The End of the World Running Club Read Online Free

reached the shop opposite our terrace. It was the only shop within a mile of the house. It should have been open at this time but the metal shutters were still down. I peered through the window to see if I could spot Jabbar, the owner, sorting through the morning papers, pushing the new milk to the back of the fridges so he could sell off the old stuff first. Jabbar was an overweight Pakistani who ran the shop with his brother. It was independent, not part of a chain, so it was filled with dusty cans and bottles already well past their sell-by dates and twice their RRP. Jabbar and his brother lived with their wives and kids in the house that joined onto the back. Close living.
    There were no lights on, no sound.  The door through to the house was shut.
    “Jabbar,” I shouted through the shutter. “Hey, Jabbar!”
    I thought I saw some eyes dart at me through the glass panel of the door into the house, but when I looked again they were gone.
    “Morning,” I heard somebody say behind me. I turned around and saw Mark standing in shorts and sandals, carrying his daughter Mary in a backpack like Arthur’s. She was about Arthur’s age. Mark and I had met through the antenatal group that Beth had made me go to when she was pregnant with Alice. She’d made friends with three or four of the girls, her ‘support network’ as she liked to call them, who quickly huddled into regular Friday coffee mornings and unabashed texts about breast milk, cracked nipples and vaginal tearing. The husbands dutifully met on the fringes, nodding silently at each other at birthday parties, going for the occasional pint where we’d sit and discuss things like sport, work, news - trivial safe-houses, anything but the reason we were thrown together. Yes, there was the odd update on how the respective wives were doing, how the sons and daughters were growing every day, little bundles of joy that they were... but we were each aware that we didn’t want, didn’t need, that level of discussion in our lives. We were really just a bunch of strangers sharing a pub table.
    I had been the only English one there. “We won’t hold that against you!” boomed Mark one night in the pub, slapping me on the back and repeating the joke I’d heard a thousand times since moving north. Mark and I got on OK, despite the fact that he was a road-cyclist and therefore a bastard, being much fitter and healthier than me. He had always threatened to take me out cycling. I always made excuses. I sucked in my stomach when I saw him.
    “Mark,” I said. “Hey. Hi, Mary.”
    I turned back to the shop and peered through the window. Mark joined me.
    “What’s going on?” he said.
    “You tell me,” I said. “Jabba the Hutt’s hiding in there.”
    Mark banged a fist on the shutters.
    “Jabba! Come out of there you fat Pakki!”
    Nothing from inside. We stepped back.
    “Weird,” said Mark.
    “Aha,” I said.
    Mark nodded up at the hills at the top of the road.
    “I just passed a load of squaddies from the barracks running up to the Pentlands.”
    “Training?”
    “Didn’t look like it. They were all over the place, no leader. Some had two guns.”
    “Have you noticed the birds?” I said.
    “Aye. Weird. Any signal?”
    “No, you?”
    “Nada.”
    “Our telly’s out as well.”
    “Ours too, must be a problem with the cable I guess.”
    “We’re on Sky.”
    We looked at each other. It was still quiet, still warm. There are times when I wished I’d savoured that feeling more.
    “Any newspapers?” said Mark.
    “No, the van always drops them here before six though. Jabba’s usually sorting through them by now.”
    We looked around the pavement. There was nothing there so we walked round to the back door of the house. There on the ground was a fat stack of Sunday Times newspapers bound up with string.
    Mark tore the invoice sheet - someone had incredibly still thought to include it, even with what lay within - and pulled out the first in the pile. It