Thicker Than Water

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"And we were still friends, in the way that people who’ve collected frogspawn and played knock-down-ginger and climbed on factory roofs together will tend to stay friends. I bought her the occasional drink at the Breeze or the Prince Arthur, and we’d share family news. She’d ask how Matt was getting on at the seminary, and I’d lie because I didn’t really know. And I’d pretend to take an interest when she told me about Dick-Breath’s progress at the Prudential, from doorstep insurance salesman to team manager and all-round messiah.

Once - only once - I made a pass. It was New Year’s Eve, when you can get away with a lot of indiscriminate kissing: the general rule being that you took it as far as you could and had a plausible get-out clause if the lady objected. I swung into the Breeze with a couple of mates ten minutes before the towel went up, hog-whimpering drunk, kissed my way down the length of the bar - maidens and matrons and all - until I got to Anita who was standing in the corner watching her cousin feed the one-armed bandit.

We clinched, and it was good. Deep, and intense, and lasting as long as our lungs did. But when I tried to come back for seconds she touched the tips of her fingers, very lightly to my chest, and shook her head. I saw tears rising in her eyes, and I was alarmed. Tears? For who?

‘You okay, ’Nita?’ I asked her, taking pains to get the consonants in the right order because being able to handle your booze was part of the measure of a man in Walton.

‘I’m fine, Fix,’ she said, looking away for a moment while she blinked the tears back under control. ‘I was just - I was waiting for someone, and he didn’t come. I’ll be all right.’ She looked up at me again, giving me a dazzling and almost completely convincing smile.

I bought her a Babycham, which she didn’t touch.

We talked about politics and punk rock - and then, when Knd /diI was really drunk, I told her about what I was and what I could do with a tin whistle.

This was before the rising of the dead went from a trickle to a torrent, and long before exorcism had become an everyday profession, but Anita listened without comment. When I got to the part about my sister Katie, she pressed her hand to the back of mine where it rested on the table, willing me comfort.

I walked her home, and she gave me another kiss. On the cheek, this time: a thank-you kiss.