‘I’m expecting the shop to be busier today, what with those girls being found. There’ll be journalists, maybe even news reporters.’ He pauses, eyes looking away into somewhere far off. ‘Imagine that, eh? My little shop on the BBC evening news.’
I stare at him, part horrified yet also unsurprised. Ultimately, I try to look unoffended. This is Harry Evans after all. He’s a man born in the wrong era. Harry’s forty-nine, born at the end of the sixties, but he’s a fifties man at heart, set in his ways with views just as out of date and offensive as his clothes.
He smooths a rough hand over the front of a tabloid, a grin pulling at the side of his mouth as I give him the once-over.
He’s dressed in some kind of brown overcoat today, with light, mustard-coloured, checked trousers.
Who even sells such monstrosities?
Underneath that overcoat I know he’ll be wearing a patterned shirt and tie that both clash with his trousers. Harry thinks it makes him eccentric and a character of the village. I know, along with everyone else, that he just looks the pretentious twat he is.
I glance at his shoes and allow myself an inward smile.
He’s all about the clothes, and the coiffed hair but I look further and cast an eye on his shoes and see him for what he really is.
The shoes are well worn, the leather down to the bare board on the toes. Harry Evans isn’t just a pretentious twat. He’s a tight pretentious twat.
‘Dale not in yet?’ I say as I ease past Harry’s bulk.
‘Any minute now,’ he says, ripping into the last of the newspaper bundles. ‘Hurry up and get back here. This is your job, remember?’
I don’t bother to reply, instead taking slightly longer than I need to put my bag in my locker and hang up my coat. I quickly check my reflection in the mirror – hate what I see; my foundation is patchy around my scar – before heading back to the shop floor just in time to see Dale has arrived and Harry’s already got him pulling something down from the shop window.
That’s funny, because there’s only one advert in the window as far as I know . . .
‘Dale?’ I say, coming up behind him.
He half-turns his face to me. ‘Oh, hey, Charlotte. You OK?’ He stops peeling off the poster in the window to give me his full attention. ‘D’ya hear about those girls?’ He looks all conspiratorial, leaning in closer to me than is comfortable. ‘Sick, innit?’
My eyebrows knit together then. ‘Yeah . . .’ I say, shaking my head, barely listening. ‘What’s that you’re taking down?’
Dale looks down at the poster half-peeled from the window. ‘Oh, Dad said it had to come down now.’ He pauses. ‘Thought you’d OK’d it.’
I see now what I already knew. It’s an A4 poster ad for our – or rather Iain’s – plumbing business.
Dale must see that I’m pissed off. ‘Sorry, I thought Dad had told you,’ he says, twisting the poster in his hands, nerves getting the better of him now.
‘He didn’t.’
‘Nor did I need to.’
Dale and I both turn at the sound of Harry’s voice as he comes out from the back. He carries what looks like another poster in his hands.
‘It was a temporary favour, Charlotte. I didn’t charge you for ad space seeing as you’re an employee, but, well . . .’ He shrugs. ‘Can’t be seen to have favourites.’
I watch as he hands Dale a replacement sign to stick in the window. It’s some ad for local garden services.
‘Harry,’ I say. ‘Please, we need all the help we can get at the moment. There’s so much competition with us being so close to other towns, people undercutting. We really need the money right now.’
Dale looks at me and gives me a sympathetic smile, but it’s clear he’s not going to speak up for me. Harry looks at me with indifference.
‘Plenty more hours if you want them, Mrs Monroe. All you have to do is ask,’ he says, without an ounce of sympathy.
He walks off then, leaving me with Dale, who suddenly looks more embarrassed than I am. There’s an awkward silence between us and I’m relieved when a man and woman enter the shop, both on their mobiles, speaking fast and trying hard to hide the excitement in their voices.
Dale looks at me as we hear the snippets of their conversations.
‘They’re too maggoty to be viewed by family members, that’s what I heard . . .’
‘. . . Yes, that’s what we thought, but they were in different stages of decomposition, so it’s going to be hard to say how each died . . .’
Dale goes to serve one of them with several newspapers and I move away from the counter. I feel Dale’s eyes following my movements.
‘Journalists,’ I mouth to him.
*
I’m sitting in the back finishing the last of my tea when Dale comes in.
I raise my mug at him. ‘I’ve ten minutes left on break.’
‘Yeah, I know. Dad’s watching the shop.’
‘Need five minutes?’
He blows out a long breath. ‘Yeah. I’ve lost count of how many journalists have come through here in the last few hours.’ He grabs a can from the mini fridge, takes a seat opposite me and pops it open.
‘So,’ he says, ‘how’s Elle?’
‘She’s fine.’
He swigs from the can, swallows and lets out a burp. ‘Got a birthday coming up soon, hasn’t she?’
‘Her seventeenth.’
‘Almost legal drinking age,’ he says with a grin.
This is awkward. I give a noncommittal nod and look at my phone.
‘Has she asked for anything specific for her birthday?’
‘Oh, yeah, driving lessons.’
He chokes on his drink. ‘Wow, are you going to get them for her? I keep hoping Dad will let me start driving the van more. He let me do the newspaper drop for the paperboy last week.’
‘How was that?’
‘Bit scary on some of them bends, and when I got onto the Linkway, I was bricking it.’ He laughs then catches the expression on my face.
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s OK, it’s just a road.’
‘Yeah, but, y’know . . .’ He looks at my scar, quickly looks away.
I smile. ‘It’s fine, really.’
The Linkway.
I try not to think about it too much, which is hard. I have to drive on it most days and it sets me on edge each and every time. It doesn’t get better with each journey, contrary to what the doctor said to me months ago.
‘So, Elle’s getting lessons,’ Dale says.
I shrug. ‘I can’t see it right now. Iain wants to get her them, even though he’s moaning the next minute about how we have to be careful with money.’
‘Has she asked for anything else, less expensive?’
I see his face flush when I look at him.
‘I thought it’d be nice to get her something.’
‘She did say she wanted some jewellery.’
He looks hopeful.
‘Pandora stuff.’