The Overnight (4 page)

How late is it now? Twelve minutes later than last time Nigel looked: close enough to five o'clock that he should turn off the alarm in case it wakens Laura. Reaching for the clock feels like plunging his bare arm into water that has had all night to gather ice. As soon as he has found the switch with a fingernail he shelters in the tropics of the quilt, but he mustn't risk going back to sleep. He inches across the warm mattress and settles a light but lingering kiss on Laura's shoulder blade, which is as naked as the rest of her. He's easing himself away when she mumbles a sleepy protest that isn't exactly "Night" or "No" either and reaches back to take hold of his stub.

Her hand feels like all the soft heat of the bed turned into flesh. At once he's much less stubby and yearning to kiss her awake as slowly as he can bear. What with his shifts at Texts and hers at the hospital, where he sometimes thinks she's too ready to accommodate colleagues with young children, he and Laura have had few occasions recently when neither of them is too tired. But she needs her sleep, and if he succumbs now he'll end up late. He can't have the staff on his shift waiting to be let into the shop. He prises Laura's fingers gently off himself and lifts them up to kiss them before he slips from under the quilt and pads out of the room.

Even the carpet is cold as snow. No wonder his stub tries to hide like a snail. He rushes downstairs as fast as he quietly can and through the mahogany kitchen to rouse the central heating. By the time he has used the toilet and shower beyond the kitchen and donned the clothes he took downstairs last night, the chill has been driven out of the building. He tiptoes upstairs to leave a morning kiss on Laura's forehead. "Dry carely," she mumbles. "See you night." Once she's asleep again he lets himself mousily out of the house.

A milk float is humming its fitful crescendo through the village as he hooks the gates at the end of the drive open and unlocks the double garage. While West Derby has been a Liverpool suburb for most of a century, it's quiet enough to be a village still. He backs his Primera out past Laura's Micra and closes the garage and the gates. Three minutes within the speed limit bring Nigel to the dual carriageway of Queen's Drive, and he's at the motorway in less than ten.

For most of half an hour his smoky cones are the only headlights. Signs like promises of blue sky—St Helens, Newton-le-Willows, Warrington—swell up and then expose their spotlit backsides in the mirror. The sign for Fenny Meadows seems paler than its relatives; in the distance it looks white with mould. It recovers its colour as the fog drains down the slip road, to stand more of its ground in the retail park.

Fog flaps around the spotlight above an X like an illiterate giant's signature on the rear wall of the bookshop. As he leaves the car a patch of moisture wells up beneath it and subsides, but it's a befogged shadow. He hurries along the alley the colour of fog and past the window, into which an assortment of books have escaped from the vacant aisles. Typing most of Woody's surname on the keypad releases the glass doors, and his first two letters reduced to numbers quell the alarm.

As soon as Nigel is locked in he begins to shiver. The heating won't have been on long, and some fog may have crept in while the doors were open: he can't be sure if the children's alcoves across the shop are faintly blurred. He hesitates by the counter but can find no excuse to stay there. It's absurd of him to behave like this when every day that Laura is in Accident and Emergency she deals with human damage most people wouldn't want even to imagine. Perhaps it's best that he and Laura have no children if this is the kind of example he would set them—a father afraid of the dark. A surge of anger sends him to clap his badge to the plaque by the door up to the staffroom.

The walls of the passage are blanker than fog, but he has never been claustrophobic. He switches on the light as the door hauls itself shut, then he sprints up the bare concrete stairs. Beyond the door past the toilets and the name-tagged staff lockers is a light that he's especially anxious should be working. It is, and for a troubled moment he thinks he isn't alone in the building, but of course Wilf neglected to clock off—he'll need to give Ray a shift error slip. Nigel slides his own card along the groove and drops it in the In rack above Wilf's, and then he confronts the staffroom.

What could make anyone nervous? Not the walls the colour of pale moss, the straight chairs standing at attention round the table except for one resting its forehead against the edge, the cork wallboard with several Woody's Wheedles sheets pinned to it, the sink full of unwashed plates and mugs and cutlery that must be collaborating on a faint moist stale smell … But this isn't the room where Nigel spends much of his time and feels least at ease. He strides to throw open the door to the office.

