was right. It wasn’t nice, but that night, for the first time since I could remember, I slept like a baby. I woke up early to the electric whinny of the milk van as it made deliveries along the High Street, and drifted back to the kind of safe half-sleep world where everything is sweet, anything is possible. I knew I had found my stories.
Maybe because I had already confessed to Miranda, it was easier to tell Mr Roberts I’d got a boyfriend.
I was halfway up the ladder, moving boxes of staplers and ballpoint pens from one side of the shelf to the other. Mr Roberts’s hands were on my calves to keep me steady.
‘I’ve got a boyfriend, you know,’ I said. ‘A proper one.’ I paused a moment, waiting for his reaction.
‘Well, good for you, girl. I knew you would get cleaned up, although—’ He shook his head, his middle fingertip pressing against my flesh a little too hard.
‘I’ll still tell you stuff,’ I said quickly. ‘Maybe I can even tell you about Tim. It’s OK. He won’t mind.’ He won’t know, I whispered to myself.
‘I’m not sure it will be the same,’ Mr Roberts said. ‘It seems impure somehow. Young love and all that.’
I held my breath because I knew I couldn’t afford to lose my home and salary. Mr Roberts was quite capable of docking my wages if I didn’t come up with the goods. I’d seen him with salesmen. They thought he was going to be an easy catch because of his woolly jumpers and funny thick glasses, but more often than not, they’d stand outside the shop afterwards, going over figures on their calculators as if they couldn’t believe what had just happened to them.
If Mr Roberts spoke before I counted to ten then everything would be OK.
He came in exactly as I reached eight. ‘We’ll maybe see how it goes. Give it a few weeks.’
I shoved the box I’d been pretending to move right over to the end of the shelf. ‘That’s it finished up here,’ I said cheerfully, but Mr Roberts kept his hand on my leg longer than he normally did. And he stayed where he was as I climbed down so I had to hold my body against his until I got to the bottom and could step aside. This was a new development, one I wasn’t too sure about.
I watched Tim’s hand brush along the back of the Seize the Day bench as if he was testing the grain of the wood. Then he made a sudden lunge, missing first and knocking my arm before finally taking my hand in his.
I squeezed back but then he started to hurt me so I tried to loosen his grasp. He shook his head and kept on pinching at my fingers. We carried on grasping each other in silence although I could see my skin turning white.
‘I’ve been plucking up the courage to ask you something,’ he said eventually.
‘Go on,’ I encouraged. I felt so light when I was with him. So free of any need to be looking over my shoulder.
‘I was wondering if I might kiss you tomorrow,’ he said.
I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. ‘You can kiss me now.’ I pouted my lips out to him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I would prefer it to be tomorrow.’
Knowing I was going to be kissed made me jumpy and restless the next day. I couldn’t eat anything, not even my usual breakfast of a fruit scone. It was still sitting in its brown paper bag under the till at lunchtime.
In the end, I went over to persuade Miranda to take an extra cigarette break because Mr Roberts wasn’t helping my mood. He had already made me do all sorts of unnecessary chores around the shop that morning, shifting the display of envelopes from one side of the room to the other, telling me to go up and interrupt customers who were happily browsing and ask if they wanted something, making me sort out the coloured pencils into separate jars. He was watching me for signs of love, he said. We couldn’t afford to let things get slipshod just because cupid had shot his arrow.
At last a big order from the Insurance Office on Silver Street came in, and as he never trusted me with anything important, he bustled round ticking things off the list. This gave me a small respite.
Miranda and I huddled in the doorway of the fashion boutique next to her salon. Despite the fact that the two women who ran it were arrow-thin, continually pointing themselves in successful directions, they never opened their shop before eleven in the morning, so it was a useful place for us to meet.
‘There’s this little girl been born somewhere who’s got a bottom half like a tail,’ Miranda told me. ‘Both legs are joined together and they’re going to have to do an operation to separate them. There was an interview with the doctor in my magazine. They called him Dr Mermaid, because that’s what the girl looks like. Apparently the operation rarely works but he never gives up hope.’
‘How do you practise kissing?’ I interrupted her.
‘You must have kissed someone,’ she said, surprised.
‘Of course I have, stupid,’ I lied. ‘But I want this to be perfect. I’m sure there used to be a way the girls at school rehearsed.’
‘With a banana,’ Miranda said firmly. ‘You snog a banana.’
It was only after I’d nipped across to the supermarket and got myself a whole bunch of bananas that weren’t even on special offer that Miranda came into the shop and said she’d just remembered she’d got it wrong. Bananas weren’t for practising kissing. They were for something altogether different. And had I heard about this woman who went into a supermarket in Manchester and had been bitten by a tarantula who came over on a bunch of bananas?
That night, on the Seize the Day bench, Tim made to take my hand before he stopped and asked me to shut my eyes. I did and then held my hand out, open fingered, to him. My arm was shaking, but instead of holding on to me, pulling me closer as I hoped, I felt him slipping something egg shaped into my palm.
I opened my eyes and peered down. A walnut was cupped there, looking withered and brain-like.
‘What’s this?’ I asked.
‘Shhhh.’ Tim looked round. ‘You have to learn to speak quieter, Molly. Trees have ears.’
‘Sorry,’ I whispered. ‘But why’ve you given me a nut?’
‘It contains a secret. A word only you will know.’
I stared at him. He looked completely serious. His brows were too heavy for the thinness of his face. They overshadowed every other feature and made him look dangerous in the wrong lights.
‘How will I know I’ve got the right word?’ I asked.
‘Hold it. Think.’
So I did. I shut my eyes again and the word came. It came miraculously. I knew it was right without questioning. I just didn’t know what it meant in this context.
‘Fridge,’ I said, and when I opened my eyes, Tim was smiling, not at me but I knew it was because of me. I was so proud it felt like a ball of sunshine had burst in my stomach.
‘And now I’ll
