After that the argument subsided and soon enough there was something weird with the audio and the soldiers reluctantly went out to search the forest again and the creature slipped out too, leaving a trail of something that looked like badly pixelated dust.

*

What felt like 5,235 hours later another customer came in and Holly prised herself out of daydream to serve him. The guy had a fat head and a tattoo of Tetris Bricks on his face as was the fashion in Blackpool then and he ordered Falafel and Fries and she microwaved it home-style with a Jackson Pollock of Ketchup and Mayo on top.

The guy made no conversation but at his request she flipped the TV off Kev Spatula’s Head Injury Marathon to a re-run pornographic Breakfast TV show called Crack of Dawn hosted by Dawn Wendy Lomax. It seemed strange at first, watching breakfast TV in the middle of the night, but by the time they had reached the weather and the desultory money shots it was all making sense somehow, the guy finishing up his food and Lomax wiping the come out of her eyes.

You have kids? The guy said to Holly

No, she said.

I got three he said. You want to see a picture?

Sure, she said.

Gimee a pen.

She took the biro from her overalls and passed it over, fingers almost touching his on the counter-top.

Thanks he said.

He took a napkin and started to draw while she watched, looking from the tip of the biro to his fixated expression. When it got too much to bear she looked away, to outside where the distant bombing had made fires in the depths of the forest. Her eyes scanned the empty road for ages and by the time she looked back the picture was done – a barbaric scratching of lines, tears and blobs in the flesh of the napkin through which three stick figure humans could just be discerned; triangles for bodies, stick arms, stick legs and sad tangled hair hung in matted scratches from the grinning circles of their heads.

All girls he said, I love them. This one Istanbul. This one London, this one dead.

Holly guessed that these were not names and resisted the temptation to query on daughter number three, mainly because of what she learned on Training Day Six: The Customer Is Always Right.

Nice, she said.

They are what I live for, he answered and he folded the napkin back into his wallet.

Later he wanted to know if there was anywhere he could sleep. She said no, not legally, but if he wanted to park his truck up out back and sleep in it no one would likely notice or care. He thanked her in his language, paid and went out. She heard the truck start and the beeping sound as he backed it to the wasteground out back of SALAAMs.