Tell Me Everything (13 page)

“So how long have you been working here?” she asked as I
moved her over toward the pen counter, far away from Mr. Roberts.

“A couple of months,” I said.

“My mum always goes on about the time I wanted to go on holiday in a stationery shop when I was a kid,” she said. “But there's something about it, isn't there? It must be bliss working here.”

I moved over to the window so I could see the corner of Miranda's hair salon. It felt like a comfort blanket, knowing she'd be inside. The woman was drawing a flower on my poster with one of the new glitter pens now.

“Oh, look at this,” she said suddenly, her pen stopping in midair. I came to stand beside her.

Above the flowers, someone had drawn a male and female angel, floating hand in hand in the sky. The male angel was thin and thick-eyebrowed, his cartoon mouth a straight line turned down at the edges, but the female was smiling and round-bellied. Her blue eyes dominated her face, and her long hair floated behind her. Both angels were outlined with rings of gold sparkling pen, and strands of glitter glue bled out to add to the effect. A polar bear stood in the background, standing on top of a mountain shining with silver ink, surrounded by a circle of silver and gold stars.

“It's lovely,” the customer laughed. “Do you know, the girl almost looks like you?”

I knew who had drawn it, but it was so detailed I wasn't sure how he had done it without me noticing him. Had he come back? I put my finger out to touch it. “Lovely,” I repeated. When she went back to coloring in her flower I had to resist brushing her hand away. I didn't want anything to spoil Tim's message to me. He was looking after me. Everything was going to be OK.

T
he customer finally left, after putting back half of what she'd collected. “I suppose you get a discount,” she said, and I nodded although I'd never thought of this before. Apart from the letters to Tim, half of which I didn't send, my life, as it stood, was totally devoid of any need for stationery, of any form of record at all. Maybe this was why I held onto her rejected pencil case, putting it under the counter until I decided what to do with it.

The poster I took off the wall and whisked upstairs to my room where it would be safe. I wanted to spend some time studying it closely to see if Tim had drawn anything else I'd missed.

Downstairs I sat behind the counter to wait for Mr. Roberts to call me, and thought of Tim.

“It's quiet in here.” Mr. Roberts came out of the kitchen, drying his hands. “But never mind. Nice for the two of us to have some peace.”

“It's been very busy,” I lied. “I expect there will be more customers soon.” “Now, Molly.”

That was all he needed to say to make me realize procrastinating would be no use. Just those two words.
Now. Molly.

Without thinking, my fingers walked over the keys of the cash register to spell out Mum's telephone number. When I realized what I was doing I put them up to my mouth and started sucking on the tips to distract myself. Maybe I should develop a few more habits. My thighs were almost too painful to sleep now, from pinching. I had to rub cream into them every time I went to the toilet, but there were still times I couldn't stop myself from pressing the bruises.

“I stole something precious from someone once,” I said suddenly,
watching Mr. Roberts to see how long it would take him to sneak a quick look at the cash register.

“It was this thing I'd been begging for, but it wasn't ever going to be mine so I decided to take it by any means.”

Mr. Roberts coughed into his handkerchief and I changed my mind. I didn't want to talk about Tim just yet. “It was from one of the teachers at school,” I said. I shut my eyes to remember the smell of the biology lab. The dust from the wooden floors; the chemical sweetness coming from the jars of glass bottles lined up on the shelves; the rancid water from a vase of flowers that had been used in an experiment and left too long. “She'd just left her bag lying around one day and I took my chance to nick some money. I'd never done it before.”

“From that teacher you had a bit of a fling with?” Mr. Roberts asked.

I nodded.

“I've been thinking about the shelves at the back,” he said. “The top ones. They could do with a bit of sorting out. Shall we do it now, while the shop's clear?”

It wasn't a question. He was looking at me directly. Now.

Molly.

Now.

“I thought if I was caught I'd say I was hungry,” I said, once I was on top of the ladder. “Make them all feel sorry for me, but I went straight out to buy some new clothes instead.” I was leaning against the shelf, resting my cheek on one of my hands, the other aimlessly shifting the box an inch this way and that. “I got these red shoes, glittering with sequins and with a long black shiny ribbon on the heel that fluttered every time I took a step. I wore a little pleated black skirt and a red beret with it. And the brightest red lipstick you could imagine,” I added.

