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  ‘Not really, no,’ Paula said. ‘We’re on the phone all the time.’

  ‘Yeah, but after so long being away you’re bound to be a bit—’

  ‘And, you know, I saw Chrissie and Jane and all that crowd at the party Damian had for me last night. Jill and Steph couldn’t make it so I met them for lunch today.’ These were all people we had both known when we were together.

  ‘You’re still in touch with all those guys?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to keep your friends. Thank God for Facebook, eh?’

  ‘Shit, yeah.’

  ‘And I’m still close to loads of people in London. Add that to my mates in Germany and, Christ, if I had a tenner for everyone who’s tried to phone me this weekend I could pay my debt off and move back tomorrow! If only, eh?’

  ‘Yeah. Shit.’

  It’s slightly disheartening to learn the one true love of your entire existence has kept in touch with every single person she’s ever met except you.

  She asked to meet you tonight, I reminded myself. That has to mean something. Okay, maybe, but what?

  ‘They’ve all been with me through everything,’ Paula said. Lucky fucking them. ‘But, you know, they’re all so bloody successful. Chrissie’s opened her third salon and Steph is two starters and a decent kitchen porter away from a Michelin star. And here’s me, five years later, bankrupt and living at my feckin’ mum’s.’ She shook her head and finished her beer.

  ‘Yeah.’ It was all I had in me to say.

  ‘That’sh why I asked you to meet me, Jim,’ Paula slurred, at which point I realised she’d obviously started drinking at lunch with Jill and Steph. ‘You understand me.’

  True or not, I was never going to pass up a comment like that from Paula Fraser. ‘Yes, Paula. Yes I do.’

  ‘You understand ‘cos you’re as big a feckin’ failure as me.’

  Oh.

  ‘Well, you know,’ I said.

  ‘You understand what it’s like, being a total waste of space.’

  ‘Hey, I wouldn’t—’

  ‘I know, I know. I’m not a total waste, but it feels like that, sometimes.’ She smiled. ‘And I love that I can talk to you about it. Someone who knows how it feels.’

  ‘Yeah, anytime.’ She was drunk and vulnerable, I told myself. She didn’t know she was insulting me. She just needed to let it out, and she chose me. She felt comfortable admitting her weaknesses with me - that was the important thing.

  ‘You’re a star, Jim.’ Paula reached across the table and squeezed my hand. It was bliss. She sat back in her seat and blinked rapidly a few times. ‘God, I’m a bit pissed,’ she said. ‘I’d better make a move.’

  ‘Really?’ It was early and I was disappointed as she stood to leave. But, if she needed her bed she needed her bed. I was just glad I’d been able to cheer her up a bit, and delighted she didn’t seem so drunk she wouldn’t remember in the morning. ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘Get a decent sleep and stop worrying. I know what you’re going through.’

  ‘Aw, cheers, Jim.’ Paula leaned down and kissed my cheek. ‘Sleep’s off the agenda, unfortunately. Chrissie’s decided to have another party in my honour tonight. KT Tunstall’s going to be there, apparently. It was great to see you, thanks again. I’ll call you soon.’

  ‘Yeah. Bye.’

  I’d have quite liked to meet KT Tunstall.

  Chapter 12

  Was Paula right, was I a waste of space? A failure?

  These thoughts clogged my brain on the Tuesday morning as I rounded the corner of my parents’ street and, confident I was out of sight of the front room window, lit a cigarette.

  I waited in the rain for ten minutes before the bus appeared.

  Paula’s friends and family were right, she hadn’t failed. Okay, her business had gone under, but that didn’t make her a failure. It simply made her someone who wouldn’t make the same mistakes next time. I believe the term is life-lesson.

  As I rode the 44 bus towards the first day of my exciting new career doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same place as I’d started my first not particularly exciting career, I pondered what lessons life had taught me. Beyond never pretend to stop smoking when you haven’t, I couldn’t think of any.

  I knocked on the wooden door of The Basement at 9.30 on the dot, proud to be punctual. At 9.37, it was finally opened by a sleepy-looking Mark.

