“What’s your name, barman?”  It was the voice of a someone who thought he had a right to know.
   
Phil ignored the question.  After several minutes of not being able to see the French girl, he had caught another glimpse of her face – smiling at a stranger who was taking away one of the chairs.  
   
“What is your name?” the man repeated.  He was over six foot tall – and,
for all Phil knew, an executive from the pub’s management company playing undercover detective.
   
“I’m Phil.”  
   
“Let me guess, Phil,” the man continued in a slow, condescendingly deliberate tone.  He wore an expensive watch, and Armani suit.  “The manager takes Mondays off.”
   
Wise guy.  Lucky guess.  The French girl’s wine glass was empty. Why was she still hanging around?  Maybe Phil had got her wrong.  It was hardly the first time he’d imagined a romantic halo clinging to a girl who took his fancy.

“But you are not going to get away with it, Phil.  I asked and paid for a double measure of single malt whisky.  This is blended whisky if it’s whisky at all.”
   
“I assure you…sir…”  Sir?  Sir was a word Phil never used.  
   
Soon he would clear the tables.  If he were nearer to her and found an excuse to bend down, he might get a glimpse of the French girl’s knickers – or their absence.  Phil needed to despise her, to restore his self esteem.
“Show me the bottle!” the tall man demanded.
   
“It’s next door, fixed to an optic.”  Both the malt and the blended, side by side.  
   
“Well, better still, Phil, open a new bottle.  I wish to see an unopened bottle of twelve year old single malt whisky.  Then you can fill the glass, right here in front of me.”  
   
Phil retreated to the back bar and found a bottle of Glen Morangie.  On his return, he made a point of pouring a generous measure.  Of course it felt humiliating.
   
Less humiliating, though than the way the French girl seemed to be looking through him.  For the first time he thought her eyes looked hard and predatory.  “Come down here to sample the low life, have you, sir?” he asked the man in the Versace suit.
   
“Low life?”  He held out his glass for another measure.
   
Phil nodded in the direction of  the French girl.
   
“Ah!” the man exhaled, as if he had already noticed her.
   
“Quite something, isn’t she?  She works for the escort agency round the corner,” Phil improvised, “but business is often slack on Mondays.”  At the time he almost believed himself.