‘Is Roxanne here?’ Jess pinned up a new strip of pork scratchings as Des emerged from the cellar, where he had been tying on a fresh barrel of real ale.

‘Nah. She’s doing something with her mother.’ He thought for a minute. ‘Healing. No, fortune-telling. Psychiatrist. Psychologist.’

‘Spiritualist?’

‘The one where they tell you stuff you already know and you’re meant to look impressed.’

‘Psychic.’

‘Thirty pound a ticket, they’re paying, to sit there with a glass of cheap white wine and shout, “Yes!” when someone asks did someone in the audience have a relative whose name began with J.’ He stooped, slamming the cellar door shut with a grunt. ‘I could predict a few things, Jess. And I won’t charge you thirty pound for it. I predict that man is sitting at home right now, rubbing his hands and thinking, What a bunch of muppets.’

Jess hauled the tray of clean glasses out of the dishwasher and began stacking them on the shelves above the bar.

‘Do you believe all that old bollocks?’

‘No.’

‘Course you don’t. You’re a sensible girl. I don’t know what to say to her sometimes. Her mother’s the worst. She reckons she’s got her own guardian angel. An angel.’ He mimicked her, looking at his own shoulder and tapping it. ‘She reckons it protects her. Didn’t protect her from spending all her compensation on the shopping channels, did it? You’d think that angel would have had a word. “Here, Maureen. You really don’t want that luxury ironing-board cover with a picture of a dog on it. Really, love. Put a bit into your pension instead.”’

Miserable as Jess felt, she couldn’t help but laugh. It was hard not to in the pub. The men at the bar were gentlemanly (as far as men who belched the alphabet could be called gentlemanly), the talk was cheerful, and it meant that for two nights and two lunchtimes a week she did not sit at home with a pile of someone else’s laundry worrying about things she could not control.

‘You’re early.’ Des looked pointedly at his watch.

‘Shoe emergency.’ Chelsea slung her handbag under the bar, and fixed her hair. ‘I got chatting online to one of my dates,’ she said, to Jess, as if Des wasn’t there. ‘He’s absolutely gorgeous.’

All Chelsea’s Internet dates were gorgeous. Until she met them.

‘David, his name is. He’s looking for someone who likes cooking, cleaning and ironing. And the odd trip out.’

‘To the supermarket?’ said Des.

Chelsea ignored him. She picked up a dishcloth and began drying glasses. ‘You want to get yourself on there, Jess. Get out and about a bit instead of mouldering in here with this lot of droopy old ballsacks.’

‘Less of the old, you.’

The football was on, which meant that Des put out free crisps and cheese cubes, and, if he was feeling particularly generous, mini sausage rolls. Jess had taken home the leftover cubes, with Des’s blessing, to make macaroni cheese, until Nathalie had told her the statistic for how many men actually washed their hands after going to the loo.

The bar filled, the match started, the evening passed without note; she poured pints in the commentary gaps, silent against the blare of the satellite television on the far wall, and thought, yet again, about money. The end of the month, the school had said. If she didn’t register by then, that was it. Jess could save for a year and see if she could try to get her in at twelve, but there was no guarantee that the scholarship would still exist.

She was so deep in thought that she almost didn’t hear Des until he dumped a bowl of Quavers on the bar beside her. ‘I meant to tell you. Next week we’ve got a new till coming. It’s one of those where everything’s written down. All you have to do is touch the screen.’

She turned away from the optics. ‘A new till? Why?’

‘That one is older than I am. And not all the barmaids can add up as well as you, Jess. The last time Chelsea was on by herself I cashed up and we were eleven quid out. Ask her to add up a double gin, a pint of Webster’s and a packet of dry-roasted and her eyes cross. We’ve got to move with the times.’ He ran his hand across an imaginary screen. ‘Digital accuracy. You’ll love it. You won’t have to use your brain at all. Just like Chelsea.’

