After You (26 page)

Your father weighed 9lb 2oz. I was absolutely furious with him for being so big, as I’d been told I’d have a nice small one! He was a very cross baby and kept me running ragged for months. But when he smiled … Oh! Old ladies would cross the road to tickle his cheeks (he hated this, of course).

I sat down beside her. Lily flicked forward two pages and there was Will, in a royal blue prep-school uniform and cap, scowling at the camera. The note underneath read:

Will hated that school cap so much that he hid it in the dog’s basket. The second one he ‘lost’ in a pond. The third time his father
threatened to stop his pocket money, but he simply traded football cards until he’d made it back. Even the school couldn’t make him wear it – I think he had a weekly detention until he was thirteen.

Lily touched his face. ‘I looked like him when I was small.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘he’s your dad.’

She allowed herself a small smile, then turned to the next page. ‘Look. Look at this one.’

In the next photograph he smiled directly out at the camera – the same skiing-holiday picture that had been in his bedroom when we had first met. I gazed at his beautiful face and the familiar wave of sadness passed over me. And then, unexpectedly, Lily started to laugh. ‘Look! Look at this one!’ Will, his face covered with mud after a rugby game, another where he was dressed as a devil, taking a running jump off a haystack. A page of silliness – Will as prankster, laughing, human. I thought of the typed sheet Marc had given me after I had missed Idealization Week:
It is important not to turn the dead into saints. Nobody can walk in the shadow of a saint.

I wanted you to see your father before his accident. He was fiercely ambitious and professional, yes, but I also remember times where he slid off his chair laughing, or danced with the dog, or came home covered with bruises because of some ridiculous dare. He once shoved his sister’s face into a bowl of sherry trifle (picture on right) because she had said he wouldn’t, and I wanted to be cross with him as it had taken me simply ages to make, but you really could never be cross with Will for very long.

No, you never could. Lily flicked through the other pictures, all with little notes beside them. This Will, rising from the pages, was not a two-line piece in a newspaper, a careful obituary, a solemn photograph illustrating a sad tale in a long-running
legal debate; this was a man – alive, three-dimensional. I gazed at each picture, distantly aware of each lump in my throat as it rose and was overcome.

A card had slid out onto the floor. I picked it up and scanned the two-line message. ‘She wants to come and see you.’

Lily could barely tear her eyes from the album.

‘What do you think, Lily? Are you up for it?’

It took her a moment to hear me. ‘I don’t think so. I mean, it’s nice, but …’

The mood changed. She closed the leather cover, put it neatly to the side of the sofa and turned back to the television. A few minutes later, without saying a word, she moved up the sofa beside me and let her head fall onto my shoulder.

That night, after Lily had gone to bed, I emailed Nathan.

I’m sorry. I can’t take it. It’s a long story, but I have Will’s daughter living with me and a lot has been going on and I can’t up and leave her. I have to do what’s right. I’ll try to explain in brief …

I ended,

Thank you for thinking of me.

I emailed Mr Gopnik, thanking him for his offer and stating that due to a change in circumstances I was very sorry but I wouldn’t be able to take the job. I wanted to write more, but the huge knot in my stomach seemed to have drained all the energy from my fingertips.

I waited an hour but neither of them responded. When I walked back into the empty living room to turn off the lights the photograph album was gone.

‘Well, well … If it isn’t the employee of the year.’

I put the bag containing my uniform and wig down on the counter. The tables of the Shamrock and Clover were already full by breakfast time; a plump forty-something businessman, whose drooping head suggested an early start on the hard stuff, gazed blearily up at me, cradling his glass between fat hands. Vera was at the far end, angrily shifting tables and people’s feet to sweep under them as if she were chasing mice.

I was wearing a man’s style blue shirt – it was easier to feel confident if you were wearing men’s clothes, I had decided – and observed, distantly, that it was almost the same shade as Richard’s. ‘Richard – I wanted to talk to you about what happened last week.’

Around us the airport was half full of bank-holiday passengers; there were fewer suits than usual, and an undertow of small, crying children. Behind the till, a new banner offered the chance to ‘Get Your Trip Off to a Good Start! Coffee, Croissant and a Chaser!’ Richard moved briskly around the bar, placing newly filled cups of coffee and plastic-wrapped cereal bars on a tray, his brow furrowed in concentration. ‘Don’t bother. Is the uniform clean?’

He reached past me for the plastic bag and pulled out my green dress. He scanned it carefully under the strip-lights, his face set in a half-grimace, as if he were primed to spot unsavoury marks. I half expected him to sniff it.

‘Of course it’s clean.’

‘It needs to be in a suitable condition for a new employee to wear.’

‘It was washed yesterday,’ I snapped.

I noticed suddenly that a new version of
Celtic Pan Pipes
was playing. Fewer harp strings. Heavy on the flute.

‘Right. We have some paperwork in the back that you need to sign. I’ll go and get it and you can do that here. And then that’s it.’

‘Maybe we could just do this somewhere a bit more … private?’

