Chapter 7
SEVEN
Dad was propped up in bed in an A he’s had a compound fracture of his left tibia.’
My jaw dropped. ‘What exactly does that mean?’
‘It means I’ve seen more of my skeleton than I bargained on today,’ he said. ‘The bone popped right through the skin. It stung a bit, let me tell you.’
‘He fell off some scaffolding,’ said Mam.
‘I can speak for myself, Denise, thank you.’ He turned to me. ‘I fell off some scaffolding.’
‘Morphine,’ she mouthed at me.
‘Ah, Dad, what are we going to do with you?’ I took a seat opposite my mam.
He sighed, a cowed expression on his face. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry, you dafty.’ I rubbed his arm, and he took another slurp of juice, the remainder rattling in the bottom of the carton. Mam passed him another one.
Between them, one infinitely more coherent than the other, they explained what would happen next. He’d been X-rayed and the fracture was a messy one, so he would need surgery to put his tibia back together and then it would be set in plaster. The recovery time was four or five months according to my mam, and a few weeks in my dad’s morphine-addled estimation.
Mam shook her head. ‘He’s going to be laid up for almost half a year.’
I let this sink in, feeling suddenly nauseous. With her out of work because she was so up and down health-wise, and Dad joining her, they would have no income at all. They still had a mortgage, car payments, all the bills. I didn’t imagine statutory sick pay would even touch the sides. Like me, they lived month to month with little in the way of savings. Then there was that ominous red-topped letter from the mortgage company that didn’t bear thinking about.
‘What are you going to do? For money?’ I asked quietly.
‘Don’t you worry about that,’ said Mam. ‘I was thinking of getting a little job anyway. Part-time, at home, for a call centre. Fiona next door is doing it, and she says it’s not bad.’ She smiled weakly.
How was she going to field calls from demanding customers, especially ones with complaints, when she wasn’t having a good day?
‘And with you doing a roaring trade at the shop, we’ll be all set,’ said Dad, patting my hand.
My throat tightened. I couldn’t speak for a moment, thinking of the forty pounds, an amount so small I’d been able to pop it in my purse and do the button up with no difficulty. I could give them it all, I thought. Take none for myself, just enough to cover the rent on the shop. But then how would I pay Neo? Or eat? My lip started to tremble, so I bit down on it – hard.
‘That’s right,’ I managed. ‘We’ll do this together. As a family.’
They smiled at each other and then at me, and I tried to swallow away the lump in my throat.
‘Denise,’ said Dad, looking sheepish. ‘I’ve had a few too many of these juices. Would you…?’
She retrieved a cardboard wee bottle, and I beat a hasty retreat. Standing outside the curtain, trying not to listen to the sound of my dad’s pee stream, I focused my mind elsewhere. I needed to make this shop work. For my parents, for Mike; hell – for myself. I had a golden opportunity, with boxes full of stuff that certainly had value. I just had to find a way to sell it.
After the weekend, I strode down Pilgrim Street with my hands stuffed in my pockets, my breath making little white clouds in the chilly air. The pavements were dusted with early morning frost – winter was truly upon us; that brief, glacial hiatus before the world was warmed up again with Christmas festivity.
Walking through the shop door to be enveloped in blessed central heating, I found Penn topping up his stock from the back room. He nodded good morning, and I did the same, taking my place behind the desk. After the stress of my dad’s catastrophe, I didn’t have the energy to ‘bring the banter’ as I’d intended at the party, or even to ask why he’d chosen me to share the shop. I knew I was emanating prickly vibes, but I was so worried about Mam and Dad I couldn’t help it. It didn’t seem so important to work on mine and Penn’s relationship just now, and he seemed to get the memo that I didn’t want to talk – our brief détente at Melissa’s was over, at least for now.
After an uncomfortable half hour pretending to be deeply absorbed in my little accounts book, I sat restlessly, tapping my foot on the floor. He glanced over at the repetitive noise, then went to his Bluetooth speaker and turned it up a notch. Soft rock drifted out at a slightly higher volume than before.
I woke up my phone and looked through the social media pages that Christa had souped up for me. I now had a healthy amount of likes and followers, but seeing the steady stream of people walking clean past my shop window didn’t give me the impression that it was helping. I remembered what Christa said about adding more content, so I got up and looked about for inspiration.
