Sweet Home

by Wendy Erskine

  Gil Courtney’s favourite cigarettes were Chesterfields.

  The soul has no skin

  Guys who’ve messed up and gone off track, they’ll work in the place for a while, but once the boredom seeps in, they’ll get themselves sorted out with something else. Years later a guy like Phil will call in to buy something, a car seat for the baby say, and it’ll be, Barry, you still here mate?

  Yeah I’m still here.

  Said with a smile, a smile and a shrug, because it isn’t that bad. It can be a laugh when you do the thing where you pick what you hope to be the most obscure item from the catalogue, and if anyone orders it you have to pay all the others a fiver. Has to be pricey enough because otherwise somebody could get one of their pals to come in and buy the thing so you have to shell out. And it has to be something that could reasonably be ordered and picked up in the shop. Dishwashers or tumble dryers are out. A Scuderia Ferrari Men’s XX Yellow Black Chrono Watch maybe. Or a Haven Fresh HF710 Humidifier—Black. A Tefal ActiFry Fryer—Silver. Barry’s had a good streak so far with the Flower Flush 8-Light Ceiling Fitting; he picked it over eighteen months ago.

  People steal stuff from the shop, as you’d expect. A box is brought to the collection point for a customer, but then it gets swiped before anyone has a chance to do anything. The security guard in tassels and epaulettes stands at the door. He says the trousers are cut that tight he can hardly move in them. That security guard always seems to be at the other end of the shop when it happens. People settle themselves on the display sofas like it’s their own personal living room in the city centre. Bring a packet of biscuits, why don’t you. Kick off your shoes and get yourself comfortable. I’m putting the kettle on, anybody want a cup of tea?

  Fair amount of hassle some days. The product doesn’t work and they want a refund. Some old guy hands you over a toaster that doesn’t work, and when you take it, a load of crumbs drop out the bottom. Sir, I am sorry but since you’ve used this, I can’t just give you a refund. You haven’t used it? You both stare at the crumbs, saying nothing, before you sweep them off the counter with the back of your hand. Uh huh, uh huh, I do hear what you’re saying, but I’m sorry I can’t give you a refund. I don’t make up these rules. The best I can do, Barry says, is to send it back to the manufacturer for you. No, I don’t know how long that would take. Not too sure about that. If I could give you a new toaster, I would, he says, because if he could give them a new toaster he would. The old guy looks murderous.

  A bank of ten sleek tellies on the shop floor, the repeated image crisp and saturated. In the staffroom out the back there’s a radio, a kettle and a microwave. Barry’d rather mooch around the town for half an hour in the lunch break, smoke a fag in the lane, rather than go to the staff room. Even by two o’clock the town feels tired like it can’t be bothered with the afternoon either and longs for the shutters down.

  Some of the others, Phil and all that, sometimes say after work to come for a drink, just the one, like. But he’d prefer to get back to the flat. Not much to see at his place. Living room bedroom kitchen bathroom. Bathroom’s full of his creams: Vitamin D analogues, corticosteroids. Flakeybake they called him in school, Flakemeister. Slather on the skin stuff morning and night, just one of the things you have to do. Walls here are wafer thin and he hears his neighbours fighting, sometimes: she goes guttural, he goes squeaky. They throw things about before they make up and Barry sees them heading out somewhere, the woman’s hand in the back pocket of the fella’s jeans. They’re alright; they lent him a corkscrew when Annie brought wine one time. And if they find his music annoying, they’ve never said anything. They’re not bad at all.

  Annie looked around the place and declared, well, Barry, you haven’t exactly embraced the concept of interior decor. Grand Designs, this ain’t. Alright, the flat’s pretty spartan, can’t deny it. There’s only one thing on the wall, a picture torn out of a magazine of a Gibson Les Paul guitar, bleached pale because it’s near the kitchen window and that spot always catches the sun. Barry used to play the guitar, messed around on it anyway, a good few years ago now.

