“What’s this?” I asked looking at the envelope he’d just
handed me.
“My notice, effective immediately,” he informed me.
“Your notice? Why are you giving me your notice?” Godfrey
shrugged, though his shrug was surprisingly descriptive. “Have you got another
job?”
“No.”
“Then what are you going to do?” I asked. Godfrey looked
around the office in a way that suggested this particular question hadn’t come
up on Saturday night.
“I don’t know,” he said, after some thought.
“Then perhaps you should think about it,” I suggested,
handing him back his envelope.
“I’ll just go on the dole,” Godfrey informed me.
“What a loser!” Elenor muttered under her breath to no one
in particular.
Godfrey scowled at her for a few intense moments before I
got his attention when I told him he wouldn’t be able to claim dole for up to
six months if he quit of his own accord.
“Have you got enough savings to see you through six months?”
Godfrey didn’t. In fact, he didn’t have enough savings to
buy himself lunch.
“Then what are you going to do? Seriously, think about it.
You can’t go around handing in your notice when you’ve got nowhere else to go
because that’s the sort of thing that can land a man on the street, or worse
still back at his parents’.”
“I can get another job,” Godfrey eventually replied.
“Then get one, and give me this back when you do. In the
mean time… why don’t we have a cup of coffee? Godfrey?”
Godfrey thought about it for some time then replied “no
sugar” and reluctantly retook his seat. Elenor waited for me to ask her if she
wanted coffee and when I did, she beamed with glee and told me she took it dark
and strong. “Just like my men,” she added unnecessarily.
This was four weeks ago and a lot of coffee had passed under
the bridge since then, although none of it had been made by Elenor. See Elenor
never made coffee. This was just a fact.
She never made coffee. Never never never.
Until today.
When she made a cup for me.
Carol’s really excited because the
school board say they might be able to find a role for her after she retires.
She won’t be able to stay on as Head Teacher but they say she’ll probably be
able to come back on a part-time basis and help out for a few hours a week,
maybe even provide sick and holiday cover. Carol’s really pleased because
she’ll be able to get back to actual teaching and forget about all the
time-consuming admin that comes with “the nice office”. She even said she’d
recommend me for the position of Deputy Head if Jenny got her job (as is
expected) but I’m not sure I want the extra work and responsibility right now.
I’ll be thirty-four next year and I’m thinking that perhaps it’s time I sat
Andrew down and pointed out to him that there are still only two of us in this
family.
But you know what, suddenly that particular conversation
doesn’t seem so daunting.
By some miracle he’s no longer slitting his wrists every
time I ask him about work. The word “fine” seems to have replaced “just fucking
awful” and he’s even humming again – always a sure sign of Spring.
I don’t know what has happened to bring about this
transformation, but then again I never really got to the bottom of what was
making his job so terrible in the first place. Andrew’s not really one of
life’s great communicators. All I hope is that whatever it is, it continues for
a while and Andrew stays in a good mood for… well, I was going to say the next
few months but if I’m wishing for miracles I might as well go for broke and ask
for the rest of his life (or at least the rest of mine).
If I didn’t know him so well, I’d almost be tempted to
venture that he’d been gripped by the Christmas spirit but I know that’s not
right. Andrew and Saint Nicholas don’t make the best of bedfellows and his
new-found cheer is sure to be swept away by a tsunami of murderous anger the
moment he has to go out Christmas shopping.
I do hope he doesn’t get me another engraved pen. There’s
only so many a girl can accidentally lose.
Something weird was happening. I’d
only stepped out for five minutes to make a cup of coffee, but when I got back
to the office everyone had gone. Everyone.
I looked at my watch and saw that it was lunchtime, which
went some way to explaining this, but it was still weird how there wasn’t a
single soul left.
Normally, only about half a dozen people off our floor
actually go anywhere for lunch; the rest of us make do with a sandwich out of a
packet or half of last night’s dinner out of a tupperware tub.
This was different though. Everyone was gone.
Everyone.
Somebody must’ve been having a birthday drink or leaving do
that I didn’t know about. Or maybe, more likely, the management had finally got
around to fine-tuning the fire alarm so that only everyone else in the office
and dogs could actually hear it.
I didn’t know. All I knew was that everyone was in on
something except me.
I thought about calling Godfrey to ask him where he was, but
then I didn’t want to make it look like I’d been overlooked so I decided to
second-guess where they’d all be, grabbed my coat and headed for The Dog &
Bull.
When I stepped out of the building however I found Croydon
unnervingly quiet. Katherine Street didn’t have a single person on it and the
air was still and empty. I walked around the corner and saw that Queens Gardens
were deserted too. I still wasn’t overly alarmed as occasionally they had a bit
of a show on in the Whitgift Centre around the corner that sucked all the
stragglers from the surrounding area, so I figured this would be where everyone
was.
I was just about to head around there myself when I noticed
the main road fifty yards away.
It too was dead.
I watched it for several seconds, expecting to see a car
come along and break the spell but none did. Not a car, a bike, a lorry or a
bus.
The road was empty.
This definitely got my attention and I looked about from
east to west, then north to south, for signs of life, but there wasn’t a soul
to be seen.
I was all alone and horribly confused.
What the hell was happening?
Either a terrorist alert had emptied Croydon or the Pound
Shop had just lowered its prices, so I headed off for the Whitgift Centre to
see for myself.
Park Street and the High Street were just as deserted as
Katherine Street. Rather more disturbingly the pubs on the way around were as
dead as doornails. The Rat & Parrot was empty (even by The Rat &
Parrot’s standards) and the posh pub opposite a shell. I poked my head around
the doors of each and both still appeared to be open for business. All the
lights were on and all the pumps were glowing. I almost called out for
assistance, then thought better of it.
I’d seen those films and no good ever came from calling out.
