Standing outside Stella’s office one morning,
Taylor sighed, pushing down her regret at abandoning her studies and whatever
else might have been as she tapped on the door.
“What is it?” Stella asked, looking over her
computer. Her eyes were bright with curiosity as she waved Taylor in.
Taylor swallowed nervously, and hoped her boss
wouldn’t take this request the wrong way.
“I was wondering if you’d be willing to give me
a reference,” she said.
“Leaving us already?” Stella’s tone was light,
but her expression held the slightest tinge of anxiety.
“I’m not leaving you,” Taylor hastened to reassure her. “I’m saving
up for a house.”
Stella raised an eyebrow.
“I thought you were studying.”
“I’ve taken a year off,” Taylor said. “With dad’s accident…”
“I see,” Stella replied, her face sympathetic.
Watching her expression, Taylor thought her boss might, for the first
time actually see, that Stella might now understand why she’d asked for more
hours and be looking at a second job. Taylor
prayed she was wrong, or that her boss wouldn’t ask any awkward questions. She
didn’t think she could face questions right now. The reality of her situation
was hard enough.
Fortunately, Stella seemed to also understand Taylor’s need for privacy,
for she nodded.
“I’d be glad to give you a reference. You know
the store number, and I’ll give you my mobile in case they try to get in touch
with me when I’m out. Put both on the application. I’ll be waiting for their
call.”
“Oh, thank you.” Taylor smiled in relief and turned to go.
“Where are you applying?” Stella asked, and Taylor paused at the
door.
“Lycees,” Taylor told her, “as a night waitress.
They’re not far from here.”
Stella nodded.
“I know it well,” she said. “It’s a good place
to eat. You can change here, if you need to… or not,” she added, seeing Taylor’s frown. “It’s up
to you.”
“Thank you.” Taylor had turned to go, when another
question from Stella stopped her in her tracks.
“How’s your father doing?
For a minute Taylor’s calm façade almost cracked. With an
effort, she kept her expression smooth and her tone matter-of-fact. “He’s still
recovering.”
“Your mum’s looking after him?”
Taylor nodded.
For a long moment it looked as if Stella would
ask her how her mother was, and Taylor
steeled herself against telling a necessary lie. Her mother was definitely not
‘okay’, but there was very little she or Taylor could do about it. Giving up
her job and almost losing her husband had pushed Taylor’s mum to the edge of what she could
endure. If Taylor
was going to be honest, she’d have to answer ‘fragile but managing’, and even that
was close to stretching it.
Her mother had always been good at keeping
herself busy. When she was at home, the house shone and the garden was well-kept.
If she sat, her hands were busy with knitting, or sewing. If she relaxed, there
was cross-stitch or quilting, which ended up adorning walls or on someone’s
bed. At the hospital, her mother just sat, her knitting needles idle and balls of
wool left tucked in her bag. She didn’t even read the novels Taylor brought her to pass the time.
No, Taylor
thought, her mother was not ‘okay’, and father… Well, ‘recovering’ wasn’t quite
a lie, but it tended to give people the impression he was up and walking
around. He was, in fact, still unconscious and still on life support. Her
mother rarely left his side, and then only when pressed. Taylor quelled the urge to sigh. There was no
point in worrying others. She and her mum would get through this, and with any
luck, her father would, too.
This time, when Taylor stepped away from Stella’s desk, her
boss didn’t call her back. With what could have been an awkward moment behind
her, Taylor
felt her mood lighten. Now, if only she could go home and hear some good news
about her father, she’d be happy. She pushed away the thought that good news
about her father would mean she could go back to studying accountancy. Instead,
she focused on the day ahead.
The first part of the day passed in a whirl of
dusting, shelf tidying and customer assistance. As lunchtime drew near, the
customer queries increased. The questions ranged from the grandmother looking
for a children’s classic for her grandson, to a student of criminal law wanting
the latest study in international crime.
Highways sold them all. Sometimes Taylor wondered how the
store managed to maintain such a wide range and still stay afloat. In the book
industry, there could be such a thing as too much variety. She was grateful
that Stella didn’t think so, and the customers obviously appreciated it because
they kept coming back.
Lunchtime was always their busiest time of day,
and today was no different. Taylor
did most of the assisting out on the floor, while Stella met customers at the
sales counter. The two of them worked non-stop until almost two in the
afternoon.
