The Forced Redundancy Film Club

by Brian Finnegan

Genres: General Fiction; Friendship; Romance

Synopsis

'A warm, touching, funny, sexy, romantic, thoroughly enjoyable, brilliantly-plotted page-turner ... a ray of sunshine' Hot Press Five colleagues. One dreadful day. And the biggest shock of her life for high-flying career girl Katherine Casey, who'd believed she was safe from the job losses coming to Qwertec Solutions. The mood is sombre as she and devastated ex-colleagues gather in the pub. But a few drinks later, with the discovery of a shared passion for the silver screen, things begin to look up. And the Forced Redundancy Film Club is born. Over a year, Katherine, along with office oddball Alice, stressed out mother-of-three Lisa, professional sorrow-drowner Martin and cheating-heart Jamie meet up each month to watch their favourite classic films. As they journey through Casablanca, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Wizard of Oz, Brokeback Mountain and many others, each faces their own personal challenges: from negative-equity hell to heartache, loneliness, toddler-strife -- and the wrath of a certain bunny boiler. And each finds comfort in the one place where they're guaranteed a happy ending. But will the dreams they dare to dream every really come true? Only time will tell...

Release date: April 5, 2012

Publisher: Hachette Ireland

Print pages: 400

Sample

First and foremost, I would like to thank Ciara Considine, my editor, mentor and friend. Your help in bringing this novel
to fruition from the moment I told you the concept has fulfilled a lifelong dream for me. It would not have happened without
you.


To the team at Hachette Ireland who got behind my dream, thank you.

The idea for this book came on a Dublin street one day when my partner and I bumped into Lisa Manselli, who told us about
the book club she and her friends had formed after they were made redundant. I named the character of Lisa after her, although
that’s where the resemblance ends. I want to thank the real Lisa for kick-starting a concept that I could get my teeth into.


To everyone at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig – thank you for providing me with a wonderful space where I could
immerse myself in writing; for great food, great company and some great parties, which added to the experience in a very special
way.


I would like to thank my readers who gave me honest and very helpful feedback – some of my oldest friends, Maggie Breheny,
Eilish Kent, Louise Mitchell and Adrienne Murphy. Your constant support and belief in me is a fundamental part of this book,
and my life.


Thanks to Freda Donoghue, who spent valuable time helping me with the plot and to Roisín Meaney who gave me a writer’s professional
feedback. Thank you too to Pete Reddy and Hazel Orme.


I thank Deirdre Buckley who has been a support to me throughout my adult life, both personally and in all my creative endeavours.


Thanks also to our beautiful son, Colum, who helped me with the title and is always happy to talk plot with me.

Over the past two years, much of my free time has been dedicated to writing this book. Special thanks go to my wonderful partner
in life Miguel Gernaey, who has not once complained about my dedication to getting it done, has read through and given me
feedback that I couldn’t have done without, and has bolstered me up throughout all those times when I had the fear that I
couldn’t get it done, always making me laugh along the way.


Katherine Casey’s thirty-sixth birthday turned out to be the worst day of her life.

Or the second worst.

So far.

It had begun promisingly enough. When she got out of bed and pulled the curtains, she was greeted by a clear blue sky, the
first after weeks with banks of grey cloud sealing the city like a Tupperware lid.


Because it was her birthday, she allowed herself time to sit and eat some breakfast, looking out of the patio doors at a pair
of robins pecking from the bird-feeder she’d put up before winter had set in. It was still January, but the morning had a
feeling of spring about it.


She was putting the final touches to her makeup in the hall mirror when two envelopes popped through the letterbox. The first
was from her mother, bearing a Spanish stamp, the second from her sister Lucy, her childish handwriting instantly recognisable.
‘Many happy returns, Katherine, from your ever-loving Mum,’ her mother’s card read, the same message she always wrote, year
in, year out. Lucy’s was stuffed with two pictures of Disney’s Little Mermaid, coloured in by Kitty, ‘Happy Birthday, Auntie
Katherine. I love you’. Lucy’s message was typically loaded: ‘Happy birthday, big sis. Only four more years till forty!’


‘Four years,’ Katherine said to her reflection. ‘That’s not so bad, is it?’

There was no card from Barry. He had been particularly busy, she supposed. He’d probably call later, when he was on his break.

