“I don’t have any money,” she said, getting out of the car.
“I can get this.”
“Yeah, you’ll need to.” Because she didn’t have any money. Whelan obviously needed things spelt out.
There were no customers inside, and one bored youth at the till. While Whelan filled the tank, Shirley collected half a dozen chocolate bars, a family bag of Doritos, a two-litre bottle of Coke and the two least small roast chickens on the electric spit. She waited by a window while the youth dragged himself away from his phone to pack her catch in a cardboard punnet, and watched a motorbike pass at about half the speed it should have been doing. Whelan joined her as the boxed chicken was being placed on the counter, alongside a spork and, at Shirley’s insistence, seven sachets of barbecue sauce.
“Do we need a whole chicken each?” he asked.
She made a face. “Oh. Did you want one?”
There was no eating area so they went back out, where Whelan suggested that they eat before setting off again, or, indeed, getting into the car. Something about the smell: Shirley wasn’t paying attention. She was literally starving. There were children featured on charity envelopes who weren’t as hungry right now. Perched on a wall next to the car wash, she opened a couple of sauce sachets, squirted their contents over the first chicken, then pulled a leg free. Whelan seemed to be trying not to watch. He’d opted for a sandwich, cheese and pickle. Shirley gestured towards the Doritos in case he fancied a side, but he didn’t seem keen.
She didn’t normally open up like she’d done in the car, and had to put it down to the blow on the head. Still, getting stuff off her chest hadn’t felt bad. Maybe the touchy-feely types had a point, and it was good to share—especially with someone who didn’t share back. One-way therapy. Best of both worlds.
He said, “My wife left me.”
Shit.
After a moment, her lack of response growing awkward even to her, Shirley said, “So, what, she found someone else?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
That was annoying, when people did that: took a simple question and turned it into a fucking enigma.
He said, “She found God.”
Shirley couldn’t help it. “Ha!”
“It’s not funny.”
It was a bit funny. “Yeah, that wasn’t a laugh. I just thought, you know. God. Stiff competition.”
“I hadn’t looked at it that way.”
Shirley took advantage of the pause to toss a bone over her shoulder.
“She joined an order, a closed community. Nuns. It was supposed to be for a limited time, a retreat, but she hasn’t come back. And she won’t speak on the phone, or answer letters. No email, obviously.”
“Sounds like a cult.”
“Not really. They just live an enclosed life. Grow vegetables, that sort of thing. There are bees, I think.”
“Bees?”
“For honey.”
“Yeah, I know what bees do. I just didn’t know nuns were into that.”
“These ones are.”
Shirley had a vision of a nun in a beekeeper’s outfit, like someone going to a fancy dress party twice.
Then the motorbike that had passed earlier returned, its headlight picking out Shirley and Whelan on their wall by the car wash before it pulled onto the forecourt, and Shirley felt a familiar lurch inside as she realised the night wasn’t over yet.
Sparrow—head on his desk, laptop humming—was woken by his phone. The blogpost he’d been writing had run out of steam around the 3,000-word mark, though tendrils of it still shimmered, phrases aglow with meaning as he’d slept, but rendered incomprehensible by the interruption. This vegetable abrogation. He looked at his phone.
Unknown number.
He answered, and heard nothing.
“Hello?”
Still nothing.
“Timewaster.” He disconnected.
It was after four.
Sparrow didn’t need much sleep. He prided himself on this, as he did on other habits, traits, thoughts and words, each of which did their bit to elevate him above the herd. Phone down, he looked to his screen again, and tried typing this vegetable abrogation, to see if concrete shape would restore impact to the phrase. It didn’t.
Blogging was a displacement activity; a way of dispelling the white noise in his head, of which there’d been plenty tonight. Word had arrived of the fiasco at the San, and the Ultras’ failure to extricate Sophie de Greer. It was true that this failure didn’t have Sparrow’s name on it—Benito hadn’t taken part himself, and he alone knew of Sparrow’s involvement—so in political terms could be judged a success, but Taverner also remained at large, and if she turned up before the Limitations Committee with de Greer in tow, Sparrow’s future would become difficult indeed. Hence the displacement activity: a takedown of the government’s adviser on ministerial standards, who’d recently suffered a second nervous breakdown. With luck, this blog might trigger a third. Thus melt all snowflakes, he thought, and his phone rang again. This time, his caller got through.