struggling to hang their coats on the right pegs. The younger ones bawled for dropped dummies and milk, some already in need of nappy changes, and Nicci was instantly back in work mode. The busier the better. Safe.
***
Mark opened his till and ran his hands over the piles of bank notes. There was no need to count them. That had already been done, and the coins too, so he knew, to the penny, exactly how much was there. There was something about money that he loved. Not just having enough of it in his own wallet to pay the bills, but money in general. He felt at home with it. There was something so dependable about it. Comfortable. There was nothing quite like a crisp bundle of brand new twenties to lift his spirits, and he often wondered, as he passed them to his customers under the partition, where they would end up and how they were going to be spent.
He’d love to put a tracker on a note or a coin, like a special collar on a roving cat, and be able to find out where it went, passing from one wallet or purse to another via assorted slot machines and charity donation tins and church collecting plates and shop tills, and ending up in a bank again somewhere, right back where it started.
It always made him smile when someone came in with a bank note – usually an elderly person and usually a fiver – that had been hidden away, probably under the bed, for so long he didn’t even recognise the design. Why, oh why, wouldn’t they put their savings into a bank?
‘Ready, Mark?’
He looked up as Sandra pulled back the bolts on the big solid oak doors. He nodded. God, those bolts were noisy this morning, but perhaps that was just because his head was still a bit muzzy from all that booze on Saturday night. Well, Sunday morning too, if he was going to be exact about it. It was well past three by the time he eventually rolled home. Never again!
There were already two people waiting on the step, both elderly. They hobbled in side by side, shaking the rain off, separating as they crossed the carpet and approaching a till each, as Sandra slipped back into the empty seat beside him. His customer was one of his regulars. One of his harem of adoring little old ladies, as Sandra laughingly called them.
‘Morning, Mr Ross.’
‘I’ve told you before, Mrs Baker. Call me Mark!’ It didn’t hurt to turn on the charm. Good practice, as Paul would say, for chatting up the girls. When the time came. When he was ready again. Paul talked a lot of garbage, obviously, but Mrs Baker was well over eighty, with a wrinkled face and a tiny body as thin as a crisp, and a bit of flattery always seemed to make her day, so why not? She was a sweet old thing.
‘Not until you call me Gladys.’ She giggled, almost girlishly, as she averted her eyes and opened her purse. ‘But I know you won’t, will you?’
He laughed. ‘Not allowed, I’m afraid. Not with you being a customer. And a highly valued one, at that. Anyway, people might talk. We don’t want anyone to think I’m your toy boy, now, do we? Best to keep it professional, eh?’
‘Ha! Toy boy, indeed!’ The old lady winked at him. ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’
‘It’s looking nasty out there,’ he said, switching to a safer topic of conversation as he counted out the few crumpled notes she was paying in to her great-granddaughter’s savings account. Well, you can’t go far wrong with talking about the weather, can you? ‘Could be a storm brewing.’
The morning passed in much the same way. A steady stream of customers in soggy coats and hats, him counting notes and weighing coins, them remarking on the rain. Just idle chat. By lunchtime, boredom was setting in with a vengeance. His headache was refusing to clear. ‘I’m going out for a walk,’ he said, closing and locking his till and pulling down the blind, the moment the clock hit twelve.
‘You all right?’ Sandra whispered. She was giving him one of her looks. A mixture of colleague curiosity and motherly concern. Next to her, Gina, who was just opening her till to cover for him during his break, nodded in sympathy. They all knew at the bank, about Nicci, about his divorce, but it was pretty clear nobody actually knew what to say, so they chose to say nothing. Like he was a hopeless case, or a lost cause. He worried sometimes that Sandra, with her over-large bosom and wobbly marshmallow arms, was about to engulf him in some sort of smothering hug. He could see she was itching to, but so far she seemed to have resisted the urge.
‘Fine. Honestly, I’m fine. I just need some air. I’ll be back in plenty of time. I know you need to get off early.’ Sandra had booked the afternoon off to go and watch one of her kids in a school play. He couldn’t remember which one. Which kid, or which play. He should have paid more attention, but asking her again would prove that he hadn’t, so it was probably best to leave it.
As he stepped out into the rain he could still feel her watching him. Without turning round he knew she would be shaking her head and sighing, the way she always did.
***
The Cosy Kettle was not the greatest coffee shop in the world but it was the nearest, and it was cheaper and friendlier than the big chains. A strong Americano, a sandwich and some time to himself were just what the doctor ordered. He picked up one of the newspapers left lying about for customers to read, and was just shoving his change in his pocket when someone called out to him.
‘Oooh, hello, young Mark.’
Just what he could have done without. Someone who recognised him and was going to want him to talk. Why couldn’t people leave him alone? He turned round, coffee cup in hand, and came face-to-face with Mrs Baker, sitting alone at a small table in the window, clutching a half-eaten scone in one of her stick-like hands and waving across at him with the other. For her, with her beaming wrinkly smile, he would definitely make an exception.
‘Mrs Baker! Fancy seeing you in here. And you’re calling me Mark. What happened to Mr Ross?’
‘Oh, that’s as may be in the bank, my duck. But now we’re out of there, those rules don’t apply, do they?’
‘No, er, I suppose not. Can I get you another one of those? Tea, is it?’ He pointed to her empty cup. ‘Um…Gladys?’
‘I won’t say no, seeing as it’s you. Then come and sit down here with me and tell me all about it.’
‘About what?’
‘Whatever it is that’s troubling you. I haven’t seen a sad face like that since the war started. And look how that turned out. Everything was fine in the end though, wasn’t it? We won that. And we even beat the buggers in the World Cup, didn’t we? So, whatever it is, it’s not worth worrying over it. Or maybe it’s a she?’
Mark couldn’t help laughing at the way her extraordinary train of thoughts just seemed to tumble willy-nilly out of her mouth. ‘There’s nothing troubling me, Mrs Baker. I mean Gladys!’ He bought her another tea and placed it on the plastic-covered table in front of her, collected the sandwich that had just been delivered from the kitchen, and sat down. ‘And, believe me, there is no she. There is definitely no she. Or not any more, anyway.’
‘Well, there should be. A good-looking young man like you. They must be queuing up at your door. I know I would be, if I was twenty years younger!’ She winked and laid a hand on his wrist. ‘Well, more like fifty, if I’m honest, but a girl can dream…’
He had come in wanting nothing more than to be left alone, but there was something quite infectious about the old lady’s twinkling eyes and girlish giggle. She was surprisingly good company, and much more interesting than anything he might have found in the newspaper he had quickly abandoned beside him.
Before he knew what was happening he was telling her all about growing up in a tower block with lifts constantly out of action, and his dad’s cigarette smoke hanging over them all and staining the ceilings yellow, how his lungs had been saved by his yearning for the outdoor life and his lifelong love of football. And she was reminiscing about her own childhood in the East End before and during the war – by all accounts an idyllically happy one, despite the bombs and the rubble and the lack of decent food – and about her grandchildren, all eight of them, and her new