‘But I’m not an automaton. I’m human and I have a life, and just for a short while I had responsibilities that meant I couldn’t be the employee you – or I – would have liked. I came here today to ask for my job back – actually, to beg for my job back, as I still have responsibilities and I want a job. I need a job. But I just realized I don’t want this one. I’d rather work for free than spend another day in this miserable, soul-destroying pan-pipe-chuffing bar. I would rather clean toilets for free than work one more day for you.
‘So thank you, Richard. You’ve actually prompted my first positive decision in as long as I can remember.’ I rammed my purse into my bag, pushed the wig towards him, and made to leave. ‘You can stick your job in the same place you can stick those peanuts.’ I turned back. ‘Oh, and that thing you do with your hair? All that gel stuff and the perfectly even top thing? Awful. It makes you look like Action Man.’
The businessman sat up on his bar stool and gave a little round of applause. Richard’s hand went involuntarily to his head.
I glanced at the businessman, then back at Richard. ‘Actually, forget the last bit. That was mean.’
And I left.
I was striding across the concourse, my heart still thumping, when I heard him. ‘Louisa! Louisa!’
Richard was half walking, half running behind me. I considered ignoring him, but finally came to a halt by the perfume concession. ‘What?’ I said. ‘Did I miss a peanut crumb?’
He stopped, puffing slightly. He studied the shop window for a few seconds, as if he was thinking. Then he faced me. ‘You’re right. Okay? You’re right.’
I stared at him.
‘The Shamrock and Clover. It’s a horrible place. And I know I’ve not been the greatest to work for. But all I can tell you is that, for every miserable directive I give you, my nuts are being squeezed ten times harder by Head Office. My wife hates me because I’m never home. The suppliers hate me because I have to cut their margins every single week because of pressure from shareholders. My regional manager says I’m underperforming on units shifted and if I don’t pull it out of the bag I’m going to get sent to the North Wales Passenger Ferry branch. At which point my wife will actually leave me. And I won’t blame her.
‘I hate managing people. I have the social skills of a lamppost, which is why I can’t hang on to anyone. Vera only stays because she has the skin of a rhino and I suspect she’s secretly after my job. So there – I’m sorry. I’d actually quite like to give you your job back because, whatever I said earlier, you were pretty good. Customers liked you.’
He sighed, and looked out over the milling crowds around us. ‘But you know what, Louisa? You should get out while you can. You’re pretty, you’re smart, hardworking – you could get something way better than this. If I wasn’t locked into a mortgage that I can barely afford, a baby on the way and payments to make on a fricking Honda Civic that makes me feel about 120 years old, believe me, I’d be taking off out of here faster than one of those planes.’ He held out a hand with a payslip. ‘Your holiday pay. Now go. Seriously, Louisa. Get out.’
I looked down at the little brown envelope in my hand. Around us the passengers moved at a crawl, pausing at outlet windows, checking for vanished passports, oblivious to what was going on in their midst. And I knew, with a weary inevitability, what was going to happen.
‘Richard? Thanks for that, but … could I still have the job? Even if it’s just for a bit? I do actually really need it.’
Richard looked as if he couldn’t believe what I was saying. Then he let out a sigh. ‘If you could do a couple of months it would be a massive relief. I’m right up the proverbial creek here. In fact, if you could start now I could make it over to the wholesalers to pick up the new beer mats.’
We swapped places; a little waltz of mutual disappointment.
‘I’ll call home,’ I said.
‘Oh. Here,’ he said. We gazed at each other a moment longer, and then he handed me the plastic bag containing my uniform. ‘I guess you’ll be needing this.’
Richard and I settled into a routine of sorts. He treated me with a little more consideration, only asking me to do the Gents on the days when Noah, the new cleaner, failed to turn up, not commenting if he thought I was spending too long talking to customers (even if he did look a bit pained). In turn I was cheerful and punctual and careful to upsell when I could. I felt an odd responsibility towards his nuts.
One day he took me to one side and said that, while it was possibly a little premature, Head Office had told him they were looking to elevate one of the permanent staff to an assistant managerial position and if things carried on as they were he felt very much inclined to put my name forward. (‘I can’t risk promoting Vera. She’d put floor cleaner in my tea to get my job.’) I thanked him and tried to look more delighted than I felt.
Lily, meanwhile, asked Samir for a job, and he said he would take her for a half-day’s trial if she would do it for free. I handed her a coffee at seven thirty, and made sure she left the flat dressed and ready in time for her eight o’clock start. When I returned home that evening, she had apparently got the job, albeit on £2.73 an hour, which I discovered was the lowest rate he could legally pay her. She had spent most of the day moving crates in the back storeroom and putting prices on tins with an ancient sticker gun, while Samir and his cousin watched football on his iPad. She was filthy and exhausted, but curiously happy. ‘If I last a month he says he’ll consider putting me on the till.’
I had a shift change, so on Thursday afternoon we drove to Lily’s parents’ house in St John’s Wood, and I waited in the car while Lily went in and collected some more clothes and the Kandinsky print that she had promised would look good in my flat. She emerged twenty minutes later, her face furious and closed. Tanya walked out into the porch, her arms folded, watching silently as Lily opened the boot and threw in an overstuffed holdall and, more carefully, the print. Then she climbed into the front seat and gazed straight ahead at the empty road. As Tanya closed the door behind her, there was a small possibility that she was wiping her eyes.
I put my key into the ignition.
‘When I grow up,’ Lily said, and perhaps only I could have detected the faint tremor in her voice, ‘I am not going to be anything like my mother.’