob, trying to hide his big silly grin when he realises she’s rejected the call, just so she can continue to chat.
‘I’m talking to you, Bob,’ she says, softening her body language slightly. She’s used this trick plenty of times before. Made her gentlemen feel special, just by setting her alarm for half-hour intervals and then hanging up on whosoever had the temerity to disturb her while engrossed in conversation with the most fascinating man in the world.
She does deliver, of course. She can’t get by on suggestiveness alone. On occasion, when she thinks they’ve
