Chapter 10
CHRISTIAN
“There you are! Where on earth have you been?”
Christian hurried down the aisle, stopping at a display case full of expensive watches.
A mug of milky coffee had been spilled on the top of it, and even though somebody had done their best to wipe it up, droplets were plopping through the cracks.
A harassed cashier stood there, a pile of napkins in one hand.
A queue had built up, people clamouring for service.
Christian pulled his cleaning products from the trolley and excused his way through the crowd.
“I’ve been waiting for nearly fifteen minutes,” the cashier said.
“Sorry,” Christian replied. “There was an emergency in the restrooms.”
“More important than a $10,000 Rolex full of coffee?” she shot back, her face creased with annoyance.
Christian mumbled another apology, waiting for her to unlock the case.
This was something he was discovering all too quickly: that when you were wearing a janitor’s overalls, people treated you like you were a servant, like you were trash.
It was a good test of character, he thought, seeing how somebody reacted to him when he had a mop in his hands.
He’d bet, if this cashier knew he was Christian Carroll, heir to the Carroll empire, she’d have been a lot more polite.
“Come on!” she snapped as he pulled the first watch from its stand and checked it.
There was a spot of coffee on the face, but it was otherwise unharmed.
It was a Cellini, very similar to one he owned, and it retailed at over $20,000.
He carefully wiped the face with a lint-free cloth, then handed it to the woman.
He’d always been conscious of the money he had, especially when he’d started to earn his own millions.
But now, dressed in a janitor’s uniform, it seemed particularly nauseating that a single watch could cost more than he would earn doing this job for a year.
“Excuse me, could you please hurry up?” barked a man behind him.
Christian did his best to smile politely as he cleaned another two Rolexes.
One — an Oyster Perpetual — had been quite badly drenched, but they were waterproof so it would be easily remedied.
He polished it as best he could, then handed it over.
He used half a roll of kitchen paper to mop up the coffee, then a clean cloth to make the glass and floor of the cabinet as good as new.
There was something immensely satisfying about the work, but nobody seemed to appreciate it.
“You can go now,” said the cashier as the crowd surged forward.
“Sure,” he said. “No worries.”
He turned to walk away, whispering ‘You’re welcome’ under his breath, then changed his mind. “Hey, why are you on your own here? It’s so busy.”
“How would I know?” she replied, taking payment from the rude man who had spoken to Christian earlier. “There used to be three of us, but there have been layoffs.”
She waved him away like he was an annoying fly.
He collected his trolley and squeezed out of the crowd.
Only when he was back in the relative quiet of the staff corridor did Christian finally exhale.
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, and the distant din of the shop floor faded into the background.
His shoulders ached, his hands smelled like disinfectant, and his pride was still somewhere on the floor back by the Rolexes.
But it wasn’t the coffee or the cashier or the rude customer that had him rattled. It was Merry.
He raked a hand through his hair and leaned against the wall, the image of her in that cramped bathroom seared into his brain. The curve of her neck when she turned to him. The flash of something dangerous when their eyes had locked.
He’d been an idiot, no question. Charging in like some knight with a mop and a martyr complex, trying to protect her when she hadn’t asked for it.
But, God, when she’d looked at him in the aftermath, he’d felt something shift.
Something had crackled in the charged air between them and he was sure he hadn’t been the only one to feel it.
The truth was he wanted her, and he needed to tame the ache in him if he was going to get through the rest of the day.
Or the rest of the month. Because no matter how much he wanted to press his mouth to the warm skin of her throat, to learn the scent of her and the sounds she’d make if he ran his hands down her body, it wouldn’t be fair.
She deserved more than someone who was leaving in a couple of weeks.
And until he could figure out how to be honest with her, he had no business thinking about her like that. Even if he couldn’t stop.
Christian sighed, pressing the button for the service elevator. He was waiting for it to arrive when his radio hissed again.
“Chris?” said Harvey. “You still on three?”