She took a lipstick from her bag, touched up her lips and checked to make sure her foundation was covering the pimple that
had appeared on her chin last night.


She was tempted to drive the car to work with the top down, but it was still very cold, despite the bright sun, and the wind
would wreak havoc with her hair. She tuned in to 4FM for a change, drumming the steering wheel with her leather-gloved fingers
and humming along with back-to-back seventies songs that spoke of sunshine and lollipops rather than the wall-to-wall recession,
euro bail-outs and rising unemployment figures on the news channels she usually chose.


As soon as she arrived at her desk, she knew something was terribly wrong. Silence floated in the air above the rows of cubicles.
Not a phone could be heard ringing, not a person talking.


The dreaded day had finally come.

Alice Little appeared beside her as she was peeling off her gloves. She had a habit of doing that, Alice, silently materialising
out of nowhere like a wafer-thin ghost. She looked paler and more drawn than ever, her lank brown hair pinned up to one side
with a plastic grip in the shape of a yellow butterfly. It was the only thing of colour about her. ‘Mr Maguire would like
to see you in his office right away,’ she said, her eyes on the floor.


As Katherine followed her to Maguire’s door, she had a vision of a prisoner being led to the dock. Above the walls of the
cell-like cubicles, anxious eyes followed her progress.


When she walked into his office, Maguire was standing at the window, focused on something in the far distance. ‘Good morning,
Eamon,’ she said, taking a seat.


‘Ah, Katherine,’ he replied. ‘Not such a good morning at all.’ He pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and mopped
the back of his neck. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news.’


Katherine tried to smile reassuringly as he turned to her. ‘Eamon,’ she said, clasping her hands in her lap. ‘Everyone’s known
it’s been coming for a long time. It’s not your fault.’


‘I wish I could be as confident about that as you are.’ He sighed and sat down at the other side of his vast, polished oak
desk.


‘How many are we going to lose?’ Katherine asked.

Now Maguire met her eyes. His brows arched, and something seemed to dawn on him. He turned back to the window. ‘I’m afraid
we’re going to have to let you go, Katherine,’ he said.


It was a few seconds before what he had said connected itself to her.

Back in August, when the Polish deal had been done, Maguire had called her into his office and told her hard times lay ahead,
but he could assure her that her job was safe. There was possibly a less home-based promotion for her in the European sector
next March. He would keep her updated on developments as they unfolded, but in the meantime she should put her shoulder to
the wheel and double her efforts.


And now he was giving her the sack.

While Katherine struggled to take it in, Maguire mopped at his forehead and talked on. He’d done everything he possibly could
and it killed him that he was losing her. Times were extremely difficult; he hated having to do this. He was sure she had
nothing to be worried about, with her qualifications and experience …


Katherine realised he had trailed off. She sat staring at him in mute horror.

‘I really am sorry,’ he said.

He was sorry?

‘The European job,’ Katherine said. ‘You told me it was mine.’

Maguire stood up again and went back to the window. ‘I did no such thing,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t have been suitable for it
at all.’


‘But after all the work I’ve put in,’ Katherine said, her voice going up a register. ‘I did it because you said I was in line
for promotion.’


Maguire turned back to her, his watery grey eyes unreadable. ‘We’re offering a month’s salary for every year worked at Qwertec.
You may also qualify for statutory redundancy pay based on your years at Henderson. But I’m sure you’ll have a new position
in no time.’


She didn’t know what to say. To stand up and walk out was to admit defeat, but what else could she do? Get on her knees and
beg?


Maguire walked over and held out his hand to shake hers. She stood up, but didn’t take it. Instead she composed herself, looked
him in the eye and said, ‘How long have you known about this?’


He looked exasperated. ‘It’s not my decision, Katherine. You know that.’

‘But how long have you known?’

‘As you are fully aware, the redundancy plans were drawn up over the past three months.’

‘And you let me work myself to the bone on the European deal, knowing all the time I was getting fired.’

‘It’s not like that. I thought you had the best credentials for the work involved. You should be proud of the part you played.’

‘The best credentials for the work involved, but not the best credentials for the actual job.’

Maguire pulled himself up to his full height, which was almost as tall as Katherine. ‘We felt the position was more suited
to someone else. That’s the way the company works, Katherine. You, above all people, should be aware of that.’


‘And tell me this, Eamon, is the person best suited to the position a man?’

