Free With Love and Squalor by Nigel Bird

waited.
     
    Jimmy never understood why her house was in such a state. Here they were, on the rob for years, yet their home looked like it was waiting for someone to put it out of its misery.
     
    Kris opened up and stood stripped to the waist, revealing a stretched stomach and the undulations of his ribs. A tattoo of barbed wire started at his shoulders and coiled around his torso until it disappeared beneath his boxer shorts.
     
    Jimmy wasn’t sure what to say. “Out of my way, you lanky fucker,” came to mind. “Nan in?” worked better.
     
    “Back garden,” Kris told him, scratching his armpit.
     
    Jimmy stepped forward to go through and Kris blocked his way. “Password?”
     
    “Give me a break.”
     
    Kris leant out of the way and Jimmy walked through. Got a kick up the arse along the way. He stumbled forward and kept going.
     
    Nan Ramsay was sitting in the middle of the patio in a deck chair.
     
    The garden shed in the corner was missing a roof and a window and weeds grew up between the patio slabs. They weren’t about to win ‘Tranent In Bloom’, that was for sure.
     
    Nan saw Jimmy coming and pulled the oxygen mask from her face.
     
    “I need it more in the summer,” she said. “The rapeseed brings my hay fever on something chronic.” Placing the mask on the table she reached over, took a cigarette from her pack and lit it, ignoring the no-smoking symbols on her machine.
     
    Jimmy was pleased to see she’d put her teeth in. The last few times he’d been over he’d barely understood a word she’d said.  
     
    Jimmy took a fag from her packed and lit it with a match. He loved the way the smoke kicked at the back of his throat and made his head feel like it was about to float away.
     
    “Twenty pence,” Nan said.
     
    “Aw, come on. We’re practically family.”
     
    She laughed and coughed. It came from deep inside her chest, a raw, rasping sound that made Jimmy wince. After spitting a lump of brown phlegm onto the floor, she took a tissue and wiped her mouth.
     
    From his pocket he took out his fifty pence and put it in front of her.
     
    Nan took two more fags from the box and passed them over.
     
    Jimmy rolled them back across the table. It may have been the going rate, but having to put up with Kris sniffing round Kylie had to be worth something.
     
    “How do you reckon you deserve more, laddie?”
     
    “Cos I’m special. Cos I’m your favourite customer.”
     
     Nan took a couple of cigarettes from the packet and added them to the others, took the money and slipped it into the pocket of her tabard. Pulling the elastic strap over her head, she poked the two small tubes back up her nostrils and replaced the mask over her mouth. Negotiations were over.
     
    Picking up the fags, he thanked her and went back indoors.
     
    Kris blocked his way again. This time he was staring into the mirror and squeezing a pluke on his chin. Without looking at Jimmy, he straightened up, took a packet of ten Regal Kings from the ledge and handed them over.
     
    Jimmy held them for a moment as if trying to estimate their weight. As he walked towards the door he reached through the banisters, put the packet on the stairs and left.
     
    ***
     
    Walking down through the new houses, Jimmy sensed the curtains twitching on both sides of the street.
     
    The buildings here looked about the same size as the council properties if you didn’t count the double garages and bricked driveways. Jimmy couldn’t see what all the fuss had been about. Sure, none of the windows were smashed or boarded up, but it didn’t make sense that they were worth three times the houses on the other side of the Wynd. The builders hadn’t even put in proper pavements for people to walk on, for god’s sake.
     
    Jimmy despised the people in this part of town. Never saw them on the High Street or hanging around. Must have had better things to do and more money to do it with. He spat on the floor as the thoughts corroded his