"Dave Hutchinson - Discreet Phenomena" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hutchinson Dave)

"No?"
He shook his head again. "But you are the subject of a lot of intense gossip, I will admit that."
"Thank you, Nigel," I said. "Thanks a lot."

After Nigel drove off, I left Domino in charge of the garage and I walked back down the High Street into the
village.
Seldon comprised about three dozen houses, one pub, two newsagents, a butcher, a greengrocer, Mavis's
knitwear shop, Baxter's Garage, a shoe shop, Vickers & Sons Estate Agents and a sort of pocket branch of
Argos, all of them baking slowly in the afternoon heat. The village's population, including toddlers, couldn't
have been more than six hundred, but just recently the place had started to look like the car-park of an
out-of-town superstore.
The big green BBC Outside Broadcast van was still parked outside The Black Bull. Beside it were cars
with foreign number plates and Press stickers on the insides of their windscreens. In the field behind the pub
were a couple more vans. One of them had a huge satellite dish mounted on its roof. Beside it was a ragged
collection of tents, teepees and benders.
I carried on past the Bull. On the opposite pavement, Jane Wallace was being vox-popped by a CNN news
team who looked as if they had all been die-cast from the same perfect mould. Jane was answering their
questions with the easy professional grace of someone who has given many many interviews and has already
made inquiries about getting an agent.
Outside Argos, the lone representative of a Ukrainian news service was standing, wild-eyed and festooned
with cameras, looking for someone to interview. I crossed the road to avoid him, turned left up the next street,
walked up my garden path, opened my door, closed it behind me, locked it, bolted it, put the chain on.
I went into the living room, closed the curtains, half-filled a glass with vodka, and lay down on the settee.
"Another one?" asked Karen from the shadows around the armchair.
I nodded and took a big swallow of vodka.
"That's six now, yes?"
I closed my eyes.

That night, it rained frogs.


2
"You look awful," said Domino.
"That's the effect I was aiming for." I sorted through the papers on my desk. "So, how does it look?"
He watched me a moment longer, then he looked down at the company books and said, "Do you want the
good news or the bad news?"
"Let's work on the assumption that I only want to hear good news today."
"There isn't any," he said. "You'll be bankrupt by this time next year."
"You gave me a choice," I protested. "Good news or bad news. Give me my good news."
He shook his head. "Grow up, Geoff."
I sat back in the threadbare swivel chair I'd rescued from a fire-damage sale the year I'd bought the
business.
"Would you like to hear my opinion?" Domino asked.
"No, thank you."
"Whoever sold this place to you must have walked away jumping into the air, clicking their heels together
and shouting yippee."
I looked at him. He had a fresh, unworried, open face and long ash-blond hair. If he hadn't been so tall and
hunched-over, he could easily have been taken for a young teenager. I rubbed my eyes.
"It's a petrol station outside a village two miles from a major A-road," he went on. "Be honest with me; how
many people charging down the A303 pull off and stop here for petrol?"