‘As it happens, yes. But that’s neither here nor there.’

Katherine’s fist balled, her nails digging into her palm. She imagined smashing it directly into his bulbous, overripe nose.
It wasn’t the first time she’d had the urge. She might have been at Maguire’s beck and call since the day she’d started at
Qwertec, but that didn’t mean she had to like the demanding, ungrateful prick.


‘You don’t happen to play golf with the man who’s getting my job, do you?’ she asked.

Maguire brushed past her to the door and held it open. ‘Send Lisa Fingleton in on your way out, please,’ he said.

On exiting Maguire’s office, Katherine bumped headlong into Martin Brady. He was coming back from the kitchen carrying a full
cup of coffee, which spilled out over the top.


‘Fuck!’ he said. ‘I didn’t get you, did I?’

Unable to speak, Katherine shook her head. Her heart was flapping against her ribcage, like a panicked bird. What she had
feared secretly since her first promotion in her first job had finally, inevitably, happened – she had fallen from grace.
It was like being pushed off the top of a skyscraper.


‘Are you all right?’ asked Martin, scratching his ginger stubble. ‘You’re white as a sheet.’

Still speechless, Katherine stiffened. She tried to make her expression smooth and impassive, but the muscles in her face
wouldn’t follow suit. Instead her chin bunched and, for a horrifying moment, she thought she was going to burst into tears.


‘Come on,’ Martin said, touching her arm and gesturing towards the kitchen station at the end of the row of cubicles. ‘I’ll
make you a cup of coffee.’


Katherine found her voice. ‘I’ve got work to do,’ she said.

Martin smiled at her, his blue eyes crinkling up at the corners. ‘Ah, c’mon, Katherine. There’s no work happening here today.’

Not knowing what else to do, she followed him, eyes fixed on the creased shirt-tail hanging out from the back of his trousers.

Katherine had been poached by Qwertec from Henderson Consulting exactly thirteen months ago, which meant a redundancy package
of one measly month’s wages. Fourteen years of working her arse off to build a career, of taking all the right steps, and
now she’d been thrown on a massive scrapheap with just four weeks’ salary for her trouble.


How would she manage the mortgage? How would she pay for the car, and the loan she and Barry had taken out to refurbish the
house?


Katherine stopped in her tracks. The space between the edge of the cubicle bank and the wall seemed suddenly too small, as
if she was being pressed in from both sides. Martin was waiting at the coffee dock, beckoning her to follow him. But she couldn’t
walk.


She pushed at the wall with the flat of her hand. Tiny pricks of sweat popped out on her forehead.

Martin walked back towards her. ‘You’ll be all right in a minute,’ he said, and she allowed him to take her arm.

He led her to one of the two high stools that had been placed beside the coffee dock and told her to sit down. On her perch,
Katherine tried to pull herself together as she watched Alice usher the permanently exhausted Lisa Fingleton into Maguire’s
office. With three children under the age of four, Lisa already had her work cut out for her without the demands of Qwertec.
That was the reasoning Katherine had given to Maguire when she’d added Lisa’s name to the redundancy list she had been asked
to draw up last October.


Martin made tea instead of the rotten coffee the machine produced and, without asking her how she liked it, put in sugar and
milk.


‘Hot sweet tea,’ he said, handing her the polystyrene cup. ‘My mother thinks it’s the cure for everything.’

It wasn’t how Katherine liked it, but the syrupy-sweet liquid was comforting, the way hot lemon and honey was when you had the flu. Mercifully, Martin sat in silence. She avoided his eye, concentrating on her cup as if tea leaves might float
to its surface and reveal her future.


‘I haven’t been called into the old bastard’s office yet,’ Martin said eventually. ‘Any minute now.’

Katherine closed her eyes. His name had been the first on the list.

‘Jamie O’Donnell said there’s TV cameras outside the front doors,’ he added, after another moment of silence. ‘He’s in the
toilets getting ready to star in TV3 News.’


Katherine smiled ruefully. ‘There’s nothing more depressing than people crying on news reports because they’ve lost their
jobs,’ she said.


‘We’ll sneak out the back, you and me,’ said Martin. ‘Out of the way of the roving reporters.’

Katherine’s eyes met his and she had a ridiculous vision of the two of them, hand in hand, running through the car park, Martin’s
shirt-tail flapping in the wind. Shaking it out of her head, she looked back at her cup.


