Free Beneath the Skin by Nicci French

continued Fred, as if it were all a big joke. His hand moved round to my side, feeling its way down my ribs. I shifted nervously, lit another cigarette, tipped the last of the lager down my throat. “Including ones that threaten to kill her. Haven’t you, Zoe?”
    “Yes,” I mumbled. I didn’t want to talk about it.
    “What did the police say?” asked Fred.
    “Not much,” I said. I made an attempt at lightness: “Don’t worry, Fred. I’m sure you’ll be suspect number one.”
    “It can’t be me,” he said cheerfully.
    “Why not?”
    “Well . . . er.”
    “You’ve never seen me sleep,” I said and immediately wished I hadn’t, but Fred just looked puzzled. It was a relief when Morris started telling me how they used to come here on quiz night.
    “It’s cruel, really,” he said. “It’s just too easy. It feels like helping ourselves to their money. We’re lucky they don’t just take us out back and break our thumbs.”
    “The Hustler,” said Graham.
    “What?” I said.
    “Is my idiot brother boring you?”
    “Don’t be mean,” I said.
    “No, no,” said Morris. “It’s another reference. That’s what Herman Mankiewicz said about Joseph Mankiewicz.” Now he grinned over at his brother. “But Joseph was the more successful one in the end.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know who these people are.”
    Unfortunately, they then started to tell me. To me the interplay of these old friends and brothers was a bewildering mixture of ancient jokes, obscure references, private catchphrases, and I generally thought the best thing was to keep my head down and wait for something I could follow. After a while the frenzied, competitive cross talk subsided and I found myself talking to Morris once more.
    “Are you together with any of . . .” I said in a subdued voice and giving a discreet nod in the direction of the various young women around the table.
    Morris looked evasive.
    “Well, Laura and me are sort of, in a way . . .”
    “In a way what?” said Laura across the table. She was a large woman with straight brown hair pulled back in a bun.
    “I was telling Zoe that you’ve got ears like a bat.”
    I assumed that Laura would get furious with Morris.
I
would have. But I was starting to see that the three women hovered on the edge of the group, mostly talking among themselves and only being brought into the general conversation when necessary, which didn’t seem to be very often. The boys, fresh-faced, bright-eyed after the football, looked more like little boys than ever. Why had I been embraced by their little group? As an audience? Morris leaned over very close to me and I almost thought for a moment he was going to nuzzle my ear. Instead he whispered into it.
    “It’s over,” he said.
    “What is?”
    “Me and Laura. It’s just that she doesn’t know it yet.”
    I looked across at her as she sat there, unaware of the sentence hanging over her head.
    “Why?” I asked.
    He just shrugged, and I felt I couldn’t bear to talk about it anymore.
    “How’s work going?” I said, for want of anything better.
    Morris lit a cigarette before answering.
    “We’re all waiting,” he said.
    “What do you mean?”
    He took a deep drag and then an even deeper gulp of his beer.
    “Look at us,” he said. “Graham is a photographer’s assistant who wants to be a real live photographer. Duncan and me go around showing stupid secretaries how to do things with their software that they should have read in the manual. We’re waiting for one or two of our ideas to, well, come to fruition. The way things are now, you need one halfway plausible idea and you’re worth more than British Airways.”
    “And Fred?”
    Morris looked reflective.
    “Fred is digging and sawing while trying to decide who he is.”
    “But in the meantime there’s that tan and those forearms,” said Graham, who’d been eavesdropping.
    “Mmmm,” I said.
    We sat there for a long time and drank too