The light in there is reliable too. Three computers attended by swivel chairs and wire trays bristling with papers keep one another company on a bench that sprouts from three sides of the room. A pair of magnetic butterflies have settled on Connie's monitor, Ray's sports a Manchester United badge, and Nigel thinks yet again that he ought to find an emblem to decorate his: it might make him feel more at home. Why should he need to force that? He must have been in windowless places before, but he has never been afraid of the dark—afraid that the lights will fail, trapping him in blackness as profound as the depths of the earth. There wouldn't even be a glow from Woody's office beyond the benchless wall. All this is nonsense, and here's his chance to prove it to himself while nobody's about. Good God, he's supposed to be a manager. He steps into the office and shuts the door behind him, then he slaps the light switch with a vigour that sends him into the instant enveloping dark.

He can't have taken many inadvertent paces when he stumbles to a halt. He meant to take them, he tells himself. He meant to surround himself with more of the darkness, to prove that no amount of it was the slightest threat to him, however much it feels as if he has been dragged underground. It has done its worst, which is nothing at all, and there's the doorbell ringing at the front of the shop. The muffled distant sound could be signalling his victory or, if he's honest about it, his release. He turns towards the staffroom, but he might as well have no eyes. There's no hint of the outline of the door.

Has the light beyond it fused, or is he wrong to think he's facing it? He can't see it anywhere around him, but he mustn't panic; he only has to advance until he encounters a wall. He takes a hesitant step and stretches out his hands. They've hardly moved when the left one touches the spongy forehead of whatever's crouched in front of him.

Nigel lets out a gasping cry that leaves him no breath. As he staggers backwards he hears the object scuttle into the dark. It thumps the bench, rattling the computers, by which time he has realised what it was: a chair on wheels. Of course the noise that slithers softly along a wall is nothing but an echo. He's farther from the door than he could have believed, but at least he's able to locate it now, by the sound of the faraway doorbell somebody's leaning on. He blunders in that direction and almost collides with the door, except for detecting the faintest hint of illumination around it. He gropes for the doorknob, which feels grubby and not too dry, no doubt from his sweaty hand. He flings the door wide and runs, not flees, downstairs.

As Nigel crosses the sales floor Gavin takes his finger off the bellpush. He continues to jig on the spot outside the glass doors while beside him Angus stops rubbing his hands together, apparently in case this looks like impatience. Both of their faces are wreathed in breath. Nigel has scarcely unlocked the doors when Gavin skips onto the READ ON! mat. "You look lively," Nigel says.

"Buzzin', all righty, that's me." Gavin jerks his eyebrows high as if to underline a quip Nigel doesn't understand, or in an attempt to hoist his heavy lids, or a tic that stretches the skin tighter on his pointed face. "How about you, Anyus?" he says, spinning around. "Sleep all night?"

Angus falters between the security pillars in front of the muddy slogan and rubs a handful of his long mottled face so hard he might be trying to erase the last of this year's tan. "He's pronouncing me like Anyes," he explains as if he's not sure how amused he's entitled to be.

"We did know that, Anyus."

Behind them a Passat driven by Jake's boyfriend cruises to a halt, and Jake gives him a quick kiss before climbing out. "I'll cope with the mob while you all clock on," Nigel says and glances at the rota on the counter. "You're tilling for the first hour, Angus. Jake and Gavin, you're shelving."

Of course there's no mob. Nobody has ever needed to unlock the doors to anyone but staff. Newspapers and magazines might bring customers earlier, but Frugo stocks those and commands the entrance to the retail park. Nigel collects yesterday's customer order forms from the shelf beneath the Information terminal, then occupies himself by lining up books in Animals to the regulation half-inch from the edge of the shelf. Once Angus reappears, Nigel heads for the route to the stockroom.

The lift is demonstrating how well it can pronounce two of its three words. As Nigel climbs the stairs a muffled clatter of books on trolleys sinks past him. The Returns and Damaged racks need to be cleared, but first the customers' orders have to be sent. He sends himself across the staffroom, where the faint irritatingly vague smell is dissipating, and switches on the office tight. He's about to sit at his computer when he notices Woody's door is ajar.