  Annie had been one of the bosses for a while, an unusually well-liked one. Everybody knew she drank, but they didn’t care because she wasn’t operating heavy machinery nor was she personally responsible for any individual’s safety. It was never a massive problem that she often had to be busy with administrative tasks out the back until after midday. Only a shop after all, where everyone was an adult. In her younger days she had been into the whole rock scene and she still dressed in that style all the years later: poodle perm, floaty scarves, a biker jacket although now she went with cheap, fake leather. They called her rock hen. Phil started it, then everyone else joined in. Never mind those there rock chicks, here’s the rock hen. She’d liked it though, thought it was funny. Annie was married to some Scottish fella who had one of those illnesses where basically everything shuts down slowly over time. Annie said he used to be in the Hell’s Angels, except his crowd were called the Blue Angels.

  The first time Annie and Barry got together was after a late-night Thursday in the run-up to Christmas. Town was tinselled up with rain and lights and they swigged from a bottle of brandy near the waterfront. Cold enough down there so the brandy was welcome. Back at his place they were leaning on the door as he tried to find the lock and when it opened they tumbled into the dark hall. How long had he lived there and he couldn’t find the light switch! In the bedroom he did know where the switch was, but he didn’t put it on.

  There was another time when they both had a day off and she came around at about half ten in the morning with a bottle of wine.

  Is it not meant to be maybe a coffee and a biscuit at this time of the day? Barry said.

  According to what? Annie replied. Barry Young’s Guide to Modern Living?

  They borrowed the corkscrew and because he didn’t have any wine glasses they drank out of mugs. The rock hen was just a bird with nowhere where you couldn’t feel the bones, whereas he seemed to himself a crude and hulking lump. Barry didn’t feel guilty. Why should he? It was nothing to do with him, nothing at all, the husband in the wheelchair or whatever it was. He had a fleeting thought of him surrounded by wires and monitors, a skeletal ghoul in motorbike leathers.

  Afterwards, when they were lying there, Annie’s hand reached out to touch his hip.

  Barry, she said. Come on. It’s really not that bad. Seriously. It’s not.

  Yeah, sure, he said. And he reached for his T-shirt and trousers squashed at the bottom of the sofa.

  She looked around the room. You know what it’s like in here, it’s like a monastic cell, she said.

  Just the way it is, he said.

  Well if it suits you.

  It does—you live in a palace yourself? he asked.

  You know I don’t. You know I don’t, Barry.

  She half put on her top and then took it off again. She wasn’t wearing a bra. Look at me, she said. I want you to look. You see the, well, I hardly need to point any of it out to you, I would rather not give you chapter and verse here, but what you are looking at is not really babe material. What’s in front of you isn’t exactly a hot piece of ass. Barry. You taken a look? Look.

  There’s nothing wrong with you, he said.

  Course there is, she said. And then she did put on her top, and her jacket. She needed to go. Someone was looking after her husband for a few hours, but she needed to get back so that they could head on. Her time was up.

  Barry’s morning routine: out of bed, do the creams, get dressed, get a takeaway coffee from the garage, get on the bus. It’s the same people, more or less, on the bus each day. Tinny beat of that guy’s cheap headphones, the woman always doing her make-up. Some, like him, are tagged with the logos of their work. The uniform’s alright. A polo shirt with a sweatshirt for the winter. When he gets off the bus and walks around, he always has at least ten minutes to spare.

  Barry has a usual spot for a smoke. He sees his own cigarette bu
tts when he looks down. Looks up and there are empty rails for clothes on the first floor of the building opposite. Beside him the hoardings surrounding a vacant space are covered in weathered, flaking posters. Building on the space was meant to start months ago. They advertise long past club nights, a psychic who visited a hotel on the outskirts of town.

