to know whether I owned a Kindle. Norris growled the word ‘Kindle’ with suspicion and I’d admitted that I used to have one until I dropped it in the bath.
I instantly regretted the bath comment because Norris paused by the ‘F’ shelf and his eyebrows leapt several inches in surprise. But then he moved on to the authors beginning with ‘G’ and asked whether I was a morning person because he wasn’t much good before he’d finished his thermos of coffee and would I be all right to open the shop. Our chat took fifteen minutes, after which Norris said he’d see me the following Monday.
I’d arrived nervously that first morning, stammering when customers asked where they might find the latest Ian McEwan or if we had an obscure political book by a Scandinavian writer in stock. The first time I ran a transaction through the till I was so afraid of fluffing it that I spoke robotically, like a Dalek: ‘That. Will. Be. £12.99. Please,’ and had to be prompted for one of our paper bags. But I soon settled into the routine.
Today, it was my turn to unlock, so I arrived just after nine, turned on the computer behind the till and ran a Stanley knife across the boxes from the distributors. New stock to be put out. Although it might not have looked like it, there was an order to the shop that I understood. If a customer came in and asked for a Virginia Woolf or a travel guide to the Galapagos, I could point them to exactly the right spot. I knew the shop as well as I knew my home. Or better, perhaps, since I rarely went into Ruby and Mia’s bedrooms (too messy, used cotton pads everywhere).
I knew the customers who came in every day to browse but actually lived on their own and just wanted some company. I recognized the punters who were time-wasters, loitering between appointments, who would finger multiple books before sliding them back into the wrong shelf. And in quiet moments, it also allowed me time to work on my own book, a children’s book about a counting-obsessed caterpillar called Curtis who had fifty feet and was late for school every day because it took so long to put on all his shoes. I’d also come to see Norris as a sort of mad uncle and could tolerate his daily habits – sitting on the downstairs loo for twenty minutes after his coffee, ignoring the phone so I always had to pick it up, leaving indecipherable Post-it notes on the counter about customer orders that were often lost.
Then there was my colleague Eugene. He was a middle-aged actor who’d worked at the shop for the past decade to pay his rent since he was rarely cast in anything. He had a bald head that shone like a bed knob, wore a bow tie every day and made me rehearse lines with him behind the counter, which often startled customers. Recently, there’d been a dramatic death scene when Eugene, rehearsing for a minor role in King Lear, had ended up lying across the shop floor.
Either he or I opened up before Norris arrived late every morning, his shirt fastened by the wrong buttons, thermos in hand; this was special coffee he ground at home and made in a cafetière before decanting it and solemnly carrying it into work in his satchel. I’d made the mistake of asking what was so wrong with Nescafé not long after I started work there and the cloud that passed his face was so dark I’d wondered if I’d be fired.
Anyway, he’d arrive and there was always grumbling about the traffic or the weather before he went downstairs into his office to drink this coffee from his favourite mug – ‘To drink or not to drink?’ it said on the outside. Half an hour later, he would reappear on the shop floor in cheerier humour and ask whether any customers had been in yet.
But that morning, I was still standing behind boxes of new stock when Norris arrived early and rapped on the glass.
‘You all right?’ I asked, unlocking the door to let him in. He looked more dishevelled than usual, shirt and trousers both crumpled, and he was panting, as if 73-year-old Norris had decided to run into work that morning from his house in Wimbledon.
‘Let me go downstairs for my mug and I’ll be up to explain.’ He strode towards the stairs and disappeared. I returned to the boxes and wondered if he’d tried to get on the Tube using his Tesco Clubcard again.
He thumped back up the wooden stairs not long afterwards and put his coffee on the counter with a sigh.
‘What?’ I asked, frowning. ‘What’s up?’
‘Rent hike.’
‘Another one?’
Norris nodded and wiped his fingers across his forehead. There’d been a rent rise last year but we’d expected that. Uncle Dale had had a long lease on generous terms and it had been up for renewal. Also, Chelsea had changed since he died. What was always a wealthy area of the city had become even more saturated with money: oligarchs from the East, American banking dollars from the West, along with the odd African despot who wanted his children to go to British boarding school. This meant the shops changed. Gone were the boutiques and coffee shops. In came curious replacements selling £150 gym leggings and cellulite cures made from gold leaf – shops for oligarchs’ wives. But although Norris had grumbled about the new lease for several weeks, he’d said it was fine and I’d believed him. It remained business as usual.
But this was different. Norris was panicked.
‘Is it manageable?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a lot,’ he replied, his voice uneven. ‘I’m going to ring the accountant later to discuss it but I wanted to let you know now. Just in case… Well, we’ll see. I’ll let you know.’ Then, as if he couldn’t bear to discuss it any longer, he changed topic. ‘Any post this morning?’
‘Not really. A few orders overnight but I’ll deal with those.’
‘All right, I’m going back downstairs. Shout if you need me.’
‘OK,’ I said, before looking around the shop, trying to imagine it as luxury flats with underfloor heating, marble floors and those hi-tech loos with nozzles that wash and dry your bottom. It was an absurd idea. It couldn’t happen. Not on my watch.
When I got home that night, I found Hugo and Mia bickering at the kitchen table. He’d moved in about six months before, a temporary measure while they did up a house in Herne Hill (‘the new Brixton’, Hugo pompously told anyone who asked).
I had mixed feelings about their house being finished. On the one hand, this meant Mia would move out and, for the first time in a decade, she, Ruby and I would be separated. And although my sisters were closer to one another than they were to me, Mia’s departure would mean change and I’d miss her. On the other hand, it would also mean that Hugo stopped creeping upstairs to my bathroom to do a poo when I wasn’t there. He denied this but I knew he was lying; he left traces on the porcelain and I’d once found a copy of Golfing Monthly lying on the floor.
That evening, they were squabbling over their wedding list and Hugo, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, was stabbing at the list with one of his weird fingers.
‘Hi, guys,’ I said, making my way to the fridge.
‘I’m sorry you don’t like him,’ went on Hugo, in a high-pitched voice, ‘but he’s my boss and it’s imperative that he’s invited. I’m sure he didn’t mean to graze your bottom. It was probably an accident.’
Mia sighed and leant back from the table. ‘Well he did and we’ve already got half your office. Anyone else you need? The receptionist? The window cleaner? Someone from your IT department?’
‘Actually, Kevin has always been very helpful with my computer.’
I opened the fridge and stared into it as I wondered, for the ninety billionth time, why Mia had said yes to him. Was a house in Herne Hill with an island in the kitchen, underfloor heating in the bathrooms and Farrow & Ball-coloured walls worth it?
She sighed again behind me. ‘Fine. Your boss can come. But that means we still need to lose…’ she went quiet for a few seconds, tapping her pen down the list, ‘about twenty people.’
I closed the fridge. It would have to be eggs on toast. I didn’t