Free Spend Game by Jonathan Gash Page B

couldn’t. Not with Leckie’s wife there.’
    ‘
Who?
’
    ‘Leckie’s wife. With Fergus.’
    We read the silence like mad for a minute.
    ‘Leckie’s ex-wife, then.’ Another pause. ‘Didn’t you know? That showy blonde, wrong shoes and that ghastly handbag.’ She mistook my stunned silence for an invitation to continue her invective. ‘She’s never had a proper hairstyle in the three years she’s lived here. And her make-up’s like a midden. I don’t know why she bothers –’
    Jake Pelman was still at the corner as I clattered past in my zoomster. He’d a parcel of some unspeakable meat under his arm, and was ever so casually inspecting an extinct bus timetable. I honked my horn. He started guiltily, but didn’t look round, not even when I shouted, ‘Wotcher, Jake!’
    Near Medham there’s one of King Cymbeline’s earthworks, only we call him Cunobelin round here. It’s an oval rampart about seven feet high, swelling from the ground of a small forest and curving for half a mile. Normally I’m not one for countryside and trees and bees and all that jazz. I like towns, where people and antiques are. For once, I relaxed my rule, which is to get the hell out of the beautiful countryside and back into a smelly noisy town as quick as my beat-up asthmatic cylinders can haul me. This particular morning I parked among the roadside trees and struggled knee-deep in filthy leaves until I reached the crest of the overgrown earthworks. My head was splitting. Since when had Leckie a wife? And she was with Black Fergus and Jake Pelman that night in the pub. And . . . and . . .
    I sat there in the silent forest in a patch of sunlight while birds and squirrels aped about like they do. Resting is hard work for a bloke like me, but graduallyI calmed down. It was an hour before my headache went. I was no nearer making sense of any of it but at least I was able to drive home. I stopped at the station for a plastic pasty, and this time ate it all.

Chapter 6
    N EXT MORNING, THE cottage looked like a battlefield. Living as I do, occasionally without a woman’s assistance, I can tolerate most shambles with good grace. It’s only when such as Sue are too tired to go home that the fur flies in the dawn. Honestly, I just can’t see the point of moving things to a fixed spot for the sake of mere tidiness. Things only wander about again. I find it more sensible just to stay vigilant, simply keep on the lookout for essentials like towels and the odd pan. In fact, I’d say neatness is a time-waster.
    My cottage is a thatched reconstruction, the sort modern architects deplore as inefficient. The place is not very spacious. There’s a little hall, a bathroom, and a living-room with a kitchen alcove the size of a bookcase. I kip on a folding divan. Sue says it looks suggestive, but she’s only joking.
    Today was my laundry day. Sheets, pyjamas, towels and shirts. I do socks and underpants in separate bits. They have to come round every day or you get uncontrollable mounds if they’re left. I put some wood under the old copper boiler in the back garden and got it lit third go by a fluke. Luckily the cottage is set back from the country lane on its own, so there’s nobodynearby to complain about the smoke. Filling it takes ten buckets. I usually feed the birds before breakfast, otherwise they come tapping on the windows and I get no peace. Today, they got some of Sue’s Batten-berg cake. I’d been trying to get rid of it for days. Her marzipan’s a foot thick. She has this thing about wholesome food.
    That done, I scrambled two eggs and brewed up. On good days I sit outside, though the birds pester me and hedgehogs are always on the scrounge. Today it looked like rain. Anyway, I had several reasons for noshing indoors. They were laid on the carpet beside the doctor’s bag.
    Wilkie had got them into my car as I’d asked. I had some daft idea of leaving them a day or two to collect my thoughts, but I’m not strong on