A Spot Of Bother

69

Jamie sat drinking coffee and eating a cheese-and-onion pasty in the Kenco Restaurant (Chef’s Specials, Midweek Carvery, International Cuisine, and much more…!).

He was in major shit. Ideally he wanted to sit here until Katie arrived and she and his mother tore a few chunks off each other and came to some kind of truce before he ventured back down to casualty.

He rather liked the Kenco Restaurant. In much the same way that he rather liked motorway service stations and airport lounges. In much the same way that other people rather liked going round cathedrals or walking in the countryside.

The black plastic trays, the fake plants and the little trellises they’d added to give it a garden-center feel…You could think in places like this. No one knew who you were. You weren’t going to be accosted by colleagues or friends. You were on your own but you weren’t alone.

At teenage parties he was always wandering into the garden, sitting on a bench in the dark, smoking Camel cigarettes, the lit windows behind him and the faint strains of “Hi, Ho, Silver Lining” thumping away, staring up at the constellations and pondering all those big questions about the existence of God and the nature of evil and the mystery of death, questions which seemed more important than anything else in the world until a few years passed and some real questions had been dumped into your lap, like how to earn a living, and why people fell in and out of love, and how long you could carry on smoking and then give up without getting lung cancer.

Maybe the answers weren’t important. Maybe it was the asking which mattered. Not taking anything for granted. Maybe that’s what stopped you growing old.

And maybe you could put up with anything so long as you got half an hour a day to come somewhere like this and let your mind wander.

An old man with lizardy skin and a square of gauze stuck over his Adam’s apple sat down with a mug of tea at the table opposite. The fingers on the man’s right hand were so yellow with nicotine they looked varnished.

Jamie glanced at his watch. He’d been away for forty minutes. He felt suddenly rather guilty.

He swigged the last of the gritty coffee, stood up and walked back down the main corridor.