Free The Quarry by Iain Banks Page A

but smiles and winks at Hol. Hol frowns and goes back to her magazine.
    ‘It’s on podcast,’ I say. They all look at me. ‘I listen on the podcast,’ I explain. They go back to their breakfasts. Except Hol, who is still looking at me. ‘I saw The Hobbit ,’ I tell her. ‘I didn’t think it was that bad. You said it was Peter Jackson’s Phantom Menace .’
    Paul chokes on his toast, or pretends to.
    ‘Phwoar,’ Haze says, sort of half laughing. ‘Harsh!’ Haze is wearing a brown dressing gown with a green cord. The gown has some interesting stains. The pale ones are probably toothpaste.
    Hol shrugs. ‘Yeah, I didn’t think it was quite that bad, either, Kit, but it’s still a piece of disproportionate, self-indulgent wank with values driven entirely by the needs of the studio and the distributors, not the original story, and it needed saying.’
    Alison sighs. ‘I loved it.’ She shrugs. ‘I can’t wait for the next two films. Sorry,’ she says to Hol, who has gone back to reading. ‘Guess I’m just such a low-brow these days.’
    ‘Always were,’ Rob says.
    She play-punches him. ‘Why I married you. Darling.’
    ‘Knew there had to be a reason!’ Haze says, but then – when they both look at him – he clears his throat and starts humming while he pushes the last of his sausages round his plate with one finger.
    ‘Really?’ Rob is saying to Alison. ‘I thought you’d been sent by Fun-Be-Gone Industries to stop me enjoying myself too much. Or at all.’
    ‘What,’ Alison says, ‘shagging everything with an infrared signature and a cleft was your idea of fun?’ As Rob looks thoughtfully up at the ceiling and gives a small shrug, Alison turns to look round at the rest of us. ‘You’ll have to excuse my husband; he’s still having trouble with the whole quantity/quality dichotomy.’
    ‘You weren’t exactly parsimonious with your favours yourself, my love, were you?’ Rob says, smiling at her.
    ‘We ran the figures, remember?’ she says to him. ‘The ratio was – what? – one of mine to four or five of yours?’
    ‘Four point six,’ Rob says, grinning.
    Alison spreads her hands. ‘Rest my case.’
    ‘Oh, get a room, you two,’ Haze says. Rob and Alison both look at him again, frowning. Haze goes back to humming.
    ‘Guy awake?’ Paul asks me.
    I shake my head. ‘No, he’s sound.’
    Hol, still focused on her magazine, mutters, ‘That’s a first.’
    Haze stops humming just long enough to look at me and say, ‘Pris gone off to see what’s-his-name?’
    ‘Rick,’ I say. ‘Yes.’
    Haze sighs.
    Haze – his real name is Dave Hazelton but he’s been known as Haze since Fresher’s Week ’92, allegedly – is in local government; planning. Career-wise, according to Pris, he’s currently in a sort of ‘slumped, drooling-with-the-autopilot-on’ state and has been for the last ten years; they split up six years ago. His interests and hobbies have varied over the years as he’s looked for something he can invest his declining supply of enthusiasm in (this is all from Pris). Apparently he’s been through surfing, hang-gliding, green politics, landscape sculpture and Lib-Dem politics. He is currently managing an amateur women’s football team. They are bottom of their league.
    Pris is back in the single-bed room she had when she first lived here; the original plan was for her and Rick both to stay here and have Guy’s room this weekend, before he got so poorly that this became impossible. Instead, Haze was asked to give up his double-bed room for them, but he didn’t want to.
    Pris is an ex-social worker now running the local franchise of a care services outsourcing agency on the south coast.
    Alison and Rob work for Grayzr. They’re back in the London office for the year but they’ve been all over the world, fast-tracked for the executive heights, apparently. I switched from Google to Grayzr last month but I feel shy about telling them for some reason. Hol calls