  ‘All right, mate,’ he said.

  ‘All right,’ I replied to his back as he turned and headed towards the bar.

  For some reason pubs always look smaller with the house lights on. Presumably it’s because there are no shadow-strewn corners for your imagination to populate. And also because you’re sober and about to start a shift.

  Mark was finishing off the remains of a roll and sausage when I reached the bar. ‘You all set for your first day?’ he asked, mid-chew.

  ‘Yeah, no bother. Like riding a bike.’

  ‘Last time I tried to get on a bike I was on my arse within three seconds.’

  ‘Thanks for the encouragement,’ I said.

  ‘You’re welcome. Grab a mop, the bogs need cleaned.’

  ‘Wonderful.’ There’s nothing like breaking the new boy in gently, I thought, as I headed for the cleaning cupboard (or at least what used to be the cleaning cupboard) next to the gents.

  ‘Jim?’ Mark called, as I stomped across the litter-covered wooden floor (no doubt I’d end up sweeping that, too).

  ‘What?’ I turned, huffily defiant.

  ‘We don’t open till eleven. You’ve got time for a coffee.’ Mark was doing a terrible job of hiding his amusement as he brandished an almost-full glass coffee pot. ‘Unless you’re really keen, in which case don’t let me stop you.’

  ‘Bugger that,’ I said with relief. I knew he’d seemed like a decent guy.

  Over the next half-hour I learned I had told Mark pretty much my entire life story at my leaving do. I therefore took the opportunity to redress the balance and ask him lots of deeply personal questions about his own life, some of which he was happy to answer, others of which he subtly warned me against pursuing by telling me they were none of my fucking business.

  I learned, for example, that he was twenty-two, he’d been working in pubs since turning eighteen, and he’d taken the charge-hand job in The Basement to see him through the summer but was going to study Community Nursing (whatever that was) in the autumn.

  I also learned, for further example, that he was in a very happy relationship with Susan but that was none of my business; he wasn’t going to tell me his hourly-rate because it was none of my business; and he thought I was a bit of a sad-case, but that was none of his business.

  Honesty isn’t something you either pursue or expect when working in an office (apart from with Terry, of course), but I’ve always thought far more of people who are willing to risk the discomfort of truth over the easy comfort of a placating lie. I say that having been the recipient and whatever the opposite of ‘recipient’ is of both, on many occasions.

  Anyway, I liked Mark. Leaving aside his sickeningly solid hair-line and ability to be more senior, and probably more intelligent, than I was despite his youth, he was nice enough.

  At ten o’clock there was a knock at the door and Mark let in a skinny young guy in chef’s whites whom he introduced as Abe. After a brusque ‘’right, mate,’ Abe disappeared through the door that led to the small kitchen, and could soon be heard clattering pots and pans around and swearing loudly to himself in the manner of all chefs everywhere.

  With our coffees finished, Mark ran me through the set-up routines for the bar. Surprisingly little had changed since my last stint as a glug-dealer, and I was indeed soon sweeping the floor. Next came stocking the fridges and shelves, then slicing fruit and filling the ice-bins. That done, I had no further excuse.

  ‘I suppose I’d better do the toilets now,’ I said manfully.

  Mark was sitting at the bar counting the till-float, and he looked up
with a smile. And a shake of his head. ‘Jim, other than sweeping up the crisp packets and fliers from the floor, have you had to actually clean anything so far?’

  ‘Thankfully not,’ I said. I had thought the place seemed remarkably clean, but assumed this was down to nine years of living alone having altered my perception with regard to what was and wasn’t an acceptable level of dirt and grime.

  ‘That would be because I was here at eight this morning to let the cleaners in. The toilets are fine.’

  While this was a relief on an immediate ‘I don’t have to clean the toilets’ level, it also sent a cold, almost painful, shudder of dread through me.

  ‘We have to start at eight?’

  The one, single, only (or at least ‘main’) benefit of working the shitty hours pub work offers had always been that you at least got a longer-lie in the mornings than the office drones. I’d started at 9.30 that morning, but Sammy had assured me that ten o’clock was the regular start-time for staff, and I was getting a half-hour induction period for this one day only. No bastard mentioned anything about eight!

