One of Andy’s recent trips had taken him to Iceland. He’d been gone for two weeks.
Andy shrugged. He had a strange expression, similar to what Dom had seen at the Blue Door earlier that day. A blankness to his eyes, like he was suddenly someone else.
‘And you,’ Dom said. ‘Technical writer. Lots of cash. Bit of a cock, true, but never been in trouble.’
‘Bury the cash for a while,’ Andy said. ‘Carry on normally.’
‘Just one job,’ Dom said, chuckling at the cliché, then falling quiet again. It was a weird subject to be talking about in such a place of sunlight and laughter.
‘So let’s plan!’ Andy said. ‘It’ll be a laugh.’
It took on the air of a joke, and with that lightness came a rush of ideas from them both. It was a throwaway conversation, one they’d have both forgotten by the time they got home, just one of many conversations that filled the times they spent drinking together. Emma would often ask, ‘So what did you talk about all evening?’ Dom’s response was invariably, ‘Can’t really remember.’ Four hours with barely a pause for breath, and he often recalled none of it.
This was like that. Except their conversation had an air of danger about it, and a sense that they were discussing forbidden things, secrets that could never be shared. It was a private, almost intimate thing between them, and it made Dom feel good.
‘We’d have to steal a car,’ he said.
‘Or just blank the number plates with mud. Use yours. Everyone’s got a Focus.’
‘Right, thanks.’
‘Just that stealing a car changes it from one job to two.’
‘Fair point. So … weapons?’
‘Don’t need them,’ Andy said.
‘And we couldn’t get them even if we did,’ Dom said.
Andy didn’t really answer. ‘These postmasters don’t give a shit about the money in their safe; it’s not theirs, it’s insured, and they won’t lose a thing if it’s nicked.’
‘You’re sure about that?’ Dom asked.
‘Just guessing.’ Andy drained his lemonade. ‘It’s afterwards that matters. The job takes ten minutes, but it’s the days and weeks afterwards when we could give ourselves away.’
‘We’d still have to ride out that way!’ Dom said. It was almost exciting. ‘Sit outside the Blue Door as usual.’
‘Everything as normal,’ Andy agreed.
‘Then we’d be seen on crime scene photos by the investigators, like perps returning to the scene of their crime.’
‘What, Dom, you after infamy?’
‘I’m after nothing,’ Dom said. It sounded awkward, too serious. ‘Just buckets full of cold, hard cash.’
‘Probably won’t get buckets from a little provincial place like that.’
‘How much do you reckon?’
‘Dunno.’ Andy shrugged. ‘Hit it at the right time, maybe forty grand?’
‘Nice little nest egg.’
‘Not bad for ten minutes’ work,’ Andy agreed. He looked around and smiled. ‘Wonder what everyone would think if they knew what we were talking about.’
Dom glanced around at the full pub garden and bustling riverbank. Men with sun-reddened torsos smiled wider than usual, alcohol soothing their worries. Women sported summer hats and sleeveless dresses. Kids darted here and there, a few people in canoes fought against the river’s flow, and a couple of hundred metres along the bank, youths were jumping ten feet into the water from an old wooden mooring. A boy and girl crouched near the bank with phones, trying to get the best shots.
‘No one would believe us,’ Dom said. Andy grasped his arm and leaned in close.
‘That’s why we really should do it.’
‘Don’t be soft.’
‘Why not? It’s not hurting anyone. Your worst criminal record is a speeding fine. I don’t even have that. We’re the last people the law would turn to. In, out, done. And like you say, a nest egg for the future.’
Dom swigged some more cider. It was going to his head now, swilling confusion behind his eyes, freeing inhibitions. Emma always said he was a man made free after a couple of pints, as if alcohol could snip off the constraints he’d imposed upon himself to get by in society and life.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘After another pint.’
‘Pisshead.’
‘Sure.’
Dom swayed a little as he walked across the pub garden, nodding at the people he knew, pausing to chat a couple of times.
Inside he dumped the empties on a table and went for a leak. Leaning his head against the wall, watching his piss swill down the urinal, he tried to make light of the post office idea.
But he couldn’t. Though it was something he knew he could never really do, just thinking about it was exciting, and talking it through with Andy gave it that edge. That sheen of reality. Andy had a way of making the dangerous seem possible.
Dom knew he should stop drinking, but it didn’t feel like a normal day. Still buzzing from the long ride, the blazing sunlight and unusual heat, and the weird sense of danger pervading their conversation, he bought one more pint.
On the way back to Andy on the riverbank he was thinking about disguises.
‘One last glass?’ Mandy asked.
She and Emma had already polished off one bottle of Prosecco between them, and were halfway through the second. But it was that sort of day. Gorgeous weather, a nice couple of hours that afternoon with Dom in the garden after his bike ride, Daisy at a camping sleepover with friends.
Mandy had turned up at their house unannounced, complaining that her boyfriend, Paul, had fucked off on a football weekend without her again, and it had turned into one of those long, impromptu boozy evenings that were always the best kind.
‘Be rude to leave it in the bottle,’ Emma said.
‘Rude,’ Mandy agreed, giggling. She couldn’t hold her drink very well, but she drank the most out of all Emma’s friends. It wasn’t quite a problem, Emma usually thought. Not yet.
Conversation had moved rapidly on from character assassinating Mandy’s absent boyfriend. They’d gossiped about others in the village, the housing estate being built on the outskirts, the new headmistress in Daisy’s primary school, and a dozen other things she could hardly remember. It had been a fun couple of hours. But now there was a slight chill on the evening air, and as Mandy poured, Emma stood to fetch blankets for them.
‘You’re lucky,’
