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lost son by the big motherly woman behind the till whom he always called Aunty Marge, although she wasn’t any sort of relation.
    ‘Ah, here’s our Jonno! Talk about return of the wanderer. You been avoiding us or something? Look at you, you’re fading away. You need a good feed-up, you do. Douggie!’ she called to the equally large man sweating over one of the fryers. ‘Nice big bag of chips for our Jonno. And stick a pickled egg in while you’re about it.’
    Jonathan grinned. ‘Thanks, Aunty Marge. And my friend Scarlett here’d like some chips as well.’
    Scarlett stood up well to being scrutinised.
    ‘Scarlett, eh? And where’ve you sprung from?’
    ‘My dad’s just started work at the Trafalgar.’
    ‘Oh, so you’re going to be living down here, are you? Going to be one of us. What do you think of it so far?’
    Scarlett shrugged. ‘It’s all right,’ she said.
    Jonathan winced inwardly. Aunty Marge was not going to take kindly to such a lukewarm reaction.
    ‘All right? All right? You’ve come to live in London’s playground and that’s all you can say for it? Shame on you! You’ve not been trying hard enough, Jonno. Go and show her all the sights. Give her a ride on the speedway.’
    ‘I’m going to, Aunty Marge,’ he assured her.

    ‘Right.’ Aunty Marge gave Scarlett one more up-and-down look. ‘Pretty girl. Needs more flesh on her bones, though. Better stick an egg in hers as well, Douggie.’
    To the annoyance of the queue of hungry customers, Jonathan and Scarlett’s bags were handed over ahead of everyone else’s. They shook on lots of salt and vinegar, Jonathan paid and they both promised to come back soon.
    Outside seemed pleasantly cool after the steaming heat and overwhelming smell of boiling fat in the chip shop. He watched as Scarlett tried a chip. It was so fresh out of the fryer that she could hardly hold it. Crisp on the outside and soft and fluffy on the inside, Aunty Marge’s chips practically melted in the mouth.
    ‘Cor, lovely!’ Scarlett mumbled, breathing air in to stop her mouth from burning.
    ‘Best chips on the Golden Mile,’ Jonathan claimed. ‘Come on.’
    He led the way across the wide road, past seafood stalls and ice cream kiosks to lean on the rails overlooking the beach. He loved this view, loved it in the winter when it was empty and windswept, and in a different way now in the summer, when it was crowded with day-trippers. Families were packed together on the pebbly sand, the mothers and fathers sitting in deckchairs with their knitting and their newspapers, the children digging sandcastles, paddling and filling pails of water. At the water’s edge, a big open sailing boat was waiting for passengers to come aboard for a ride out on the sea. Beyond that, cockle boats bobbed at their moorings and, as a backdrop to it all, marching out into the sea was the pier.
    ‘So where do you come from?’ Jonathan asked in between chips.

    ‘A village the other side of Rochford.’
    ‘And what brought you here?’
    ‘My dad needed a job.’
    ‘It’s just the two of you, is it?’
    ‘Yes.’
    It was obvious that she was uncomfortable, that she didn’t want to talk about it. He recalled what his mother had said about the new cellar man. ‘Bit of a loser, if you ask me. But what can you do? It’s high season and we need someone.’ He tried a different tack.
    ‘It was nice, your village?’
    ‘Oh, yes—’ Scarlett started to tell him about it, a faraway look on her face. It all sounded pretty ordinary to him. She went on to describe the pub where she had lived, the Red Lion.
    ‘It was such a nice little place.’ She sighed, licking her finger and dabbing up the last pieces of crispy potato round the bottom of the bag. ‘It had lovely old beams, and lots of horse brasses, and benches against the wall outside. My mum and me kept it all spick and span. And in the summer I always kept a nice jug of wild flowers on the bar. Just to make it look homely,