The Overnight (6 page)

"Don't shout at us," the lanky boy smirks. "We're just reading your book."

It should be in Tiny Texts. "I don't think so," says Agnes. "Will you give it here at once, please."

He's eager she should have it, and in a moment she sees why. Each double page displays a picture and a solitary word for it, but the words have been crossed out and replaced in crude scrawled capitals with the ones she had to hush. Since Bryony has followed her, Agnes makes a swift decision. "Bryony, I'm trusting you to take this to your mummy and not look inside it. Give me your answer sheet to keep safe. Tell your mummy the book's defaced."

Bryony hugs it to her chest as she heads for the counter and Jill, but she's halfway up the Religion aisle when a man accosts her. "That's a bit babyish for you, isn't it? More than a bit. What's the appeal? Come on, you can show me."

"I'm supposed to take it to mummy, Dad."

Agnes is confronting the boys. "Tell me the truth, now. You wrote all that, didn't you?"

"We never," the lanky boy protests. "It was on the floor."

"We haven't even got a pen."

"Search us if you don't believe us."

"You're not allowed to touch us. Anyway, he wouldn't have a pen. He can't write."

"Neither can you either."

"Never said I could."

"Give over saying I can't, then."

These are among the words they shout, together with a selection of the ones they were previously uttering. Agnes has told them twice that it's enough when Jake trots over, lowering his broad chubby freckled face and blinking lashes Agnes would be proud to sport. "Let's be polite, lads," he urges. "Ladies present. Other children too."

The duo gape at him. "Why are you talking like that? Are you a queer?" is most of what the lanky boy responds.

"That's what I am and proud of it. Now that'll have to be all, I'm afraid. Out of here till you remember how to behave."

The boys stare at the hands he stretches out to usher them. "Keep your filthy paws off," the squat boy warns, which Agnes suspects he overheard his mother say except for an extra word or perhaps that too.

"We'll say you tried to come up us, you dirty peedo," the lanky boy adds and much else in between.

Agnes slips Bryony's answers into the hip pocket of her dress and grabs the boys by a shoulder each. "There won't be much point in saying that about me, will there? Come along now or—"

The boys duck out of her grasp and dash through Psychology. "You touched us. You've had it now," one cries with embellishments as they fling books from the top shelves in their wake. Jake sprints after them, leaping over Jung, but they've fled the shop. Staff aren't supposed to pursue miscreants once they're out of the exit, since Texts isn't insured against whatever might happen next, and so he trudges back to Agnes. "I'll put them straight," he says.

A nearby mother looks askance at that. While Jake retrieves the books as if they're injured birds and somehow his fault, Agnes picks up the boys' answer sheets. Their sole contents are drawings she would be embarrassed to see on a wall. She stuffs them in the pocket she has taken Bryony's sheet from and collects the rest. Bryony has outdone them by half a dozen answers and returns in time to see it. "This young lady is the winner," Agnes says, displaying the evidence.

The others straggle off to find their parents. She's about to take Bryony to receive her prize when Woody darts out of the exit to the staffroom. "Why were you after those boys, Jake?"

The nearby mother lets her wordless agreement with his doubts be heard as Jake holds up a textbook with a broken spine. "They were being stinky-mouthed," he says. "I chased them out and here's their revenge."

"There's too much damage in this store."

Woody sounds so accusing it's no wonder Jake refrains from exhibiting the other ruined volumes. Agnes is willing the confrontation to finish when the mother steers her young daughter over to Woody. "Are you the manager?" she demands.

"That's me, ma'am. How may I help?"

"We thought there was going to be a competition."

"It's my impression we had one. I'm sorry if you missed it, but I'm sure there'll be—"

An even sterner woman shoves one of her sons at him at the end of either arm. "Aren't you meant not to let staff or their relatives play?"

"I don't believe the store has a specific policy on that, but I'd think—"

"Then you should," she objects, and gives her sons a ventriloquistic shake. "Tell him what you told us."

All three children start to clamour, but the girl's shrillness triumphs. "The one who won's mummy works here."

"And you said the organiser took her answers and hid them, didn't you?" her mother prompts.

