As Brenda tidies the sweet display unnecessarily, Charlie stuffs his phone into his jeans pocket and tries to appear fully occupied with important tasks. His boss doesn’t like him ‘looking idle’, as she puts it. It can be stressful, appearing busy when there’s literally nothing to do. Charlie cracks his knuckles and neatens the small selection of magazines on the counter; all those weekly publicationshe’s spent so much time looking at over the past two years, they have coloured his view of what adult life is actually like.
Mum’s new hubby kept her locked under the sink!
Vengeful ex smashed up my tot’s Wendy house!
Hubby left me on our wedding night – and bedded Auntie Sue!
All these hubbies and exes ‘bedding’ people they shouldn’t – it’s a particular kind of language that’s seeped its way into Charlie’s brain. Sometimes late at night, when he’s been studying under the glow of his ancient Anglepoise lamp, he’s found himself wondered how he might possibly fit into that adult world. It seems fraught with danger and potential heartbreak.
‘… So I called the council and reported that awful pothole on Dawson Road,’ Brenda is telling him as she adjusts the packets of Chocolate Buttons. ‘Nearly broke my back axle, it did. I said to them, “You’ll be getting the bill for that …”’
‘Uh-huh,’ Charlie says. As he doesn’t drive, potholes aren’t really of any concern to him. If he encounters one, he can simply walk around it. That’s one benefit of not being able to drive, he supposes.
Brenda tweaks the Turkish Delights, which no one has bought since something like 1993. ‘… So with that loft insulation I was telling you about, there’s dry rot in the joists. I’ll have to get that sorted before they can even think about measuring up …’
‘Mmm-hmm,’ Charlie murmurs, trying to appear fascinated by the update.
‘Daniel says it should be easy enough …’
‘Right.’ Daniel is Brenda’s weird nephew, a goth in his forties, ghostly pale as he floats around the village in a long black flowing coat.
‘… He’ll start at the eaves, that’s the best way. He says you just roll it out and stuff it into the crevices …’
Is this really his life? Charlie reflects. While Remy lounges in a hotel room, snacking on lime-flavoured nuts and enjoying one of those showers that blasts you from all angles, he has to endure all this talk of potholes and dry rot. It’s making him feel itchy and weird, like he shouldn’t be here, like he’s in thewrong environmentfor a boy of seventeen years old. He has an urge to run out of the shop and never come back. But then, what would he do for money?
Brenda coughs loudly into a tissue and stuffs it up her sleeve. She is wearing a stained brown sweatshirt, tight jeans and collapsed-looking flat black boots. Her hair is gingery brown – dyed, Charlie thinks – and a couple of wiry hairs have sprouted out of her chin. He has no idea how old she is, and he and his mum have agreed that she’s one of those people who doesn’t actually have an age. And Brenda is certainly not good on other people’s ages. Or at least, on Charlie’s age as – despite him working here since he was fifteen – she must regard him as a much older person (of, say, eighty), judging by the way she goes on. Charlie keeps nodding and uh-huh-ing, wondering what she’d do if he were to suddenly leap onto the counter, rip up the weekly magazines with their ‘cheating hubbies’ and shout that he doesn’t give a fuck about loft insulation.
No, not rip them up. That’d be bad because occasionally Mrs Arden, his chemistry teacher who he’s quite fond of, comes in to buy a bunch of them to take to her mother in her care home.
Brenda continues to fiddle with the onlyslightlyout-of-date Hula Hoops and Maltesers and stands back to observe the display, as if in readiness for a royalinspection. She coughs again, pulls the tissue from her sleeve and presses it to her mouth. Again, Charlie thinks about Remy in Liverpool and wishes he could have travelled up there to the gig tonight. He could have gone by train. Thanks to Brenda, he has the money. But Remy never asks him to gigs anymore, and Charlie would feel awkward suggesting it, in case he seemed like a hanger-on. He’s seen him play in London of course, but that was ages ago.
Now Brenda is wittering on about her goth nephew, and how he ‘can’t close a cupboard door’ whenever he visits and ‘plays that terrible music, it’s always coming out of his phone …’
‘What kind of music?’ Charlie asks, not that he cares really. But as it’s potentially more interesting than potholes, he’s grabbed on to it like a life belt.
‘That goth stuff. I don’t know.’ She shrugs. ‘Something Jesus and Mary. My Chemical Toilet …’
Charlie suppresses a smile as he makes a mental note to relay this conversation to Remy when he gets the chance. He does this, storing up titbits for him like a squirrel hiding nuts for later. Not much goes on around here but that’s got to be worth sharing. Finally – finally! – Brenda says she’s nipping home to ‘see to the dogs’, which means that Charlie will be left by himself for an hour or so.
He glances at the news on his phone, then picks up one of the tabloid papers, the ones Brenda orders for the regular customers; fewer and fewer these days because everyone reads their news online. He starts flipping through it just to pass the time in the absence of customers. A celebrity split, a politician ‘caught with his pants down’; it’s not that different to the magazines really. He keeps on leafing through, even though Brenda doesn’t like himreading the papers or magazines ‘because then they feel sullied’. As if he’s not a perfectly civilised seventeen-year-old boy but a farm animal.
One of the older men from the village comes in to buy cigarettes and Polo mints. Once he’s gone, Charlie continues flipping through the paper, vaguely registering the fashion page and celebs. He never reads celeb stuff. It doesn’t interest him. He can never understand why people choose to ‘introduce’ their new baby through the pages ofOK!andHello!magazine. And who on earth is interested that that couple fromLove Islandhave broken up?
So Charlie doesn’t know what makes him stop at that page of the paper, the celeb page. It’s just an interview with a singer who’s launched her own drinks range (‘Pure clear spirit with a hint of citrus’), a ‘love rat’ actor and then a series of pictures like the frames in a comic, only these are photographs.
There are six in all, showing different views of the same person. In the first one her long red hair is all around her face and you can’t really see it properly. But in the next couple you can. She’s sitting on a low concrete wall, and it looks like she’s eating something with her hands from a huge carton on her lap. In another she’s gnawing on something – maybe chicken? – then she’s smoking a cigarette. In the final picture she’s standing up, looking angry, and as if she’s shouting.
The caption reads:Cluckin’ mad! Esther Burton looks like she has a bone to pick as she scoffs a whole BUCKET of chicken by herself, and enjoys a smoke afterwards!
Charlie’s heart seems to thud as he blinks at it. Esther, Instagram star and ambassador for that jewellery brand, and now his friend … eating from a bucket?
… didn’t seem to care who spotted her,it goes on.Wonder what the influencer’s fans will make of this?
Charlie pictures Esther the last time he saw her, so chatty and fun to be with. And he remembers the first time he met her, at his place, before her boyfriend started on at her dad. How she’d asked him,So, Charlie, where does the moon go during the day?
She hadn’t been taking the piss. She’d genuinely wanted to know. And now some vile person had taken pictures of her and sold them and made money out of her. Fury rises up in Charlie as he imagines how she’ll feel if and when she sees this.
Of course she’ll see it. She probably has already.
