Read A Week in December for Free Online Page A

ways of approaching a novel, a work of invention that aspired, albeit pathetically, to be a work of 'art'; but although they listened patiently, they seemed not to believe him.
    The book group met once a month and the school work came in three times a year, so Tranter was still open to offers. In this hopeful vein, he had been intrigued one day in April to open his e-mail inbox and to see, after the usual spam for Bruno Banks, that there was one for him from Mrs Doris Hine, or [email protected].
    Tranter had heard of the company, in fact had a jar of their aubergine chutney in his kitchen cupboard, and he could scent money in Mrs Hine's message. He replied at once, and a date was set for him to visit Farooq al-Rashid, the founder and owner of Rashid Pickle, at home in Havering-atte-Bower with a view to advising him on a 'literary project'.
    III
    Jenni Fortune was on the final circuit of her Sunday shift. It was true she'd turned the light off in her cab the better to enjoy her privileged view of the city without her own reflection in the way, but that was not the only reason. She never looked at photographs of herself, and spent as little time as possible looking in the mirror. There was nothing glamorous about the uniform, and for that she was grateful because it meant there was no choice; for the same reason, she had liked the blazer and skirt required by her school.
    Being a Tube driver gave her power and responsibility. Almost all her training was in safety measures, the care she had to take with other people's lives; the train itself was controlled by a single lever and was easier to drive than a car. 'We're paid', the older drivers in the canteen had said when she arrived, 'not for what we do but what we know' - and this included how to get the forty-year-old rolling stock on the move again if it broke down, as, when the weather grew cold, it often did.
    Jenni lived in a two-bedroom flat in Drayton Green, in the western suburbs between old Ealing and the new India of Southall. The second room was occupied by her younger half-brother, Tony, who was out of work. Tony and Jenni had only known each other for a few years, though their respective single mothers had gathered from casual conversations with the father that there were other children too. Tony had been curious about his halves, said to be six in total, and had tracked Jenni down. Marie, Jenni's mother, thought Tony was a sponger, like his father, and that with Jenni he'd 'latched on to a good thing'. It was true that Tony looked at Jenni's payslip with awe, though in fact, after tax and rent at PS250 a week, there was little left for much beyond the weekly shopping. Tony had lived off the jobseeker's allowance for the previous year. He was obliged to take occasional jobs to maintain a position on the benefit ladder, to which he returned when it was safe.
    His room was at the back of the house, looking towards the athletics track. In his schooldays, he'd been a promising 400-metre runner himself, but it had meant training at weekends because the teachers wouldn't supervise sports in the afternoon, as part of some historic work-to-rule, and Tony found getting up at seven on Saturday to take the Tube from Tottenham to the club in Harringay too much to ask. He liked to think he'd kept in shape by playing Sunday football in Gunnersbury Park, but at the age of twenty-eight he was already carrying several extra pounds on his belly. The amount of weed he smoked made him hungry for food but not for exercise; in the evenings, he went to a pub in Harlesden and later on to various clubs, where he drank lager and bourbon.
    He didn't understand Jenni. What would make a girl get up early every day and put on clunky shoes with rubber safety soles and drive a train through a dark hole in the ground? She had good holidays and steady cash, but so what? That canteen, that dick of a station supervisor, the social club, the smell, the darkness underground ... And then when