In Real Life (18 page)

I turn right and start walking in the direction of Piccadilly, extremely, painfully aware that Dalisay's turned the same way too.

Shit.

She's walking just a few steps behind me.

I try to focus on rolling my cigarette, but my fingers feel numb and wonky like they're made out of sausages.

I slow myself down, so we're almost level.

The wind keeps blowing my tobacco away.

I'm trying desperately to think of something interesting to say.

When I finally finish rolling my cigarette, I look up and there she is in the left-hand corner of my eye, just a quarter step behind me.

I stick the roll-up in my mouth and light it.

‘You shouldn't smoke,' she says. ‘It's a bad habit.'

I turn to look at her and she's smiling.

‘Sorry,' I say.

I slow myself down a little more and now we're walking side by side. I attempt to blow my smoke away
from her face but the wind catches it and blows most of it straight back at us.

‘Sorry,' I say again.

‘Why are you apologising?'

‘I don't know.'

She's still smiling.

I try to smile back and my face feels like a Microsoft Paint drawing of a smiling face. We walk along Deansgate, past Richer Sounds and the Church of Scientology and a large shop that just sells bathtubs. I allow myself to stop smiling.

‘I'm giving up soon anyway,' I say. ‘For my birthday.'

‘When's your birthday?'

‘This coming Friday.'

‘Cool.'

‘I don't suppose . . .' I say.

‘What?'

This is it.

I am
grabbing happiness by both horns
.

‘Well, I was just wondering . . .'

‘Yes?'

I'm about to just blurt it out when a beeping sound makes us both jump. I spin round and there's Martin's Audi, pulling up to the kerb. Fuck's sake. Not now. The tinted window slides down as we both approach.

‘Alright, mate?' Martin says. ‘Want a lift?'

Dalisay hangs back, confused.

‘I'm fine thanks,' I say.

‘Fair play,' he says. And then, really, really obviously, he winks at me.

He pulls away from the kerb so fast his back tyres squeal, lurching off into the Deansgate traffic.

‘Martin goes out with my sister,' I say.

‘Oh, okay, right,' says Dalisay.

A long pause.

‘He's awful, isn't he?'

‘Yeah.' Dalisay smiles with relief. ‘He is.'

‘Anyway . . .'

We've stopped walking now. We're just standing by the kerb, looking at our trainers. They're both Converse, I realise, except mine are black low tops while Dalisay's are red high tops. Fuck it. I'm just going to say it.

‘I was just wondering if you fancied having a drink with me on my birthday, maybe? I've only just moved here, you see. To this city. And I don't have that many friends yet, and I was going to hang out with my sister but now she's going away. For the weekend. With Martin. So, um, yeah.'

Did I really just say that?

‘Oh shit, I can't,' she says. ‘I'm helping my aunt all weekend. I've already booked the Friday off.'

‘Right.'

I drop my fag on the pavement and grind it out, feeling a little kite of hope come crashing down inside me.

‘But what are you doing right now?' she says.

PAUL

2014

‘
W
hat did you think?' Alison asks.

She's done her room up like a French restaurant, covering a borrowed collapsible card table with a chequered red-and-white table cloth and sticking a candle in an empty wine bottle and streaming a compilation album called
Café Parisien
on her free Spotify account. Every fifteen minutes or so, the jaunty accordion music gets interrupted by adverts for car insurance and macho outdoor assault course training.

Paul takes a big swig of red wine, swivels a little in the office chair she's borrowed from one of her house-mates, and looks down at his empty plate. She made them pasta. Just penne pasta, with what Paul suspects was a jar of Dolmio stirred in.

‘It was nice, yeah,' he says, unable to summon any kind of enthusiasm.

He feels deeply embarrassed by this whole evening.

I'm thirty-one and a half, he thinks. What the fuck am I doing here?

He watches her face fall.

‘No, really,' he says. ‘It was nice.'

Alison stands and starts collecting up their plates.

‘You can say it was shit if it was shit,' she says.

‘It was nice,' Paul says.

‘It was shit,' Alison says.

‘I think I'd better go.'

‘But what about the film?'

The film is
Breathless
. That was the whole point of French Restaurant Night. Also, earlier on, Alison said, ‘Wouldn't it be great if we were in, you know,
actual
Paris?' and fluttered her eyelashes at him cartoonishly, her face flickering in the candlelight, and Paul knew just what she was hinting at.

‘Yep,' he'd said noncommittally.

‘We should go, lol,' she'd said, trying to pitch it as a joke, a throwaway comment. But Paul could tell how much she really wanted it. She'd been moaning recently about the frustration of only ever being able to see him in her room.

‘No, I think I'd better go,' Paul says firmly.

Without warning, Alison drops their empty plates on the floor. One of them smashes and both sets of cutlery go pinging off into the bedroom.