‘Maguire had me making lists of people to be let go for the past three months,’ she said. ‘I never imagined I’d be on one
of them.’


Martin opened his mouth to reply, but then Lisa appeared, her round cheeks burning, her wide eyes wet and puffy. ‘Maguire
asked me to send you in,’ she said to Martin, pushing her jet-black bob behind her ears.


‘Here we go,’ Martin said, sliding off his stool. ‘Dead man walking.’

‘Good luck,’ Katherine called, as he ambled down the corridor. She was immediately filled with regret. What a stupid thing
to say.


‘I think they’ve given Alice the chop too,’ said Lisa, wiping her eyes as they watched Martin go into Maguire’s office. ‘When
I passed her cubicle I could hear her bawling her eyes out.’


‘I can’t believe Maguire would agree to that,’ said Katherine, although now it seemed that anything was possible. ‘It’d be
like cutting off his right hand.’


‘She’s in an awful way,’ said Lisa. ‘Will you go and talk to her?’

‘Why can’t you?’

‘Look at me. I’m a mess. I don’t think I can cope with Alice right now, on top of everything else.’

Katherine drank the last of her tea and stood up. Everybody on the sales floor avoided Alice like the plague, but it wasn’t
right to leave her alone today.


The sound coming from Alice’s cubicle was more like a kitten mewing than someone bawling. Katherine put her head around the
corner of the partition and saw Alice slumped at her desk, her head in one hand, the other clutching her phone.


‘You’re not being let go too, are you?’ Katherine said.

Alice looked up and shook her head, wincing. ‘It’s my mother,’ she said. ‘She’s dead.’

By noon it was all done and dusted – 180 people let go to join the thousands of unemployed already on the dole queues. It
took a three-interview shortlisting process to get a job at Qwertec, but only minutes to be told you didn’t have that job
any more.


The sales floor emptied. Nobody from middle management told Katherine where they were going, and hardly anyone from the ranks
below talked to her as they abandoned their cubicles.


Katherine didn’t care that no one here liked her. She had done her job to the best of her ability, and if that had made her
unpopular, so be it. It was the price you had to pay for success in business.


But today of all days it would have been nice not to be left out.

She was sitting at her desk, staring listlessly at her computer screen and wondering whether or not to go home, when Martin
popped his head over the divider wall. ‘We’re going to the Bell and Castle if you want to come,’ he said.


‘The Bell and Castle?’

‘I know. It’s a dump. But they pour the best Guinness in town.’

‘Maybe not,’ said Katherine, turning back to her screen. ‘I still have a few things to finish up here.’

‘Suit yourself,’ said Martin. ‘You know where we are if you change your mind,’ his disembodied voice called, and Katherine
heard the lift doors open and close.


The last time she’d gone to a pub with him she’d barely been in the job a month. She’d had to take to dinner some Japanese
clients from the largest telecom company Qwertec dealt with, and even back then, without fully knowing the lie of the land,
she was surprised Maguire had chosen Martin to go in his place.


He’d come to the restaurant in jeans and an open-necked checked shirt, ordered his steak ‘like shoe leather’ and wolfed it
down as if he was eating in a trucker’s diner. Katherine had tried her best to maintain the formal tone of the occasion, but
Martin had chatted away as if he was entirely immune to the cultural differences it was so important to observe. Yet somehow
it didn’t bother the clients, who seemed to relax in his company and even enjoy it, as he regaled them with stories of how
he had broken his wrist pretending to be the Karate Kid when he was eight. Despite herself, Katherine, too, had relaxed.


Later, when they’d waved the clients off in a taxi, Martin had insisted on bringing Katherine to what he called the smallest
pub in Dublin. She’d refused to go at first, but with a few glasses of wine on board, her defences were down.


The pub was a claustrophobically narrow room with just a line of scruffy brown leather stools at a bar and an old, grey-haired
man quietly polishing glasses behind it. She’d asked for a half of lager, but Martin had bought her a pint. Somewhere in their conversation he’d begun doing imitations of the Japanese clients that were as startlingly good as they were politically
incorrect. Katherine had laughed, against her better judgement.


