and wondered if she should take this last drink to her room, and finish it there before sleeping everything off. Yet again. As she walked back to her seat, weaving between the chairs, she collided with one of the tables, knocking it to one side. She restored it to its position with careful, elaborate movements.
When she sat down she was startled by a sudden impression of brightness, flooding the room as if a stage light had been turned on. She twisted on her stool, and saw that the large windows all along the opposite wall were now lit up, as if by daylight. The impression was so vivid that for a moment Teresa wondered if she had passed out, slept uninterrupted for several hours, and woken up with no perceptible gap.
She put her weight on one leg, half sliding off the stool, ready to cross the room. A movement behind her startled her, and she became aware that a man must have come into the bar from the corridor behind, without her hearing. She turned sharply back towards him. He was tall, quite elderly, greyhaired, and had a face with fine bone structure. His blue eyes were staring past her towards one of the windows. He put down the cloth he was holding and stepped quickly sideways, along behind the counter, still looking anxiously towards the window.
He turned back, and she heard him shout through the door into the corridor: 'Mike! Are you there?'
There was apparently no answer. He lifted the bar flap and went through in a hurry, crossing the barroom. The flap banged back down into place. He walked quickly between the tables, heading for the door that led out to Eastbourne Road.
It was then Teresa realized that several other customers were in the bar. She could see four people, all men. One was sitting at a table, with his beer glass pressed to his lips, but the others were standing, looking and peering, trying to see past and above the frosted panes, into the street outside. The jukebox was playing an old track by Elton john.
There was a series of sharp bangs from outside. The elderly man, almost at the door, ducked down.
He looked back towards the counter.
'Mike!' he shouted. 'There's someone out there with a gun!'
But strangely he went to the door, pulled it open, stepped outside. All four of the other men were at the windows now, stretching up on their toes to see through the clear glass.
In great consternation, her hold on reality abruptly uncertain, Teresa stood away from the bar stool, clinging on to the polished wooden surface of the counter.
The door to the corridor opened, and an elderly but still upright and goodlooking woman came hurriedly into the bar area.
'Jim?' She looked directly at Teresa. 'Did Jim call me?'
'Is Jim the ?'
'He's outside!' one of the men yelled across the room from the window. 'There's some idiot out there with a gun!'
'Jim!'
The woman pushed her way through the bar flap at the same moment as one of the windows exploded into the room with a shattering crash, the glass flying in all directions. All four of the men fell back on to the floor, blood already flooding across the boards. The woman, obviously hit by flying glass, turned sharply away, buried her face in her hands and went down to a halfcrouch, but then she continued towards the street door. Blood was pouring through her fingers. She leaned weakly against the door, and Teresa thought she was going to fall, but she managed to hold on. Brilliant sunlight outlined her. A younger woman rushed into the bar from the road, thrusting her way past the drooping figure. just then there was another series of shots, and the elderly woman was thrown backwards into the room by the impact of the bullets.
As suddenly as it had appeared the impression of daylight vanished, and Teresa found herself alone in the bar again. The overhead lightbulb, the darkened glass of the windows, the dreary emptiness, all as before. How long? A glimpse, a fleeting memory, a few seconds, a few minutes? How long had that gone on?
She was standing where she had been when the window exploded inwards: just a foot or two away from the bar stool, her hand still stretching back to steady herself against the counter.
The jukebox was silent, the bar flap still raised, as the greyhaired woman had left it as she passed through. Had it been open earlier, when Nick was tending the bar? lt was normally closed.
She stared at her unfinished drink, trying not to think what it might be doing to her. And, now she thought about it, there was again that background sense of another migraine attack, looming somewhere, ready to swoop. The drink was her enemy: she couldn't take her tablets if she had been drinking. Not safely, anyway.
She sat down on the stool again, feeling drunk, feeling like a foolish drunk, a drunk who hallucinated, who was about to throw up.
But she held on, and was still sitting miserably at the counter when Nick returned. He was lugging two crates of
beer bottles, one on top of the other. He dumped them heavily on the floor behind the counter.
'Are you OK, Mrs Simons?' he said.
'Teresa, call me Teresa. Am 1 OK? No, 1 guess I'm not. Don't call me Mrs Simons.'
'Can 1 get you anything, Teresa?'
'Not another drink. Never drink on an empty stomach. Look what happens.' She waved a hand vaguely to describe herself
'I could make you a cup of coffee.'
'No, I'll be OK. Don't want any more whiskey. I'll finish this one.'
She didn't mean it though, and sat there staring at the glass while Nick went about stacking the bottles on the refrigerated shelves.
Presently, she said, 'That guy who comes in here sometimes, to help behind the bar?'
