Free Flesh and Blood by Simon Cheshire Page A

council.
    Neither of us said anything for a minute or two. We each stared into our screens and tapped at our keyboards.
    Finally, Emma puffed out her cheeks. “Are you bored?” she whispered. “I’m getting bored with this.”
    “There’s still plenty to do,” I said. “I’m happy to leave it for now, but we won’t have time tomorrow.”
    “Oh bugger, yeah,” she sighed. “It’s that stupid careers thing all day. Forgot about that.”
    “If you like, I could come over at the weekend. I mean, you only live a few hundred metres away!” Strange as it might sound, there really wasn’t any agenda behind what I said. I didn’t for a second think it might be a chance to make a move on her, or anything like that, and I certainly didn’t feel any of the burning urgency to see inside the Priory that was to consume me not long afterwards.
    I would have asked her over to ours, but the thought of my mother going all gooey over her was too terrible to even contemplate. Emma would leave our house with the unambiguous impression that my parents thought of her as a lovely girl and ideal girlfriend material. Which, of course, they did.
    She smiled at me. “No, you’re right, we should finish now.” Something must have flashed across my face, because she added: “Sorry, I’m not being funny, it’s just that I very rarely have anyone over to my house.”
    “Really? Why’s that?”
    She looked a little sheepish. “Well, I know it sounds silly, but I tend to guard my own personal space. If you see what I mean. I like to have lots of friends, as you know, and I like to be doing things and going places, but I also like to keep something that’s just for me. I keep my own home private. Sorry, I know that sounds weird.”
    “No, not at all,” I said. It did sound slightly odd, but no more than that. “I try to keep my parents out of my room all the time! The notice on my door saying ‘sod off’ doesn’t seem to work, though.”
    She laughed. “Mum and Dad think I’m peculiar. They have their cronies and business types over for dinner all the time.”
    I looked back at the screen in front of me. “It must be strange, seeing your mum in the paper like that.”
    Emma shrugged. “It happens now and again. You’d be surprised how blasé you get about it! Mumand Dad are always being papped at charity dos – they love it. No, really, they do. They like to be seen to be doing their bit for the plebs.”
    I blinked. Had I heard that right? “Sorry?”
    “Oh, you know what I mean,” she said.
    “Plebs?” I said, with exaggerated emphasis.
    “Oh, stop it,” she smiled. “You know what I mean. Charity work. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
    “I agree.”
    “They collected the money to set up a new food bank last Christmas. Sometimes, you have to step in and do things for people that they won’t do for themselves.”
    I kept my tone deliberately jokey. “I thiiiink it’s more a question of
can’t
than
won’t
. I’m pretty sure users of food banks aren’t just too lazy to go to Tesco. Hmm, can’t say I had you down as a closet snob.”
    “I am
not
a snob,” she laughed, wide-eyed. Her mouth wrinkled into a semi-grin. “It’s just that … y’know, there are some people … to whom I
am
superior.” She giggled. She was making a joke of it, but she said it with such ease that I felt I was glimpsing an aspect of her I’d never seen before.
    Even so, it didn’t ring any particular alarm bells. It should have done, but it didn’t. Although it marked the first time I’d ever seen her as having ‘Hadlingtonist’ attitudes, I think I might still have forgiven her anything at that point.
    Maybrick was full of snobs, I reasoned logically. Some of it was bound to rub off on her. She came from a wealthy family, so a little right-wing grit, a little detachment from certain realities, was simply a product of her sheltered upbringing and her privileged surroundings. No more than that.
    I reasoned it away,