And then he’d done impressions of Katherine’s excruciating efforts at conversation with the clients, and she’d laughed harder.
Tears had rolled down her cheeks and her stomach hurt. She’d pleaded breathlessly with him to stop, but he wouldn’t let up.
She’d reached out and grabbed his knee in a desperate attempt to shut him up and both of them had fallen instantly silent.
After a moment, she’d excused herself and gone to the Ladies to check her mascara hadn’t run. But then she was giggling again
at how he’d taken her off …


Now Katherine stood up.

‘Wait!’ she called, into the empty silence of the office floor. ‘I’m coming!’

The Bell and Castle was one of those bars that had all but disappeared during the super-pub boom, flock wallpaper and Axminster
carpet, the red velvet banquette seats faded and shabby, a distinct smell of cigarettes eight years after the smoking ban
had been introduced.


Two decrepit men nursing pints of Guinness at the bar eyed them as they walked in. One raised his stubbly grey chin to Martin
in silent greeting.


‘Right,’ said Martin, rubbing his hands together. ‘Who’s for what?’

‘I’ll have a white wine spritzer,’ said Lisa, who had perked up considerably since Maguire had given her the bad news. Her
cheeks were still spotted red, but she had a kind of giddy energy, as if she might tip over into an uncontrollable fit of
giggles at any moment. Sometimes Katherine wished she could be more like that. Lisa had no internal editor. She was forever
laughing and blurting out the first thing that came into her mind and she regularly put her foot in it, but everyone seemed
to like her.


Jamie O’Donnell looked up from his mobile phone to survey his surroundings. ‘What a dump. I’ll have a Coors Light.’

Katherine ordered a gin and Slimline and wondered what she was doing there. Apart from that one time with Martin, she had
never gone out with any of this crowd. Back at Qwertec she’d known of her reputation as a slave-driver. In fact, she’d fostered
it in an effort to replace what she saw as a general lack of ambition with a clear work ethic.


Not in a million years would Lisa or Jamie have asked her out for a drink, and Martin was only taking pity on her now. She
felt mortified, and told herself she’d just have the one and go, although she hadn’t the foggiest where to. Uncomfortable
as she was, there was nowhere else she wanted to be.


Barry still hadn’t called to wish her a happy birthday, and she was reluctant to phone him. In Barcelona they wouldn’t have
heard about the Qwertec lay-offs yet, so he was blissfully unaware. She wanted to leave it that way for the moment.


‘Shove up,’ said Jamie, when Katherine sat into the banquette. He was still engrossed in his phone, his dark eyebrows knitted,
like two question marks. Katherine’s hand made contact with something sticky on the seat as she pulled herself in to make
room for him.


‘This is lovely, isn’t it?’ said Lisa, beaming from ear to ear, her midriff pushed up against the table.

‘Yeah,’ said Jamie, ‘if what you mean by “lovely” is a normal person’s worst nightmare.’

‘Don’t mind him,’ said Lisa, with a conspiratorial roll of the eyes for Katherine. ‘He’s just pissed off because of what Maguire
said.’


‘A disappointment,’ said Jamie, finally putting his phone down. ‘That’s what he called me. I bet he said nothing of the sort
to any of you.’


‘He didn’t get a chance,’ said Martin, putting the tray of drinks on the table. ‘I was in and out of there like a hare. “You’re
firing me? Right. See ya.”’


Katherine did her best to smile along with the others. They all knew she was the one who had put their names on the redundancy
list. How couldn’t they when she’d been Maguire’s clear confidante for the past six months?


‘What about you?’ said Jamie, turning a cold eye on her. ‘I’m sure you didn’t see that one coming.’

Katherine sipped her gin to clear her throat. ‘It was a bit of a surprise, yes,’ she managed.

‘I’ll bet,’ said Jamie. He took a slug from his beer bottle and looked away again.

There was a loaded silence until Martin broke it. ‘Let’s not talk about Maguire,’ he said, raising his glass, ‘or Qwertec,
or any of it. Let’s just get plastered.’


‘Oh, no,’ said Lisa, her heavy rings clinking against her glass as she lifted it. ‘I couldn’t go home to the kids drunk. I’ll
just have one, that’s all.’


Three rounds later, they were still there. As the alcohol coursed through her veins, Katherine felt more stunned than relaxed,
weighed down and barely able to speak. She sat nodding as the conversation turned from the snow at Christmas to bank managers’
overblown bonuses to the new season of Mad Men, trying at least to look as if she was contributing. But with each sip of gin her insides seemed shrivel, leaving only an
outer shell to keep up appearances.