“Yeah,” he replied.
“They need you on ten,” he went on. “Out back, head office. No idea what the job is, but they asked for you.”
Christian knew exactly what the job was.
He rode the elevator to the top floor, pushing the trolley back out through the toy department.
Santa Claus was sitting outside the grotto, a young girl on his knee and a line of people waiting to speak to him.
Christian squinted at the man, shaking his head in disbelief.
It couldn’t be the same Santa whose knee he had sat on when he was a kid, could it?
It certainly looked like him, but he didn’t seem to have aged a day.
As if he could sense that he was being watched, Santa glanced up, a twinkle in his eye as he looked right at Christian. Despite the fact he was nearly thirty years old, Christian grinned and waved.
The smile didn’t last long. He used the new code to open the staff door, leaving his trolley in the corridor, and headed past the break room and the locker room to the offices at the back. There was no mess to clean up here, he knew — not in the conventional sense, anyway.
He stopped outside the door to his dad’s office, knocking twice.
“What?” came the gruff reply.
Christian opened the door, trying to make sense of the gloom after the blindingly bright corridor. “Dad? You needed to see me?”
“Come in.”
He did as he was asked, closing the door behind him. It was only when he turned to face the desk again that he noticed Margot sitting in the armchair in the corner of the room.
She glared at him. “Picking fights now, are we?” she asked. “Attacking customers with a broom? What kind of example are you setting for the rest of the staff?”
Christian sighed. “It was a mop.”
“We had to offer to dry clean her dress and shoes,” Margot went on. “Money we could have done without sp—”
“Leave it,” growled Lewis Carroll. He seemed even older than he had yesterday, slumped over his desk, the oxygen mask hanging around his neck, but his words carried the same power and authority they always had. “They probably had it coming. Right, son?”
“Yes,” said Christian. Then, thinking of what Merry had said, “Actually, no. I acted way out of proportion. I’m sorry.”
Margot grinned smugly, but his dad waved his words away. “I don’t care.” He broke into a fit of hacking coughs.
Margot got up to help him, but he waved her away too. He inhaled through the mask, taking a moment to catch his breath. “It’s forgotten. Have you learned anything?”
Christian nodded, walking to the chair in front of his father’s desk.
He sat down, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
“I’m getting a sense of the place,” he said.
“There are major queues forming, customers getting angry at the wait and leaving without buying anything. From what I’ve learned, it’s a staffing issue.
There just aren’t enough people here, especially for this time of year. ”
“That’s rubbish,” spat Margot. “My staffing levels are perfect.”
“So why the layoffs?” Christian asked. “Why are you letting so many people go?”
“What?” barked his dad. “What layoffs?”
“The janitorial team, the jewellery department, Kitchen, everywhere.” He looked at Margot. “This is your doing.”
“We haven’t made any layoffs,” she said, her eyes like daggers. “And if you’re going to accuse me of something, you’d better have evidence to back it up.”
“Hey, calm it down,” said his dad. “Margot, leave us.”
She stood up, fuming, opening her mouth to protest, then seemed to think better of it.
“I told you, Lewis,” she said as she walked from the room. “He doesn’t know the business. He doesn’t know the company.”
Then she was gone, the door slamming behind her.
Lewis pushed his chair back, struggling to his feet, and Christian ran around the desk to help him.
“I’m okay,” the old man said. “I’m not dead yet.”
They stood face to face, and Christian was shocked at how small his dad looked — as if somebody had shaved a foot off his height.
He was stooped and broken, each breath coming in short, rapid wheezes.
All Christian wanted to do was wrap his father in a hug, but years of emotional absence kept him at bay.
“Grab that.” Lewis nodded at the oxygen tank.
Christian picked it up, careful not to pinch the tube.
His dad collected a walking stick from the side of the desk and shuffled across the room, leading the way into the corridor.
There were a few members of staff out there, all of whom nodded to their boss, and all of whom completely ignored the janitor by his side.
