Christian shook his head.
“I’ll never forgive myself,” he said. “I shouldn’t have got involved.”
Merry took a step toward him.
“You shouldn’t have,” she said. “But you did. And I know you were doing it for the right reasons.”
He pushed himself up from the sink and took a step toward her. They were almost close enough to touch, and the quiet room suddenly felt strangely intimate. Christian fixed his eyes on her, the corner of his mouth lifting into a kind smile.
“Thank you for forgiving me,” he said, almost a whisper. “Even though I don’t deserve it.”
She took another step even though she didn’t know why she was doing it. There was just something magnetic about him, even in his creased overalls. There was something she couldn’t resist.
“Thank you for being my knight in shining armor,” she said, reaching for him with a trembling hand. “Even though I didn’t ask you to be. I don’t think he’ll be back in a hurry.”
“If he comes back, he’d better be wearing wellington boots and galoshes,” said Christian, his hand closing gently around hers. His skin was surprisingly warm, his palms rough but his grip tender. Merry almost yelped, because when he took her hand she felt an electric charge pulse through her. She leaned into him, her heart like a jackhammer.
“What on earth is going on in there?”
The voice was like a klaxon alarm, and Merry leapt back in shock. Somebody was pushing the restroom door open—and only one person had a voice like that.
“The dragon lady!” Christian hissed. “Hide!”
She didn’t hesitate, she just threw herself into the nearest cubicle and shut the door behind her. Climbing onto the toilet, she crouched down and listened to the clack of Mrs. Cradley’s heels as she marched into the restroom. She could just about see through the crack in the door as Christian pulled a screwdriver from his belt, holding it like a vampire hunter face to face with Dracula. Fortunately, Mrs. Cradley didn’t seem to recognize him from yesterday.
“Excuse me!” she snapped. “What are you doing?”
“Uh…” Christian stammered. “I was just asked to fix a toilet.”
“Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“Uh… it… exploded?” he said. Despite the tension in the room, Merry had to cover her mouth to stop the laugh escaping.
“Exploded?” the dragon lady asked.
“Yeah, there was… uh… stuff everywhere. I was trying to repair it.”
“Are you a qualified plumber?” Mrs. Cradley asked.
“No, I’m just the janitor.”
“Then you will leave this facility immediately and call for the relevant technician. Am I clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Christian said, glancing at the cubical where Merry was hiding. “I just need—”
“Now!” barked Mrs. Cradley, loud enough for the word to echo off the tiled walls. Christian flinched, walking from the room like a chastised schoolboy. Mrs. Cradley looked at the row of cubicles, and for a dreaded moment Merry thought she was coming to investigate. But she wheeled on her heels and exited, closing the door behind her and plunging the room into silence.
8
“There you are! Where on earth have you been?”
Christian hurried down the aisle, stopping at a display case full of expensive watches. A mug of milky coffee had been spilled on the top of it, and even though somebody had done their best to wipe it up droplets were plopping through the cracks. A harassed cashier stood there, a pile of napkins in one hand. A queue had built up, people clamoring for service. Christian pulled his cleaning products from the trolley and excused his way through the crowd.
“I’ve been waiting for ten minutes,” the cashier said.
“Sorry,” Christian replied. “There was an emergency in the restrooms.”
“More important than a $10,000 Rolex full of coffee?” she shot back, her face creased with annoyance. Christian mumbled another apology, waiting for her to unlock the case. This was something he was discovering all too quickly: that when you were wearing a janitor’s overalls, people treated you like you were a servant, like you were trash. It was a good test of character, he thought, seeing how somebody reacted to him when he had a mop in his hands. If this cashier knew he was Christian Carroll, heir to the Carroll empire, she’d have been a lot more polite.
“Come on!” she snapped as he pulled the first watch from its stand and checked it. There was a spot of coffee on the face, but it was otherwise unharmed. It was a Cellini, very similar to one he had once owned, and it retailed at over $20,000. He carefully wiped the face with a lint-free cloth, then handed it to the woman. He’d always been conscious of the money he had, especially when he’d started to earn his own billions. But now, dressed in a janitor’s uniform, it seemed particularly nauseating that a single watch could cost more than he would earn doing this job for a year.
“Excuse me, could you please hurry up?” barked a man behind him. Christian did his best to smile politely as he cleaned another two Rolexes. One—an Oyster Perpetual—had been quite badly drenched, but they were waterproof and it would be easily remedied. He polished it as best he could, then handed it over. He used half a roll of kitchen paper to mop up the coffee, then a clean cloth to make the glass and floor of the cabinet as good as new. There was something immensely satisfying about the work, but nobody seemed to appreciate it.
“You can go now,” said the cashier as the crowd surged forward.
“Sure,” he said. “No worries.”
He turned to walk away, then changed his mind.
“Hey, why are you on your own here? It’s so busy.”
“How would I know?” she replied, taking payment from the rude man who had spoken to Christian earlier. “There used to be three of us, but there have been lay-offs.”