I liked myself in this outfit. It felt safe to be the center of attention
in clothes like that. I could imagine prancing down the high street with everyone smiling at me. I kicked back my own shoe now—a scuffed black gym sneaker I'd got from the charity shop—and narrowly avoided thumping Mr. Roberts on the forehead.

“Careful!” he warned.

He must have been stretching his head up. I didn't want to think about what he might have been doing. Good thing I'd put trousers on that morning and not that little pleated skirt. I put my hand down, pulling the denim an inch away from my body. All my clothes seemed to be getting looser these days. I got back to the story quickly. Molly in red. I shut my eyes to imagine it better.

“I climbed on a bus in the middle of town,” I said. “I didn't even look where it was going. I didn't care. I had some new clothes on my back and some change left in my pocket. It was an adventure. To begin with I sat up by the driver, but then I made myself move back a row every time the bus stopped. Whoever I sat next to, if they asked me to do anything I had to do what they said. It was a rule I set myself.

“The first few times I sat next to women. The first one asked me to get her coat off the rack. That was easy. The next was about seventeen, not much older than me. She was a country girl, as plump as an apple just about to fall off the tree. She had no idea of how to dress though. She hid herself up in a beige raincoat. It was only when the bus jolted and I fell against her that I felt the roundness of her breasts.”

Mr. Roberts gasped audibly below me. What had I just said? Breasts. Was that all it took to make him happy, for me to say “breasts” a few times?

“They were big breasts.” I paused. No second gasp. Nothing. I carried on with my bus ride.

“I did it again a few times, every time the bus went round the
corner, putting my cheek against her chest as if by accident even when I could see she was starting to get annoyed. She still didn't say anything though. Just gazed firmly out of the window.

“I wanted her to ask me to do something, just for fun, so I thought I'd start the ball rolling. I asked her if she was going far; she just turned round and stared at me. Then the bus stopped and she got off, but when it was time for me to go back to the next row I couldn't. She gave me such an unpleasant look when she left, it made me shy to move. She'd looked inside me, you see. Spotted what was there that no one else could see.

“And then, in the end, someone came to sit next to me. I didn't look up at first and when I did, I saw that it was a man. He was smiling at me in a nervous way, which made me feel more in charge. I forgot about the breast woman and concentrated on this new possibility.

“ ‘I think I must be dreaming,’ he said, and I could tell then that he was waiting for me to say something. That I was the sort of sexual predator he'd probably always dreamed of. And I suppose I was, in my red beret and high heels.

“I didn't speak, just opened my handbag, got out my lipstick and, looking at my reflection in the window, put another layer of red on. Then I smacked my lips together to even the color out and smiled at him. I was trying to work out if I still had to do what he asked when it was him who sat next to me. In my mind I could see the breast woman staring at me, her raincoat clutched together over her chest with one hand, a sort of yearning expression on her face. I looked straight into the eyes of the man next to me. Or as straight as I could.

“He was older, you see. About as old as you.”

And then I stopped talking. I just shut my eyes and put my forehead down on the shelf. Unlike the bus, I knew where my story was heading. How could I not? Although I might have
changed a few details, the emotional truth was real. I wasn't sure I could handle this, not just at the moment.

“Older, eh?” Mr. Roberts was egging me on, willing me to get back to the tale. He didn't seem to see how the story ended. Maybe I'd be taken off to join the white slave trade, or covered in precious silks and made the queen of the harem, or run away with the breast woman after all, or even just while away an afternoon with a strange man. I knew he'd be hoping that I'd fall into some kind of trouble. That I'd be humiliated and hurt and somehow damaged. For those were the stories he seemed to prefer now that it was clear Leanne wasn't coming back.

I squeezed my eyes tightly together. If there were any tears there to fall, now was the moment. I was sure I could look down and call on Mr. Roberts's sympathy, remind him what a good job his wife thought I was doing, and he'd tell me to climb down. Normal life resumed. I remained dry-eyed though. Resolute.

“Have you gone to sleep on me up there, Molly?” Mr. Roberts gave the ladder a gentle shake. “What did he ask you to do?”