“People have really said that?” his dad asked. “That there’ve been layoffs?”
“Yeah,” Christian said. “Too many for it not to be true. You must have a record of employees, of who has joined and who has left?”
“That’s Margot’s department now. She works with Mrs Cradley on the background stuff.”
“And you trust her?” Christian asked.
His dad pressed the buzzer and shouldered through the door into the store.
Christian hefted up the oxygen tank, following him out.
His dad was breathing hard, and Christian was worried that he might be overdoing it.
But it turned out he wasn’t going far. He stopped at the edge of the children’s department, close enough to see Santa passing a gift to a young boy.
Overhead, ‘All I Want For Christmas’ was playing.
“You recognise him?” his dad asked.
“Santa?” said Christian. “I think so. I couldn’t be sure. Is it really the same guy?”
“Of course.” There was almost a smile on his dad’s face. “I remember putting you on his knee when you were ten months old, holding you there while he asked you what you wanted for Christmas. You know what you did?”
Christian shook his head. It was so unlike his dad to reminisce like this that the question took him by surprise.
“You threw up all over his trousers,” he said, coughing out a rumbling laugh.
“We had to rush him into the bathroom to clean it off. Luckily the store wasn’t open yet, we were just setting up.
We had time to dry clean them. But for the rest of that rehearsal, Santa gave out gifts in his jockey shorts. ”
Christian laughed. “Who is he?”
His dad turned to him, blinking his watery eyes.
“What sort of dumb question is that?” he said after a moment. “He’s Santa.”
His dad sucked in a breath through his oxygen mask. His eyes were dull and heavy again, his mouth downturned and serious.
“I trust Margot,” he said, wiping his lips on the back of his hand. “She’s ruthless, and she wants the top job, but I trust her.”
Christian still had his doubts, but he kept them locked behind his lips. He’d been away for so long that he really didn’t know Margot anymore — or his father, for that matter.
“You know, this store is all I have,” his dad said. “After your mum died, after you left. It’s all I have, and all I ever had.”
Groups of people passed by, most of them completely oblivious to the fact that they were looking at the last two members of the Carroll family.
“I’m not going to live for ever,” the old man went on.
“And when I do go, this is what I leave the world. My father trusted me to run this place, and I have. It’s bigger now than ever.
I thought I could trust you to run it too, after I go.
You were so happy here when you were a kid.
This place was your world. I thought you would trust it to your own children one day too, and they to theirs. ”
“Dad . . .” Christian said.
“It needs a Carroll!” his dad shouted, coughing hard. “And unluckily for me, I’ve only got one. But one is all it takes. Is it really too much to ask? Is this life really so awful?”
“I said I’d stay,” Christian said, feeling the same spark of anger he always felt when he was talking to his dad. “Until the ship has righted itself. I said I’d stay until then.”
“And then what? Back to the Philippines? To mud huts and sewers?”
His dad broke into coughs again, putting a hand on a shelf to steady himself. People were starting to pay attention to him now, and he smiled at a group of older ladies, keeping his voice low.
Then, for a beat, Christian’s mind betrayed him.
He saw Merry’s smile and felt the way his body had lit up when she smiled at him.
He could still remember the soft scent of her, the way her breath had hitched when she leaned in.
He imagined kissing her, imagined what it would be like to sink into her, to forget everything else for one stolen moment.
And that was the problem. Because for a second he let himself wonder if there might actually be something here worth staying for.
The thought hit him like a punch to the chest.
No. Absolutely not.
He had to get out of here. Before he did something stupid and let a pretty girl and a pile of unresolved guilt convince him that he could make peace with this life. Because he couldn’t. He knew what this place did to people. What it had done to him.
He turned on his heel before his father could respond, needing space to breathe, needing to remember that just because something felt good didn’t mean it was right. Because the truth was, if he didn’t leave soon, he might not leave at all.