‘Can’t I just stick with this? I’m hopeless with computers.’

‘You’ll be fine. We’re going to do staff training.’

‘Staff training.’

‘Half a day. Unpaid, I’m afraid. I’ve got a bloke coming.’

‘Unpaid?’

‘Just tap-tap-swipe on a screen. It’ll be like Minority Report. But without the bald people. Mind you, we’ll still have Pete. PETE!’

Liam Stubbs came in at a quarter past nine. Jess had her back to the bar and he leant over it and murmured, ‘Hey, hot stuff,’ into her ear.

She didn’t turn round. ‘Oh. You again.’

‘There’s a welcome. Pint of Stella, please, Jess.’ He glanced around the bar, then said, ‘And whatever else you have on offer.’

‘We have some very nice dry-roasted peanuts.’

‘I was thinking of something a bit … wetter.’

‘I’ll get you that pint, then.’

‘Still playing hard to get, eh?’

She had known Liam since school. He was one of those men whom you knew would break your heart into tiny pieces if you let him; the kind of blue-eyed, smart-mouthed boy who ignored you all the way through years ten and eleven, laughed you into bed when you lost your braces and grew your hair, then gave you nothing more than a cheery wave and a wink for ever after. His hair was chestnut brown, his cheekbones high and lightly tanned. He ran a flower stall in the market and whenever she passed he would whisper, ‘You. Me. Behind the dahlias, now,’ just seriously enough to make her miss her stride. His wife had left him about the same time as Marty had departed (‘A little matter of serial infidelity. Some women are so picky’), and six months ago, after one of Des’s lock-ins, they had ended up in the ladies’ loos with his hands up her shirt and Jess walking round wearing a lopsided smile for days.

She and Marty had lived like an irritable brother and sister by the time he left. Sometimes he said he was tired. Mostly he said she put him off with her nagging.

Jess sometimes thought she missed it, but she didn’t miss him.

She was taking the empty cardboard crisps boxes out to the bins when Liam appeared at the back gate. He walked up to her with a sort of silent swagger so that she had to back slowly against the wall of the pub garden. He had a smile on his face like they were both in on some private joke. He stood so that the entire length of his body was just inches from hers and said softly, ‘I can’t stop thinking about you.’ He held his cigarette hand well away from her. He was a gentleman like that.

‘I bet you say that to all the girls.’

‘I like watching you move around that bar. Half the time I’m watching the football, and half the time I’m imagining bending you over it.’

‘Who says romance is dead?’

God, he smelt good. Jess wriggled a bit, trying to get herself out from under him before she did something she’d regret. Being near Liam Stubbs sparked bits of her to life that she had forgotten existed, like those joke birthday candles that insist on reigniting long after you’d blown them out.

‘So let me romance you. Let me take you out. You and me. A proper date. Come on, Jess. Let’s make a go of it.’

Jess pulled back from him. ‘What?’

‘You heard.’

She stared. ‘You want us to have a relationship?’

‘You say it like it’s a dirty word.’

She slid out from under him, glancing towards the back door. ‘I’ve got to get back to the bar, Liam.’

‘Why won’t you go out with me?’ He took a step closer. ‘You know it would be great …’ His voice had dropped to a whisper.

‘And I also know I have two kids and two jobs and you spend your whole life in your car, and it would take about three weeks for you and me to be bickering on a sofa about whose turn it was to take the rubbish out.’ She smiled sweetly at him. ‘And then we would lose the heart-stopping romance of exchanges like this for ever.’

He picked up a lock of her hair and let it slide through his fingers. His voice was a soft growl. ‘So cynical. You’re going to break my heart, Jess Thomas.’

‘And you’re going to get me fired.’

He was the man you never dared take seriously. She thought he probably liked her because she was the only woman round here who didn’t.

‘I take it this means a quickie’s out of the question?’