It's to protect Bryony as much as herself that Agnes says "I didn't hide the answers. I just looked after them while Bryony was kind enough to take a damaged book to the counter."

"More damage? Good God," Woody says, frowning at Jake while the boys' mother mutters "I'll bet she looked after them."

"I'm sorry if there's been a misunderstanding." Agnes assumes Woody is about to defend her until he adds "If you'd like to take your children to the counter they can all have prizes. That includes anyone who was in this half of the quiz."

As the mothers and their undeserving tribe head for the counter, he motions Jake over. "Maybe you could work on not being quite so obvious around children." he says low.

"Unless you're straight, you mean."

"That's kind of unreasonable, wouldn't you say? You know we're an equal opportunity employer."

"I'll try and be surreptitious all the same, shall I?" As though he's indulging himself one last time, Jake says more loudly "Kids aren't my meat, by the way."

Woody stares at him before following the parade to the counter, and Agnes grows aware of Jill's daughter. "Come with me, Bryony. You're still the winner. Let's make sure you get your prize."

Jill is having some trouble with issuing vouchers while Woody observes. Perhaps she's distracted by the sight of her ex-husband and Connie at the end of Erotica. "Don't tell me, it'll come to me," Connie is saying to him. "Orient /Occident, that's where you work."

"And you were one of the party in leather."

"Keep some of my secrets," she murmurs, touching a finger to his lips and another to her own. "So can I help you with anything?"

"I'm just here to pick up a little girl when she's collected her prize."

"Lucky little girl."

Agnes sees Jill swallow a retort and tries to distract her, but all she can bring to her suddenly sluggish mind is "Don't forget Bryony, Jill."

"You'll have to wait your turn, Bryony. Other people are."

"She was going to," Agnes feels bound to point out as she signs on at a till. She's placating one of the mothers with a voucher when the parent of the set of boys turns on Woody. "Are we going to have to come back?"

"Not unless you care to, ma'am. We hope you will."

"Your assistant doesn't seem to want to give them their prizes."

Jill keeps her glare on the register. "There's something wrong with this."

When Agnes glances along the counter she sees no recognisable symbols on Jill's screen, just fragments like a scattering of flimsy bones. Perhaps. that's the fault of the angle she's viewing it from, because Woody cancels the transaction and signs on and swiftly endorses the vouchers. "Can we get videos?" one boy begs.

"Our vouchers are good for anything we sell, ma'am."

"They don't read much," the mother confesses.

"We wouldn't have known that, would we, mummy?" Bryony says not quite under her breath.

Jill scarcely grins, but Woody's silence feels like a sudden fog. He passes Bryony's voucher to her as Connie heads upstairs, leaving Bryony's father to venture to the counter. "I'll take Bry to choose her prize, shall I?" he suggests to Jill.

"I'm sure she's more than capable of choosing for herself."

"I'll tag along anyway. Makes me feel wanted," he says, turning the depths of his brown eyes on Bryony, who takes his hand.

As Jill watches them retreat to the opposite side of the shop, Woody says "If there's anything you need to be reminded of, let me know."

"I can't think of anything."

He takes a breath that sounds like a sigh played backwards. "Not discussing customers in public would be one. We were nearly sued over that in Florida."

It strikes Agnes that he's discussing Jill in public. Presumably he realises, since his voice sinks as if it's being dragged down. "Counter routines," he barely utters out loud.

"The till was playing up."

"I guess we'll know if it happens again. Yes, Agnes, Anyes. Were you waiting for something?"

"I thought you'd want to see this," she says, passing him the defaced book from the Returns shelf behind the counter.

The first page he opens tugs his head down. When he speaks he seems to be casting his voice into some profundity of the book. "We need to be a whole lot more vigilant."

"I wonder if whoever did it wrote in any others."

"Madeleine can check for that while you finish your shelf end."

She didn't intend to give Mad another task. Bryony and her father are returning to the counter, and she beckons them to save Jill from making any more trouble for herself. Bryony presents her with a book of poems from the Tennish section. "You were quick," Agnes remarks.

"My dad's taking me for lunch in Chester and then we're going to the zoo."

"Maybe you'll see some mating routines," says Jill. "It can make you laugh, what animals get up to when they meet."

