Deliverance (Book 1)

Job Three: Our Daily Bread

Shinichi Hama was watching baseball again as Suzu entered the kitchen. It was like she had never left, she thought. "Hi dad."

"Hello," he said. Puzzlement crossed his face at that point, but Suzu missed it because she was already raiding the fridge. "Where's your car? I didn't hear you driving in," he asked.

"I left it at... work. Doing some work on it," she replied. In fact, conscious of Neil's paranoia being fairly reasonably grounded, she had left the taxi in a car park at Minamisenju and taken the train from there.

"Dear?" called Shinichi. "Suzu-chan's here."

"Ah, good," came the muffled reply. Footsteps on the stairs, and her mother bustled in. "Hello Suzu. Where've you been? This new job is so busy?"

"You wouldn't believe it."

"So what's it like?" asked her mother. Her father craned his neck, Chunichi vs Carp forgotten.

"Later," replied Suzu, kissing her mother on the cheek. "I have to go and have a shower and get some clean clothes on."

Her mother sniffed as she passed. "Agreed."

"Don't be long! I'm hungry!" called her dad after her as she retreated up the stairs.

Suzu was hungry too. She hurried, but she also took the time to simply savour the feeling of hot water on her back. Back in her bedroom she hunted through her wardrobe, choosing a slightly girlier outfit than she would normally choose but which she imagined would please her parents. A strange sort of momentum acted on her; what she was doing, this crazy new job, the rabbit-hole she was falling into, it was all clearly dangerous and frequently illegal, but she had already jumped and nothing would reverse her direction of travel. She wondered how to tell her parents about it.

Dinner turned out to be spaghetti, with her mother's sauce, based on a recipe Suzu had learned from her host family and taught to her mother, and which her mother had modified to include soy sauce for some reason Suzu didn't understand. It was still good, despite the adaptation; it still tasted of Maserati Biturbo clutch and chilled-out evenings on the roof terrace with that ratty nylon deckchair, enjoying sunsets and the dry heat of Palermo in late summer, drinking Peroni.

Buoyed by these pleasant memories, Suzu relaxed into the meal and she felt reasonably OK about talking to her parents about Deliverance. She played things down, of course – the last thing she wanted to do was to let them think she was into something illegal or dangerous. She felt she'd done the job reasonable justice by the time they were finishing off their desserts.

"So what about this man you're working with. Neil, was it?" asked her mother.

"He's a fairly dark horse. Hard to really get a read on him. I think he's a little withdrawn, because his previous driver died recently."

"Died? How?" asked her father. This was no longer his area but all three of them knew how hard old habits died for him.

"He was hit by a car. He wasn't driving at the time," she said, conscious of the crease rapidly beginning to decorate her dad's brow. "But Neil's a decent guy. Better than some of the guys at the garage. I think I can work with him."

"You should invite him over," suggested Shinichi.

Suzu and her mother shared a look. That wasn't her dad's normal way of behaving. Shizuko knew her husband was being suspicious, but it wasn't like him to be so overt about it.

"I know you think I'm just being nosy," he said into his coffee, pretending to watch the silenced TV. "But he sounds interesting, and I don't get to meet many foreigners nowadays. How's his Japanese?"