She extricated herself and made her way towards the back door, trying to make the colour subside from her cheeks. Then she stopped. ‘Hey, Liam.’

He looked up from stubbing his cigarette out.

‘You don’t want to lend me five hundred quid, do you?’

‘If I had it, babe, you could have it.’ He blew a kiss as she disappeared back indoors.

She was walking around the bar to pick up empties, her cheeks still pink, when she saw him. She actually did a double-take. He was sitting in the corner alone, and there were three empty pint glasses in front of him.

He had changed into Converse trainers, jeans and a T-shirt and he sat staring at his mobile phone, flicking at the screen and occasionally glancing up when everyone cheered a goal. As Jess watched, he picked up a beer and downed it. He probably thought that in his jeans he blended in, but he had ‘incomer’ written all over him. As he glanced towards the bar, she turned away swiftly, feeling her brief happy mood evaporate.

‘Just popping downstairs for some more snacks,’ she said to Chelsea, and made for the cellar. ‘Ugh,’ she muttered, under her breath. ‘Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.’ When she re-emerged he had a fresh pint and barely looked up from his phone.

The evening stretched. Chelsea discussed her Internet options, Mr Nicholls drank three more pints and Jess disappeared whenever he got up to the bar, juggled debts and imaginary lottery wins and tried not to meet Liam’s eye. By ten to eleven, the pub was down to a handful of stragglers – the usual offenders, Des called them. Chelsea put on her coat.

‘Where are you going?’

She stooped to apply her lipstick in the mirror behind the optics. ‘Des said I could leave a bit early.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Date.’

‘Date? Who goes on a date at this time of night?’

‘It’s a date at David’s house. It’s all right,’ she said, as Jess stared at her. ‘My sister’s coming too. He said it would be nice with the three of us.’

‘Chels, have you ever heard the expression “booty call”?’

‘What?’

Jess looked at her for a minute. ‘Nothing. Just … have a nice time.’

She was loading the dishwasher when he appeared at the bar. His eyes were half closed and he swayed gently, as if he was about to embark on some free-form dance.

‘Pint, please.’

She shoved another two glasses to the back of the wire rack. ‘We’re not serving any more. It’s gone eleven.’

He looked up at the clock. His voice slurred. ‘It’s one minute to.’

‘You’ve had enough.’

He blinked slowly, stared at her. His short, dark hair was sticking up slightly on one side, as if at some point during the last hour, he had started to slide down the banquette. ‘Who are you to tell me I’ve had enough?’

‘The person who serves the drinks. That’s usually how it works.’ Jess held his gaze. ‘You don’t even recognize me, do you?’

‘Should I?’

She stared at him a moment longer. ‘Hold on.’ She let herself out from behind the bar, walked over to the swing door, and as he stood there, bemused, she opened it and let it swing back in her face, lifting a hand and opening her mouth as if to say something.

She opened the door again and stood there in front of him. ‘Recognize me now?’

He blinked. Jess could almost hear the cogs of his brain working.

‘Are you … Did I see you yesterday?’

‘The cleaner. Yes.’

He ran a hand through his hair. ‘Ah. The whole door thing. I was just … having a tricky conversation.’

‘“Not now, thanks” tends to work just as well, I find.’

‘Right. Point taken.’ He leant on the bar. Jess tried to keep a straight face when his elbow slipped off. ‘So that’s an apology, is it?’

He peered at her blearily. ‘Sorry. I’m really, really, really sorry. Very sorry, O Bar Lady. Now can I have a drink?’

‘No. It’s gone eleven.’

‘Only because you kept me talking.’

‘I haven’t got time to sit here while you nurse another pint.’

‘Give me a shot, then. Come on. I need another drink. Give me a shot of vodka. Here. You can keep the change.’ He slammed a twenty on the bar. The impact reverberated through the rest of him so that his head whiplashed back slightly. ‘Just one. Actually, make it a double. It’ll take me all of two seconds to down it. One second.’