Who are your people?

I've got the girls this weekend but carved a couple of hours out down the pub.

"If you fuck me over on this, I will fuck you over ten times worse," he said. "I don't deal with skanks." I didn't know how to reassure him. "Who are they, your people? he pressed.

"Well, one's a Housing Officer, one's a Probation Officer. [--] is a teacher and [--] has got his own IT business."

"Right, that's alright. But I don't deal with skanks."

His girlfriend, with whom I was at school, talked about how big my parents' adopted home town of Middlesbrough is and the difficulty of breaking eggs in one hand and how to get them to sit in a circular pool on the plate. She said that she can get me far better eggs than anything I'll have tasted. "Eggs" became a codeword and it was funny listening to ourselves develop it.

He went off to have a cigar. I said how nice their flat looked when I was there yesterday. "It's me that pays for all that you know. We have to pay 340 quid for bills every month. It's me that pays it. He hasn't worked for twelve months. Anyway shut up he's back now."

"What the fuck am I doing," I thought, as he said "You're coming down to Nottingham with me, because [--] will want to meet you. But with me."

It sounds intense from this condensed retelling but it was all drunkenly amiable and open, me and her talking about how when a new man comes along the children take against him despite him having no catalytic role in the breakdown of the former relationship. The next table was earwigging. We noticed it and switched to cooking techniques and how best to kill crabs.

I went to get another pint. When I came back the atmosphere had changed. "No, that's too much," she said. "No that's going too far," and got her coat. "What's going too far? What's the matter?" I said, after she'd left. He screwed his head into his hand. "She's pissed off."

"What with? About what we've been talking about?"

"No, no, not that." I waited. But nothing more. This is why I like women more than men. Just fucking talk about what's on your mind.

He spilt his wine and used my Lancaster Guardian to mop the pool up. "One nil to me," I thought. I hope this is going to work. It's the thought of having to make conversation in his car all the way to Nottingham that bothers me the most.

I rang Kim, a long phone call. Told her a bit about Mary-Ann and the feeling of formless anxiety with which I wake up some days. We spent a long time ruminating over calendars, trying to meet. "But if you're coming over," she said, "stay a while. It's not as if we talk all the time." I liked her for making not talking something she values. I look forward to my wasted times with Kim. Silence. Pauses. Long minutes of a tumble-thought of nothing. Then looking up and half smiling.