Head Over Heels [antikvár]

Chapter 1 'I can't decide, cider or a glass of Chablis.' Jessie Roscoe leaned her elbows on the bar and chewed one arm of her paint-splattered sunglasses while she gave the matter somé thought. T don't know if I should serve you. Are you sure you're old enough to drink?' said Olivér. 'Oh,' Lili sighed, 'I wish someone would say that to me.' Jessie searched energetically in the pockets of her jeans, at last unearthing a fivér. She waved it lovingly under Oliver's nose. 'Cider for your dear old mother. Better make it a shandy, don't want to fali off my ladder. Lili, how about you?' 'Coke. Don't want to fali into a drunken stupor.' Lili looked regretful. A proper drink would be lovely, but that was the drawback with small children: when they were around you had to be so alert. The lounge bar of the Seven Bells was cool, dark and faintly musty, the ingrained aromas of beer and cigarette smoke mingling with beeswax polish and the smell of sizzling onions and garlic wafting through from the kitchen. When Olivér had finished serving them, they made their way through the empty pub and out into the enclosed back garden. It was five past twelve and the sun was blazing down. Lili parked the cumbersome double buggy in the shade of a lilac tree while Jessie batted curious wasps away from their drinks and tore open a packet of Twiglets. 'Look at them. Like a couple of pensioners on the beach at Bournemouth.' Jessie nodded at the children, both fast asleep in the buggy, facing away from each other with mouths open, chins lolling on chests and knees apart. Two-year-old William, Lili's youngest, clutched a naked Action Man. One-year-old Freya, whom Lili looked after for another couple in the village, was managing to snore gently and simultaneously suck her thumb. Lili prayed they'd stay asleep. If they woke up, William would bellow to be pushed on the swing and Freya would scream even louder because she wanted to go on it too. They would then yell for crisps, drinks and more drinks, and since they were both at that stage where they were driven to investigate everything - bits of broken glass, other people's