Mr. In-Between Read Online Free Page A

three tarnished pound coins. They sat in a quiet corner and silently supped the heads from their drinks.
    â€˜The first pint I ever drank in a pub was with you,’ said Jon eventually. ‘Remember? It was in the Crown and I was sick.’
    â€˜Of course I remember. Two pints of cider and “whuff”.’ He made a vomiting sound then blushed and sipped gently, and looked up from the glass. He wore a moustache of froth. ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘That was your first time in a pub? You used to tell me that you drank in pubs all the time .’
    â€˜I was lying. You were always in pubs and I felt stupid.’
    â€˜No, I wasn’t. I’d had a couple of halves with my old man before Sunday lunch, that was all.’
    Jon bristled. ‘You used to tell me that you and your dad used to drink in there every Wednesday night. You were on the darts team or something.’
    â€˜I was trying to be grown up.’
    Jon produced his cigarettes, offered them. Andy accepted with a self-reflective smile. ‘And if you wouldn’t have started me on these ,’he said, ‘I might have been able to give them up by now.’
    Jon made a face of exaggerated incredulity. ‘You used to smoke like a chimney.’
    â€˜Only because I thought I looked cool when I was lighting up. I used to give myself a terrible headache.’
    â€˜And you could always tell when you’d nicked your mum’s,’ said Jon, ‘because she smoked menthol and you’d put them in a Benson & Hedges packet, and when people asked you why the filter was white you said they were duty-free.’
    Andy groaned, his hand across his mouth.
    â€˜How is your mum?’ said Jon.
    â€˜Oh, she’s fine. Still the same. Does the bingo.’
    â€˜And your old man?’
    Andy drew hard on the cigarette. ‘Just the fucking same.’
    â€˜You don’t see them much, then?’
    â€˜I take the kid round to mum’s on a Saturday afternoon when the old man’s out on the piss.’
    Jon let this sink in.
    â€˜The kid?’
    Andy shook his head and beamed in pride, more, Jon thought, for the power of revelation than the satisfactions of fatherhood. ‘A girl. Kirsty. She’s nearly three.’
    â€˜Kids. Jesus. You’re married then?’
    â€˜Seven years. Remember Cathy Reynolds? In the year below us?’
    â€˜Cathy Reynolds ?After that night with the phone you used to deny you even fancied her!’
    â€˜Well I did fancy her. Bumped into her a couple of years after I last saw you and one thing led to another, y’know. Bob’s your uncle. Married with a kid. Before I knew it.’
    After I last saw you. As if the parting had been a watershed: the passage from one world to another.
    â€˜What about George and Mildred?’ This had been Andy’s name for Jon’s foster parents, and they had loved him for his innocent cockiness in using it, for the fondness it implied. The unique power of names. When Andy was around they had referred to one another thus, ‘George, it’s Andy for our Jon.’ ‘I’ll put the kettle on for him, Mildred.’ ‘Sit yourself down, Andy. George’ll make you a cup of tea.’
    â€˜They’re dead,’ said Jon.
    Jon found the loss in Andy’s face hard to bear. He was uncomfortably certain that Andy had for a moment entertained the notion of turning up on their doorstep, a pushchair in one hand and the toddler in the other, greeting them with a smile and ‘Hello George, hello Mildred,’ achieving a kind of continuity, a sense of himself as the boy of whom they had been so fond, grown older but unchanged in essence, still eminently recognisable.
    â€˜Oh, Christ, Jon. I’m sorry, mate. When?’
    Jon shrugged and smiled bloodlessly. ‘It must be ten years.’
    â€˜Ten years ?
    â€˜Time flies.’ He said this in a half stoop, standing and draining his pint.