“Why don’t you take it,” said Penny, advancing and handing it to the fat man. “Buy yourself a magnifying glass so you can see your own dick one of these days.”
Eilish was falling asleep. She got so tired these days. The phone rang, starkly, shaking her out of her dream. Her television program had finished, and some house show was on. Eilish loved house shows. She would pretend she was the one who had to choose between the town house, the modern bungalow, the apartment in the stately home. Very rarely were the customers offered two-up two-downs on a council estate.
The phone rang again and, grunting a little as she moved her legs, she leaned over to pick it up, listening in silence, until finally, “Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.”
Lizzie looked at the phone. Mum. How was she going to tell her she’d been let go? Just shucked off, not needed. After all the work . . .
“How’s Mr. Boakle?” said Grainne.
“Sorry,” said Lizzie, making her mind up. “I have to take this call.”
She sank to her desk, steeling herself not to cry. But her mother didn’t even ask her how she was, just poured it all out in a rush. After asking her to slow down and repeat herself several times, Lizzie just blew her ratty fringe out of her eyes, and pushed back her chair from the desk.
“Oh my God,” she said.
Penny was staring at Ravi, who was staring at the floor.
“You can’t talk to customers like that!” Ravi was saying. He was about sixteen years old, and on a management training scheme that somehow made him her boss even though he hadn’t started shaving yet. Disciplining people obviously made him unbelievably unhappy.
“OK,” she said. “I won’t do it again. But they were disgusting losers.”
“They were customers, Penny,” said Ravi.
“I know, I know,” said Penny. “Most of our customers are disgusting losers, right, what can you do . . .”
“No,” said Ravi miserably. “I mean, it says in the handbook . . .”
The handbook was a huge color-coordinated folder that laid out every single piece of information required to run the All-American New York Diner, including how many umbrellas per pina colada (2), how many napkins per rib rack (7), and how strong a word you could use against a customer before you were in serious trouble (meanie). Penny could get around Ravi, but nobody could get around the handbook. She sighed. Her phone rang, again.
“Oh, answer it,” said Ravi, trying to put off the inevitable. Why hadn’t he gone in for musical theater like he’d always dreamed of? He could be living in the real New York by now. He stared out of the window, looking at the 1,500-space car park and the way the clouds looked like they were touching the top of the gray corrugated-iron Bowl-o-rama.
“Mum?” said Penny. “What is it?” She listened intently.
And, finally, “Oh my God!”
She ripped off her employee badge, which said, “Hi. My name is Penny and I want y’all to have a nice day now, d’you hear?,” threw it on the floor, and stamped on it.
“Ravi,” she said. “You are a nice man. And not a very big one. So, it’s going to be a bit painful to do what I’m about to suggest next. But I really do insist that you take this”—she lifted up the heavy handbook—“and turn to the color-coded section where it explains exactly how to get it up your arse.”
Chapter Two
The three of them crammed into the small front room at Parkend Close. This in itself was unusual. Penny was always just passing through.
“So, explain again slowly,” said Penny. Lizzie had come in with a tray holding three cups of tea, the strongest thing they had in the house, and a new packet of chocolate digestives.
“Your gran . . . not Nana, but your dad’s mum. Well, she’s not well. She’s had to go into a home.”
“What’s wrong with her?” said Penny impatiently.
“I don’t know,” said their mum. “Just old. Not dementia, just an ‘episode’ they think.”
“You mean, crazy,” said Penny with a shudder. “Remember you used to take us there. Brr. There were tins of dog food everywhere.”
“And she didn’t even have a dog,” said Lizzie and Penny at the same time.
“Yes, well, she’s not crazy,” said their mum, “just a bit mixed up, that’s all.”
“There were cobwebs. And spiders,” continued Lizzie, suddenly sounding exactly like her six-year-old self.
“But she wants to—” Penny shook her head. It didn’t feel quite real.
“She wants you to move in there, yes,” said their mum. “According to the nurse, she thinks somebody’s going to nick her fifty years’ worth of back copies of the Radio Times.”
“But why us?” said Lizzie.
“You,” said their mum. “Not me, of course, oh no. But you two apparently are the only family she’s got left, or at any rate the only family she kept mentioning to the nurses.”
“But we don’t know her,” said Penny.
“Well, blame your useless bloody vanishing dad for that, love.” Their mother reconsidered. “And it’s my fault, too. She did want to see you, but it was always such a long way in, and you two hated going so much, and she never offered to help pay the fares, or buy you anything. She lives in that big place in Chelsea and she never helped us out at all. I think she gave it all to your dad. I expect that flat’s all that’s left.”
“Big place in Chelsea,” breathed Penny, as if saying, “the magical land of Oz.” “We’re moving to Chelsea.”
“For a bit,” said their mum. “Just till she gets well enough to go home.”
“But she’s really old and mad and stuff,” argued Penny. “I mean, she’s not likely to be—”
“Penny!” said their mother sharply. “Have a little decorum for once.”
“I don’t see why I should,” said Penny. “She owes us, doesn’t she? We haven’t had so much as a Christmas card from her for over twenty years, and as for . . .”
“Did she . . . I mean, doesn’t she know where Dad is?” asked Lizzie timidly. Although their mother almost never talked about their dad, saying only it had been short, occasionally sweet, and that she’d been delighted with the results, i.e., them, she had never quite gotten over her childhood fantasy that it might all have been a mistake, that he might have been hit on the head by a brick and suffered terrible amnesia, and didn’t even know he had twins.
Her mother shrugged. “Well, obviously not. Good-for-nothing.” Her face clouded briefly. “And his mother obviously thinks she owes you for that. So, I think you should take advantage of your good fortune.”
“Deffo!” said Penny, her eyes shining. “Oh God. I’m going to live up West.”
She tried on a ridiculous accent. “Haylo! My name is Penelope Berry and I live in Chelsea. I have a terribly rich luff-er end I only shop at Christian Dior.” She clapped her hands in glee. “Oh God. At last. I knew something good was going to happen. I just knew it.”
“Well, an old lady is in a home,” said their mother.