In Real Life (17 page)

LAUREN

2014

I
'd just finished showing Peter how to use the till – he picked it up straight away, he'd done shop work before – and I was about to sort through the remaining tower of donations with Nancy, when Alyssa appeared in the doorway.

‘Surprise,' she said, stepping into the shop, shaking a Sainsbury's bag at me.

‘What's that supposed to be?' I said.

‘Lunch.'

‘I don't think I can leave the shop today.'

‘Come on. It's your
birth
day.'

I looked back at Peter, who grinned and raised his eyebrows. I went back over.

‘Right,' I said, keeping my voice down so Nancy didn't
hear, ‘now I know this is throwing you in at the deep end, but think you could handle things here for a bit on your own, just for half an hour?'

‘Well, there's Nancy too,' he said. ‘She can help me out if I get stuck, right?'

‘Yep,' I whispered. ‘But if she asks where I've gone, just say I've popped next door.'

‘I'll be fine,' he said.

‘Thanks,' I said, touching him on the arm, which struck me as weird, even as I did it. (I've never been much of a ‘physical contact' person.)

‘Happy birthday!' he called as we left.

It'd stopped raining, just about, so we sat on a bench in the square, a little way down the road from the shop. Alyssa took her jacket off and laid it over the damp slats of the bench, hamming it up, playing the role of a Disney prince.

‘Why, thank you, kind sir,' I said, trying to join in, but my heart wasn't really in it.

Once we'd sat down, she talked me through the contents of the Sainsbury's bag: ‘just cheese' sandwiches, BBQ Transformer Snacks, Mr Men cupcakes, and a large bottle of Appletiser, which she cracked the top off and swigged from before handing to me.

‘Aren't I a bit old for this now?' I said gently.

‘That's the point,' she said, blowing a stray bit of hair from her forehead. ‘That's the joke.'

‘Right.'

I tried my best to smile.

‘So? Go on, Birthday Girl. What happened?'

‘What happened when?'

‘What happened last night?'

‘Oh shit. I don't know. Nothing happened. I cancelled on him. Said I wasn't feeling well.'

‘He sounded nice.'

‘I'm fine on my own,' I said. ‘You really need to stop thinking that being single is some kind of problem or disability. Because it isn't.
Okay
?'

I could feel that wasp's nest buzzing inside me again and I had to stop and take a deep breath. I didn't even really know what I was getting so angry about, really. Alyssa was just trying to help.

‘Right,' she said, only half listening, peeling the pink circle of icing off the top of her cupcake with her teeth, half a cheese sandwich still in her other hand. ‘Well, there's this bloke at work called Gary who I think
might
be single, if you wanted me to find out and put a word in with him?'

‘Fucking hell!' I said, standing, my sandwich falling off my lap. The pigeons went for it immediately, swooping down, making the whole scene about ten times more dramatic than it should've been.

‘What?' Alyssa cried. ‘
What?!
'

I took another deep breath and sat back down.

‘I'm fine,' I said.

‘You're thirty-one.'

‘So?'

Alyssa was four years younger than me. She'd been married since her early twenties, to Dave, a boy she'd
known since A-Level college. She'd never been outside this town, except on holidays and training courses. Which was
absolutely fine
, I reminded myself. But it also seemed to lead her to different conclusions about things.

Be nice
, a voice said inside me.
She's your only friend here and she's just trying to cheer you up, because, admit it, you've been acting pretty down lately
.

‘Thirty-one's fine,' I said, in a purposefully lighter tone, trying to snap myself out of it. ‘Thirty-one's the new, um, twenty-eight. Please stop trying to make it into something it's not.'

‘That spotty lad at the till looked alright,' she said, grinning.

‘He's eighteen,' I said, unable to stop myself from smiling too.

‘Hot MILF action.'

‘Right, now can we please stop being such fucking clichés,' I said, forcing the grin off my face, ‘and just talk about anything other than
men
for once?'

‘Like what?'

‘I don't know. Like how the planet is probably going to become uninhabitable in our lifetime and there's probably no point in procreating anyway.'

‘Cheerful.'

‘It's true.'

I wasn't sure if it
was
true or not; it was just a thing I'd skim read on my phone the other evening between TV programmes, some elderly academic likening our attempts at recycling and emissions management to ‘rearranging deckchairs on the
Titanic
'.

As the pigeons pecked away at the rest of my sandwich, I imagined an end-of-the-world scenario: global warming had caused the earth to reach unbearable levels of heat and everyone knew that soon they'd all be cinders.