  This morning there’s been a big delivery so that means lots of stuff for them to unpack. They have to slice through the cardboard and ties with blades. Some of the other guys were there early this morning for the van coming through. You need to go on a day course if you want to be able to unload the lorry, but Barry hasn’t attended it, nor does he want to. The new manager won’t be around for much longer because he is looking to move to a bigger shop. It’s alright unpacking the stuff: you get into a rhythm as you work away. You think about things. Don’t think about things. Think about things. Barry goes through the track listing of various albums, tries to remember the back cover of Second Helping, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the guitar listing. That new woman on the bus, Polish maybe, the line of her jaw as she wiped a circle in the condensation on the window, but now it’s Annie and he feels her leaning against him and laughing as they tumble in his front door. Don’t switch on the light.

  But didn’t everyone say the sun was great for clearing up your skin? The good old sun works wonders. Lying in the park, first summer after he’d started tech, trying to see if everyone was in fact right and that the sun could work some magic. He was down by the old bandstand on one of those early July days of melting tarmac and yellow grass. There were a few fellas from the college going through the park. They came over, sat down for a while, then headed off. They were going off to a party that night.

  You wanna come?

  No. You’re alright.

  You sure? What the fuck’s the point just hanging around here by yourself?

  Hot, hot day. The guys from tech ambled off, but then another bunch came and started throwing a frisbee to each other not far from where he was lying. When the frisbee hit him for the second time, he thought about the cool of the kitchen and going home.

  Two playgrounds in the park, one at each entrance. The new one had a zip line and fresh rides, the old a rusty climbing frame and forlorn couple of tyres.

  Hey, she shouted when Barry was walking past. Hey there, can you help me?

  A girl was dangling there in the old playground, fat legs a few feet off the ground. She was maybe nine or ten. Her hands clung to the rusty bar above her and she couldn’t get free because she was hooked to a broken pole by her pants. Face shiny from crying and the sun. Barry reached up and freed her. He held out his hands so that she could take them and jump down.

  What happened you? he said. How you get stuck?

  They’d all been messing around, she said, but then one of her big brothers had gone and done that to her. They’d all cleared off on her after that.

  My brothers are always doing stuff like that on me, she said. They have me tortured.

  She fixed her skirt, which had got all twisted, pulled up her socks.

  Well, Barry said. That’s you down now anyway. He felt around in his pocket and found a 50p.

  Take it sure, he said. Get yourself something. Away on, off you go and get yourself something. Get an ice cream or some sweeties.

  She took the coin and walked off towards the gates, breaking into a skip as she got closer.

  Did none of yous think when you were unpacking all this stuff that there seemed to be a bit of an excessive amount for us? James the manager says. None of yous boys think about that?

  Some of the stuff they have just unpacked should have gone to the other shops. They are overwhelmed with ironing boards.

  Not really, Barry says.

  Nah, never thought, Phil says. You told us to unpack the stuff, so that’s what we did.

  Well I’m gonna have to arrange for them to be taken away again, James says. So don’t be doing anything more with those ironing boards.

  They stack them in the only empty space in the store and get back to unpacking more stuff, but James comes back through again and tells Phil that he needs him out the front. Annie always said, would you mind, in work. Would you mind giving me a hand. Would you mind coming out the front. Nobody ever did mind. When Annie didn’t appear in work for the best part of a month nobody knew what had happened. Barry tried to phone her but there was never any answer. One night he was going to bed when she appeared at his door. How could you be skinny and bloated at the same time? She said she wouldn’t stay long, she’d come in for just a minute or two. He made a couple of cups of tea in the mugs where they’d once had the wine.

  When you coming back? Barry asked. Place is going to wrack and ruin without you.

  Oh yeah, right enough.

  Yeah. We got all these temporary managers, haven’t a clue. Everybody misses you big time.

  She said that she wouldn’t be coming back to work again because it had all got too much.

  You know what I’m talking about, she said.

  He asked if they were moving her somewhere else.

  I don’t think so, Barry, she said. There comes a time when I think you just have to call it a day.

  Well, said Barry, yeah. Suppose so.

  I do though, he said, I do miss you.