"I don't think it's the time of year," Bryony's father says.

"Some of them seem to think they're hot all year round."

Woody emits a sound like a grunt that has snagged on a cough, but only Bryony looks at him. The till Agnes is using feels sluggish, or time does. The machine lingers over regurgitating the spent voucher for her to slip in the drawer; the details gather on the screen with all the speed of objects floating up through mud. She's about to draw Woody's attention to this in Jill's defence when the till sticks out a receipt. As Agnes drops it in the Texts bag she hands Bryony, Jill is told "I'll have her back with you for Sunday dinner."

"It'll be waiting for you, Bryony. Sleep well. Dream you're somewhere special," Jill says, and faces Woody as if challenging him to speak.

Agnes is making for her shelf end when he follows her. "Anyes? Any call?"

"For what?"

She turns to find him gazing barely patiently at her. "Did your customer call back?"

"Not yet"

"So long as you've got something for them."

"They won't be disappointed," she's anxious to persuade herself at least as much as him.

Her entire conversation with her father is repeating itself in her head, leaving little room for thoughts. As she stands guidebooks on the brackets under her Winter Breaks notice while Woody helps Mad return the chairs to the staffroom, she realises how sunlit all the places in the books may be. Half her display invites people to visit countries she has never seen, but that's part of her job. When she's home she can reminisce about holidays with her parents. Outside the fog is edging closer to the shop, and sunlight is a memory—one that she decides it's unwise to indulge just now. Memories won't lighten the greyness that is Fenny Meadows. They make it seem eager to grow dark.

"Mist dumber."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Mist dumber, wasn't it? A
Mist Dumber Night's Dream
by Speakshape."

"Ah, is it a parody?"

"About as much of one as you. Are you hauling on my chain or do you really not recognise me? That's too sad. You don't want to forget old times."

"Forgive me, I—"

"Slater. I expect you thought it looked like Staler. Fred Slater, and you're Lowell. Wilfred Lowell, only didn't you sign Wildfed Wellow or some such crap once?"

By now Wilf has remembered him. Slater's face hasn't aged much in ten years, but it has ended up on the front of a lump of pallid mottled flesh wider than itself. He still lets his mouth droop until it tugs at the rest of his face while he waits for his victim to catch up with the joke, and Wilf wonders if he'll pinch or poke or punch to gain the reaction he wants, as he used to when their school desks were next to each other. "I must have been having a bit of fun," Wilf says.

"You never seemed to be having much not being able to spell."

"Well, I am now."

"We'd all have had a good laugh if you'd said you wanted to work in a bookshop."

He never read a paragraph more than he had to. It was Wilf who was so hungry to read he felt he was starving until the dyslexia tutor taught him how. "What about you?" says Wilf. "Have you made much of yourself?"

"Maybe you'll hear from me some night soon."

"Sorry, why would I do that?"

"Don't you like hearing from old friends?"

Can he really believe he was ever one of Wilf's? Wilf's politeness is starting to feel like thin ice under entirely too heavy a burden. "If you'll excuse me, I ought to—"

"Hang on. You're helping me, or you will be in a minute. I'm your customer."

Nigel glances at Wilf along the counter from the till he has just arrived at, and Wilf daren't seem unworthy of working at the shop. "How may I help, then?" he makes himself ask.

"Try listening." Slater treats him to a pause that isolates the dwarfish music in the air before he says "Hello there, Mr Lowell. I wonder if you realise how the changes in our climate may be affecting where you live?"

"I really couldn't say. I shouldn't think—"

"The winter's getting wetter every year. Can I ask when you last had your damp course checked?"

"I haven't got one," Wilf says with some triumph. "I'm on the top floor."

"Don't feel too safe. It can still reach you, what's happening. How am I doing so far?"

"I'm afraid I don't think I'd be buying."

"Where would you say I'm going wrong?" Slater says and lets his face droop like a bloodhound's. "What's your secret as a salesman?"

"I don't know if I've got any." At once he's afraid Slater will betray it to Nigel—Wilf's old problem, even if he has solved it for good. He feels as if his teenage self is desperate to burrow out of reach inside him. "Just enjoy it," he suggests.