Alice Adams - Invincible Summer

Eva leant forward. ‘High praise indeed, and wholly justified. Think about it. How many times have you tried to order things over the internet only to find that it takes so long to retrieve the damn things from the sorting office that you may as well have gone and bought it on the high street? Internet shopping has vast potential but it’s being hobbled by twentieth-century delivery systems unable to cope with the notion that people go out to work and don’t have a spouse sitting at home. The Plop-Box will solve all that. The basic design will be classic, like those old red post-boxes, and it will come in different shapes and sizes to fit the dimensions and style of your porch or garden. You leave it unlocked and empty, the delivery man puts the parcel inside and closes it, it locks automatically and gives him a receipt, then you open it with a key or code when you come home. Simple, yet exquisitely practical.’

Big Paul looked thoughtful. ‘Well, first off, I’m assuming Plop-Box is a working title, because it sounds like a mobile khazi. Second, the distributors are your biggest challenge. They have to agree to accept a receipt from this thing instead of a signature from a person. Have you spoken to anyone yet? Royal Mail? DHL? The Post Office is pretty monolithic and hardly well adapted to change.’

‘We’ve had initial talks and they made promising noises, but we need to have a prototype in place to get them to commit, and that’s why we need capital now. I really don’t think it’s going to be that hard a sell once we have proof of concept. Think about it. Every time they fail to deliver a parcel, they have to take it back to a sorting office and then attempt to redeliver it. That adds costs for them. If the householder buys a Plop-Box, they’re spending money that will not only save them inconvenience, but will save the distributors money too. Everyone’s a winner.’

There was a few seconds’ pause and then Big Paul said, ‘Okay. Done.’

‘Done?’ asked Eva.

‘Done,’ he confirmed. ‘Two hundred.’

Sylvie’s face dropped. ‘Oh. Two hundred quid won’t go far.’

But Eva was smiling broadly. ‘Not quid, Sylvie. Grand.’

Eva and Big Paul watched in amusement as she processed the information, furrowed brow giving way to widening eyes. ‘As in, thousand pounds? Two hundred thousand pounds?’ she squeaked. ‘Just like that?’

‘Yeah, just like that,’ said Big Paul. ‘With one caveat. You have to change the name. Now, do you know why I’m doing this? I’m doing it because I know you, Eva. I trust and believe in you, but more than that, I know that you are so anally retentive that you would walk over hot coals before you let this business fail and lose a penny of my money. And just to give you some added motivation, let’s be clear that if you prove me wrong, I will hunt you down and destroy all that you love.’

Still smiling, Eva fetched the bottle of champagne she’d bought that day in the hope there would be a reason to celebrate, and Big Paul, satisfied that it was of a suitable calibre to pass his lips after scrutinising the label, uncorked the bottle and handed the first glass to Sylvie.

She waved it away. ‘I’ll stick with juice, thanks.’

‘AA, is it?’ He peered at her suspiciously.

Sylvie looked taken aback. ‘Not exactly. I never made it quite that far. But some people are better off not drinking, and I’m definitely one of them. We all know what happened the last time you handed me a drink,’ she added, gesturing upwards towards Allegra’s bedroom. This was the first time that their previous meeting had been alluded to, and an uncomfortable hush descended upon the table.

‘Yeah.’ Paul shifted in his chair. ‘I suppose now’s a good time to say that I’m sorry about that. We may not have behaved in an entirely gentlemanly fashion on that occasion. I was sorry about the baby and Robert and everything.’

Eva shot him a glare across the table, causing him to backtrack.

‘Shit, I don’t mean I’m sorry about the baby. Probably you’re really happy about the baby. Actually, I’ve got no idea how you feel about the baby and I’m just trying to make the right noises but digging a hole so big I’ll probably emerge in Azerbaijan—’

‘Relax.’ Sylvie stopped him with a smile. ‘I’ve got a thick skin and I know people don’t always know what to say. I’d honestly prefer that they give it a shot, even one as incompetent as that, than ignore Allegra completely. For the record, I’m delighted about my daughter. She’s beautiful and I love her. Sometimes it’s tough and I worry about the future, but mostly she’s a huge source of joy in my life.’

Big Paul leant back in his chair. ‘Good. Great. I was really sorry to hear about what happened, that’s all. Really bad luck.’

‘Look,’ said Sylvie, ‘in my situation you rethink your ideas about what constitutes bad luck. Spend half an hour in the waiting room at Great Ormond Street and you’ll see children with feeding tubes, oxygen canisters, tracheostomies, colostomy bags. We don’t have any of that anymore. The kids themselves, they don’t sit around measuring themselves against other people or railing against the injustice of their circumstances, so unless their condition is really painful, and Allegra’s isn’t, most of the bad stuff is to do with worrying about the future. For the first year I did nothing else. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and lie there for hours thinking about what will happen to Allegra when I die. It blunts itself after a while. I mean, say I live to seventy-five, that’s more than another thirty-five years from now.’

Big Paul nodded thoughtfully. ‘True. And who knows what will have happened in thirty-five years’ time? What with global warming, probably all that’ll be left will be Keith Richards and a bunch of cockroaches sitting around on a rock. Maybe we should all be running through the streets screaming.’

‘Exactly,’ said Sylvie. ‘But you’re not, are you? Because no one can live like that. I’ve given up stressing about it. I’m going to do what’s in my power to make each day a good one, and beyond that everything will just have to take care of itself.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Paul, and raised his glass.

Lucien shifted uncomfortably and looked out of the window of the bus. The suit he’d been given by the woman at the Dress for Success charity was digging into his crotch and armpits. He hated the thought that he was going to have to put this suit on again tomorrow morning, and the next day, and the next. Still, at least he’d got the job. It wasn’t much of a job but it was a start. Sylvie and his parole officer would be pleased.

He thought back to when the manager had asked at the end of the interview whether he had any questions and, realizing he was expected to come up with something, he’d asked what it was like working there.

The manager had smirked. ‘What do you think? It’s a bloody call centre. No one wants to be here. It’s the seventh circle of hell. Everyone you speak to hates you and it pays tuppence more than the minimum wage. Only people who are desperate do it, people like you. We’ve taken on a few ex-cons under the reintegration scheme, and they actually tend to stick around longer than most because they have the least choice about it. You’re going to hate every second of it, but if you turn up every day for a year, then suddenly HMP Hellhole isn’t the last thing on your CV and you’re back in the game. A rehabilitated member of society, so to speak.’

This probably wasn’t a totally unfair summary of the situation, but the bastard could have at least tried to put a gloss on it, Lucien thought grimly. Still, he could manage anything for a year, right? For a moment he half wished that tomorrow morning he’d be waking up back in Spring Hill. The open prison where he’d spent most of his sentence wasn’t all that bad in many ways, it had lovely grounds and he’d even had a PlayStation. Moving to a jail out in Buckinghamshire had meant fewer visits, but that hadn’t been such a bad thing. The first handful of visits from Eva had left him feeling so low that he’d had to put a stop to them; after a few sessions of listening to her bang on about her high-flying job and her plank of a boyfriend and their latest weekend mini-break in Rome, he’d known he couldn’t tolerate years of the same, so he’d put her off by saying he was using his slots for other mates, even though precious few of the people he used to call his mates had actually ever bothered to visit or write. It had taken a while but she’d got the message eventually, though she’d still been good enough to top up his prison bank account regularly and send frequent care parcels and the occasional picture of Herbert before she found him a new home.