‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you what I like doing at the seaside. I like going to arcades.’
That figures, thought Ana, picturing him wearing out his thumb-pads on a space-invader machine or kicking the shit out of a virtual Ninja. Or something.
‘Have you got any moral objections to gambling? As a concept?’
She shook her head.
‘Got money on you?’
She patted her tapestry rucksack and nodded.
‘Cool,’ he said, ‘let’s go.’
Broadstairs was prettier than your average seaside town, prettier than Bideford, thought Ana, where she’d walked on the beach with Tommy and her father in the winter, throwing sticks for the dog, bashing the sand out of their shoes before they got into the car and getting a pie on the way home. Steep cobbled streets ran away from the seafront, where bow-windowed, knock-kneed cottages lined the lanes.
‘Did you know,’ said Flint, ‘that Dickens wroteThe Olde Curiosity Shoppehere? In Broadstairs?’
‘Did he?’ said Ana, ‘really?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘How did you know that?’
Flint grinned. ‘I dunno,’ he said, ‘I thought everyone knew that.’
‘Oh,’ said Ana, ‘right.’
She glanced at people as they walked and wondered what they were thinking, wondered what sort of a couple she and Flint made. Pretty eye-catching, she imagined, her being so tall and him being so huge, clutching their crash helmets. Nobody would guess, she was sure, that she was just waste-of-space old Ana Wills, unattractive and disappointing second daughter of Gay Wills, naïve country bumpkin and pretty much born-again virgin. She probably looked like she lived in some funky, stripped-floorboarded flat, like she had loads of cool friends who all got stoned and went to parties together and like she had sex with Flint about twenty times a day while drinking tequila from the bottle and listening to really loud music.
Ana suddenly felt like a character in a film. A little fizz went down her spine.
The feeling soon evaporated as they entered the arcade. That smell. That smell of teenagers’ trainers, cold metal and dirty money. And the noise – not just the rings and clunks and clinks of the old days, but the new sounds too; booming American voices, rapid gunfire, explosions, thwacks, grunts and groans of Japanese warriors. This was home. This was Devon. This was Bideford and everything she hated about it. Bored teenagers and displaced aggression.
She posted a £5 note into a change-making machine and listened to the jackpot noise of coins being returned to her. And then she looked around for Flint but couldn’t see him anywhere. She looked at the Tekken machines, the Sega Rally cars, lined up together at the far end. She looked at the pinball machines, Time Crisis, some bigthing that looked like an army tank, but he was nowhere to be seen. Growing a little concerned now, her hands full of sweaty ten-pence pieces, she walked around the circumference of the arcade, and then she stopped in her tracks and just stared for a while at what suddenly struck her as one of the most endearing images she’d ever seen in her life. It was Flint, wearing a very earnest expression and patiently depositing two-pence pieces into a penny cascade machine. As she approached, a precariously quavering lip of coins crashed noisily into the metal spout in front of Flint. She saw him bunch up his fists triumphantly before scooping up the money and counting it.
‘24 pee,’ he grinned at her, ‘24 pee! I’m 10 pee up!’
He looked like a little boy in his Gap Kids-style outfit. He was so excited. Ana wanted to hug him, wrap her arms around him and tuck her head into the crook of his enormous shoulders. He grinned at her again before turning back to the slot with a fistful of two-pence pieces. Bless him to death.
She tore her eyes from him and headed towards a one-armed bandit in the corner where the shadows concealed her scarlet blush and the metal stick in her hand cooled her sweaty palms.
18
They found a pizzeria but it wasn’t due to open for another half an hour.
‘Fancy getting a drink somewhere?’ asked Flint.
They found a big noisy boozer a couple of streets away, and Ana offered to get the drinks in. It was the least she could do, she said, after all the petrol Flint must have used getting here. He watched her at the bar from a small table in a corner, watched her fiddling inside her old tapestry rucksack for a purse, rubbing self-consciously at her elbows as she waited to be served, smiling tightly at the barman and then walking back towards him ever so carefully, a pint in each hand, careful not to spill a drop, careful not to look at Flint.
‘I got us some crisps, too,’ she said, dropping a packet of salt and vinegar on to the table from underneath her arm.
‘Ah,’ smiled Flint, ‘a girl after my own heart – a pint of lager and a packet of crisps. Lovely.’
She picked up her pint and tipped at least a quarter of it down her throat. ‘Argh,’ she exclaimed, ‘I needed that.’
‘Yeah,’ laughed Flint, ‘I can see that. You’re not really like your sister, are you?’
Ana laughed, too. ‘Aren’t I?’
