Jonathan rushed off to his rehearsal in London and the other two walked in the direction of Membery, although the usual mandatory Sunday lunch of Alyssa’s overcooked roast beef and two veg, where everybody met, had been abandoned today by tacit consent. Jilly touched Fran’s arm. ‘How about walking over to the pub at Endbury for a drink and a snack, maybe? Anything’s better than this awful waiting.’ She sounded on edge, and waited nervously for Fran’s reply. ‘What do you think?’ Fran hesitated. The erstwhile White Horse, now facetiously renamed the Rat and Radish, and suffering under equally dire assaults on its decor, was a place Fran would normally have avoided like the plague, the in place at the moment, popular with Felsborough’s G & T brigade, many of whom she met daily on the station platform, most of whom were scarcely able to wait to board the train before pulling out their laptops and checking in with the office on their mobile phones — and none of whom she wished to meet in the present circumstances.
