Resurrection. The Underwood and Flinch Chronicles: Volume One.

Chapter Five

5

Keith Mullins sat on his sun terrace reading the online edition of The Sun newspaper. The terrace was situated at the rear of the two-floor apartment above the pub he and his wife, Michelle, had bought last year in the little town of Almacena, Cadiz.

A fly buzzed around and landed on Keith’s face. He slapped his face, but missed the fly. It flew away. Keith picked up the plastic fly swatter that lay next to his laptop and waited. A few seconds passed and the fly returned. Keith grinned, watching it as it crawled around on his empty breakfast plate. Then he struck – the swatter mashing the fly into bacon grease and egg yolk. ‘Yesss!’ Keith put down the swatter and returned to the newspaper.

He had wanted to call their new pub, The Queen of Hearts, in memory of the late Princess of Wales; he’d had a vision of Diana’s face on the pub sign, smiling angelically down at the punters as they supped their pints on the front terrace. A beautiful image perhaps, but Michelle had reminded him that if he wanted to keep their presence discreet, perhaps it wasn’t the best choice. She was right of course – though Keith at least got part of his wish after they translated The Queen of Hearts into Spanish and christened the pub La Reina de Corazones. He’d had to give up the pub sign idea too. The sign they finally agreed on wasn’t the saintly visage of the dead princess, but the Queen of Hearts from the playing card pack. Keith hadn’t been happy, but he’d been able to see the logic.

It was eight-thirty in the morning, and from the kitchen he could hear the voices of Michelle and their daughter Melanie as they went through their usual morning mixture of instructions and rebuttals. Then came the sound of a chair being abruptly pushed back; Michelle shouting; a slammed door, and then Michelle emerging onto the terrace looking flustered. ‘Little madam,’ she said, ‘she gets it from you, you know.’

‘Gets what? Good looks, animal magnetism?’ Keith looked up over the screen of his laptop computer and grinned. ‘Balls?’

‘Yes, balls. She’s got your balls. I don’t know where they are exactly, but they got into the ingredients somehow.’

Keith chuckled. ‘That’s a good thing, girl. A woman needs balls in this world.’

‘Not when she’s talking to her mother, she doesn’t.’ Michelle pulled out one of the plastic chairs opposite him and sat down.

‘Aw, leave it, Chelle. She’s just at that age. It’s a phase. She’ll grow out of it.’

‘That’s easy for you to say, you don’t have to feed her. Now she’s saying she doesn’t want milk anymore. She wants soy milk. She not eating her bloody corn flakes.’

‘What’s that then?’ said Keith, returning his interest to the screen, the back of which was facing Michelle. He clicked to see the day’s Page Three girl.

‘She says it’s from a bean or something, a soy bean.’

Keith’s brow furrowed. He looked up from admiring Amii from Birmingham. ‘A bean that’s got milk in it? What? Like a coconut?’

‘Well, I don’t know, do I? She says Teresa drinks it and it’s better for you than what milk is. Apparently you can make shepherd’s pie and everything out of it.’

‘What? Bean milk?’

‘No, not the milk, the bean; it’s a meat alternative. Vegetarians eat them.’

‘Don’t tell me she wants to become a bloody veggie.’

‘Well if she does, I’m not cooking for her. Bloody bean pies; she can do it herself. Either that or you can. After all,’ she smiled sarcastically, ‘It’s just a phase, isn’t it? You won’t have to do it for long.’