That's hardly remarkable. Woody tends to leave it open when he's in his office. As Nigel pushes it wider, the baseball pennant above the desk flexes itself wormlike in the dimness and sags flat on the wall. Two of the quadrants of the security monitor up in the far corner display movements too: Gavin's on his knees in Music, and a figure is squatting in Toddlers' Texts. At least they have a customer, then, though the figure's head and indeed its whole greyish shape are too blurred for Nigel to distinguish any details. He closes the door and goes to work at the computer.

He e-mails most of the orders to the American warehouse or the British equivalent in Plymouth, though the publishers of a poetry collection are so diminutive he has to search for the address and send a direct request. He's close to finishing his task when Gavin's voice appears above him. "Nigel call twelve, please. Nigel buzz a dozen."

He grabs the phone to head off any further jesting. "Yes, Gavin."

"There's a customer wanting to know if you've got his order."

"Can you give me the details?"

"It's about round here."

"And his name is …"

"Sole. What's your first name?" A pause sounds smothered by a hand. "It's Robert," says Gavin, and not quite evenly "Mr R. Sole."

Is this a prank? When Nigel glances at Woody's monitor he sees a man in front of Gavin at the counter. His grey hair could be a tail his fur collar is dangling. Nigel opens the computer list of customers who've ordered books. Riddle, Samson, Sprigg, but not a solitary Sole or anything it could have been mistaken for. "Could you just confirm the name?" Nigel at once feels unwary for asking.

"He's wondering about your name." Another pause interferes with Nigel's breath before Gavin reports "It's like I said."

"I'm coming down," Nigel says to forestall any repetition of it, and heads fast for the stairs.

He's nearly at the Information terminal when the customer swings round with a swirl of his ponytail and a smell of old astrakhan. His lower lip helps the upper rise into a smile as he fingers the thumb-hole in his chin and then extends a hand as pudgy as his wrinkled piebald face. "Bob Sole."

"Pleasure. Nigel," Nigel offers, and hastily "I'll see to Mr Sole, Gavin. Would you happen to know when you ordered the book, Mr Sole?"

"The day you opened. I was nearly the first through the door."

"Glad you keep coming back."

"It's about time there was a bit of intelligence round here."

Nigel isn't sure if this refers to Texts or the customer, and restrains himself to asking "Would you know the author?"

"I've got his name if that's what you're after. Bottomley's the feller. Don't ask me the book."

Nigel types the surname in the Search box of the online catalogue. Soon a multiplication of the name rises up, bringing titles with it:
In the Dells of Delamere, Stories of a Stockport Stockbroker, Manchester Murders and Mayhem, Poems on the Peaks, Commons and Canals of Cheshire...
"Could that be it?" Nigel suggests, pivoting the screen towards the customer.

"You'd wonder what'd drive that out of your thick skull, wouldn't you?" Mr Sole enquires, presumably about himself. "Can you give it another go?"

"I will the moment I'm back at my desk. I'm sorry your order slipped through the system somehow."

"I'm not blaming any of your crew."

All the same, once he has dictated an address in Lately Common and Nigel has printed out the slip, Mr Sole scrutinises his copy before folding it pocket-sized. He's the only customer now—indeed, Nigel didn't notice when Toddlers turned deserted; there wasn't anybody there when he came downstairs. He shows the wall his badge and hurries back to his computer.

It's displaying a screensaver that he hasn't seen before. Presumably the image of several figures performing a dance or some other repetitive business hasn't fully loaded: it's too greyish and muddily blurred. He touches a key to get rid of the spectacle and search for Mancunian Press. He emails an order for Bottomley's book and glances at the security monitor in case Mr Sole is waiting to be told his order is in order, but the public is represented only by two bald men in armchairs. Each is staring at the nearest shelf as though the spines of books are quite enough to read, until one raises his face like an aquatic creature mouthing the surface of a pond.

It's time for Nigel's secret indulgence. He wonders sometimes whether everybody has one so silly they would be mortified if it were ever discovered. His is acting like a vandal towards already damaged or imperfect books; perhaps he needs the break from playing manager. Racks stir with a furtive jangle as he hurries through the stockroom to find a trolley, onto which he lobs half a dozen faulty video cassettes and more than twice as many books. He wheels them to his section of the office bench and sets about examining his take.