The front door banging shut announced the arrival of one of my parents back from work. After a day of analysing my powers and saying 'I don't know' a lot it was somewhat of a relief to speak to someone else.
Fiona and I walked downstairs to find my father halfway through a beer.
"One of those days, Dad?"
"Just a bit," he sighed. He undid his tie, took off his jacket and slumped into an armchair in the front room. Fiona and I settled down opposite him on the sofa.
"Work has been pretty stressful. The stock market has been so volatile recently it's really tough to know whether the company is going to continue to get venture capital funding. I hope so, or the job I was hired to do is not going to exist."
"You really think that's a possibility Dad?"
"I hope not son, but I'm trying to be realistic. I really want to make a go of this role but I may have to start looking around for something outside the.com sector."
"That would be such a shame! I know how much you were looking forward to growing the sales team at your new place."
"Yup. And the product is really good too. Everyone needs email management with the explosion of emails flooding into businesses but a good product might not save us if we can't get the next round of funding secured. Bloody stock market."
He took another long pull from the beer bottle, slowly relaxing again.
"How about you two? What have you been up to today or don't I want to know?"
Fiona blushed slightly and I scrambled for an answer.
"We've been going over ideas for how to use the information that Joe told us about yesterday. To be honest we haven't really got anywhere."
"Well, why don't I put my job to one side, you put the rumours to one side and we can all go out to the pub tonight."
"Sounds great Dad!"
"Thanks Mr Conw...I mean Mark," said Fiona.
"OK. I'll cook up my famous spag bol and then we can all head out and forget about everything for a while."
The kitchen was soon blasting with the sounds of Supertramp and chopping onions. Fiona and I showered quickly and got changed into some different clothes for the pub. Dad was calling us to eat just as the front door slammed and Mum came in.
She looked thoroughly depressed and only perked up slightly at the smell of dinner.
"You're late Mum. Is everything OK?"
I took her bag and gave her a hug.
"Not too great Jake, if I'm honest. But I'm home now and it smells like your father has been working his magic in the kitchen. Let's eat first and then talk about it."
We settled around the table as Dad served up one of my favourites. He was a frustrated chef at heart and when he did cook it was always good. His spag bol was wonderful - a mix of pork and beef mince with onions, chopped tomatoes, olives, herbs and probably other stuff that I didn't know about. Whatever it was I could eat it by the bucketload and always had to hold myself back.
We told Mum about the pub idea and she was equally enthusiastic.
It wasn't long after 7pm that we were walking up the hill to an old coaching house called the Four Horseshoes. It was a slightly rundown place but a new manager had taken it over about a year ago and he was slowly turning it around into being more of a food pub. The manager was a guy called Simon that my Dad vaguely knew through football so if he was going out for a pint it was always to the Four Horseshoes.
"Mark! Great to see you. Not often we see you on a Monday."
"Nice to see you too Simon. You remember Anne?"
"Of course, welcome."
"And this is my son Jake and his girlfriend Fiona."
"Good to see you both. Now what can I get you all?"
We were quickly settled at a table. In no time we had two pints of Summer Lightning, a glass of chardonnay and a gin and tonic sitting in front of us. Both my parents looked like they really needed this and I smiled to see them relaxing.
Over the next hour or so the pub filled up a little bit and we chatted about work, university and everything other than the rumours. We couldn't escape those for long though. Mum had been forced to deal with every shitty job that they could find for her at work. It was crushing as she had been there for well over five years. All because of the rumours about me. I felt like shit.
Dad wanted to go to the Citizen's Advice Bureau to get their help to file a grievance, but with limited job opportunities out there Mum didn't want to do it. With the divorce she was more aware than ever that she couldn't afford to lose her job, however crappy it was.
Mum and Dad headed home after one drink. I knew they must want some time and space to themselves in the house so we stayed for a while longer, playing pool and loading up the jukebox.
We were part way through our second game when the door opened and a group of guys in sports gear came in, probably from the five a side pitch down the road.
"It's Jake isn't it?"
I turned round reluctantly expecting yet another arsehole from school. But it was Dave and Phil, the two guys from the bus accident. They were part of the football group that had just arrived. I broke into a smile when I realised who it was.
"Hi! Yes, that's right."
"Great to see you man. We were hoping you'd drop by at some point. We wanted to buy you a beer."
"Thanks Dave, but you really don't need to do that."
"That's no problem, give me a secon...oh, sorry, am I interrupting a date?"
I laughed at his sudden change of tack.
"No, that's fine. We're just getting out of the house for a while. This is my girlfriend Fiona."
"Wow! Nice to meet you. I hope that the hero here has told you all about what he did in that crash."
"A little," said Fiona, "but he's quite modest about it."
"Well he shouldn't be," said Paul chiming in for the first time. "He was already up and helping the injured when we were trying to figure out which way was up. And with all that blood a lot of people would have freaked. Not Jake. You've got a good one here."
"Thanks, I'm slowly coming to that conclusion myself."
"Guys please!" I was feeling embarrassed and pleased at the same time.
"At least let us buy you a beer and then you can carry on with your date without a pair of smelly footballers in the way."
"That's really kind, thank you."
"And next time you fancy a beer, pop up on a Saturday evening and we'll see how good you are at pool."
"That sounds great, I'll do that."
A beer and another gin and tonic appeared a few minutes later and with a cheerful wave the two left us to finish our game.
"They're really nice."
