Outside again, where the bar was now fuller and louder, busy with the night-time crowd, the cinema-goers, the drama youth group, the poetry workshop, she told Vince she had loved the show. She was glad he had brought her. He said bitterly, ‘I was right, though. Another fucking fridge piece.’ They were at the bar, where a woman on a high stool held court and talked about flamenco. ‘Sorry, Penny,’ Vince said sheepishly. ‘I’m horribly cynical and queeny sometimes, aren’t I? It’s only put on. No, I’m glad you liked it, pet.’ He ordered two more pints.
They sat by a large window and Penny looked out at the park in Vane Terrace. It was sinisterly Victorian, box trees and holly beyond the Arts Centre’s driveway. And then she saw someone was standing beside their table. He was collecting the empties, but he was staring down at Vince.
All in one go Vince looked scared and relieved. He was on his feet in a flash and then he didn’t know what to do. The man collecting the empties seemed pleased to be clutching his tower of empty pint glasses and his plastic basket. ‘The woman at the box office said you might be in tonight,’ said Vince. He tried to laugh. ‘We both look like we’ve seen Banquo’s ghost, don’t we?’
Both Penny and the man collecting empties said, ‘Who?’
He was about Vince’s age, Penny decided, but he dressed younger. He was in a white Adidas top, the ones with stripes and flashes and irony. He wore his jeans slouched down, his hair clipped short and he had a nose ring. Vince commented on this.
‘Had it years,’ was the reply. He was a boy. Penny thought, in a way Vince wasn’t. They might be the same age, but this one was aspiring to boyishness and Vince was not. There was a surliness about him, too, that seemed as much a part of his outfit as the trainers with their tongues sticking out.
‘This is Andy,’ Vince said to Penny. And all at once he seemed genuinely relieved. As if something he had worried about had turned out all right. But what had happened?
‘I’ll finish with this lot… I’ll be back in a second,’ Andy said. And he was gone in the crowd. Vince sat down with a sigh, brushing the hair out of his eyes with both hands.
As the 213 weaved and plunged down Burn Lane and entered her own estate, Agnew Two, Penny devoted a moment to inventing excuses for her lateness. She should have phoned. But Liz trusted her. In the summer she had been out all hours, coming back the next day sometimes. These were the dark nights, though. By their nature they became more hazardous. She thought, Oh, here I am, backwards and forwards on the bus to and from Darlington. It all seemed a horribly futile exercise, going somewhere and coming back. What happened in the middle ought to transform or replenish you or do you some good. Had it really? Here she felt a stab of spite towards Vince. He was doing something else. He wasn’t just slinking home unchanged. He had stayed and was, presumably, being transported into some other state. Oh, I’m tired, Penny thought. And I don’t want anyone to be happy.
The bus seemed to be groping its way blindly to the top of Phoenix Court. She got up ready to ting the bell.
Andy had sat at their table until closing time. When Penny started drinking soda water, the two of them switched to gin and tonics. They were talking more freely, enjoying themselves, enjoying each other. Penny watched. They were laughing and, when the other wasn’t paying attention, giving sly, appraising looks. Gauging each other. Penny was drawn in, aware of something private going on but not shutting her out. She felt suspended, sitting there. Vince and Andy ordered tequila slammers for them all to end with and together drilled Penny on the procedure. The salt on her fist, the exact force of the slam on the yellow table top, and the etiquette of sucking a lemon wedge. ‘Got it?’ Vince asked. ‘Lick, slam, suck ... on a count of three. It has to be all together.’
‘It’s our favourite thing.’ Andy grinned. ‘You get licked, slammed and sucked. One, two . .. three!’
And, still smeared with wet salt and lemon juice, tequila burning their throats, they hurried out into the night, which had turned freezing. Almost without a word they escorted Penny to her bus stop. She asked if Vince was coming back to Aycliffe.
With an eye on Andy, Vince explained that he wasn’t. He was heading off up to North Road, where Andy had a room above a taxidermist’s shop.
Penny nodded. ‘You might as well get off now,’ she told them. ‘It’s a long walk up North Road. You won’t make my wait any shorter, staying here till the bus comes.’
‘Are you sure, pet?’ Vince asked. He raised his eyebrows in concern. A smear of lemon on his cheek was bright under the streetlight. Penny had an urge to wipe it off. Andy stood a couple of paces back, bouncing on his Adidas heels, eager.
‘The 213’s due any minute,’ she said and smiled. ‘Go on. Have fun.’
Vince smiled almost shyly then, and suddenly both he and Andy were gone.
The bus groaned and hauled itself shuddering to a halt at the stop outside Penny’s garden gate. She jumped out and thanked the driver, smiling with relief to be home, and he winked at her again.
As she turned she
