Dench sniggered. “That’s what I thought. Rights to nothing is still nothing. You’ve got to the end of the week to sling your hook, you little scumbag.”
“Whatever.” I dropped my empty glass on the bar. It clattered dully on the damp beer mats, then toppled to the floor.
Shame it didn’t smash.
I gave Dench the finger and bowled out of the pub. I spent my last coins on a bottle of dodgy cider and drifted back to the yard. Fuck the chips.
Grey joined me at the end of the lane, unhurt and sashaying in front of me like the furry toss bag who’d just cost me my job and my home. Drunk me wasn’t unduly alarmed. Sober me probably wouldn’t be either. That part of me had died a long time ago.
I drank warm cider all night, tracking Dench as he stayed in the pub till after the regular lock-in, then trailing after him as he meandered home to be sure he wouldn’t go back to the yard. Then, with the arse crack of dawn on my sore shoulder, I stumbled into the caravan and found the backpack I’d arrived with six months ago. My belongings only half filled it. Laughing, I did a sweep for anything worth nicking, then rejoined Grey outside. He rubbed his face on my shin bone and the reality that I had to leave him behind hit home. I scooped him up. He pranced along my arm and onto the shoulder that kept me up at night when I didn’t have a belly full of beer. His tiny paws were fire to my damaged nerves, but I didn’t shake him off. Couldn’t, cos the little guy was my pal.
You can’t leave him.
My gaze fell on an abandoned tackle box, upended next to a push bike that had seen better days.
Dench’s tools were in his old Transit van. I dug a screwdriver out of my bag, jimmied the lock, and helped myself to his cordless drill. The yard was a gold mine of scrap metal and plastic. I pinched what I needed, drilled air holes in the tackle box, and attached it to the front of the bike. Even as a resident yard cat, it wouldn’t be the most comfortable bed Grey had ever had, but it would keep him safe while I got the fuck out of Dodge.
My cider-addled legs, not so much. But I was committed now. I stuffed a stolen pillow into the box and retrieved Grey from where he’d perched on the back of a dilapidated bench to watch me work.
I eased him into the box and secured the lid. His emerald green eyes blinked up at me, trusting and pure, no hint of surprise at the strange turn his night was taking. “That’s right,” I whispered. “You’re safe now.”
Safe from dipshit petrolheads, at least. I strapped my bag to my back and straddled the rusty bike. It creaked, and the front wheel wobbled as I pushed off the ground and started to pedal.
Or maybe it was me. I’d developed quite the stomach for drinking in recent years, but out in the cool early-morning drizzle soaking the air, and once again all alone in the world, I felt drunker than I had when I’d left the pub.
Dazed and confused.
Stupid, and once again unemployed. Oh, and homeless.
Fuck.
I was half a mile down the unlit road when it dawned on me that I had nowhere to go.
