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‘Bye, Addison!’ I called out cheerily as I passed his door. There was a small break in tapping in response. I took it as a good sign.
Two (#ulink_7710dfd0-605c-50c4-a012-62b41fdc236f)
It was getting dark when I hopped on the bike and headed up to the market. Going out in the chilly nights was the worst; I knew I had several hours of rushing about with my hands wet to come, and all around me the nine-to-fivers were heading for home, fresh pasta and The Bill. And they all made twice as much as me. It didn’t seem fair. Working in the market wasn’t anything like working in a shop. Then, you got to choose things yourself and put them together, and if someone had been rude to you on the phone you could put a bug in their gladioli. Here, I had to check ten thousand tulips and try to work out which ones were the best.
I worked for Johnny, who was wizened and had been on the flower markets for four hundred and seventy years, as he never stopped reminding me.
‘Aye, you never saw colours like that in my day,’ he’d snort derisively at one of the more over-the-top hybrids.
‘That’s because everything was in black and white, then,’ I’d point out to him. ‘It was the olden days.’
‘People used to eat flowers during the war, you know.’ He was quite one for reminiscing. In fact, he was absolutely, bar none, the best person I’d ever met at making up things about the war.
‘Hey, Johnny,’ I waved to him as I whizzed round the corner. The lorries hadn’t started to unload yet, so people were standing around, smoking roll-ups and gossiping about magnolias. The flower people despised the fruit people in the next set of bays, and they in turn thought the flower people were a bunch of big pansies who couldn’t lift a box of melons if their lives depended on it.
‘Hey there, lass.’ He regarded me critically. ‘You know, when I was your age, I was selling out the back of my own van.’
‘Johnny, you have no idea how old I am. In fact, I’m nine years old. And I have my own van. I do this for fun.’
‘I never met a lassie who knew when to shut up,’ he observed mournfully, and threw me over a pair of heavy gloves.
I’d only been there a couple of weeks, and already I hated it. It was exactly like school. The girls all wore inappropriate clothing, smoked behind the sheds and picked on me. Either that or they were so stupid they had to be reminded every day how to pick up a box of flowers without drooling on it.
So I tended to slog away on my own, pausing only to hurl abuse at Johnny or to point out things to the drooling girls along the lines of ‘Box – there! … You see box? Pick up box?’
The smoking girls teased me because I’d been to college, particularly Tash, their queen, this scrawny girl with thick black eyeliner who had a real mother-smoked-in-pregnancy look about her. Tonight she sidled up alongside me, observed my work closely for several minutes, and then said:
‘Hmm, yes, I see now why that needed a degree – getting all those tulip heads in a line can’t be easy.’
The rough boys all guffawed and I tried to laugh but couldn’t. I hated her, and I hated being bullied, and however rude I could be to Johnny it wouldn’t translate to this lot. They were rough as badgers’ arses.
‘Could you pass the sign-in sheet?’ I hated it but sometimes I just had to talk to her.
‘Sorry, love, I’ve only got a GCSE in general studies.’
All the boys laughed again, and one of them shouted, ‘Oi, watch out, Tash, she’ll trip on the chip falling off your shoulder.’
I grimaced and pretended to join in, boiling inside, but really I felt like when I was taken by some older girls to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show when I was eleven – it was all too trashy and I just didn’t get it, but I was laughing along anyway. They were mean, mean kids. Because I didn’t blow cigarette smoke out of my nose they called me TinBits.
‘Please,’ begged one of the lads, bending on one knee before me, ‘your exquisite virginal majesty, might I just for one second peek up your skirt?’
‘She’s got her knickers welded to her bottom,’ yelled Tash.
I very nearly flashed my tits at him just to piss him off, but instead made a hasty vow to myself to apply for every florist’s job in a five thousand-mile radius.
For the rest of the night, Tash contrived to make fourteen derogatory remarks, upset my flowers four times and spend at least an hour talking about me (I suspected) on prolonged fag breaks with the lads. I was being bullied! I couldn’t believe it! This wasn’t fair.
My shift finished at 4 a.m. and I freewheeled home as usual, down the hill back to the big house. I crept in and saw the light on under Addison’s door. The urge to see him again was overwhelmingly strong so I wandered into the kitchen and made two cups of tea. I didn’t know how he liked it, so I put three sugars in for luck as I’d never seen him eat – he probably needed the nutrition. Then I ferreted around for a couple of biscuits to add to it, but the only thing going was a very lonely Penguin – Kate allowed herself one every fortnight. I took it anyway, planning to replace it, pronto.
I knocked on the door softly.
‘Addison, it’s me.’
The soft clicking noises stopped for a second. I could imagine him desperately trying to wrack his brains for a single person he could be expected to identify from a ‘me’.
I pushed the door again and popped in.
‘I made tea!’ I announced, like a fifties housewife.
His short-sighted – oh, but beautiful – eyes swivelled round to focus on me. His glasses were sitting on top of the mother-ship console.
‘Tea!’ I indicated by holding the cups up and motioning like a lunatic.
He focused on the cup and followed its path as I went to place it beside him whilst I wondered if he was mentally subnormal.
‘Not there!’ he barked.
‘OK, OK, put the gun down. How about I hand it to you?’
Slowly he extended his arm. I placed the cup in his hand, handle facing outwards – which meant burning a hole in my hand, but I didn’t mind because when he took it, the tips of our fingers touched, and I swear I felt a bolt of electricity shoot through me.
I waggled the Penguin at him.
‘Penguin?’
He stared at it for a bit then shook his head, so I ate it. After all, as he’d taken the tea, that implied a contract that allowed me to stay for a little bit.
