Read Dear Thing for Free Online

dumped her corduroy jacket at their usual table by the low-beamed fireplace before she went up to the bar.
    ‘He’s usually here before you,’ said Liz, the landlady. Romily suspected she had a bit of a crush. This was Ben’s local – low-ceilinged and thatched, and decorated with horse-brasses and dried hops. If Romily wanted to have a drink and not drive, it was a bus ride and half a mile’s walk.
    ‘I’ll get his pint, anyway,’ Liz went on. She began pulling two pints of Tanglefoot.
    ‘You can be on our team,’ said one of the regulars, Glenn, joining Romily at the bar. He wore a Barbour jacket and corduroys, a weekend country squire.
    ‘Thanks, but if he doesn’t turn up I’ll try it solo.’
    ‘You’ll never get the current events round.’
    ‘How do you know I haven’t been watching the news? Like, constantly?’
    Glenn smiled and shook his head. ‘I’ve watched you do these quizzes. I know your weaknesses.’
    ‘You’re scaring me now.’
    ‘Who’s Prime Minister?’
    ‘That’s easy. Barack Obama.’
    ‘You’re going down, love.’
    ‘Want to lay some money on it?’
    Glenn hesitated.
    ‘Didn’t think so,’ said Romily.
    Liz slid over the two pints and Romily took them to the usual table. She watched the door. Ben hadn’t replied to her texts for over a week. He’d missed football last Saturday. He and Claire might have gone away, but you’d think he’d have mentioned something, especially since they’d agreed to do the quiz ages ago. It was a total waste to get a babysitter just so she could hang around the Rose and Thistle by herself. If she’d known, she could have traded tonight for another night during the week, and gone out and done something else. Something like …
    Well, she couldn’t think of anything at the moment. But she could have done something. Gone to a movie; she hadn’t been to a movie in ages. Popped up to London for a lecture.
    Though of course she could do those things in the evening any time she wanted to, really, because Ben and Claire would always babysit if she asked. It wasn’t the wasted babysitter that she minded. It was Ben not getting in touch. She understood. He had a real life. He had a marriage and a wife, now pregnant.
    She noticed, to her surprise, that she’d drunk more than half of her pint. She glowered at the door and worked on the rest of it. At the end of the bar, Muz, the long tall hippy who ran the quiz, was getting his papers ready. He turned on themicrophone and it let out a long screech of feedback, just as it always did. She squinted and endured it. Competition in these village pub quizzes was fierce; according to Ben, people talked strategy for months beforehand. Every other team was made up of six people, which was the maximum allowed. She and Ben were usually the only twosome, though that hadn’t stopped them winning the last three years in a row. The other teams were already conferring in low voices, as if the Rose and Thistle were some sort of hop-strewn battle zone.
    ‘On your own?’ Muz asked as he distributed the answer sheets.
    ‘Looks like it.’
    ‘I saw him driving out of town with his missus last night.’
    She bit her lip and looked over the picture round. Damn. Glenn was right. She knew none of these people. ‘When are you going to do a picture round about insects?’
    ‘You’d have an unfair advantage.’
    ‘I always have an unfair advantage,’ she muttered, ‘but tonight he’s with his wife.’
    ‘Then his twin just walked in,’ said Muz, and Romily looked up, smiling.
    Ben’s face was like thunder. He glanced at Romily and the single full pint in front of her, and went straight to the bar.
    ‘There may be trouble ahead,’ Muz commented. ‘What have you done?’
    ‘It wasn’t me,’ she said. ‘Probably work.’
    Liz gave him a big greeting. Romily couldn’t hear what either of them said, and Ben had his back to her so she couldn’t see his face either, but from the way Liz’s grin melted