I clutched at the edge of the shelf automatically. If you put a newborn baby above a washing line and drop them, they'll be able to hold on with their hands. Even from birth, the body is designed to hold its own weight. That was another fact I'd kept in my head from school.

“Still awake,” I said. “I was just thinking about something.”

He coughed, but more like he was really sick than just complaining as he did sometimes. “I'm just going to get a glass of water,” he said. “You stay right there.”

He didn't wait for an answer. I shoved the box this way and that, not angrily though. I was thinking. By the time he came back I was ready.

“The trouble was that it was my stop,” I said. “As I got off I
could see the older man standing up too. He was going to follow me but I shook my head. I wanted to be on my own.”

I stopped talking suddenly. I was exhausted.

“Is that it?” Mr. Roberts said. He sounded oddly subdued and wouldn't meet my gaze when I looked down at him, his eyes slipping away to the floor. His face was still flushed from coughing.

“I think so,” I said, coming down the ladder.

“It was different. Not up to how it used to be with Leanne.” Mr. Roberts made way for me as I brushed past him. “Although—” He put his hand out to touch my waist.

“I know,” I said, slipping away from his grasp. “I'll tell you more tomorrow. If the shop's quiet. Although I'm a bit embarrassed about it because that man did follow me home after all and he asked me to do lots of things you can only imagine. It doesn't really show me in the best light.”

Mr. Roberts smiled; his shoulders almost visibly bounced with relief. “Now Molly,” he said. “You haven't been a wicked girl again, have you?”

T
hat night, the receptionist at the leisure center waved me through to my shower without any need for queuing or paying.

Although I now enjoyed this privilege, there was something too pathetic about my little plastic bag filled with towel and soap for there to be anything but humiliation. Sometimes others in the queue waiting for their wholesome swim or half-hour on the badminton court would look at me with too frank an interest.

That only made me hurry through quicker.

Once I was in the showers I turned the water on hard to drown out everyone and everything else. Perhaps I should buy a
bathing suit. Not to go to the pool. I wasn't quite up to that yet, but at least I could have pretended I'd been swimming. For the moment though, I tried to put the outside world aside and concentrate on my shower.

I washed myself again and again, rubbing my skin hard with the wash cloth Mr. Roberts had brought me. When all the soap was rinsed off I turned the water to freezing. And then I stood there, grimacing as the sharp needles hit me. As I turned to ice.

T
he next day I went up to the Seize the Day bench to plant two pansies I got from the shop on the high street. One red and one blue. I was going to put them on either side of the bench, soldiers keeping guard, but then I changed my mind and placed them next to each other, at a slight angle so it looked more artistic. I had to use a spoon to dig the hole so it took some time, but it was satisfying. Then I went to the water fountain and carefully carried some water over in my cupped hands to baptize them. Grow well, I whispered.

I buffed up Jessica's brass plaque with the edge of my T-shirt until it shone—just like your hair used to, I told her—and cleared up the dead leaves from around the base of the young tree that was growing in front of the bench.

Only when everything was shipshape did I sit down. To begin with, I pretended not to see Tim walk across the park. He didn't take the direct route, but zigzagged from tree to tree. Not in a weird fashion, but just so he was in sight for such a short time that you hardly noticed him. I wasn't sure what to say to him at first, but he just stood in front of me.

“Herrrr-hummm,” he said, looking up under his eyebrows
and doing a waggly thing with his fingers as he pointed his hands toward me. Then he came and sat down without saying anything more. Despite what had happened the last time we'd met, just seeing him made me crinkle up with happiness.

You see, there was something I noticed when Tim came toward me. It was the way I caught myself looking at him. It wasn't so much that I thought, “Oh, there's Tim,” but that I absorbed my vision of him right into me, so I knew who he was before my eyes took in the boring exterior details. And then as he came closer I could feel every muscle, every bone working away under his skin. I willed him to keep straight on, but the funny thing was that my thoughts were so much inside him at that stage I was convinced that, if the fancy took me, I would be able to get him to veer off in a different direction. Or even skip or jump. Anything I wanted. And he wouldn't be able to do a thing about it. I was back in charge.