Martin was holding forth about his favourite film ever, his speech a little slurred at the edges. ‘It was the first film I
remember watching from beginning to end,’ he said. ‘I could see E.T. a million times and never get tired of it.’


Katherine felt it was time either to enter the conversation or to leave the pub. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.’

‘Jaysus,’ said Martin. ‘Where did you grow up? The gulags?’

‘In Dublin. We just didn’t go to the pictures that much.’

Martin took a swig of his pint. ‘Seriously, you must be the only person on Planet Earth who hasn’t seen E.T.’


Katherine prickled, although she couldn’t say why. She fixed a smile on her face, battling down her irritation. ‘I’ll rent
the DVD,’ she said. ‘That should make it the full quota for Planet Earth.’


‘Same again, everyone?’ Lisa asked, wobbling a little as she stood.

‘Anyone who hasn’t seen E.T. hasn’t lived,’ Martin said.


Katherine got to her feet. ‘It’s my round,’ she said.

As she waited at the bar for her order, one of the old men leaned over and said, ‘Soft day, thank God.’ His breath stank of
stale cigarettes and alcohol.


‘It is,’ she replied, trying not to recoil.

‘From around here, are you?’

Katherine willed the barman to hurry up. ‘No,’ she said shortly.

The man shrugged and went back to his pint.

When she returned to the table with the drinks, Martin was talking about Star Wars. ‘I don’t care what anyone says,’ he said, ‘Princess Leia is one of the most the most beautiful women in the history of cinema.’


‘The woman had Danish pastries for hair,’ said Jamie. ‘She was the princess that style forgot.’

Martin flushed, as if they were talking about a real live person. ‘No way!’ he said. ‘Leia was a total ride!’ He took a swig
and swallowed almost half of the pint Katherine had just bought for him, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘You
have to admit, she looked smokin’ hot in that gold bikini.’


‘Not to my eyes,’ said Jamie.

‘Well, you’re gay,’ said Martin, ‘so it doesn’t count.’ He pulled a cigarette packet from his pocket and held it aloft. ‘Anyone
care to partake?’


‘Maybe I’ll have just one,’ said Lisa, pushing her fringe out of her eyes. She’d dyed her hair from platinum to black just
before Christmas, telling Katherine she thought it made her seem younger, but now her head looked too small for her big-boobed
frame.


‘That’a girl,’ Martin said. ‘Come on, so.’

‘Wait up,’ said Jamie, grabbing his mobile phone. He followed them to the back door of the pub, leaving Katherine alone at
the table.


The smoking area was a few beer barrels topped with planks of damp wood to sit on, wedged against a wall under the Gents’
windows. Through them Lisa heard a man – probably one of the friendly old lads sitting at the bar – clear his throat, then
a heavy stream hitting a urinal interrupted by a loud fart. She blushed hotly but, thank goodness, neither Martin nor Jamie
noticed. Anyway, her face was most likely bright red from coming into the freezing cold air, which was probably doing her
capillaries no good. Not that smoking was good for them either. This was her last one, absolutely. She’d get mints on the
way home so Patrick wouldn’t smell the nicotine off her breath.


‘Can you believe that cunt said he was firing me because of my lack of productivity?’ Jamie was saying, pulling furiously
on his cigarette and exhaling without breathing in any of the smoke. ‘It beggars belief.’


Lisa made an empathetic sound, although Jamie had worn it as a personal badge of honour that he came at the bottom of the
sales sheets at the end of every month. Maguire had said more or less the same thing about productivity to her. Even though
she had fully intended to take voluntary redundancy if it had been offered, she’d found herself crying before he opened his
mouth to tell her she was no longer wanted. When he was holding his office door open on her way out, he’d handed her a tissue
to mop up the tears that wouldn’t stop coming. She’d been daft enough to say, ‘Thank you.’


‘So, what was the first film you remember watching from beginning to end?’ Martin asked them, still trying to steer the talk away from that morning’s events.


Lisa took a deep, satisfying drag of her cigarette. ‘I think mine was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.’


‘Come get your lollipops, all free today,’ Martin said, in a singsong voice. His eyes bulged, capturing the Child Catcher
perfectly, and a shiver made its way down Lisa’s spine.


Jam