It was as Taylor directed a woman and her newly
found QQHistory of Roman ArchitectureQQ
to the counter, that she realized the shop had grown quiet. Glancing around,
she saw it was almost empty. Only a mother and her fretful child were left as
the front door closed behind the history buff and her latest purchase.
From behind the till, Stella sighed and shook
her hands as though loosening up her wrists. She and Taylor shared a look of
relief, and glanced curiously towards the mother.
“Oh I’m just browsing,” the woman said, and
they smiled encouragingly at her, before turning to other tasks.
Taylor heard herself saying, “That’s okay. Just let
us know if you need a hand,” as she bent to straighten a row of travel books.
Honestly, she’d never know how people could be so careless with things that
didn’t belong to them. None of them seemed to be bothered putting anything
back, and they always complain if they couldn’t find what they were looking
for.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the rattle of
the bell as the door to the shop was flung open. Well, someone was in a hurry!
Frowning, Taylor glanced up from the shelf.
Someone indeed was in a hurry. Six-foot-two,
broad shouldered and well proportioned, he strode quickly down the nearest
aisle, looking about him as he did so. Dark disheveled hair crowned a tanned
face at odds with the well-tailored suit he wore. A linen shirt was framed by
his jacket collar, but he had no tie.
Sensing her gaze, the man looked up, giving Taylor a clear view of
his tension-etched face and brown eyes. He smiled, seeming to relax as he moved
towards her.
“I was wondering if you could help me,” he
began.
“Yes?” Taylor
replied, but before she could say more, he had reached her side.
Placing an arm around her shoulders, he steered
her towards the rear of the shop, and the door leading to the staff-only areas.
When he spoke again, he bent his head close to hers and kept his voice low.
“Show me how to get out of here. I don’t have
much time.”
The urgency in his tone stopped the protest
rising to her lips, although it did little to reduce the resentment Taylor felt at the overly
familiar placement of his arm. How on earth was she going to explain this to
Stella? Given how stressed the guy seemed, she thought it best if she just
showed him into the alley behind the store as quickly as possible.
Less stress on the customers, too, Taylor thought, catching
the startled look on the face of the mother with the fretful child. No, she’d
explain to Stella that she’d thought it would be safer all round if she just
did as the stranger asked. She couldn’t see her boss being too angry at that,
especially with a child at stake.
After they’d passed Stella’s office and the
staff lounge, Taylor brought them to a second door opening onto a narrow
corridor leading past the staff toilets. As soon as they were through the door,
the man stepped behind her, propelling her forward by placing one firm hand on
the small of her back. They were halfway to the rear entrance when Taylor heard the shop
door slam open once more.
“Where is he?” cried a rough male voice.
“Which way did he go?” shouted another.
Stella must have pointed the way, for a second
door slammed and Taylor
heard the sound of hurried footsteps. She stopped outside the door to the
Ladies’ toilets, resisting the hand on her back.
“In there,” she said, pushing the door open.
“Quickly.”
Without waiting to see if he obeyed, she ran to
the door leading into the street and pushed it open as far as it would go. The
noise it made as it banged into the large garbage bin muffled the sound of the toilet
door closing. She was turning to go back into the store, when two men burst
into the corridor.
“Which way?” one roared, and Taylor pointed at the partially open back
door. She did not have to pretend to be afraid. The men were brandishing pistols
as they rushed towards her, and even though they held them pointed towards the
ceiling, they were no less threatening.
“There!” she exclaimed. “He went that way!”
She didn’t need to say more, as both men pushed
past her. They moved so swiftly, that she only caught a glimpse of dark eyes
and hair, and the scent of sweat and cologne as they ran by. They wore dark
clothes, jackets zipped shut against the weather, even though they were inside.
Still, they were both in such a hurry that Taylor didn’t think they’d felt the need to remove
their jackets. They hadn’t been in the shop long enough to register its heated
interior.
“I don’t see him,” she heard one shout as the
rear door closed for a second time. Holding her breath, she waited to see what
they’d do. Terrified that they’d come back in and search the place, she leant
against the wall and closed her eyes, listening for any sound heralding of
their return.
“He was moving pretty fast when he went in,”
came the reply. “He’d have bolted as soon as he hit the street. Go that way!”