I leaned over. His computer screen was covered in bizarre symbols, just like in James Bond films.
‘What are you working on?’
He tried to cover up the screen, but as his arms were like matchsticks, it didn’t have much effect. However, as the symbols meant as much to me as EC policy directives, it was a pointless exercise anyway.
‘Ehm, nothing. Thanks for the tea …’
He sipped it, then tried to disguise his gagging reflex.
‘That’s all right. How was your day? Mine was shitty.’
And so I told him all about the nasty boys at the flower yard. Mainly for conversation really, because I knew the second I stopped talking there would be complete silence.
Much to my surprise he appeared to be listening – well, not doing anything else, which had to pass for it.
When I’d finished, I took another sip at my tea and said:
‘So, what do you think I should do?’
He looked at me for a second, then cracked an absolutely heartbreaking smile.
‘Not talk to anyone?’
A sentence! Almost. I grinned back at him, then decided to leave on a high note. I nodded with my mouth closed, mouthed ‘good night’ to him, and retreated, leaving him sniffing suspiciously at his tea.
‘Success!’ I crowed to Josh the following evening. ‘He talked to me.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Well, he told me not to talk to anyone. But apart from that I consider it an outright success.’
‘Oh, speaking of outright success, did you steal Kate’s Penguin?’
Shit; I’d forgotten all about it.
‘Mmmm … maybe.’ I surreptitiously checked round the outside of my mouth in case there was any chocolate left there from last night.
‘You’re in trouble.’
‘OK, OK, I’ll just go out and get her one.’
‘It’s too late. Plus, she knows it’s a blue one. I’d make myself scarce, if I were you.’
Unfortunately I wasn’t working that night and, annoyingly, felt that cold thing you get in the pit of your stomach when you know you’re going to get into trouble later.
‘Argh! I am not in trouble! I am going to go out now and buy her fifteen Penguin biscuits and … and make her eat herself to death like in Seven. I am NOT going to let her intimidate me like this. She is so damn ANAL about everything.’
‘Which is why she’s one of the best corporate raiders under thirty in London –’
‘Just under thirty.’
‘I know what she’s like. Be nice to her. She has it hard enough at work. Everyone is really mean to her.’
‘Ooh, gossip? ’Fess up.’
Josh was an indefatigable gossip, although he wouldn’t thank you for pointing out this particular trait.
‘Well, she just has an overwhelming inability to spot married guys. I mean, they can have a bloody suntan ring round their fourth finger and Kate believes them when they say it’s impetigo. And she’s seeing this guy now who only phones her in two-minute bursts from call boxes at eleven thirty at night, and they do a lot of their dating in their lunch hours … Any day now she’s going to find out he’s another louse. Deep down, I think she realizes they are and it’s all a big psychological mishmash.’
‘Wow,’ I said, nodding thoughtfully. ‘That whole big psychological mishmash thing.’
And we each thought about our own for a second or two.
‘So,’ I resumed, ‘she’s grouchy all the time and it’s not my fault.’
‘I don’t think she’s that happy at having another woman around the flat.’
‘I’m not exactly a threat,’ I said, looking down at where the button should have been on my pyjamas. Fortunately, I’d known Josh a long time.
‘It’s not that. It’s a territorial thing.’
I grunted. ‘What, like cats have? I thought there was a funny smell in my room. Maybe she’s pissed in it.’
‘Ssh,’ said Josh, as we heard the door open.
‘Shit! I’ve forgotten to go out and get the Penguins!’
He winced at me as Kate did her normal arrival routine: an enormous sigh, an elaborate dumping of her expensive accoutrements, and a full-body lunge for the bottle opener.
Josh winked at me, and I smiled manfully.
‘Hey, Kate, how’s it going?’
‘Shit! Holly, did you eat my Penguin?’
I cringed, which wasn’t what was supposed to happen. I was supposed to say something along the lines of, ‘Yeah – do ya wanna make somethin’ of it?’ and spit on the floor. Instead of which I said, ‘Yes. Look, Kate, I’m really sorry, I’ll buy you some more.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ she sniffed, LYING. ‘I’ve only been out working for twelve hours, slaving over a huge offshore investment, which is almost entirely my responsibility, something unheard of for someone under thirty …’
‘Just …’ I said, under my breath.
‘… why on earth should I want or deserve a little bit of relaxation, which I’ve already bought and paid for, when I come home exhausted? I’m silly, really. I should just give it up and mess about with flowers and eat other people’s Penguins all day long.’
She picked up the wine bottle and retreated from the room, continuing, ‘Really, I must just be so, so selfish.’
Once she’d gone I beckoned to Josh.
‘Hand me that bread knife.’
‘Now, you remember what I said …’
‘I heard what you said, and now I am going to kill her with a knife. GIVE it to me.’
‘No.’
‘I’m sorry. I don’t think you understand the situation: I am going to have to kill Kate with a knife, and I’m asking you to pass it to me.’
‘Sit down,’ he said, handing me a plate of couscous. ‘Ignore it. What else was Addison saying?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Don’t sulk.’
‘No, I mean it. Actually, nothing. Has he ever spoken to you?’
‘Not really. He just turned up when we put the ad in, and he’d brought so much computer equipment we didn’t have the heart to send him away again. Plus, Kate thought he was cute.’
‘He’s better than cute. Oh, did she try and pull him and fail?’ I asked eagerly.
‘No, she tried talking to him for ten minutes then ran out of attention span. Plus, also, he didn’t show any of the normal signs of bastardy.’
