There was a silence. I could feel her robotic eyes scanning my room. There was nothing for her to latch on to in here. The boxes of condoms were well hidden and there was no evidence of anything else she wouldn’t approve of.
“Why have you got so many cushions in here?” she said.
“I like them.”
She stood up and surveyed the cushions with this massive air of suspicion. I know it’s probably stereotypical, but I saw these pictures in a travel magazine of luxury hotel rooms, and I liked all the cushions they would put on the beds. I like making things look nice. I wanted sophistication. I wanted my room to look like I had style and maturity. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, so I didn’t understand why she was looking at me in such a weird way. I couldn’t quite place it. Mild disgust?
“Loop me in with the job progress,” she said, turning and walking out.
I sat on my bed in despair, the entire summer now looking nothing remotely like what I’d expected.
“He’s got a lot of cushions in his room, Tom!” I heard her say to my dad as she got to the bottom of the stairs.
“I know, what’s that about?” Dad replied.
Great. So everyone was thinking stuff about me and was busy contemplating how I had some sort of dysfunctional cushion thing going on.
“Well, you know what teenage boys are like. They’ll try to hump anything,” she said, laughing.
I stared into the middle distance, so shocked I couldn’t move.
For the record, I’d never tried to hump a cushion.
At least, I hadn’t until that point.
Sorry, that’s probably too much information again.
CHAPTER FOUR
I decided to change my clothes. Board shorts and a baggy T-shirt weren’t really going to cut it. I reluctantly pulled my chinos on, along with a white shirt and the only tie I had that wasn’t my school tie. It was actually one of Dad’s old ties, which he lent me when he and Mum took me to a posh restaurant to announce their divorce, and after telling me it was “all amicable” and we’d “still be doing fun things as a family”, we spent the whole meal in agonizing silence, until Mum stormed out, saying to Dad, “You couldn’t even make an effort for this!” A tie of happy memories. It had a horrible pattern, and was very wide, but it would have to do. I ran some wax through my hair and tried to make it do something that wasn’t random sticking up in all directions. I couldn’t say I was particularly successful.
“Do I look OK?” I said, walking into the kitchen.
“You’re wearing that tie?” Kendra said, perched on a stool at the end of the breakfast bar, looking up from her laptop.
“Yes?”
“OK then.”
“Why? Do you think it’s—”
She held her hand up, distracted by her ringing mobile, which she answered with her other hand. “Georgie? Do we have news?”
I waited while Kendra jabbered on about whatever the hell it is she actually does. Property or something. I looked down at my tie. Maybe it was wrong, I didn’t know. My chinos also had a little stain on them, just by the flies, and that was definitely not a good look. I glanced back up when I realized it had gone silent.
Kendra was looking at me, her cupped hand over the mobile. “Alex?”
“Yeah?”
“Just be confident? OK? Walk into wherever has a vacancy, and say what you want. Don’t ‘um’ and ‘ah’, just say it. What do you want?”
“What do I want?” I repeated.
A flash of annoyance crossed her face. “Yes! What do you want?”
“A job?”
“With confidence!”
“I want a job.”
She nodded. “Thank you.”
I licked my finger and tried rubbing the little stain by my flies.
“Alex?!”
I looked up.
“Stop playing with it.” She lifted the phone back to her ear. “Sorry, Georgie. Just trying to coach the boy in a few job-hunting skills.” She looked at me, mouthed “Go!” and got back to the call. “Yeah, no, he is a bit,” I heard her say as I walked towards the front door.
I didn’t even want to know what I was a bit.
One result from the influx of Londoners to Newsands was the increase in the number of shops aimed at pretentious types. There was a café now, for example, that did stuff on toast that really had no place being on toast. And the place I was standing outside of now had also recently opened.
RAW
That was its name. The interior had a stripped industrial feel: air-conditioning ducts on the ceiling, bare brick walls, polished concrete floor, and those old-fashioned light bulbs, where you can see the filaments, hanging down from the ceiling.
RAW sold clothes – although not many, by the looks of it. A few rails were sparsely scattered around the store, each of which had only one or two garments hanging from them, and there were some tables, also with just a couple of tops or trousers folded on them.
It was quite dark inside. And the music was quite loud. Occasionally, you would get a fleeting glance of an aloof, cool figure, casting their eyes lazily over a T-shirt, like they were the judge on a TV talent show and the T-shirt really needed to work to impress them. I felt like I was being watched. And I felt like whoever was watching me was also laughing and bitching about how someone with my (lack of) fashion sense had no place being in a place like RAW. But they had a small sign by the door advertising “Sales assistants required – apply within” so I guessed that, depending on their level of desperation, they might give me a chance.
I repeated Kendra’s words, like some sort of affirming mantra. Walk in. Say what you want. Don’t “um” and “ah”.
Well, I’d already walked in, so now I really needed to tell someone what I wanted.
I looked around. There was absolutely no one who appeared to be actually in charge. There wasn’t even an obvious place to pay for stuff, which I could just hover near. I mean, stride confidently up to.
Then over in the corner, I saw two women – early twenties, maybe. They were putting some clothes back on a rack and had that disinterested, superior and disdainful thing going on which I think is a prerequisite for anyone working in a high-end clothes shop.
My chest was tight.
Say what you want.
Heart hammering.
I gritted my teeth and strode over to them, although my legs felt like jelly. “Hi, I’m here about the job?” I said. I’m pretty sure my voice was wobbling all over the place, but the whole thing is a bit of a blur.
The women glanced at one another. It was a sort of … mildly disgusted glance. Like someone had just farted.
I put my hands in my pockets to help add an air of cool to the proceedings. I shouldn’t have said anything else, but there was this terrible, awkward silence, so I did. “I’m good at…” Don’t say oral! “Selling.” Yes, Alex, good! This is a shop, they’ll like it if you can sell stuff. “I, er … I can sell really good. I mean, well. I could sell … a glass of water to a drowning man, that’s me. So. Boom.”
I wasn’t sure what the “boom” was about.
Nor were the women, by the looks of things.
One of them nodded and called over to this guy who was riffling through some shirts in the corner. “Spence! This guy’s here about the job?”