‘Is that poker?’ I ask Ed when he comes back.
‘Blackjack. It’s what Steve plays. I’m more for roulette, if I’m in the mood.’
‘And are you?’ I ask, looking round the room, with its lowered voices and faces masked in concentration.
‘I don’t know. I think I just didn’t want to go back to the flat. I needed to do something, go somewhere.’
He drums his fingers on his thighs as he speaks. He seems jittery. I look at him, remembering what my mother told me, and wondering if, and when, he will tell me. But although he talks a lot about his work as a journalist – I picture him sitting in front of a typewriter, hands flying over the keys and only pausing to draw on a cigarette – and although he talks about his childhood in a suburb of Leeds – in a houseful of boys, the things they got up to sounding boisterous and fun and sometimes alarming – he gives away nothing of his recent life. He clearly loves his job, and is good at it, I realise, after I’ve been gently drawn into talking about myself. My childhood, my friends, my ambitions – he spools out questions and reels in the answers.
‘Was it a surprise to you,’ he asks, ‘when you didn’t get the grades you needed?’
I consider this. ‘A bit. I didn’t think I’d done that badly, although I knew I hadn’t worked hard enough.’
‘Too much having fun?’
This time I pause even longer. I’m sick of having to pretend; before I even speak I can feel the relief of saying out loud the things I’ve never said to anyone.
‘I didn’t want to be at home. Evenings are when my mother starts to drink. Well, to be honest, she can start any time. But evenings are when she gets argumentative with my father, and picks fights with him. And then me, if I get involved. And practically every weekend she throws one of her boozy parties and I can’t stand being around all that. It’s why I got a job where I’d be working evenings. The other nights I’d go to friends’ houses, or be out somewhere. So I never did that much revision, you see.’
I turn to look at the nearest roulette table, where a little coo of surprise has signalled someone’s good fortune, a man now grinning broadly as he scoops up a pile of chips. When I turn back Ed is watching me.
‘You’ve not had a good time of it,’ he says.
‘No. But then again, I’ve had a roof over my head and anything I asked for was mine, so it’s not all bad, is it?’ He shrugs. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me,’ I say. ‘I’m not telling you to make you feel sorry for me. It’s just how it’s been.’
‘So how do you manage now?’ Ed asks. ‘The work for your resits?’
‘I go to my classes, and to the library. I’m pretty sure I’ll get through this time. And then I’ll be off.’ Ed raises his glass to that.
We drink the wine and then go on to whisky, another first for me. It makes me grimace, and Ed laughs at my face. Every now and then he rolls us both a cigarette, but I leave mine half-smoked, not used to their strength after the Silk Cut I sometimes buy or cadge. I’m feeling pleasantly drunk now, and comfortable with Ed; it’s as though I’ve pulled him on, like an old sweater.
It’s one-thirty in the morning when we become aware of staff doing the rounds and having a word with everyone. It’s like a hurricane outside, they’re saying. All taxis are finishing for the night, and anyone who wants to get home is advised to get one of the last ones, leaving now. The casino is closing early, they say, and already I can see that the tables are packing up – cards being folded, the roulette wheel stilled, the coloured chips stacked and boxed.
We make our way to the foyer, which by now is crowded with people shrugging into their coats and peering anxiously though the glass doors. The floodlights that illuminate the casino now also pick out things flying horizontally through the air, some of them looking more lethal than earlier. Once, what looks like the swinging bit of a metal shop sign flies past the doors and crashes into the wall at the far side of the square. Suddenly I feel a trickle of alarm. It’s becoming clear that the few remaining taxis won’t be able to take everyone, and we’re at the back of the queue. Some people are muttering about walking home, but it’s at least three miles to my house, and I don’t think I can manage that in this storm. When I say this to Ed he says I can come back to his flat and that he’ll sleep on the sofa, but, apart from any doubts I might have about that, it’s almost as far.
‘I don’t fancy walking anywhere with all this stuff flying through the air. And trees. That’s what kills people, isn’t it … falling trees?’
He doesn’t say anything; he’s staring through the doors at the wild night. Then he looks back at the waiting crowd. ‘Hang on. I’ve got to get this.’
He goes to the desk and talks to the Chinese woman, who seems to argue briefly, but finally searches around and hands him a pen and a pad of paper. I watch then as Ed moves down the queue, asking them questions, nodding as they talk, and scribbling things down; I can guess what he’s doing, and it looks like most people are eager to tell their story. At one point he goes out to a waiting taxi and I see him quizzing the driver, who leans out the window and shouts excitedly, waving his arms around. When he comes back in Ed holds one hand up to me, fingers splayed wide. Five minutes. Then he crosses to the payphone, and joins that queue. I chew on my lip, tapping my foot nervously, while the minutes tick away. The taxis are thinning out alarmingly, and little by little the groups of people either leave in one of them, or decide to take their chances on foot. Should we do that? Maybe we’ll have to.
When Ed has phoned he comes and stands beside me, squeezing into the queue so that his arm is pressed against mine. That’s when I realise I’m shivering.
‘Are you okay?’ he asks, taking hold of my hand, closing his own around it. Suddenly I’m intensely aware of how much I like being with him.
‘Sure.’
‘I just had to phone this story in. It was too good to miss.’
I shrug. ‘That’s your job. Anyway, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Look.’
Outside the two last taxis are pulling away, leaving us and everyone ahead of us stranded. Ed frowns.
‘Where do your parents think you are?’
‘At a friend’s house.’
He nods. ‘Right, let’s be logical. The taxis have gone, and walking home in this doesn’t seem like an option. How about we brave it up to Castle Square and hope to get a cab from the rank up there? It’s not too far.’
I hesitate, reluctant to go out at all, but with no other plan in my head.
‘Okay. Let’s go for it,’ I say.
The first obstacle is getting the heavy door to open far enough against the wind, and then we are practically pushed through it by a burly doorman. After that standing upright is a challenge. It takes all my strength to put one foot in front of the other, and to not pull Ed over with me every time the wind changes direction and throws us backwards or sideways. With each gust all the breath seems to be sucked right out of me. When an empty pizza box slams into my head I yell out loud; I’d never have thought cardboard could hurt so much. After what seems like miles, but is probably no more than a few hundred yards, we reach the square – only to find it deserted, empty of anything, taxis or people.
‘What do we do now?’ I shout, and then jump a mile high as a deafening crash splinters the air. Behind us, the plate-glass window of a boutique lies in pieces on the ground and, as we watch, clothes are being whisked out as if by a giant hand, whirling around in the air like some bizarre fashion show. Finally, the mannequins themselves tumble onto the floor of the window. Some bits of glass still shiver in the frame, all jagged, like little icebergs, and suddenly I imagine