  ‘Don’t panic,’ Mark said. ‘I had to start at eight ‘cos I’m opening up today. Unless you decide to go for a badly-paid junior-management position you’ll be fine. The eight o’clock start is only for us key-holders.’

  ‘Oh thank fuck,’ I said. ‘Tell you a secret?’

  ‘Go for it,’ Mark’s voice said. I’d rather you didn’t, his face said.

  ‘I murdered my radio-alarm clock last night.’

  ‘Okay.’ Mark smiled, a little nervously. ‘Good for you.’

  ‘I was a bit pissed, no reason to go into why here,’ I said.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Mark agreed.

  ‘But, you know. It was symbolic. That wee, white plastic bastard’s been waking me up at half-seven every morning for years. Mostly with Terry Wogan. I had to kill it.’ This made perfect sense to me.

  ‘Yeah, okay.’ Mark didn’t appear to understand, but he was young. ‘Anyway, we need to get going here, it’s opening time.’ He headed down towards the door.

  ‘No bother.’ I was eager to start my new, old, life.

  Mark pulled down the bolt on the outside storm-doors and stopped them open with wooden wedges.

  ‘Are you ready for this?’ he asked when he’d returned behind the bar, where I stood, awaiting the throng.

  ‘And willing.’ I didn’t rub my hands together, but I wanted to.

  The door was opened at eleven o’clock precisely.

  The first customer didn’t appear until 11.45, which was a bit of an anti-climax. And all he wanted was a coffee, which Mark made and served.

  I used the time to familiarise myself with the layout of the bar. I was delighted to note there was no Moosehead font. The only other real change was that, instead of being up on optics, the main spirits were lined up on a speed-rail set at waist-height below the bar, each shot to be poured by hand using wee steel measures. I figured I could handle that.

  Mark was in the office and I had my back to the door trying to work out how to operate the PC-like till when our second customer arrived shortly after twelve.

  ‘Service bar-keep,’ a loud, familiar voice said. I turned to see Terry at the bar, grinning. ‘And be quick about it, my man.’

  ‘Pint, good sir? And might I add that sir is looking rather dapper today.’

  Terry had clearly continued to make good use of his iron (and bath), and looked almost smart. Plus, he was clean-shaven and, unless the sickly-sweet stench clawing at the back of my throat was mistaken, wearing aftershave. He’d even brushed his hair. This wasn’t like him at all.

  ‘Why thank you. Just a latte for me, mate.’

  This really wasn’t like him. I replaced the pint glass I had lifted automatically upon seeing Terry and moved to the cappuccino machine. ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m fine, why?’ He sounded confident but I knew Terry well enough to spot his embarrassment.

  I held up the latte cup I’d filled with steamed milk as evidence. ‘Would this have something to do with your meeting with Patrick yesterday, by any chance? I take it you got my job?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Terry’s eyes dropped for a moment. ‘He seems to think I might have hidden talents.’

  ‘That would be hidden in the same way the Holy Grail, for example, is hidden?’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘Hidden like El Dorado?’

  ‘Aye, okay.’

  ‘Shangri-La?’

  ‘Fuck off and give me my coffee.’

  Terry said this loudly enough to make Mark stick his head round the office door. ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked, obviously worried I was already giving customers cause to swear at me.

  I laughed. ‘It’s fine, this is my mate Terry.’

  Satisfied, Mark withdrew and returned to whatever he was pretending to do.

  ‘Is he your boss?’ Terry asked.

  ‘One of them, he’s the charge-hand. He’s all right.’

  ‘So it’s him and your mate Sammy, then?’

  ‘No, there’s an assistant manager I haven’t met yet, too. Apparently Sammy’s training her up to take over as manager when he goes back to his proper job. They’re due in later.’

  ‘Her?’ Terry said, which was both predictable and rather sad.

  ‘Yes Terry, her. And no, I don’t know what she looks like, if she’s single or if she likes big-boned men.’ I hoped it wouldn’t be too long before Terry found a way off that Egyptian river.