Richard Percival didn’t look at me. ‘Too busy, I’m afraid. I have a hundred things to do and I’m one staff member down today.’ He bustled past me officiously, counting aloud the remaining bags of Scampi Fries hanging by the optics. ‘Six … seven … Vera, can you serve that gentleman over there, please?’

‘Yes, well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I was wondering if there was any way you –’

‘Eight … nine … The wig.’

‘What?’

‘Where’s the wig?’

‘Oh. Here.’ I reached into my bag and pulled it out. I had brushed it before putting it in its own bag. It sat, like a piece of blonde roadkill, waiting to make some other person’s head itch.

‘Did you wash it?’

‘Wash the wig?’

‘Yes. It’s unhygienic for somebody else to put it on without you washing it first.’

‘It’s made of cheaper synthetic fibres than a cut-price Barbie’s. I assumed it would basically melt in a washing-machine.’

‘If it’s not in suitable condition for a future staff member to wear, I’m going to have to charge you for a replacement.’

I stared at him. ‘You’re charging me for the wig?’

He held it up, then stuffed it back into the bag. ‘Twenty-eight pounds forty. I will, of course, provide you with a receipt.’

‘Oh, my God. You really are going to charge me for the wig.’

I laughed. I stood in the middle of the crowded airport, as the planes took off, and I thought about what my life had become working for this man. I pulled my purse from my pocket. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Twenty-eight pounds forty, you say? Tell you what, I’ll round it up to thirty, you know, to include administrative expenses.’

‘You don’t need to –’

I counted out the notes, and slammed them onto the bar in front of him. ‘You know something, Richard? I like working. If you’d looked beyond your bloody targets for five minutes you would have seen that I was somebody who actually wanted to do well. I worked hard. I wore your horrific uniform, even though it turned my hair static and made small children jig in the street behind me. I did everything you asked, including cleaning men’s loos, which I’m pretty sure was not in my contract, and which, in actual employment law, I’m sure should have meant the provision of a Hazchem suit at least. I stood in for extra shifts while you searched for new bartenders because you’ve alienated every single member of staff who ever came through this door, and I have upsold your wretched dry-roasted peanuts even though they smell like someone breaking wind.

‘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.’

I waited a moment, then started the car and we drove in silence back to my flat.

Fancy the pictures tonight? I could do with some escapism.

I don’t think I should leave Lily.

Bring her?

I’d better not. Sorry, Sam x

That evening I found Lily out on the fire escape. She looked up at the sound of the window opening and waved a cigarette. ‘Thought it was a bit mean to keep smoking in your flat, given that you don’t.’

I wedged the window open, climbed out carefully, and sat down on the iron steps beside her. Below us the car park simmered in the August heat, the scent of hot tarmac rising into the still air. A car with the bonnet up thumped bass from its sound system. The metal of the steps retained the warmth of a month of sunny afternoons and I leaned back, closing my eyes.

‘I thought it would all work out,’ Lily said.

I opened them.

‘I thought if I could just get Peter to go away all my problems would be solved. I thought if I could find my dad I would feel like I belonged somewhere. And now Peter’s gone, and Garside’s gone, and I know about my dad and I have you. But nothing feels like I expected.’

I was about to tell her not to be silly. I was about to point out that she had come such a long way in a short time, that she had her first job, prospects, a bright future – the standard adult responses. But they sounded trite and patronizing.

At the end of the road a bunch of office workers huddled round a metal table by the pub’s rear door. Later tonight it would be packed with hipsters and strays from the City, spilling out with drinks across the pavement, their raucous calls filtering in through my open window. ‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘I’ve been waiting to feel normal again since your dad died. I feel like I’m basically going through the motions. I’m still in a crappy job. I still live in this flat, which I don’t think is ever going to feel like home. I had a near-death experience, but I can’t say it gave me wisdom or gratitude for life or anything. I go to a grief-counselling group full of people who are as stuck as I am. But I haven’t really done anything.’

Lily thought about this. ‘You helped me.’

‘That’s pretty much the one thing I hang onto most days.’

‘And you have a boyfriend.’

‘He’s not my boyfriend.’

‘Sure, Louisa.’

We watched the traffic crawl down towards the City. Lily took a final drag of her cigarette, and stubbed it out on the metal step.

‘That’s my next thing,’ I said.

She had the grace to look slightly guilty. ‘I know. I will stop. I promise.’

Across the rooftops the sun had started to slide, its orange glow diffused by the lead-grey air of the City evening.

‘You know, Lily, perhaps some things just take longer than others. I think we’ll get there, though.’

She linked her arm through mine and let her head rest on my shoulder. We watched the sun’s gentle fall, and the lengthening shadows creeping towards us, and I thought about the New York skyline and that nobody was truly free. Perhaps all freedom – physical, personal – only came at the cost of somebody or something else.

The sun vanished, and the orange sky began to turn petrol-blue. When we stood up, Lily smoothed her skirt, then gazed at the packet in her hand. She pulled the remaining cigarettes abruptly from the wrapper and snapped them in half, then flung them into the air, a confetti of tobacco and white paper. She looked at me triumphantly and held up her hand. ‘There. I am officially a smoke-free zone.’