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He sits at the bar and stares at the glass in his hand. He’s been nursing this pint for nearly an hour, but he can’t afford another. He keeps hoping one of his old mates will turn up and stand him one. Only his old mates don’t want to know anymore…

It’s been three months since Bobby got out of Risley and he’s starting to get desperate. He owes a lot of people a lot of money. Most of them will wait, but not Julian. Julian’s gonna want paying, and soon. And Bobby doesn’t need any kind of reminder what happens to people who don’t pay Julian.

Foie gras. What the French do to geese, Julian and his lads do to bad debtors. There’s a long tube involved, and hot fat from the fryers at The Captain’s Table, The Salt & Battery, or The Codfather. Julian made his fortune with a chain of chippies long before branching out into… other activities. The lads keep the fat hot so it goes down nice and smooth. Some smartarse in Risley told Bobby your stomach swells up to twelve times its normal size before it goes pop. That’s a hell of a lot of chip fat.

It’s not as though Bobby hasn’t had the chance of work. His parole officer got him jobs in the warehouse at MFI, driving for a courier, and mucking out the pigs at a farm in Pontefract. Bobby’s temper lost him all three. The prison shrink kept telling him he had anger management issues. Bobby told the prison shrink to go fuck himself. Besides, none of those jobs were going to earn him the kind of money he needed to pay Julian back, even if Bobby was a prudent saver.

He stares up at the TV set in the corner of the bar. Ted Reed, the MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, is giving a speech. Thank fuck the sound is down.

“Wanker!”

“Not a fan of our future Prime Minister?” says the bloke to Bobby’s right. Big fucker with a Ben Affleck goatee and those glasses that look like a windscreen with the wipers stuck halfway. Bifocals. Bobby considers for a second telling the guy where to stick it (after Risley, big doesn’t mean anything to Bobby), but then he figures this might be worth at least a drink. After all, he dined out on these stories well enough in prison.

“Went to school with that knob-jockey. Harrogate and Knaresborough, my arse – he’s a Keighley lad, just like me.”

“Well, he is always bragging about his working class roots.”

“Yeah – well, I guess you’re looking at those, mate. You’re looking at the bloke what twatted our future PM on a regular basis when he was a lad. Stories I could tell…”

“Really?”

Bobby sighs. Some people you really have to spell it out for.

“But there he is, swanning round Harrods on his lunch hour – and here’s me, can’t even afford a second pint.”

Much later in the evening, the bloke – whose name is George – asks Bobby if he’s looking to earn some serious money.

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