Doors Open Read Online Free Page B

regular.

    ‘Now and then,’ she said. She sounded South African to Mike.

    ‘Big tipper?’ he asked her.

    She didn’t like the question. ‘Look, I just work here . . .’

    ‘We’re not cops or anything,’ Mike assured her. ‘Just curious.’

    ‘Pays not to be,’ she confided, turning on her heel.

    ‘Tidy body,’ Allan said appraisingly, once she was out of earshot.

    ‘Almost as tidy as our own dear Laura Stanton,’ Gissing added, winking in Mike’s direction. By way of response, Mike said he was heading outside for a cigarette.

    ‘Can I bum one off you?’ Allan asked as usual.

    ‘And leave an old man on his own?’ Gissing pretended to complain, opening the catalogue at its first page. ‘Go on then, off with the pair of you - see if I care . . .’

    Mike and Allan pushed open the door and climbed the five steps leading from the basement bar to the pavement. It had only just grown dark, and the roadway was busy with midweek taxis seeking work.

    ‘Pound to a penny,’ Allan said, ‘when we go back inside he’ll be bending someone’s ear.’

    Mike lit both their cigarettes and inhaled deeply. He was down to four or five a day, but couldn’t quite give them up completely. As far as he knew, Allan only smoked when around smokers - obliging smokers. Looking up and down the street, Mike saw no sign of Calloway and his cohorts. Plenty of other bars they could be in. He remembered the bike sheds at school - there really had been bike sheds, though they were only used for improvised kickabouts. Behind them, the smokers gathered at break and lunchtime, Chib - having earned the nickname even at that early stage in his career - chief among them, breaking open a pack of ten or twenty and selling singles at inflated prices, plus another few pence for a light. Mike hadn’t smoked back then. Instead, he would hang around on the periphery, hoping for some sort of welcome into the brotherhood - an invitation that had never come.

    ‘Town’s quiet tonight,’ Allan said, flicking ash into the air. ‘Tourists must be lying low. I always wonder what they think of the place. I mean, it’s home to us; hard to see it with anyone else’s perspective.’

    ‘Thing is, Allan, it’s home to the likes of Chib Calloway, too. Two Edinburghs sharing a single nervous system.’

    Allan wagged a finger. ‘You’re thinking of that programme on Channel 4 last night . . . the Siamese twins.’

    ‘I caught a bit of it.’

    ‘You’re like me - too much TV. We’ll be in our dotage and wondering why we didn’t do more with our lives.’

    ‘Thanks for that.’

    ‘You know what I mean, though - if I had your money I’d be helming a yacht in the Caribbean, landing my helicopter on the roof of that hotel in Dubai . . .’

    ‘You’re saying I’m wasting away?’ Mike was thinking of Gerry Pearson, of emails with embedded photos of speedboats and jet skis . . .

    ‘I’m saying you should grab what you can with both hands - and that includes the blessed Laura. If you nip back to the auction house, she’ll still be there. Ask her out on a date.’

    ‘ Another date,’ Mike corrected him. ‘And look what happened last time.’

    ‘You give up too easily.’ Allan was shaking his head slowly. ‘It amazes me you ever made any money in business.’

    ‘I did, though, didn’t I?’

    ‘No doubt about it. But . . .’

    ‘But what?’

    ‘I just get the feeling you’re still not comfortable with it.’

    ‘I don’t like flaunting it, if that’s what you mean. Rubbing my success in other people’s faces.’

    Allan looked as though he had more to say, but natural caution won him over and he only nodded. Their attention was distracted by sudden music, pulsing from a car as it cruised towards them. It was a gloss-black BMW, looked like an M5. Thin Lizzy on the hi-fi - ‘The Boys are Back in Town’ - and Chib Calloway in the passenger seat, singing along. The window was down, and his eyes met Mike’s