She waved him away like he was an annoying fly, and he collected his trolley and squeezed out of the crowd. Only when he was back in the relative quiet of the staff corridor did he start to think about Merry, and what had happened between them. He’d been an idiot, he knew that now. He had no idea what he’d been thinking when he’d chased away her ex with his mop—except maybe that he’d wanted to be her hero. But it had completely backfired, and suddenly he had become the villain instead. He couldn’t blame her if she hated him.
Except, she didn’t seem to hate him. She’d forgiven him, and hadn’t it been more than that too? Back in the restroom she had taken his hand, she had moved close to him, and for a moment there had been electricity in the air—as if she had been about to kiss him. He had to be mistaken, of course. It was just a small room, and it had been a stressful few minutes. If anything, she had probably just been about to shake his hand, or give him a friendly hug. Right?
Thanks to the dragon lady, he’d never know.
Christian sighed, pressing the button for the service lift. He was waiting for it to arrive when his radio hissed again.
“Chris?” said Harvey. “You still on three?”
“Yeah,” he replied.
“They need you on ten,” he went on. “Out back, head office. No idea what the job is but they asked for you.”
Christian knew exactly what the job was. He rode the elevator to the top floor, pushing the trolley through the toy department. Santa Claus was sitting outside the grotto, a young girl on his knee and a line of people waiting to speak to him. Christian squinted at the man, shaking his head in disbelief. It couldn’t be the same Santa whose knee he had sat on when he was a kid, could it? It certainly looked like him, but he didn’t seem to have aged a day.
As if he could sense that he was being watched, Santa glanced up, a twinkle in his eye as he looked right at Christian. Despite the fact he was nearly thirty years old, Christian grinned and waved.
The smile didn’t last long. He used the new code to open the staff door, leaving his trolley in the corridor and heading past the break room and the locker room to the offices at the back. There was no mes
s to clean up here, he knew—not in the conventional sense, anyway. He stopped outside the door to his dad’s office, knocking twice.
“What?” came the gruff reply. Christian opened the door, trying to make sense of the gloom after the blindingly bright corridor.
“Dad?” he said. “You needed to see me?”
“Come in,” said his dad. He did as he was asked, closing the door behind him. It was only when he turned to face the desk again that he noticed Amy sitting in the armchair in the corner of the room. She glared at him.
“Picking fights now, are we?” she asked. “Attacking customers with a broom? What kind of example are you setting for the rest of the staff?”
Christian sighed.
“It was a mop, not a broom,” he said.
“We had to offer to dry clean her dress and shoes,” Amy went on. “Money we’ll—”
“Leave it,” growled Lewis Carroll. He seemed even older than he had yesterday, slumped over his desk, the oxygen mask hanging around his neck, but his words carried the same power and authority they always had. “They probably had it coming. Right son?”
“Yes,” said Christian. Then, thinking of what Merry had said, “Actually, no. I acted way out of proportion. I’m sorry.”
Amy grinned smugly, but his dad waved his words away.
“I don’t care,” he said, breaking into a fit of hacking coughs. Amy got up to help him, but he waved her away too. He inhaled through the mask, taking a moment to catch his breath. “It’s forgotten. Have you learned anything?”
Christian nodded, walking to the chair that sat in front of his father’s desk. He sat down, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
“I’m getting a sense of the place,” he said. “There are major queues forming, customers getting angry at the wait and leaving without buying anything. From what I’ve learned, it’s a staffing issue. There just aren’t enough people here, especially for this time of year.”
“That’s garbage,” spat Amy. “My staffing levels are perfect.”
“So why the lay-offs?” Christian asked. “Why are you letting so many people go?”
“What?” barked his dad. “What lay-offs?”
“The janitorial team, the jewelry department, everywhere,” Christian said. He looked at Amy. “This is your doing.”
“We haven’t made any lay-offs,” she said, her eyes like daggers. “And if you’re going to accuse me of something, you’d better have evidence to back it up.”
“Hey, calm it down,” said his dad. “Amy, leave us.”
Amy stood up, fuming. She opened her mouth to protest, then thought better of it.
“I told you, Lewis,” she said as she walked from the room. “He doesn’t know the business. He doesn’t know the company.”
Then she was gone, slamming the door behind her. Lewis pushed his chair back, struggling to his feet, and Christian ran around the desk to help him.
“I’m okay,” the old man said. “I’m not dead yet.”
They stood face to face, and Christian was shocked at how small his dad looked—as if somebody had shaved a foot off his height. He was stooped and broken, his breaths coming in short, rapid wheezes. All he wanted to do was wrap him in a hug, but years of emotional absence kept him at bay.
“Grab that,” Lewis said, nodding at the oxygen tank. Christian picked it up, careful not to pinch the tube. His dad collected a walking stick from the side of the desk and shuffled across the room, leading the way into the corridor. There were a few members of staff out here, all of whom nodded to their boss, and all of whom completely ignored the janitor by his side. “People have really said that? That there’ve been lay-offs?”
“Yeah,” Christian said. “Too many for it not to be true. You must have a record of employees, of who has joined and who has left?”
