Blood Ties: Family is not always a place of safety. Julie Shaw

seeing again.

      ‘Oh, Jean, that’s priceless!’ she said, nudging her friend and turning slightly. ‘But hey up, better keep it down, girls – big lugs is here. And you know what she’s like for spreading the gossip.’

      The other women laughed. Why would they not? She was a figure of fun to them. And if she’d learned one thing since becoming part of the fabric of a public house, it was that the insight of drunk people was every bit as lacking as their inability to realise how boring they always sounded was immense.

      She glanced around in search of friendlier company. Mary, now recovered, seemed to be coping fine behind the bar, which was presumably why her dad wasn’t there.

      ‘If you’re looking for him,’ Irene called across, without any prompting, ‘he’s in the best room playing dominoes. Meant to be bloody helping, he is. Lazy old git. And her …’

      Kathleen let the sentence drift away as she headed to the best room where, up till ten or so minutes ago, a band had been playing, the members of which were still busy getting their leads and amps together, and who nodded a hello to Kathleen as she entered. She knew them well. They played regularly – had done for as long as she could remember. A trio of men, nearer her dad’s age, all from the Canterbury Estate, who sang country music, folk songs, some unbearably sad to listen to; one in particular which Mike, who did most of the singing, and had known her dad back in his printing days, had always told her had been a favourite of her mother’s.

      The jukebox was still blaring in the main bar – to which many had now decamped – but in contrast this room could have been somebody’s dining room, so was a choice spot for the older customers to drink and play their dominoes in peace.

      Her dad seemed pleased to see her. ‘There’s half a lager here, love,’ he called as she glanced around. ‘And we’ve nearly finished this game if you want to join in the next one.’

      Kathleen quite enjoyed the odd game of dominoes – it was one of those childhood things that had always bound her and her father – but it was Saturday evening and she couldn’t quite escape the feeling that a seventeen-year-old girl playing dominoes with her dad represented a tragedy just that bit too big to be borne. She pulled up a chair, though, to be friendly, and accepted the drink.

      ‘No ta,’ she said, smiling, ‘I’ll just have this half and watch, then I might go give Mary a hand behind the bar.’

      ‘I told you, love,’ her dad chided, ‘there’s no need for you to do that. Relax, love. Enjoy yourself. Mary’ll be fine.’

      ‘But it’s getting busy now,’ she said, glancing back across through the foyer to the tap room as a couple of new people came in. ‘Pictures probably turned out, and in a bit, she’ll be swamped with –’ She stopped, feeling her face flush. Terry Harris was standing watching her from the foyer. He was with a mate, but he’d stopped, and had obviously been waiting to catch her eye. He grinned and waved, and she immediately lowered her gaze. But at the same time …

      ‘You know what, Dad?’ she said. ‘Think I’ll head back to the bar after all. Can I take this?’ She raised the glass.

      ‘Course you can, love. I told you. But –’

      ‘No, it’s fine, Dad. I don’t mind. You know what Mam’s like. I’ll go and help Mary, or she’ll be hollering for you instead, won’t she?’

      Kathleen picked up four empties in her free hand, and then pushed through the door, back into the foyer. Terry was still there, now watching the reels of the bandit spinning. He stopped when he saw her and reached to pull the taproom door open for her.

      ‘Here,’ he said, taking the empties. ‘Let me carry those for you.’

      ‘No, it’s fine,’ she told him. ‘Honest.’ But it was to no effect, since he already had them anyway.

      ‘Nice to see you down here on a weekend,’ he said, smiling back at her as she followed him to the bar itself. ‘You don’t normally work on a Saturday night, do you?’

      No, but I’m glad I’m down tonight, she thought but didn’t tell him. ‘I’m not really working as such,’ she said. ‘It’s just that my mate’s ill and I’m at a loose end, and –’

      His eyes widened. They were dark-lashed but pale. An unusual greeny grey. ‘Ah, so that means you could maybe have a drink with me then, doesn’t it? If you’d like to,’ he added, turning to look at her as he plonked the empty pint glasses down on the bar.

      She thought she’d like that a great deal. And not just because she was keen to talk to him about Darren. But Mary was getting busy. And there’d be fat chance, if she did go and sit down with Terry, of Irene not ordering her to go and help out anyway – or at least, given it was Kathleen’s night off, and she had no business doing so, making an enormous ‘thing’ out of her sitting down with Terry.

      But you never knew. In a bit she might be teetering on her usual brink – either too pissed to care, immersed in stirring the cauldron with her cronies, or too pissed to stand, in which case she’d disappear off to bed.

      ‘That would be nice,’ Kathleen said, and hoped he could tell that she meant it. ‘But I really should give Mary a hand first. Just for a bit … I’m coming, Mary,’ she called across.

      But it seemed Mary didn’t want or need her help. Or perhaps there was something more. She certainly glanced behind Kathleen, towards Terry, as she approached.

      ‘Thanks, love,’ she said, her tea-towel-covered hand moving rhythmically around the inside of a pint glass. ‘But I’m fine at the moment, honest. Why don’t you pull yourself a drink and then go have a sit down with Terry. I can always shout you if I need you, can’t I?’

      ‘Good idea,’ Terry said. ‘You’re hardly ever out from behind that bar, Kathy. Come on. Come sit with me a bit. Rest your feet.’

      ‘You make me sound like a little old lady,’ she said indignantly, as she pulled herself a half and topped it up with lime cordial. ‘I can rest my feet when I’m dead, thanks.’

      ‘Alright. So we’ll stand up, then.’

      ‘Now you’re just taking the mick.’

      ‘No, seriously. I spend that much time on my backside … Still, now we’re here.’ He gestured to an empty table he’d found, on the far side of the pool table, miles from Irene. ‘Unless you want to challenge me …’

      ‘I could too.’

      ‘I’ll bet.’

      ‘Seriously, I’m good.’

      ‘Seriously, I’ll bet you are,’ he said again, smiling at her over the rim of his glass. ‘So we’ll have to make that a date, won’t we? Anyway, pour tu, mademoiselle,’ he said, pulling one of the chairs out and gesturing to it theatrically, while she tried her best to relax and to not keep thinking date, he said date …

      And she did relax. Almost immediately, too, even though she knew Irene was sneering across at her. Even though she knew they’d be gossiping about her. Let them, she thought. Let them say what they want. She didn’t care. Pour tu, he’d said. French. The familiar form of it. She remembered that from her French lessons in school. Terry and her Uncle Ronnie went to France quite a lot, she knew, driving all the way down south and taking their enormous lorries onto the ferries. It sounded so glamorous, even though Terry had more than once told her it wasn’t. That she’d have to take a look inside one of his lorry cabs some time. That it was probably about as glamorous as keeping pigs.

      He was chatting about it now, about a recent trip to Paris – him and Ronnie; some anecdote about a missing wallet, or was it pallet, or something, at any rate – and she was perfectly content just to listen. To listen and, in fairness, to drift a little, too. What she wouldn’t give, she thought, to wake up every morning and not know where in the country – or even the world – you were going to end up. In a lorry