The Walking Dead

Wherever there was available space, the posters went up.

The next Saturday morning, it was advertised, a 'Super Sale' would start in Luton, with special offers discounted down to fifty per cent of the usual amount. There would be 'Give-away Prices', every thing 'slashed' in the chain stores that filled the retail outlets inside the cavern of the shopping centre. And on that morning a celebrity from the local radio station would open the Super Sale.

The manager of a chemist's in the centre spoke to a councillor who sat on the Trade and Commerce Committee in the town hail as they watched the slapping on of the posters from a vantage-point among the trees of St George's Square.

'I hope this bloody works,' the manager said. 'Rents are up, takings are through the floor. If this doesn't pull the punters in, we're well and truly shafted.'

'They'll be fighting to get in, just you wait and see, when the doors open.' The councillor slapped the manager's back. 'Could be a special day for the Arndale next Saturday. They'll be shoulder to shoulder and lined up right round the corner. Its the sort of initiative this town needs and that shoppers respond to. They'll come with filled purses and wallets. It'll be like the Saturday before Christmas.'

It was Jools's routine on a Sunday morning. Out of bed, Hannah's, out of her flat and down the alleyway into Inkerman Road. Up Manchester Street and past the town hail where that damn great clock was striking, along the pavement past St George's Square, the wine bar, Travelcare, the Oxfam shop and Tasty Fried Chicken. Then the closed doors of three building societies and the Age Concern unlit windows on his right, and the dive into the newsagent that sold fags. Every Sunday morning was the same: Hannah would be making breakfast and he would be on the quarter-mile tramp for a carton of cigarettes and a scandal sheet.

And, as it always did, his mobile rang.

His father: 'Just to tell you, son, that Babs rang and I said you were out, and would you call her?'

His father and mother, fifteen miles north of the town, were an active ingredient in the deception fools practised. The familiar bleat from him to Babs was that they were elderly, getting frail, and that it was important he visited as often as possible, both to show them his support and to do jobs round their house because they could no longer afford, as pensioners, to have a man in. They hated telling the lies for their son's adulterous relationship but, as he told them when it was fraught and he was challenged, the alternative was a split with Babs and their granddaughter without a father at home. Babs would ring on a Sunday morning, and Jools's father would swallow his truth culture and say that fools had just popped out, then telephone his son. fools would call home on his mobile and would concoct anecdotes of what he'd done at his parents' house for them. Did he care? Not much…He bought his cigarettes and the paper, and as he walked back he spoke to his wife, and forgot her as soon as the mobile was back in his pocket.

That Sunday morning fools Wright had much to reflect on.

And he was not sure — in a welter of confusion — where his priorities lay.

Could have been his performance in bed with Hannah, bloody abject and useless. Could have been the package in the bottom of the wardrobe at home with his shoes and spare sandals covering it.

What to do? If the Inkerman Arms had been open, he might have headed into the public bar and ordered up a double Johnnie Walker, no ice, but it was not.

He had seen the posters going up outside the shopping centre. When Babs and he went out to buy things, it usually ended up in a whispered bickering about what they could afford, what they couldn't, and which credit card or cheque book might still be functioning. Different times. There was twelve and a half thousand pounds, presumably in fifties, in his wardrobe and he could go down to the shopping centre next week and buy half of any of the damned outlets bloody near empty.

He passed the Inkerman Arms and heard a vacuum-cleaner inside. He was within sight of Hannah's door. The trouble with Hannah was that she had an appetite, and women with an appetite needed regular feeding, and if she didn't get satisfaction at one outlet, she'd go looking for another. It was the way she was: if Jools wasn't the flavour she'd be heading off elsewhere, and he'd be getting the phone call to say he needn't bother to come again. If he had that call, it would push him down into the gutter.