Chapter 6: The Duck

"What's that supposed to mean?" I said.

Alfie stepped back.

Whatever he'd been about to say, he swallowed it.

"Ask your solicitor," he said, and walked back toward the noise.

I stood on the corner with my scarf round my neck and my heart going.

Then I went home and locked the door and didn't sleep again.

By Monday morning, the clip had a new name.

The Duck.

Somebody had cut Alfie's dive behind the bar to the sound of a cartoon duck quacking.

Somebody else had put it next to a nature documentary of a heron.

A man in Ohio had made it into a song.

Nic sent me forty-one links before eight o'clock, each with more crying-laughing faces than the last.

I sat at Gran's kitchen table in my dressing gown and watched my husband drop out of sight in slow motion.

I didn't feel as happy as I should have.

You've just cost yourself the house.

At ten past eight someone knocked on the front door.

A polite knock. Two taps.

Nathan Coombes was standing on my step, filling the whole doorframe, holding two coffees from the place on North Street.

"Morning," he said.

"You've been sacked."

"Suspended. Indefinitely. Pending a review of my editorial judgement." He held one coffee out. "Oat flat white. I guessed."

I took it.

"How did you guess?"

"Your sister rang me at six and told me what to get."

"Course she did."

I should have taken the coffee and shut the door.

I stood back and let him in instead.

He had to duck under the beam in the hall.

In the kitchen he looked round at the yellow tiles and Gran's plates on the dresser.

Then he smiled.

"My nan had those plates," he said.