Page 27 of A Face in the Crowd
I’m so surprised that the best I can manage is a weak, ‘Oh…’
‘Are you coming to the memorial tomorrow?’ she asks, not missing a beat.
There are a few seconds in which I have no idea how to respond. I met a lot of people in the months after Ben died. There were faceless officials, lawyers, journalists – and then the other women and men who’d also lost loved ones on the train. I was one of them at first. Then I became the fraud because they would talk of love and loss and I couldn’t see past the lies.
I try to place Gloria, but there’s nothing. If I know her, then it’ll be by looks, not by name. She will be online, of course. We all are. Look for my name and Ben automatically appears alongside me. We’re forever entwined.
‘I’ll be there,’ I say. I’d tried to forget the memorial service, I always do, but it creeps up on me.
‘Great,’ Gloria replies. ‘I was hoping you’d say that.’ She’s speaking quickly, as if this is precisely what she thought I’d say. There’s a moment in which it sounds like she’s typing something on a keyboard and then: ‘Can we talk about money?’
I glance across towards my bag and the envelope within. ‘Money?’ I stumble.
‘Perhaps it’s best if we talk tomorrow?’ she says.
‘But—’
‘I’ll find you and we’ll talk after the service itself.’
‘Can you—?’
Gloria isn’t listening. She cuts across me with ‘Safe journey. We’ll talk soon’ – and then, like that, she’s gone.
I’m staring at the blank screen and, when I press to look at previous callers, all I see is ‘unknown’.
She wants to talk about money, except the only money I have is that which is sitting in the envelope that’s still in my bag. Perhaps it’s me, but perhaps it’s her, because, for whatever reason, it sounded as if she already knew that.
Chapter Sixteen
I get back to what I’ve spent so many hours doing – googling to see if anyone has reported missing or stolen money in the area. It’s reached the point where I’m hoping there is something. Perhaps a robbery in which the perpetrator had to dump the money? It would be an answer – and yet there’s nothing.
Billy has gone to sleep and I’m not used to being at home during the day. I’d usually be an hour and bit into a stint behind a checkout and, even though the end of my shift can never come quickly enough, I now want to be at work. I sign up for overtime on my days off; I give up holidays because the money is more important. I spend so much of my time wishing I didn’t have to do such a job and, now I’ve been fired, I want it back.
I continue searching for jobs and find a posting that someone has linked to on Facebook where a sandwich shop is looking for a person to do early morning to lunchtime shifts during the week. It’s minimum wage, less than I was making, but the hours mean I’ll be home for Billy by mid-afternoon. I look the place up and realise it’s closer than the supermarket. It would be simple enough to keep my bus pass and use the same route. On nice mornings in the summer, I could walk. If anything, although the pay is worse, the hours are a little better. There are no weekends and I’d be home earlier.
I send the woman a message and then allow myself a little self-indulgence by making a cup of tea. It’s only as I’m picking out a teabag that I realise I’m not going to have my five per cent staff discount at Crosstown. It doesn’t sound like much – it’snotmuch – and yet it has totalled a lot of money over the years. Everything comes back to money in the end.
By the time I get back to the sofa, I already have a reply from the sandwich shop owner.
Hi Lucy.
Thanks for your interest. Can I ask what experience you have in the food industry and also what your current job is?
Thanks.
I read the short message three times over. The answers are simple enough. I have no experience and I am currently unemployed after stealing from my previous job.
I think about lying, replying to say something like I’m ‘between jobs’ because I’m also studying – but there are already too many holes in my life history for someone who is thirty.
Instead, I return to the websites for the pair of job agencies. I fill in forms to say that I am, essentially, looking for anything. It reeks of desperation, but it’s not the first time I’ve debased myself today. I have rent to pay and debts that were never mine to clear.
When that’s done, I remove the remaining cash from the envelope and stack it on the table in piles of £200. I’m going mad, I know. This is surely not the way normal people behave. I count it all five times in a row and there’s a little under £3,000. It’s a huge amount, but it won’t last long if I have to start paying rent and bills from it.
So much for handing it in.
Billy is pawing at the door, so I let him out to go wandering the halls and then return to the sofa. With all the free time I suddenly have, I can catch back up on my university work.
I don’t, of course. I sit in front of the laptop, occupying myself with nothing of note. I can’t even make myself log onto the site. Even Billy’s return doesn’t raise me. It’s worse that he seems to sense it, too. He clambers onto the sofa and rests his head on my knee, wanting to be of comfort. I count the money over and over until I get so frustrated with myself, that I pack it all back into the envelope. The afternoon is largely wasted by thinking about the things I could buy with it.
