By Monday morning, the tills at The Edge are working again.
Lunchtime is quieter than usual on the whole retail park and Julie’s pretty bored by the time Leanne comes over at about three. It’s raining so hard that Leanne’s usually perky blonde hair is hanging in spiky tendrils around her face when she walks into the restaurant. Julie’s dying for a fag but she finishes topping up the salad bar while Leanne talks about Chantel, who’s arriving tomorrow.
‘. . . totally fucked with all the floods,’ she’s saying.
‘What?’ says Julie. She’s been thinking about David all day, and his testicles, and the cancer inside them. It’s the first time she’s been able to think about a disease without being terrified she might get it herself. It’s a weird feeling. David must be so scared. It’s horrible.
‘Had to come a totally different route and everything.’
‘What did?’
‘The removal van, stupid.’
Heather comes out of her office. ‘Julie?’ she says.
‘Yeah?’ says Julie, tipping blue-cheese dressing into its little pot.
‘Can you come in here for a minute?’
‘Can’t she go on a break?’ says Leanne.
‘It won’t take a minute,’ says Heather. ‘Then she can go on a break.’
Heather’s office isn’t really her office at all. She shares it with the other supervisors and managers at The Edge. As a result, the room has an anonymous atmosphere, like a waiting room or a bus stop. There’s a lot of clutter on the single desk, and bits of Edge uniform lying around – blue T-shirts and braces – mostly still in plastic wrappers. Heather gestures for Julie to sit down opposite her at the table.
‘OK,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a little test for you.’
She opens the drawer and pulls out something that looks like a job application.
‘What’s this?’ Julie asks.
‘A test, like I said.’
‘OK.’ Julie likes tests. ‘Cool.’
‘Aren’t you going to complain?’ says Heather.
‘What? No. Why?’
Heather shrugs. ‘All the others did.’
‘Oh.’ Julie looks at the test. ‘Do you want me to do it now?’
‘Please. I’ve got to stay here and watch, to make sure you don’t cheat.’
‘OK.’
‘It’s not that I think you would – or even really that you could, because it’s not that sort of test, but still, those are the rules.’
‘OK.’
Julie takes her pen out of her bum-bag – heavy with her float – and opens the test paper. Most of the questions on the test are about food hygiene, food and drink preparation, customer service and The Edge rules. They’re all multiple choice. Julie finishes the test in about seven minutes.
‘I’m done,’ she says to Heather, who’s reading a magazine.
‘Blimey,’ says Heather, startled. ‘It wasn’t some sort of race.’
‘I wasn’t trying to . . .’
‘You can go on a break now,’ she says, sighing. ‘Tell David to watch the restaurant.’
David’s hardly said a word to Julie all day, as if the conversation they had never happened. She hasn’t known what to say to him, so it’s been a pretty odd day. He hasn’t even told any sex jokes, or quoted any Eminem lyrics, or anything. He’s just had the radio on in the kitchen, and has turned it up whenever any cheerful pop song comes on.
‘So how’s it all going?’ Julie asks Leanne, once they’re out in the back room.
‘All right,’ says Leanne. ‘I’m moving on.’
‘Moving on?’
‘Yeah. I’m going to tell Luke it’s definitely over.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, we can never go out anywhere. And he’s been distant lately, too, you know, totally wrapped up in his own world.’ She sighs. ‘It’s hard getting through to him when he’s like that.’
‘Oh, I see.’ Julie doesn’t know what else to say. Leanne gives her a Lambert & Butler. She lights the cigarette and gets dizzy instantly. She hasn’t had one for about four hours.
‘I’m going out on the pull with Chantel later,’ Leanne says.
‘I thought you were saying she’d been held up in the floods?’
‘Nah.’ Leanne draws on her cigarette. ‘Removal company has, though. Chantel came early and left her mum to get on with it. She’s been hiding out in a hotel in Shenfield while they sort out all the stuff. Not that they’re bringing much of it, of course, it’s mainly her gran’s stuff they’re keeping for sentimental reasons. Everything else is being chucked out, and they’ve got this designer working on the new house ready for them to move in, and Chantel’s like, “Now I’m a millionaire I’m not helping the removal men move my stuff; I just want to go in there when it’s all done.” I’d be the same. I hate moving.’
As far as Julie knows, Leanne’s never moved.
‘What’s she like?’ Julie asks.
‘She used to be really fat,’ says Leanne. ‘I don’t know. She’s all right.’
‘Is she nice?’
‘You’ll see tomorrow, won’t you?’
David sticks his head around the door. ‘Heather says can you come out?’ he says to Julie. ‘I’ve got to do a test or something.’
‘Sure,’ says Julie.
Leanne puts out her fag and goes back to Blockbuster.
Julie’s meeting Charlotte Moss after work. It’ll be the second time she’s socialised with someone other than Luke and Leanne in one week, which is pretty remarkable considering that the last time she went out so much was before Mark died. Since their little group – Mark, Charlotte, Julie and Luke – broke down completely, Julie’s hardly been out at all.
The e-mail Charlotte sent Julie, late on Friday night, was so chatty that it almost seemed as though nothing had happened. But then Charlotte’s the sort of person who’d send a ‘Hey, nice to see you yesterday’ e-mail even if she was referring to the day you told her you’d thought seriously about killing yourself.