“That’s Amy’s department now,” his dad said.
“And you trust her?” Christian asked.
His dad pressed the buzzer and shouldered through the door into the store. Christian hefted up the oxygen tank, following him out. His dad was breathing hard, and Christian was worried that he might be overdoing it. But it turned out he wasn’t going far. He stopped at the edge of the children’s department, close enough to see Santa passing a gift to a young boy. Overhead, All I Want For Christmas was playing.
“You recognize him?” his dad asked.
“Santa?” said Christian. “I think so. I couldn’t be sure. Is it really the same guy?”
“Of course,” his dad said, and there was almost a smile on his face. “I remember putting you on his knee when you were ten months old, holding you there while he asked you what you wanted for Christmas. You know what you did?”
Christian shook his head. It was so unlike his dad to reminisce like this that the question took him by surprise.
“You puked all over his pants,” he said, coughing out a rumbling laugh. “We had to rush him into the bathroom to clean it off. Luckily the store wasn’t open yet, we were just setting up. We had time to dry clean them. But for the rest of that rehearsal Santa gave out gifts in his jockey shorts.”
Christian laughed.
“Who is he?” he asked. His dad turned to him, blinking his watery eyes.
“What sort of dumb question is that?” he said after a moment. “He’s Santa.”
His dad sucked a breath through his oxygen mask. His eyes were dull and heavy again, his mouth downturned and serious.
“I trust Amy,” he said, wiping his lips on the back of his hand. “She’s ruthless, and she wants the top job, but I trust her.”
Christian still had his doubts, but he kept them locked behind his lips. He’d been away for so long that he really didn’t know Amy any more—or his father, for that matter.
“You know, this store is all I have,” his dad said. “After your mom died, after you left. It’s all I have, and all I ever had.”
Groups of people passed by, most of them completely oblivious to the fact that they were looking at the last two members of the Carroll family.
“I’m not going to live forever,” the old man went on. “And when I do go, this is what I leave the world. My father trusted me to run this place, and I have. It’s bigger now than ever. I thought I trusted you to run it too, after I went. You were so happy here when you were a kid, this place was your world. I thought you would trust it to your own children one day too, and they to theirs.”
“Dad…” Christian said.
“It needs a Carroll!” his dad shouted, coughing hard. “And unluckily for me I’ve only got one. But one is all it takes. Is it really too much to ask? Is this life really so awful?”
“I said I’d stay,” Christian said, feeling the same spark of anger he always felt when he was talking to his dad. “Until the ship has righted itself. I said I’d stay until then.”
“And then what? Back to the Philippines? To mud huts and sewers?”
His dad broke into coughs again, putting a hand on a shelf to steady himself. People were starting to pay attention to him now, and he smiled at a group of older ladies, keeping his voice low.
“I want you to take a long, hard look at yourself, Christian,” he said. “I want you to ask yourself what you’re really running away from. And I want you to think—really think—about whether there is something here, in this family, in this city, in this store, that is worth staying for.”
Christian started to reply, but something kept the words from coming out. He took a deep breath, thinking about his family—only his dad remained, a man he couldn’t get through a single conversation with without arguing. He thought about the city, a city that had once offered him so much hope, but which now seemed only cold and unwelcome. And he thought about the store, a business that had sucked away his childhood, which had taken away his mom, and now his dad, which now threatened to take away his own future.
Then he thought of Merry’s smile, of the way she had taken his hand, the way she had leant into him. He imagined what
it would have been like to accept her kiss.
What if there was something worth staying for after all?
9
For a day that had started off just about as badly as it could have, things had gone downhill surprisingly quickly.
For a start, once Merry had escaped the restroom and returned to jewelry, the lines for the checkout were so long that people were actually yelling at each other—and at her. Twice she had a complete stranger growl in her face that they were going to take their business elsewhere, and at least three people had put in complaints to the management about the slow service. Merry only discovered this when Mrs. Cradley arrived, two hours or so after the incident in the restroom, pulling her away from her station and into the service corridor.
“Look,” Merry said, trying to get in front of the old lady. “I’m sorry, I know what you’re going to say.”
“Hush yourself!” Mrs. Cradley barked, flapping her clipboard in Merry’s face as if she meant to use it as a weapon. “You seem to think that this job is your leisure time, that you are free to chat idly to friends and acquaintances instead of actually working. But let me tell you something, Miss Sinclair, you are on thin ice. Your job is to satisfy every demand the customer makes of you, and no more. When one task is finished, you move onto the next. And you do not, under any circumstances, physically threaten a visitor to this store.”
“I didn’t,” she said, but once again Mrs. Cradley interrupted her.
“Luckily for you, Mr. Carroll himself took care of the incident and found that nobody was at fault, but that was your last warning. Am I making myself clear?”
“As ice,” Merry said. “It won’t ever happen again.”
Mrs. Cradley gave her a stern look, then marched away. She had only made it a few yards, however, when she turned back.
“And do not use the facilities on this floor,” she said. “One of the toilets has exploded.”
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