Keeping Penn’s side of the shop carefully out of view, I arranged some of my more aesthetic-looking items, such as the range of pastel-coloured tea and coffee canisters or the rose gold-packaged cosmetics, into neat displays. I took some pictures, messed about with some filters and uploaded them with jaunty captions. They did look better with a Clarendon filter on them actually. Penn looked on with vague interest but was then distracted by a customer.
‘Hiya, mate,’ he said to a similarly styled man of about his age. They then engaged in a conversation indecipherable to me, but before I had the need to tune it out, another customer came in and started looking at my selection of oven cleaning products. Happily, after a minute’s consideration, she came over and bought a few items, and I relaxed back on my stool, feeling buoyed up. So buoyed up in fact that I decided my shop needed a little music too, more in keeping with my style. If Penn could have a soundtrack to his sales then so could I. I scrolled my Spotify playlists and decided to go festive – ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ always got me in the Christmas spirit.
Penn gave me a look but carried on talking to his customer. After a while, the guy walked over to Penn’s glass cabinet and pointed to the Pink Floyd album inside. He asked to take a closer look.
Penn hesitated then said, ‘Sorry, mate. It’s not for sale.’
The guy shrugged, bought a couple of other records and left. Penn followed soon after, leaving his closed sign on the desk, and I narrowed my eyes at his back as he went. What was the deal with that record?
He returned with another of his trendy coffees – of course, he hadn’t offered to get me one. I made a point of going into the back room, making an instant hot chocolate and loading it with mini marshmallows. When I came back out, I noticed that the music on his side of the shop was now a fraction louder. Some whiny, mournful sounding singer was drowning out ‘Last Christmas’. Indignation rippled through me – my awful weekend had left me with no patience to tolerate his nonsense. I sat at my desk, smiled, took a sip of my confectionery-laden drink and moved my music up a notch too. The playlist shuffled on to ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’. I didn’t even like that song, but when I saw his nostrils flare, I decided I liked it a little bit more.
He shook his head with a look of resigned amusement and clicked his music up a level again. I was almost distracted by the way his half-smile gave him the slightest dimple in his cheek, but I wouldn’t be bested in this battle.
I looked him dead in the eye, and like a cat knocking an ornament off a table, I held his gaze while cranking mine up once more. It was becoming deafening. The competing strains of Radiohead doing battle with The Jackson 5 was like being in a fever dream. Angsty sneering lyrics clashed with seventies merriment until they started to sound like I’d put my head in a tumble dryer.
Penn bit his lip and stared at me intensely. ‘Very mature,’ he said, having to raise his voice to be heard.
‘I could say the same about you,’ I shouted.
He smirked in a way that should have enraged me, but there was something about it that made my heart skip. Was he… enjoying this? The back and forth was starting to remind me of the way we’d flirted in the bar.
Just then, a customer peeped around the door, winced and walked away. There was no knowing which of us he was visiting so we both glared at one another.
‘You’ve just lost me a customer,’ I said.
‘How do you know he was for you?’
‘He didn’t look your type! Far too pedestrian I’d imagine.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘That’s very judgemental.’
‘Well, you’d know about that.’ I looked at the vegetable peelers alongside the packets of clay face masks and remembered him prodding through it all.
‘Turn it down,’ he shouted.
‘You turn yours down,’ I replied. ‘Or go and get yourself another of your… Kama Sutra coffees, or whatever they’re called.’
His jaw tensed, and he opened his mouth to clap back at me once more when the door swung open.
‘What the fuck is going on in here?’
Jake stood in the doorway, holding his palms up in question and glaring at us from underneath his baseball cap. ‘Are you two for real? I can’t hear myself think back there, and I’ve just lost a sale.’
We immediately switched off our speakers.
‘Sorry, Jake,’ I said.
Penn muttered an apology too then grabbed his jacket and went out again.
I groaned and leaned on the desk, grinding my palms into my eyes. ‘I really am sorry. He’s just… argh.’ I groaned in frustration. It seemed Penn and I were right back where we’d started, being six feet away and a million miles apart from each other at the same time.
‘It seems to be six of one and half a dozen of the other, if you ask me,’ Jake said.