‘Just fucking go then,' she snaps.

Paul stays in the swivel chair, paralysed with shock.

He reaches for his wine glass and gulps down the rest, his hand trembling.

‘GO,' she screams, and he jumps in his seat, then stands.

She pads over to her bed and sits on the edge of it, her head in her hands.

‘I was going to say this later on, anyway,' he says quietly. ‘I don't think we should see each other any more.'

‘No shit,' she mumbles.

Paul quickly gathers his coat and his phone and leaves the bedroom. As he's going down the stairs, he doesn't notice the scuffed bedroom door on the floor below, standing open. It's only as he's almost past it that he realises. There in the doorway is Rachel Steed, staring at him, eyes burning.

‘Hello Rachel,' Paul says, not quite able to meet her gaze.

She doesn't speak.

Just stares at him, her mouth pursed, her eyes narrowed, her hair all ratty and unwashed. She's wearing her Rip Curl hoodie and a pair of faded pink pyjama trousers, and she's holding an empty white bowl with a fork in it.

Paul feels her eyes boring into his back as he races down the second set of stairs, along the hallway, then slams the front door behind him.

LAUREN

2014

‘
H
ow was that?' I asked when I got back.

‘Pretty good,' said Peter, but he sounded unconvinced. ‘We almost sold a pair of jeans, actually. This lady came in and tried them on in the changing room but then she decided she didn't want them in the end.'

‘She wasn't wearing a red baseball cap, was she?' I asked, thinking: please, not Piss Lady.

‘She was actually, yeah. How come?'

I went over to the cubicle in the corner, pulled back the curtain and the sharp, sour smell hit me in a wave. Sure enough, there was a pile of soiled clothes – knickers and jeans – tangled on the floor, kicked beneath a chair.

‘Did I do something wrong?' Peter asked as I hurried off to the back room for a plastic bag.

Nancy was in there, eating her sandwiches and sipping her Cup a Soup, playing some sort of colourful, Tetris-like jewel game on the computer.

‘
Lau
-ren?' she asked. ‘Can I—'

‘Not now,' I snapped.

I could feel it again: that buzzing, waspy frustration rising up inside me.

I went back through to the changing cubicle with an inside-out carrier bag and picked up the jeans and knickers using the bag as a glove. I felt warmth through the thin plastic and gagged a little.

‘Oh,' Peter said, when he saw me come out and the smell finally hit him. ‘Oh god, I'm really sorry. I didn't realise. Or I would've . . .'

‘It's fine,' I said, hearing myself snap at him, too.

‘Are you sure? Cause you look a bit . . .'

‘What?' I shouted. ‘I look a bit
what
?'

Nancy had come out from the back room and they both watched me as I burst into tears.

‘Right,' said Peter, taking charge. ‘Right, come with me.' And he guided me, gently, one hand on my shoulder, into the back room where he cleared a space among the piles of donations and dragged up a chair. I'd stopped crying by then, and I felt embarrassed and sheepish as I sat down, letting him rush round, asking Nancy where the kettle and the teabags
were, then coming back and asking if I'd like a hot drink.

‘Cheers, yeah,' I said. ‘One of my teas, please. The herbal ones near the kettle.'

But Peter remained where he was, awkwardly shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

‘Is there anything, um, you want to talk about?' he asked shyly.

‘Not really,' I said. ‘Thanks though.'

The kettle had begun boiling; it rattled and whistled like a tiny, nightmare steam train.

You get paid to work here, don't you?
Jamaal's voice echoed in my head.

Just after three, Nancy's husband, Bob, came to collect her. He was like a male version of Nancy – shy, small, childlike, early sixties – and he always wore the same pair of gigantic white trainers and the same light grey, perma-creased trousers. If I understood it correctly, they'd met online, through some kind of dating service for people with special needs, and they seemed really, really happy together. He was the one who made Nancy's sandwiches and filled her thermos with Cup a Soup in the mornings.

‘Alright Bob,' I said.

‘Afternoon, Lozza,' he said, leaning against the counter while Nancy fetched her coat. ‘Busy day?'

‘As always.'

According to the journal roll, we'd made a grand
total of £16.47 so far. (According to the last managers' meeting, we should be bringing in at least ten times that.)

‘All ready for Christmas?' he said, looking around the undecorated shop and then winking at me.

I smiled and nodded.

‘You can go, too, if you like?' I said to Peter once Bob and Nancy had left.

‘Think I'll stick around to the end,' he said. ‘If that's alright?'

‘Thanks,' I said. ‘Weird first day, I imagine. Hope it hasn't put you off.'

‘Nope,' he smiled.

I could tell that he still felt a bit awkward about before, about me crying. I was embarrassed, too. I wanted to change the subject.

‘So, uni next year then?' I said.