BooksBarbecue
Back The Favor Save as PDF
Chapters (78)
  1. Title Page
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-One
  25. Twenty-Two
  26. Twenty-Three
  27. Twenty-Four
  28. Twenty-Five
  29. Twenty-Six
  30. Twenty-Seven
  31. Twenty-Eight
  32. Twenty-Nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-One
  35. Thirty-Two
  36. Thirty-Three
  37. Thirty-Four
  38. Thirty-Five
  39. Thirty-Six
  40. Thirty-Seven
  41. Thirty-Eight
  42. Thirty-Nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty-One
  45. Forty-Two
  46. Forty-Three
  47. Forty-Four
  48. Forty-Five
  49. Forty-Six
  50. Forty-Seven
  51. Forty-Eight
  52. Forty-Nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty-One
  55. Fifty-Two
  56. Fifty-Three
  57. Fifty-Four
  58. Fifty-Five
  59. Fifty-Six
  60. Fifty-Seven
  61. Fifty-Eight
  62. Fifty-Nine
  63. Sixty
  64. Sixty-One
  65. Sixty-Two
  66. Sixty-Three
  67. Sixty-Four
  68. Sixty-Five
  69. Sixty-Six
  70. Sixty-Seven
  71. Sixty-Eight
  72. Sixty-Nine
  73. Seventy
  74. Acknowledgments
  75. About the Author
  76. Remarkable Praise for Nicci French
  77. Also by Nicci French
  78. About the Publisher

“Stop.” Vin had taken another bite of his food and he needed to swallow it before he could continue. “You’re a doctor. You get a steady salary, money when you’re ill, money when you’re on holiday. You get a good pension. Everything’s sorted out for you. Now us.” He gestured around him. “We are a tiny company. Two of us, working with our hands, doing jobs for multiple people at the same time, juggling. We live day to day, right. Sometimes we earn a bit more than we spend, and sometimes we earn a bit less. Sometimes companies go under and leave us a bit high and dry and we have to find ways round that. Sometimes we don’t get paid on time and have cash-flow problems, and that’s a pain in the arse. Sometimes we don’t get paid at all.”

“But Michael said—”

“If accountants went round inspecting all the books and closing down companies that weren’t sticking to the rules, we’d almost all be gone. Me and Liam, we got by. Touch and go, but we got by. We’re good at what we do. We make lovely things. We take pride in our work. Some people piss us off; we piss other people off. But here we still are.”

He stopped, looked down at the remaining crusts of his early lunch.

“Of course, it’s not ‘we’ any longer, is it? So I’ve no idea if I can keep going. This was Liam’s business before I joined him, and I was only his unofficial partner. It’ll be hard to start over.” He shook his head, his thick hair rippling around his face. “Ah well, if I have to.”

Jude waited. She finished her coffee and put her hands in her pockets for warmth.

“Anthony Leary,” she said.

Vin’s head snapped up.

“Fuckwit,” he said. Then: “Not you. Him.”

“He’s one of the ones who never paid?”

“People like him,” said Vin, “because they have money, they think they’re better than everyone else.” He folded the wax paper and slid it back into the bag. “So not only did he not pay us, he not-paid us with a kind of sanctimonious self-righteousness.”

“He sounds pretty odious,” said Jude.

“Oh, you’d probably like him.” Vin was suddenly cheerful again, the anger wiped from his face like a cloth sweeps away dust. “You’re a doctor, after all, not a carpenter. I guess that’s where you’re headed?”

“I thought I should.”

At the door he surprised her by taking her shoulders in his hands and bending down to kiss her, first on one cheek and then the other.

“You’re a stubborn woman, aren’t you?” he said.

“I’m just doing what I’m meant to be doing.”

Vin shook his head.

“What you’re meant to be doing is going back and being a doctor again.”

Thirty-Three