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gift shops and trendy wine
bars than shops that sold anything
useful.
    They call this ‘gentrification’? thinks Michael. Pah! I bet Joe Strummer would have something to say about that.
    First hit was his butcher; turned out new age-y types didn’t eat red meat, or if they did, the last thing they wanted was to see pigs hanging from their back legs and trays of offal; they
wanted it pre-sliced and packed up in polystyrene trays so they didn’t have to confront where it came from. Next to flounder was his DIY store, and finally his green-grocer. The greengrocer
sold the shop to Ali because he feared – rightly, as it transpired – it would get coshed by competition.
    Leaving me with Bloomin’ Hove, thinks Michael as he pulls across the metal shutters with venom, a name that captures my sentiments exactly.
    ‘Would you like one of these for Mrs A.?’ he asks Ali en route to the car, offering him one of the posies.
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Of course. And thanks for earlier.’
    ‘Mrs A. will love them, so beautiful and bright.’ Ali grins – ‘You never know, it might mean I get an extra-special thank you!’ – then winks.
    Michael laughs, aware his friend wants to cheer him up, and he is pleased the amaryllis will give someone pleasure. Nonetheless, his dismay after all that has happened is acute – he feels
humiliated, broken, as if he’s been pummelled against the ropes in a boxing match by a much stronger contender.
    ‘Where have you been?’ asks Chrissie when he gets home. ‘I was worried.’ She gives him a peck on the cheek and returns to the kitchen where she’s making supper, a
gin and tonic by her side.
    ‘Only at work.’ He’s poised to tell her about his encounter with Tim and has a sudden urge to say, ‘We’re up against it now, sweetheart, what would really help is
if you got a job,’ but he bites his tongue. In the run-up to Christmas he suggested she try in one of the shops or pubs nearby. ‘Just something temporary, mind, while they’re
busy.’ She’d brushed it away with a ‘Not now, Mickey, the kids are only home for a short time.’ Which is typical: although Chrissie’s responses vary –
‘I’ll talk to them next week’; ‘I’m not sure what use they’d make of my skills, love, they’re so outdated’ – his chivvying invariably comes to
nothing.
    Occasionally Michael feels his wife like a weight around his neck and wants to yell:
I’ve been doing this for thirty years, surely you can bloody well do something!
But instead he
says, ‘Come on, Chrissie, you’re a beautiful woman, you’d be great behind a bar,’ or whatever is appropriate, and she shrugs her shoulders and tells him he’s
biased.
    ‘You are too soft on your lady wife,’ Ali had said to him once. Mrs A. works alongside him in the grocery shop for several hours every day, and does the bookkeeping too.
    Michael knows Ali has a point, but for all his punk heritage and gruff exterior, he doesn’t want to push Chrissie into something that he senses terrifies her. ‘I reckon she’s
lost confidence over the years,’ he’d replied. ‘It’s been so long since she’s worked for anyone but me.’
    Anyway, he argues silently with Ali as he goes to the fridge and cracks open a beer, I wouldn’t be keen on Chrissie working nights in a pub, not long term. He pads into the lounge, pulls
the pouffe up to his favourite armchair and eases into the seat. Then he raises his voice to say, ‘Mm, love, smells good, anything I can do in the kitchen?’ knowing his wife will tell
him she’s perfectly able to cook supper on her own.
    So it’s not one-way, he reasons. She takes care of me too. Ali has even invented his own terms of endearment for Chrissie’s repertoire of packed lunches.
    ‘What’s she put in your Tupperware box today, my friend? Salmon and cucumbria? Cheese and Piccadilly?’
    It’s a similar jibe every time, but it always makes the two men chuckle.

6
    When Abby wakes the