Trafika Europe 9/10 - UK in Europe

Not Near London

Southern Comfort at her elbow. ‘I’m in the pink, ta. How’s you, duck?’ Jasper met her only once, when she was literally almost on her last breath but still upright. ‘Where do you live, Mrs Fowler?’ he asked. ‘Louth, my hubby’s town.’ ‘I thought Louth was in Ireland.’ Suzie covered her face in mock despair. Nan cackled. ‘You know what thought did? He only thought he did. And you know what they say of Louth folk?’ ‘No.’ ‘They’re either lame or daft.’ ‘Which are you?’ dared Jasper, risking a lot. ‘Neither, handsome. From Grantham, me.’ Plain-spoken Gran would

have told her what to do. Gran had all the stories, some of them right saucy. Like how she worked in a grocery store in Grantham when she was fifteen and had her boobs felt up by the owner, one Alderman Roberts, father of our future prime minister and supposed paragon of virtue. ‘Like a dog with two dicks, he were! Slipping his paw down, right here. Ugh. Mind you, I were lovely to look at, then.’ And now there wasn’t one left to tell, not one, because they’d all gone up in smoke along with her, and the firemen had got there just five minutes too late, according to her mum. ‘Midnight like midday, they said.’ Flat scorched black like the inside of an oven, nothing left intact but that porcelain cat watching a butterfly

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