‘I feel bad. The last thing I want to do is upset everyone else in the building. Would a hot chocolate make up for it?’ I asked, daring a smile.
‘Aye, go on then,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep an eye on the door for any vapers.’
I brought him his mug, and he leaned against my desk, slurping from it loudly without any self-consciousness.
‘You’re alright you know,’ he said. ‘Even with all the racket, you’re an improvement on the last one.’
‘Yeah, I had the pleasure of making his acquaintance. As well as meeting the vein throbbing in his temple.’
‘Aye, he wasn’t the most stable of people.’
‘He tried to warn me off Mike. Should I be worried?’
‘Should you fuck. Mike’s a top lad. They just didn’t get along, and they had a major bust-up in the end.’
‘Right. Seems to be a lot of that about. Penn and I are headed that way, I think.’
‘He’s not your best pal then?’ he asked.
I sighed. ‘It doesn’t look that way. He seems to think I’m the retail equivalent of a weekend at Butlin’s. And he’s really, really annoying. And rude. And quiet . If we aren’t having a music battle, you could hear a pin drop in here.’
‘He’s a pretentious wanker. I asked him if he had anything by The Weeknd and he just laughed.’
‘Too mainstream. He looked like he was going to vomit when Katy Perry came on. Here’s to liking the things you like.’ We clinked mugs, and he held my gaze for a little longer than I expected. We drank our drinks for a bit, while I awkwardly tried to think of something to say to break the tension.
‘Um… How’s business for you then?’ I asked. ‘When you’re not losing customers to the caterwauling in here.’
‘It’s canny, thanks. Everyone needs their vapes and their phones.’
I glanced at my wares and wondered how many people were going to need a desk lamp in the shape of a giant paperclip.
‘Yep,’ I agreed.
He looked at me furtively. ‘I’ve got a little secret though. I think I can trust you not to break the tenants’ code.’
I wasn’t aware there was such a thing, but I was intrigued. ‘Go on.’
‘I’ll be packing up in the spring. I’m off to be a holiday rep in Ibiza.’
I stared at him. ‘What? You’re leaving?’
‘Aye. My mate’s been doing it for years. Money’s just okay, but I’m not gonna turn down sunning myself and hitting the clubs on a night. It’s gonna be mint.’
‘Yeah, good on you,’ I said weakly.
My heart sank. I’d barely absorbed the fact that Arthur and Sven were retiring, and that Mike was going to struggle to keep afloat after that. Now that I knew about this, I felt even more worried for him.
‘So Mike doesn’t know?’ I clarified.
‘Not for now,’ Jake said, making a buttoning motion on his lips. ‘I’ll tell him after Christmas. He’ll have no bother filling the unit though.’
Knowing what I knew, I wasn’t so sure.
‘Well, I’ll miss you,’ I said. I barely knew him, but it seemed to be the polite thing to say.
His face lit up. ‘Will you?’
I nodded. ‘Of course!’
He stood up a bit straighter, with a slight swagger. ‘You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you…’ He flashed a cocky grin.
No, no, no…
‘Are you doing anything after work tonight? There’s a nice pub up the road. I’ll buy you some dinner.’
I tried not to let my mouth drop open and diverted it to a wide smile. ‘Oh… I’m sorry. I’m busy!’
‘How about the weekend?’
I hesitated. ‘I think I’m busy then too.’
He nodded, visibly deflated. ‘Right. Well, never mind.’ He drained the remains of his hot chocolate in one. ‘I’ll catch you later, yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, my voice as limp as a wet flannel.
He smiled tightly, his face starting to glow, and he left.
I cringed, feeling awful. He just wasn’t my type. Saying that, I wasn’t exactly sure what my type was – my dating history was like my shop: eclectic and with long periods of zero interest. Apart from a couple of doomed relationships with fairly bland men, I’d had the odd date here and there, but that was all.
Suddenly, Penn flashed into my mind – guitarist Penn, charismatic and handsome – and my stomach dropped. Why he was featuring in my back catalogue of boyfriends was beyond me. After all, one brief flirtation in a shadowy bar didn’t even come close to a romantic relationship. And knowing what I knew now, it didn’t matter how hot he was – we were as incompatible as Michael Bublé and Metallica.
And that was basically it; just like musical tastes, when it comes to romance, you like the things you like.