I imagined myself going to the phone, trying desperately to call you, and realising I didn't know your number.

‘Give me that Appletiser,' I said.

Alyssa passed me the bottle and I took a big swig.

IAN

2014

M
artin appears in the doorway and claps his hands. ‘Great job this morning everyone. Only a few hundred surveys left before we've hit our target. So let's really smash it the rest of this week, yeah, and as soon as we get it finished, I'll order us in some pizzas. How does that sound?'

Everyone makes an
ooh
noise.

On my way out the door, he puts a hand on my shoulder.

‘Quick word, mate?'

I follow him down the corridor and into his office, which smells suspiciously like McDonald's.

‘Have a seat,' he says, sliding himself into his big leather chair. ‘I've been having a listen through to a few
of your calls from the other day. And I don't think you're performing at your maximum potential to be honest, mate.'

‘Oh,' I say.

‘Now don't be alarmed. I'm not going to fire you. But I just feel like you're just not really putting your heart and soul into this. You sound like you're just reading out the words from the script if I'm honest. And we both know you can do better than that, yeah?'

‘Yep.'

‘It's not rocket science.'

‘No, it's not.'

‘Look at Danny.'

‘Which one's Danny?'

‘Danny,' Martin says, touching the place on his earlobe where a sparkly earring would go. ‘Danny.'

‘Right,' I say. ‘Danny.'

‘He only started a couple of weeks before you did and he's consistently coming up in the top three in the weekly chart.'

I didn't know there was a weekly chart.

‘Whereas you . . .' Martin says, opening a spread sheet on his computer, then swivelling the monitor to face me, ‘you're right down here near the bottom.'

He points to my name on the screen. It's second from the bottom. Below me is someone called Andrew Smith.

‘Which one's Andrew?' I say.

‘Andrew's been off since before you started with spinal problems. Anyways, all I'm saying, mate, is that this afternoon I really want you to step it up a gear, yeah?'

‘Alright,' I say, lifting myself out of my chair. ‘Cheers.'

I wonder what he'll do exactly if I don't step it up a gear.

I wander back down the corridor.

I stick my head in the break room.

Today there are eight or nine people in there, including Sue and Danny and Tall Boy and Dean. They're all eating Tesco sandwiches and silently doing things on their phones. I carry on down the steps towards the exit, rolling a roll-up as I go.

Four days left until I give up.

Four days until my thirty-first birthday.

For once it's not raining, so I decide to go for a walk.

I head down Deansgate in the opposite direction to the Tesco Express, and on a whim I turn into a side road near the fancy, white-brick solicitor's offices. At the end of the street there's a small park that I've never seen before: a rectangular patch of bright green, just-mowed grass with a few metal benches dotted round the edges. It's the kind of place you might take someone for a picnic. It's almost empty, just one woman sitting on her own, eating her lunch.

I can't remember the last time I went for a picnic with anyone.

I'm reaching for the gate, my hand's just about to touch it, when I see a dash of pink beneath the woman's coat and realise that of course it's Dalisay, sat there eating her sandwiches. My hand falters and stops in mid air then slips back into my jacket pocket.

I never know what to do in situations like this.

Do I sit on a different bench?

Or do I go over and say hello?

Or do I perhaps turn round and head back to work as quickly as I can, hoping she didn't see me?

I feel extremely pathetic, the whole rest of the afternoon. Each time I hear her voice from behind the partition wall, I cringe. I bet Danny wouldn't have run away from a girl on a bench. According to
Ways to Happiness
, ‘to fully achieve happiness you must first be prepared to grab it by both horns'.

I'm such a coward.

I should've gone up and said hello.

In between calls, I lose six games of solitaire in a row.

Before you leave each day, you have to fill in a sheet, saying exactly how many minutes you've worked and exactly how much in pounds and pence you believe you've earned, then add that figure to your running total for the week. It's beginning to look like a massive amount (even though I know in reality it's only slightly above minimum wage).

Only a few days left until payday.

I've had to borrow twenty quid off Carol, to see me through the week.

I sign my name in the correct box and file my sheet in the box file by the door, and as I'm heading down the main set of stairs, I realise that I'm right behind Dalisay. She's only two or three metres in front of me.
She pushes open the main door at the bottom, then stops and holds it open for me, too.

‘Thanks,' I mumble.

I stick my hands deep in my coat pockets and fumble around amongst the bits of fluff and the stray filter tips for my almost-empty pouch of tobacco and papers. We step out onto the street. It's already gone dark and the wind is making a whistling, howling sound, like a dog trying to join in when someone plays the piano.