By lunchtime they were not exactly eating out of her hand, but prepared to have a sniff. After lunch I had something to discuss and went to find her, on a fag break at the back of the building. She stood huddled in a corner with one or two others. Linda was a little younger than me but over the years we’d worked together she’d become a good friend. She was blonde and jolly, with a wide smile, a laugh that cracked out of her and a laid-back manner that was deceptive. She was quite tough in most matters, grew up on the kind of estate where it paid you to be. Once the business was out of the way I found myself being updated on her complicated two-family life. ‘…. so we’ve got Jessica in the spare room, while she gets over him and finds herself a place of her own. Tom’s due back from his gap year and asked if he can bring two New Zealand girls for a week, just till they travel up to Scotland. I’ve told him he’ll have to give up his room and we’re not having any threesomes in our house.
