‘Me neither,’ he replied, grabbing a couple of tampons and popping them into my handbag for me. ‘Had one. Lost it. Fucking Tories, innit?’
‘I suppose the recession has been hard for everyone,’ I sympathized. ‘It’s a tough time.’
‘Do you need to call anyone?’ the big baby asked. The man dug his hand into his non-knifey pocket and produced a brand-new iPhone. ‘You can use my phone if you want.’
‘Actually, that would be amazing,’ I said, readily accepting the handset but ignoring the controversial cover design. Pretty sure they didn’t sell Swastika iPhone cases in Carphone Warehouse. This was definitely home-made. ‘Thank you.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll give you a bit of privacy.’ He nodded curtly, stood up and wandered a couple of feet away. I watched as a worried-looking middle-aged lady in a waxed jacket and an Alice band took a very sharp and sudden detour. I looked away as he followed her.
‘Hello?’
‘Amy.’ I would never answer the phone to an unknown number. Amy always would. ‘It’s me.’
‘What phone are you on? What’s going on? Did they give you a new phone. Did you get an iPhone? Have you got Siri? Can I ask him a question?’
‘It’s not my phone.’ I cut her off before she could come up with anything filthy to ask the omniscient Siri. ‘Are you at work?’
‘Yeah.’ She didn’t sound convinced. ‘Until five.’
‘Oh. I got the sack and I thought you might want to get very, very drunk.’
‘STELLA!’ I snapped my head away from the handset as Amy bellowed at her boss without moving the phone away from her mouth. ‘I’ve got a migraine. I’m going home. All right?’
‘I don’t think you can shout that loudly if you’ve got a migraine,’ I pointed out.
‘Be at yours in half an hour,’ Amy replied, ignoring me. ‘Don’t kill yourself before then, OK?’
‘OK,’ I said. It hadn’t actually occurred to me before she brought it up, but the Thames was awfully close by and it would save me from having to sign on. I didn’t actually know where the job centre was. Maybe my new friend could tell me. Or maybe I should just kill myself. Amy had hung up before I could ask her opinion and I noticed the phone’s owner hovering nearby. I hung up, smiled and held it out to him.
‘You know what?’ He waved my hand away. ‘Have it. I can always get another one.’
‘Oh no.’ I tried to press it back into his tattooed hand. ‘I couldn’t possibly. Really, I couldn’t.’
‘No, take it.’ He pressed it back into my hand and stood up. ‘How are you going to get another job without a phone? Just have it.’
‘Well, thank you very much.’ I gave him my cheeriest smile. ‘That’s really lovely of you.’
‘No worries.’ He held up his arm in a salute I vaguely recognized, and not from Brownies. ‘And don’t worry yourself. Fit bird like you? You’ll be fine. Just remember, fuck ’em all.’
‘Yeah, fuck ’em all,’ I repeated, trying to reconcile the fact that his compliment made me happy with the fact that it came from a man who was clearly some sort of neo-Nazi.
I watched my fairy godmugger wander off across the park, the edges of my stolen, swastika-emblazoned phone cutting into my palm, and just as it started to rain, I started to cry. And I did not know how I was going to stop.
The girl I met in the mirror at home was not the same girl who had left my flat three hours earlier. Her smart chignon had turned into a tangled mess of sodden curls, and the carefully applied but terribly subtle make-up was all gone, either cried or rained away. The brown eyes that had been so sparkly when they left the house were dull and rimmed with red. My simple black shift dress was wet through, now considerably less office chic – more black-latex-condom-frock with a Pritt Stick still in the pocket. At least now I understood why that little boy had burst into tears when I’d smiled at him outside Superdrug. I was still staring at my reflection, willing what I believed to be three new wrinkles on my forehead to go away, when the front door flew open and a tiny black-haired woman blew inside, hurling herself at me before I could even draw breath.
‘Oh my God! What happened? What did you do?’ Amy leapt up onto her tiptoes and crushed me in a bear hug. ‘Did you punch someone? Did you photocopy your arse? Did you embezzle them for millions?’
‘Downsizing,’ I choked, disengaging my soggy self from her arms. ‘There was a “restructure”.’
‘You know I hate when you use air quotes,’ Amy said, slapping my hands down by my side. ‘And that’s really, really disappointing. You didn’t punch anyone? Not even Charlie?’
Amy and I had been best friends since we could speak. Before that, I’m assured that we got on very well. Born six weeks apart, our mums had been besties ever since they’d bonded at an aerobics class in the village hall. We had marked every major milestone together – from first words and first steps right through to most recent snogs and latest hangovers. We were always there for each other in times of need, whether that need was me running out of teabags before there was such a thing as a twenty-four-hour Tesco in East London, or Amy walking out on her fiancé, Dave, three days before her wedding. She never had been good at making a decision and sticking to it. In the past two years she’d had three jobs and four zero percent credit cards, but when it came to me, she was as dependable as Ken Barlow and fiercely loyal. I couldn’t fault her.
‘I didn’t get a chance to punch anyone.’ I still couldn’t quite believe what had happened. I was redundant. I’d been called a lot of things in my time, but the ‘R’ word was the worst. ‘HR called me in. I thought it was just paperwork stuff for the promotion, and then they told me they were letting me go.’
The words stuck in my throat.
‘Nothing dramatic. Nothing exciting. Just restructuring.’
‘Are you OK?’ She eyed me cautiously, as though I might suddenly lose my tiny mind and bust up the entire apartment. It was fair. If I had been capable of feeling anything at all, there was a chance I might have. ‘Your job is, like, your everything.’
Just what I needed to hear.
‘I’m not anything,’ I said carefully. My mouth felt thick and the words weren’t coming out quite right. ‘I don’t feel anything.’
‘Nothing?’ Clearly I’d given the wrong answer. ‘Not angry or sad or confused or, I don’t know, stabby? Sometimes I feel stabby when I get the sack.’
Amy got the sack a lot.
‘Nothing,’ I repeated. ‘Just … a bit blank. A bit cold.’
‘Emotionally cold?’ She was far too eager for my liking. ‘Do you feel dead inside?’
‘Physically cold.’ Maybe calling her had been a bad idea. ‘And like I need a wee.’
‘Yet more disappointment.’ Amy dragged me through the tiny living room and into the kitchen to pop open one of the three bottles of cheap fizzy wine that were clinking together merrily inside a Sainsbury’s bag. ‘I don’t get it. Surely they can’t fire you. Everyone knows you’re the only one who does anything at that place. Have you gone mad? Did they fire you because you’re mad? What did Charlie say?’
‘He wasn’t in when I left.’ I accepted a Snoopy mug full of cava and