Free Prosperity Drive by Mary Morrissy Page B

scrawny nets and the fierce tidiness it was designed for. Everything in it was two-faced. The toilet hid behind what looked like a cupboard door, the banquette seats with the table wedged between them turned into a bed. And though he had opted to move, he had felt banished there as if Neet had sent him into exile. He still went into the house for his grub but, ridiculously, he felt Neet had turned him into a latchkey lodger.
    ‘Lucky you!’ Trish said enviously.
    When he and Neet passed in the kitchen they only found things to quarrel about. There was just one area of truce. The movies. Neet loved the cinema and even when they became estranged they still trooped once a week to the local fleapit. His friends – with the exception of Trish who found it touching – jeered him for going out with his old lady, but he made the weekly pilgrimage to keep faith with Neet. He owed her thatmuch. The deal was that he would pick the film one week, and she the next. Thanks to Neet he got to see a lot of period dramas and some awful French turkeys. What he hated was the subtitles. He felt as if he was being duped. There always seemed too many words on screen for what was being said, sound clogged up with too much explanation. The exact opposite of his life with Neet, where there wasn’t enough.
    An alarm goes off, a red light flashes. Her watch. She reverses, throws it into a plastic tray and tries again. Again the buzzer goes off. A female guard steps forward, thick heavy hair crowded on her shoulder like a burden, with the eyes of a stricken Madonna. She forces Trish to extend her arms like a child playing aeroplanes. With a seamstress’s finesse she runs her fingertips down Trish’s hips and thighs. She nods, gives her the all-clear. Trish steps to the side to retrieve her jacket, her shoes, the watch. When she’s reassembled, put back together again, she turns to check. Is he still there?
    Trish! He could still call out; it’s not too late. But he finds himself locked in a paroxysm of indecision. Look, she’s in a hurry. Must be the Rome flight she’s aiming for. (He knows the schedules by heart.) 6.55, connecting in Madrid. Stirrings of curiosity now. What’s she doing in Rome? But if he had questions about her and the years that have intervened – he feels suddenly archival – then she, too, would have questions and he’s not sure he would be able to explain. Explain how he got here. He’s tried Munich, Düsseldorf, Bremerhaven. But Malaga is the most comfortable; the weather is kinder. Keith raves about Paris. Not the airport (‘Charles de Gaulle is poxy! That hub system, all about crowd control!’) but the city, where you can get three square meals a day. Early morning breakfast at the convent in Picpus, lunch in Belleville, an evening meal with the monks on Rue Pascal. But Mo never got in on that circuit. Anyway, Paris is brutal in the winter and he’s mistakenfor a Berber. Funny that – here he’s seen as vaguely white. In Paris he felt like a tramp. Here, he’s permanently in transit; he could be just about to get back on the carousel of life. One ticket away from normality. And it’s sheltered, he’s under cover. He collects plastic bottles in the morning, scavenged from the litter bins, and takes them to the supermarket on the ground floor of the terminal, which gives cash back. He hoovers up food left on the café tables when passengers’ flights are called. The security guards know him and mostly turn a blind eye. Last month someone nicked his trolley and it was a parking attendant who located it in the underground car park and returned it to him. Who the hell would want to steal his trolley? Sad fucks. He pictures it now with the plastic bags swinging from the handles and his bed roll bent over inside, lolling like a sludgy tongue. His life is a small, smelly trove locked up in a wire basket on wheels.
    She could try a wave, on the off-chance it is Mo. Just like she did the last time she saw him. A