  ‘Let me know when you’ve found out. How did you get on with Simon on Sunday?’

  ‘It wasn’t him. It was Paula.’

  ‘Really? She asked you out? What happened?’ I had Terry’s full and undivided attention.

  ‘Nothing, she just wanted a chat. I think she’s struggling a bit. She ended up only staying for half-an-hour. She was half-cut.’ I decided not to mention the ‘failure’ stuff.

  ‘And? Are you going to see her again?’

  ‘She said she’d phone me.’

  ‘Did you get her number?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Jesus! You are rubbish, Jim.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  The door creaked open and a group of four office workers came in and sat at one of the tables against the side wall.

  The door opened again and three more customers chose a table. Then another four did the same. Then a group of five, then a two, then a six.

  Mark came out of the office. ‘Here we go,’ he said. ‘Are you wanting any lunch, mate?’ he asked Terry. ‘You’d better order now if you do.’

  ‘Thanks but it feels too weird being in a pub without a beer in front of me. I’ll stop at Greggs for a chicken pastie. Jim, good luck in your new career!’

  ‘Same to you, mate.’

  Terry saluted and headed for the door.

  Mark handed me an order pad and a biro. ‘You take eleven, fourteen and nineteen, I’ll get the rest.’

  ‘Right, okay,’ I said. ‘Which ones are they, exactly?’

  ‘Check the plan,’ Mark said with a sigh. He pointed to a sheet of A4 tacked to the wall above the till, before hurrying to take his first order.

  Pencilled on the paper was a badly drawn floor plan of The Basement showing all of the tables with their corresponding numbers. In fairness to Mark he had pointed the plan out to me while we were having our coffee and suggested it would be a good idea for me to spend some time studying it before we got busy. In fairness to me I’d forgotten.

  A few seconds of frantic spatial geometry later, I’d established that Mark had allocated me the table of two, of three and one of the fours. He was breaking me in gently after all.

  The routine was straightforward enough: take the order, open the table on the till and input the order, which then sent the food order to Abe in the kitchen and the drink order to the printer beside the till. I then poured the (mostly soft) drinks and served them, and waited for the food to appear at the kitchen pass for me to take to
the table. It had seemed pretty fool proof when Mark explained it that morning.

  I spent the next two hours proving otherwise.

  The first hurdle came when I failed to separate the starters from the main courses on my first order, causing Abe to serve them all at the same time. ‘Fucking idiot,’ he said reasonably, when I explained my error.

  Then I put the wrong food against the wrong table number in the till, screwing up both the order and two bills. ‘Fucking idiot,’ Abe said again, which was reiterated by Mark when I mentioned the problem with the bills.

  I made a few of the traditional mistakes like spilling soup, leaving bits of cork floating in wine and dropping trays of glasses behind the bar, but they were only to be expected and barely raised a glance from Mark or Abe.

  Accidentally hitting a customer across the back of the head with a large bottle of mineral water was more problematic, but fortunately the customer involved was in a forgiving mood, and happy to accept his table’s entire bill being written off as adequate recompense.

  When asked how the crayfish special was served I thought replying ‘dead, hopefully’ would be a funny way of covering the fact that I had no idea. That table was happy with just the drinks being removed from their bill.

  There was one table of two who waited almost an hour for their food. I’d been over several times explaining how busy the kitchen was and assuring them their order was on the way before I realised that I hadn’t put it through the till. They never got any food so it was only their drinks Mark had to comp.

  Apart from these and a number of other things, it went fairly well.

  Once the last lunch table had left Mark took a till reading. ‘Congratulations Jim,’ he said. ‘You only cost us 114 quid in comps. Well done.’

  ‘Well, you know. I try,’ I said. ‘Honestly mate, I’m sorry. Tomorrow will be better, I promise.’

  ‘I’d say we’d take it out of your wages but it’ll take you three days to earn that much, so we’ll let you off. Take a half-hour break, I’ll cover the bar. Abe’ll make you something to eat if you’re hungry.’

  ‘I think I’ll just grab a smoke then get a coffee,’ I said.