She smiled at him. ‘Thank you, but I’m fine.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes, honestly,’ she lied.
Angus’s smile faded and he looked serious for a change. ‘You look tired,’ he persisted.
‘Gee, thanks,’ she countered.
‘You know what I mean. I worry about you. About the stress of it all.’ Did he? Liv wasn’t too sure. Angus was an optimist by nature. He truly believed that most things worked themselves out in the end, and that worrying was wasted energy. It was an attitude that Liv envied. He came and put his arms around her. ‘Okay. I’ll take you at your word.’ She was glad he couldn’t see her face. ‘But how about some fresh air before you get stuck into round three? Why don’t we walk down to the front? We can take Arthur. Maybe meet up with Noah and Freddie? Have a romp on the beach? Do something nice together for a change? It might help.’
Liv nodded. Perhaps it would.
Chapter 20
THE AMUSEMENT arcades never seemed to change, and that’s why Noah loved them. The mad syncopation of a thousand jewel-bright bulbs. The cloying sweetness of candyfloss cut with the mineral smell of coins. The carpet – the less said about the mash-up of colours and stains, the better. And the sounds! The mechanisation of fun: clicks, clunks, whirrs overlaid with cheap pop music and the regular evocation of joy and despair. They were good places to lose yourself for an hour or so.
Noah always closed his eyes for a few seconds when he first stepped inside. It was an involuntary reaction, a reboot back to his factory setting – child mode. It felt good.
Simple actions and reactions. Risk and reward. You anticipated winning. You won. Then you lost. It was so gloriously, addictively straightforward.
Freddie poked him in the thigh, bringing him back to the moment. ‘What first, Uncle No?’ His eyes were bright, reflecting the glare.
‘First, young man, we need to get you loaded up. This way.’ Like a sensei guiding his pupil, Noah led Freddie over to the big yellow change machines. ‘Now, how much have you got on you?’
Freddie put his hand in his pocket and produced two one-pound coins. Jesus, Liv was such a tight-ass!
Noah smiled. ‘That’s a good start.’ He took out his wallet and extracted a tenner. Freddie’s eyes widened. ‘So if I give you this, how much will you have to spend then?’
Freddie did the maths in his head, then grinned. ‘Twelve pounds.’
‘Correct. All you have to do is decide how many ten-pence, two-pence and pound coins you want. Take a pot – that’s for your change.’ Freddie grabbed one of the branded plastic tubs and Noah showed him how to feed the machine. Freddie’s delight as the cascade of ten-pence coins crashed down the shoot into his pot was infectious.
The next half-hour was filled with the delight of a hundred small decisions: which game to play, which horse to back, which motorbike to race on. They made three trips back to the change machine, replenishing their pots. Freddie was cautious at first, feeding his two and ten pences – and the occasional big spender pound – into the slots slowly, taking his time choosing which machine looked ready to pay out. But under Noah’s tutelage, he quickly lost his caution and began to play instinctively, happily. His favourite game turned out to be the classic coin drop. A good choice, in Noah’s estimation. The illusion of skill, the tantalising piles of ten pences just ready to fall into your clutches, with the judicious insertion of the right coin into the right slot at precisely the right time. The series of small wins, the coins cascading into the metal-lipped pocket with a satisfyingly loud, soul-pleasing clatter. The smell of arcade money on your fingertips. Noah was so enthralled himself that he didn’t realise Freddie’s luck had taken the inevitable turn for the worse and his pot was nearly empty, again.
‘These are my last two, Uncle No.’
‘You’d better make them count then, Buddy. There’s no more when they’re gone.’
Freddie held his penultimate coin to the slot and waited, his eyes focused on the slide, then he committed and pushed it in. The ten pence dropped, rolled into the space, wobbled, fell on its side – way too far to the left to make any difference. His mouth pinched into a frown. He took his last coin and lined it up with the slot, waited, breathing through his pursed lips. He waited for three moves before sending his final lonesome offering on its way. It dropped, rolled, fell and landed perfectly on the ledge, slap-bang in the middle. It had to be a win. The shelf moved forward, Freddie’s coin joined the others, pushed against the pile, edging at least a quid’s worth of winnings towards the lip, then withdrew. Noah and Freddie waited, but nothing dropped. Game over.
‘That’s not fair,’ Freddie wailed.
‘That’s how it goes, Bud.’
‘No!’ Freddie’s face flushed red. He raised his fist and thumped the glass, leaving a small smudge of rage.
‘Whoa, there, Freddie. You can’t go round lamping the machines. You’ll set the alarm off, and the police will come and take you away.’ Freddie’s expression immediately switched from anger to anxiety and, before Noah could take back his flippant comment, his nephew burst into tears. Not again? His track record with his nephews was beginning to follow a depressingly familiar pattern. Noah was mortified, but also slightly irritated by Freddie’s display of histrionics. Learning to lose gracefully, to be told ‘No’, to have things not always go your way were all essential life skills that Arthur, and Freddie, were going to have to master sooner or later.
A jolt of recognition that he sounded like his father softened Noah.
The bribe of an ice cream got Freddie out of the arcade,