  Yeah well. Something for you, she said. It was a set of glasses. They were popular those glasses because they only cost £8.99. They were the four pack Belgravia wine glasses 38cl. On the cardboard there was a soft focus shot of a pretty woman holding one of the glasses to her lips. Barry knew he and Annie probably wouldn’t see each other again unless by chance.

  Thanks, he said. I’ll make sure that these are used next time I’ve got somebody around for a drink.

  Well, Barry, Annie said, I would love to hear that you were using those glasses.

  Back from the park the house was still and dark as he knew it would be, and the water from the tap tasted so cold. After tea he was lying on his bed listening to something or other with the headphones on when his ma opened his door.

  You need to get downstairs, she said. Quick, Barry.

  Why?

  There’s a policeman! she said. She was untying her apron, fixing her hair in the mirror on the landing.

  The police?

  Yes. You better go down, Barry. What on earth’s it about? They want to speak to you. You haven’t even got your shoes on, where’s your shoes?

  Here’s Barry now, his dad said when he came to the door. The policeman was young and smiling. He said that all they needed was just a quick chat with him, wouldn’t take long at all they hoped.

  Me?

  The policeman nodded.

  You need to speak to me?

  Had there been a terrible crime that he’d not noticed himself witnessing? He didn’t know anybody that got in trouble with the police. One of the fellas from tech that he saw earlier had been smoking a bit of grass in the park. Had somebody seen that? Was that what it was?

  He asked the policeman what happened. Was it something he’d done?

  The policeman was pleasant. He smiled. We just would like you to attend the police station for the purposes of assisting us with an investigation, he said.

  Excuse me, sir, are you arresting Barry? his dad asked.

  Oh no, we’re asking him to attend the station voluntarily.

  His mum came down the stairs holding his old school shoes. The policeman watched him as he put them on. Old school shoes and jeans. He felt suspicious already.

  In the car the bulk in the front seat was another policeman. He said nothing when Barry got in and the three of them drove along in silence. Then the car stopped at a garage. The young one went in to get something so it was just Barry and the other one in the car. He turned around slowly and deliberately to give Barry a long stare. He put down the window and spat onto the garage forecourt before giving a weary sigh. Barry started to rub at one elbow and then the other.

  They turned out of the garage and drove back down the
way that they had come. They passed the bottom of his road and suddenly it looked beautiful. The sun was hazy in the trees and there was a guy out washing his car, clots of suds gleaming on the road. Barry thought how he never knew before that he loved that road. It was just the road. All those people at the bus stop. You could see the cranes and beyond them the hills. The adverts in the estate agent’s window set out in a grid, all those little houses, he loved everything about it, and the people coming out of the Chinese with their takeaway. It was all so fragile, who would have thought? His ma, at the kitchen sink, doing the dishes, holding up a bowl to the light to see if it was clean.

  At the station he was put in a room. They told him they were waiting for his dad. He needed to be there before they could ask him any questions. They hadn’t realised his age, that he was under eighteen. It smelled like the changing rooms in school in the room. They all knew his name, Barry this, Barry that. Then they took him through to another room where his dad was sitting, now wearing a suit. An eternity ago, his dad had got up to answer the door, only maybe forty minutes ago, and now here he was at a police station wearing a suit he never usually wore. Stapled on the cuff there was still the dry cleaner’s pink paper after the previous time. The woman on the other side of the desk thanked his dad for coming.

  Barry, she said. Do you want a coffee?

  He said yes even though he had never drunk a coffee before. He needn’t have worried because the coffee didn’t ever come anyway.

  She explained that they would need to record the interview and then a door opened and another man came in.

  So, she said we need to ask you a few questions. And you’ve come here voluntarily. We need to ask you about a girl who’s gone missing. Young girl of eight by the name of Megan Nichols. Now, Barry, have a look at this please. I am showing Barry a photo of Megan Nichols.

  Looked straight off the mantelpiece, still in the brown cardboard frame of the annual school photo. She was wearing the same primary school uniform that he wore himself when he was a kid.