Ridiculous, she thought, throwing off her duvet. As if I’ve ever been superstitious. Superstition gets you nowhere. But she felt better as she got ready, humming along.
That’s probably because you’re eating better, she thought. Although Kris from the takeaway probably thinks I’ve died.
On Wednesday, after the previous night’s palatial supper of leftover pasta, and realising that if she didn’t do something she would be having a bowl of baked beans for tea, she had borrowed a book called Easy Suppers from the cookery section and visited Nafisa’s Mini-Market two doors down. It had taken her an hour and a half to cook a meal which allegedly took twenty-five minutes, but while it looked nothing like the photograph, it tasted nice. And she couldn’t feel her arteries closing up as they did when she wolfed down one of Kris’s offerings…
Jemma realised the time, and dashed to the tube station. The first train was already full so she waited for the next, which took ten minutes to come and was full again. By the time she managed to squeeze onto a train then dash to the shop, it was five to nine. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she panted, as Raphael opened the door in his usual unhurried manner. ‘It was the trains. They were awful, and I had to wait ages.’
‘Never mind,’ said Raphael, absently. ‘You’re here now. I was just about to open.’
There was no hint of reproof in either his voice or his face, but Jemma still felt it. Nice one, Jemma, she thought to herself as she scurried to the window and pulled up the blind. Stellar move, being almost late on the day when your boss decides if he’s keeping you or not. She remembered a day, perhaps a year ago, when the tube had let her down, and she had arrived in the office at her actual start time instead of her usual hour earlier. The office had given her a round of applause and raucous cheers, with cries of ‘Here she is at last!’ and ‘We were going to call the police!’ Even Phoebe had come out of her office to comment. Jemma had taken it with a smile; but she had never been so late, as she thought of it, again.
The shop was quiet that morning and Jemma kept her head down, getting stock on the shelves (today’s boxes held travel guides, books on hobbies, and manuals about budgeting). ‘I thought it would be busier on a Friday,’ she ventured at eleven o’clock, when their only customer so far, a man looking for books on the Indian railways, had departed with three large hardbacks under his arm.
‘It goes in waves,’ said Raphael. ‘I’d like to tell you that it varies with the weather, or the season, or what’s on television, but really, in my many years running this bookshop, I’ve learnt that there is no rhyme or reason to it.’
‘But surely there are trends,’ said Jemma. ‘Lots of new books are released in September, and then there’s the run-up to Christmas—’
‘Not in this bookshop,’ said Raphael. ‘I think it’s time for elevenses. Would you mind doing the honours?’
Jemma went through to the back room, switched on the kettle, and found that they were out of Raphael’s favourite Earl Grey teabags. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she muttered. ‘I swear the shop is out to get me.’ She remembered the article that Em had sent her, and shivered. ‘He’ll have to make do with ordinary,’ she told herself, dropping three teabags into the pot. She felt somewhat less sanguine when she saw Raphael’s face as he took the first sip of his tea.
She could bear it no longer. ‘About the trial period—’
‘Oh yes,’ said Raphael, putting his cup down precisely in the saucer. ‘It’s been very nice having you here.’ Then he returned to his newspaper.
Oh, thought Jemma. I guess that’s it then. She felt as if she had had a rug pulled from under her but nothing else had changed. ‘I suppose you want your cookbook back, then.’
‘Only when you’ve finished with it,’ said Raphael, filling in a clue on the crossword.
‘I don’t have it with me today,’ said Jemma. ‘I’ll – I’ll bring it in next week.’
‘Oh yes, you do that,’ said Raphael, not looking up.
‘I’m just going into the stockroom,’ said Jemma. Receiving no response, she bolted, and presently found herself staring at the aisles of boxes. What do I do now?
The blank boxes stared back at her.
Jemma searched through her memories of all the courses she had attended and all the blog posts she had read for some nuggets of wisdom. ‘What can I learn from this experience?’ she whispered.
‘You could ask for feedback,’ said a helpful little voice which sounded rather like Em’s.
Oh God, I’ll have to tell Em that I only lasted a week. I’ll ask for feedback on what I did wrong, and promise to do better, and ask for another week’s trial. Jemma took several deep breaths, then went back into the main shop. ‘Could I ask for your feedback, please?’
She spoke louder than she had intended, and Raphael almost jumped out of the armchair. Folio, who was sitting on his lap, rearranged himself with a baleful glare at Jemma. She was getting used to Folio’s baleful glare, though, so that didn’t worry her too much.
‘Feedback?’ said Raphael. ‘About what?’
‘About my performance this week,’ said Jemma. ‘Because if there are things I’ve done that you weren’t happy with, or that I could have done better, I’d welcome the opportunity to learn from you, and perhaps we could do another week’s trial?’ She gave him her best enthusiastic smile.
Raphael stared at her in disbelief, then started laughing. ‘You haven’t done anything wrong,’ he choked out eventually. ‘The shop hasn’t burnt down, and we still have all the books, and there haven’t been any riots so far this week.’
‘That’s a fairly low bar,’ said Jemma.
‘You haven’t met some of my assistants,’ said Raphael darkly. ‘There was one time when I had to escape in a kayak. And no, I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘So … does that mean I can stay?’ said Jemma.
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Raphael. ‘Folio seems to like you.’
Jemma looked at Folio, whose glare had softened to topaz inscrutability.
‘Do you still have all your fingers?’ Jemma held them up. ‘Exactly,’ said Raphael. ‘And the shop seems to like you. Most of the time.’
It was on the tip of Jemma’s tongue to ask how a shop could possibly have feelings; but she sensed that now was not the right time to voice such a thought. ‘That’s good, then,’ she said, rather weakly. ‘If you like, I could show you some projections I’ve put together, based on the recommendations in the action plan I drew up—’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Raphael. ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing. And perhaps not too much of that.’
‘Too much of what?’ asked Jemma.
‘You know,’ said Raphael. He waved a hand. ‘The spreadsheety, projectiony, computery thing.’
‘The computery thing,’ said Jemma. ‘All right, I’ll do less of the computery thing.’ She resolved to do computery things when he wasn’t watching, as they seemed to be working. ‘But I can stay?’