When the sound of their footsteps had died
away, Taylor
made her way back to the store. While she wanted to go and check on their
unexpected visitor, she needed to make sure Stella was okay. She also needed to
make sure the mother and her child had taken no harm, and she needed to call
the police.
Setting her mind to these tasks, Taylor hurried back along
the corridor and into the bookstore. When she arrived, Stella had one arm
around the mother, and was looking anxiously at the staff entrance. When she
appeared, Taylor waved, and Stella’s look of apprehension melted into relief. Taylor
mimed going for the telephone, and Stella nodded, speaking softly to the mother
and her child. The other woman raised a tear-stained face in Taylor’s direction, and some of the tension
went out of her body.
Taylor gave them all a quick smile as she
reached the counter and began to dial. She had every intention of making tea
and coffee in the kitchenette opposite Stella’s office, but the policewoman
kept her on the line until the first patrolman arrived. Stella closed the shop
for the afternoon, and seated them in the staff lounge upstairs. The officers
agreed to interview them in her office.
In the fuss that followed, Taylor managed to forget about the man she’d
hidden in the Ladies’ room… until he came up in the interview.
“And where is he now?” the policeman asked.
“He’s…” Taylor felt the blood
drain from her cheeks. “Oh! I left him there.”
She was up from her seat and out of the door
before she could be told not to go anywhere. Ignoring the cries of ‘Wait!’
behind her, she hurried to the staff toilets. The sound of footsteps behind her
told her the police officers were hurrying in her wake, but she didn’t stop.
How could she have forgotten? Taylor
whisked through the door into the Ladies’ and didn’t see him.
When he didn’t her call, she tentatively opened
one cubicle after another, only to find he wasn’t in any of them. Nor was he in
the single locker where staff could store a change of clothes. He wasn’t in the
shower bay around the corner, either. With one police officer right on her
heels, and another at the door, she went through the bathroom again.
“But, he was in here,” she murmured, turning to
look at the policeman in confusion. “Where did he go?”
“He might have left when he thought it was
safe,” the officer told her.
“Or when he heard the sirens,” his colleague
added, ushering her into the corridor to inspect the rear door.
“Did you lock this?” the first officer asked,
testing the handle and opening the door to peer cautiously outside.
“No.” Taylor
answered softly. “I was in too much of a hurry to see if Stella and our
customer were all right.”
Feeling relieved and worried at the same time,
she let the two officers lead her back to Stella’s office.
“He wasn’t there,” she explained, in response
to Stella’s questioning stare.
“And I’m making coffee,” Stella added glaring
at them, “or tea. Whatever people prefer.”
With a small gesture of surrender, the
policeman questioning Taylor asked for coffee, and nodded encouragingly to his
partner when the man glanced at him as though for permission.
The young mother’s name was Helen; her child
was called Michael. During the interviews, Michael had stopped fretting, curled
up on Helen’s lap and gone to sleep. Coffee in hand, Helen went through the
interview and returned to the office where Stella was waiting. By the time
Stella’s interview was over, Michael had started to stir.
Taylor saw the officers to the front door and then
locked it behind them. Stella had said she wouldn’t be opening for the rest of
the afternoon, but Taylor
was surprised to find the afternoon had already given way to the soft light of
evening. A quick glance at her watch confirmed the time and Taylor felt her spirits drop. If she didn’t
hurry, she was going to be late for her interview. It was a good thing Lycees
was just across the road. When she’d asked for Stella to be her referee, she
hadn’t mentioned she’d be dropping her resume off that evening.
Quickly turning the key and testing the handle
to make sure the door was firmly locked, Taylor
hurried back to Stella. When she arrived, Stella and Helen were deep in
conversation, and Michael was happily sipping hot chocolate from one of the
work mugs.
“It’s past six, Stella,” Taylor said, “and I need to drop my resume
off. Do you mind if…”
“No, you go,” her boss replied. “I’ll be fine
to lock up here, and then I’ll take Helen and Michael home. Are you sure you’ll
be okay? I could ring them and let them know we’ve had an interesting
afternoon.”
Taylor shook her head.
“It’s okay. I’m sure I’ll be fine. I’ll lock
the back door as I leave.”
She said a brief goodbye to Helen and Michael,
then hurried to get changed. In her rush, she forgot completely about the
stranger she’d hidden in the Ladies’ toilets, and did not see the tall shadow
that slipped out of the Men’s room, unlocked and locked the store door behind
her, and followed her into the night.