I left as quietly as I’d entered and hurried along to the
Whitgift Centre. Unbelievably, this place was deserted too. I ran from shop to
shop and found them all open. I even succumbed to temptation and punched open a
cash register to find it stacked full of notes. I pulled them out and folded
them up but frowned at the thought of what I was doing.
Should I take it?
The obvious answer was yes, but then if the security cameras
were on and I was the only man in Croydon, Surrey police wouldn’t have to clock
up too many man-hours tracking down the culprit. And did I really want to be
that rat that always made the papers after every disaster?
SCUMBAG THIEF LOOTS SHOP WHILE HERO FIREMAN BATTLE TO SAVE
THOUSANDS
I always hated that bloke, as did everyone. And he always
got his just desserts.
DISASTER THIEF BLUBS IN DOCK AFTER GETTING FOUR YEARS. “HE
SHOULD’VE GOT MORE!” DECLARES OWN MUM
Hmm, not tempting.
I put the money back and closed the till. If the population
of Croydon were off somewhere being saved, I wanted to be saved with them too,
or better still, one of the people who saved them. And if they weren’t, then I
could always come back for the money later.
I peered out of the shop and saw that the street was still
deserted.
I then thought about phoning Sally but realised I’d come out
of the office without my mobile. I walked over to a public phone and picked up
the receiver but there was no dialling tone. What’s more, I could hear somebody
grunting on the other end of the line. Or maybe chewing.
“Hello? Excuse me,” I said.
“Uh! Uh! Whoozat?”
“Hello, who is this?”
The voice thought for a moment then asked me a simple
question back.
“Where are you?”
I thought better of answering him, put down the phone and
stepped back a few paces.
I didn’t like this. I didn’t like this one little bit. I
screwed up my face as the fear tightened my innards and thought about crying,
but it had been so long since I’d last cried that I’d forgotten how to.
I had to get out of here. That was all there was to it. I
had to get to my car, put my foot down and get the hell out of here. Something
was wrong. I didn’t know what. I only knew I didn’t want to hang around and
find out the particulars.
I was just about to run back when a noise stopped me in my
tracks. It was way off in the distance and I had to put an ear to the wind to
hear it, but when I did I liked my situation even less.
It was a wailing. Or more accurately, it was lots and lots
and lots of wailing. And it was getting closer.
I turned away from the wailing and began to run but only
made it a few steps when I realised I was running in the direction of the
wailing. I turned back and ran the other way but the sound was coming from that
direction too. In fact, the sound was coming from everywhere and it filled the
air with noise.
All at once I saw the first of them. He stumbled into view
at the end of the street then began staggering in my direction. He looked like
he was drunk but I soon realised he wasn’t drunk – he was dead.
But he was walking?
Okay, so he was one of those walking dead mateys? Big deal,
live and let live, now let’s get the hell out of here, I told myself, but the
other way was already blocked.
More dead. More walking. More wailing.
The Whitgift Centre was suddenly alive with those creatures
and the doors of the Drummond Centre opposite began swinging backwards and
forwards as walking corpse after walking corpse spilled out on to the High
Street.
“Oh fucking nora,” was all I could think to say.
I had hoped my last words on Earth might’ve been a little
bit more profound than “Oh fucking nora!” but they matched the occasion
beautifully so I decided to go with them.
The faces of the dead were pale and blue. Some looked as
though they had died horribly, whereas others looked like they had died in
their sleep. One or two looked like they had only just clawed their way out of
the ground, which was where I guessed all this had begun. It didn’t really
matter. They were here now and they were all around me.
It was too late to run, too late to hide. Even if I’d tried
to bolt they would’ve been onto me in a flash. All I could do was stand very
very still and hope they didn’t notice me.
So that’s what I did. I stood very very still in the middle
of Croydon’s pedestrianised High Street and barely dared to breath.
The dead mingled and milled, knocked into each other and
even me, although incredibly none of them afforded me as much as a glance. I
was just another obstacle to them, no more or less interesting than that tree
some fat zombie had just wandered into therefore I was invisible.
I was just starting to think I might even get away with this
when one of the zombies stopped in her tracks and turned straight at me.
“Are you okay, Andrew?” the zombie asked.
I blinked a couple of times and saw Elenor looking at me
curiously.
“Are you alright?”
“What? Oh yes. Yeah fine. Just miles away, daydreaming,” I
shrugged, and looked back at the fat zombie to see that he’d turned into a fat
businessman. He was rubbing his head from where he’d walked into the tree and
frowning down at the slice of pizza he’d just dropped.
“You looked lost,” Elenor pointed out.
“I am really. Christmas shopping. I never know what to get.
I always just end up thinking about other things,” I explained,
Dawn of the Dead
from the night before
providing today’s inspiration.
“Who are you buying for?”
“Sally. My wife,” I told her.
“What does she want?” Elenor asked.
“That’s the point, I don’t know.”
“What would she like?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged once more, as if it were going
out of fashion.
“Well, what did you get her last year?”
“A pen. It was a nice silver one. It was engraved with her
name and everything. It was nice.”
“Sounds great,” she smirked sarcastically. “Did she like
it?” I thought for a moment and admitted I didn’t know that either. “Then you
should probably steer clear of pens in the future,” Elenor advised.
“She makes it so difficult. Every year I ask her what she
wants and every year she says the same thing; ‘Don’t get me anything too
expensive, just get me something little.’ But like what? What’s little and
inexpensive and still nice that I can buy without feeling like a bleeding
tightwad? Do you know of anything?”
Elenor said she didn’t but ventured it was the thought that
counted.
“I know, and that’s the annoying thing. I hate shopping and
Sally knows it and she knows I haven’t got a clue what to get her and yet she
deliberately engineers a situation where I have to put a bit of thought into
what I get her.”