Free Highbridge by Phil Redmond

sigh escape as she shook her head. Typical. They sneak along to the guest room, forgetting it’s above the kitchen. She brushed Becky’s phone across the butter, tossed it over to Roscoe who initially eyed it with suspicion until his nose, then tongue, registered the butter. As he licked away Tanya reached for her own phone, then smiled at a message. T’HOUSE? 9-ISH ? It was the local name for the pub now known as the Sandstone Box. Originally called T’House at Cross it was a 500-year-old former coaching inn that marked the eastern approach to the town. It was built in sandstone blocks that matched the cross opposite its front door, the monument to the old Abbey that once stood on the site.
    In the late 1990s old Jim Mulligan, whose family had owned T’House for three generations, finally decided he had had enough trying to scrape by as an independent and sold out to the brewery. Five hundred years of history was immediately absorbed by the marketing machine and turned into yet another themed outlet, the new name aimed at the transitional youth market. Somewhere ‘between the sandpit and thinking out of the box’, the Planning Committee was told. They didn’t really care so long as old Jim got a decent price for his service to the community and the community itself got to keep their pub, with real ale and a bronze, not cheap brass, plaque on the wall outlining the site’s heritage.
    Everybody seemed happy, especially in refusing to call it by its daft new name. It was, is, and always will be T’House. If you didn’t know that, you weren’t local. And there was some value in knowing that. Especially as Billy and Shirley McGuire, who now ran it, interpreted the brewery’s transitional youth policy as any local over sixteen, as Billy and Shirley knew who they were and knew their families would appreciate knowing where they were.
    Which was exactly where Tanya would be tonight. However, MIGHT B, was all she texted back as she heard a hollow thump from overhead and decided it was time to go back to bed, trying to blank any images of parental sex.
    *
    Even Sandra, who could talk the leg off a chair, had not got far with Glynnis, telling Sean that the only thing she found out was that Glynnis had moved into the area about twenty years ago. So whatever it was had happened before that. The only other thing Sandra suspected was that Glynnis had ‘a thing’ for Sean. Initially, like the rest of the staff, she thought it was a crush, but it became more than that. Not romantic, more protective. She would do anything for him. And only the three of them knew why. She had become dependent on him.
    Sandra had suggested they try and get her to learn to read and write, but Sean said he had tried when he found out but she reacted so badly that he had to work hard not only to stop her moving on, but also to convince Glynnis that her secret was safe with him. Which is why he had really laid down the law with Sandra, and even then only told her when she was getting a bit too pointed in asking him what the attraction was with Glynnis. Since then, and to his great delight, she had been true to her word and had even helped work out strategies to protect Glynnis.
    It was Sandra who suggested they always had a junior member of staff working with her to keep all the paperwork up to date, as it was Sandra’s idea to present the menu in pictures, an idea picked up when they had been to Japan during their travelling years. It was supposed to be for letting kids pick their own meals, for which it had been a great success, but it was really to allow Glynnis to put up the Specials Board. And in this she had blossomed to become both photographer and graphic artist as she herself took the pictures when they changed the menu, then imported them to the graphics package, manipulated the menu style and printed out the new versions. Even words like Menu, Starters, Mains, Puddings, Service, VAT and everything else that creeps on to menus she recognised