Final Demand by Deborah Moggach

on the lunches?’ he demanded.
    Chloe looked like a startled rabbit; Sheila, too, jumped up. ‘Come on, pet,’ she said. ‘I’ve made a start on the veg.’
    â€˜Seen the news?’ said Archie, with grim satisfaction.
    â€˜Don’t show her,’ said Sheila, ‘it’s upsetting.’
    Chloe moved closer and picked up the paper. David was standing behind her. He gazed at her vast hips. Her upper arms, from the back, were ruddily mottled; her elbows dimpled, and sunk in flesh. A spasm of pain passed through him.
    Chloe let out her breath. ‘How awful . . .’
    â€˜Listen, Chloe—’
    She swung round, jumping to attention. Why did he have that effect on her?
    â€˜Wherever you are,’ he said, ‘whatever the time, it doesn’t matter how late . . .’ David wanted to put his arm around her but he hadn’t done that for years. ‘Day or night, if you need picking up, just phone. Understood? Just stay there and I’ll come and fetch you in the car. Is that a promise?’
    Surprised by the passion in his voice, she looked at him. ‘OK.’
    â€˜Phone me. That’s what your mobile’s for,’ he said. ‘And make sure it’s charged. You know how forgetful you are.’
    Sheila gave him a sharp look. He shouldn’t have added that; it made the whole thing accusatory. His irritation rose.
    â€˜And run across and get some tomatoes for your mother.’ He thrust a note into her hand. ‘They weren’t in the delivery.’
    Chloe made for the door.
    â€˜Put on your coat!’ called Sheila.
    But their daughter had gone. Traffic rumbled, as the door opened. David felt a familiar sense of failure.
    â€˜You’ll catch your death!’ Sheila called.
    The pub filled up, first with the regulars, then with the lunchtime crowds from the nearby offices – gaggles of girls (Chardonnay by the glass) and young blokes (Stella Artois, Czech imported Pilsner in the bottle) who shouted and blew smoke into David’s face as he served them behind the bar. They took the place over, pulling chairs away from the tables (
You using this, mate?
) and leaving the old boys marooned with their pints, looking like a nearly extinct species, which indeed they were. These kids spent money – where did it all come from? If the brewery had its way, which it was threatening to do, this last genuine local would be revamped into some themed Slug and Lettuce bollocks, transforming it from a pub that served food into an eatery that served drinks, because that was there the profits lay. And the few old lags who stuck it out would find themselves shunted into the corner, gazing glumly at a bottle of balsamic vinegar. Finally they would feel so out of place that they would just melt away. It was happening all over. Where did they go? Into some corner where they quietly died of natural causes?
    David felt equivocal about this. He couldn’t make a livelihood out of his pensioners, eking out their pints, but on the other hand he had run this pub for nine years; he knew their wives and their grandchildren, he had presided over their family celebrations in the function room upstairs. Besides, he too was feeling his age.
    Only fifty
, he told himself, and then he would catch sight ofhis face in the mirror on the way to the gents’. A large expanse of his forehead was visible now; this left his eyebrows looking thicker and somehow comic. A person’s first reaction wouldn’t necessarily be: Look, a bald man. But he had to admit that a certain amount of his hair had disappeared, leaving alien, shiny skin that burnt in the sun. It seemed only yesterday that David had had a full head of it – thick brown stuff that just existed, taken for granted. He had even pulled it back in a rubber band when he went on stage. His moment of glory now seemed pitiful. What had he been? A Green Jacket at Warner’s Holiday