overnight, she had lifted out a pair of jeans with boxer shorts still inside them. Neither of them had been washed. For a good long while. If ever.
But it didn’t matter, because she was atoning. Making up for a lifetime of hedonism and selfishness. She wasn’t going to throw a diva tantrum and demand to be given something easier and less gross to do.
Besides, it had all been worth it to see the look on Niall’s face this morning when she sent him packing with the words, ‘Anyway, I have to go now, I mustn’t be late for work.’
Stunned, he’d said, ‘What d’you mean, work?’
And she’d got a real kick out of replying, ‘Oh, didn’t Ellie mention it? I’ve got a new job.’
The other upside to having turned over a new leaf was discovering how buzzy and clear-headed it was possible to feel when you gave up drinking. She hadn’t realized before what a difference it made when you didn’t even have a hint of a hangover fuzzing up your brain.
‘’Scuse me, love, this one’s too small for me, d’you have it in an eighteen?’
The customer was in her forties and had one of those tartan shopping trolleys on wheels. She was holding up a pink cardigan and looking hopeful. The old Roo would have said, ‘Hello? We’re in a charity shop, darling. This isn’t Harvey Nicks.’ Or she might have said, ‘If you lost a couple of stone, it’d fit you.’
But she wasn’t Old Roo anymore, she was New Roo. Sans makeup, sans snarky attitude. She made a conscious effort to envisage this customer’s life: poverty-stricken, unlucky in love, lots of daytime TV… oh God, apart from the poverty bit, that’s me!… and said, ‘I’m so sorry, we don’t. But a lovely pale green one just came in this morning, I’m sure it’s an eighteen and the color would really suit you. Shall I pop out to the back room and find it?’
Pat, who was the manageress, told her it was to be priced at six pounds fifty. Roo brought the cardigan out and it fitted the woman perfectly. She’d been right about the shade too; it really brought out the color of her eyes.
‘Oh dear, six pounds fifty, though.’ The woman hesitated, visibly torn. ‘That’s more than I can afford.’
God, imagine not being able to afford six pounds fifty. Roo leaned forward and whispered, ‘It’s all right, you can have it for one pound fifty.’ What the hell, she’d make up the difference herself.
‘OK.’ The woman beamed, as well she might. It was a lamb’s wool cardigan from Jaeger, in pristine condition. ‘I’ll take it!’
Three minutes later, glancing up as the woman was about to leave the shop, Roo saw her deftly removing a pair of Russell and Bromley stilettos from a display stand and sliding them into her tartan shopper. She blinked in disbelief as an armful of scarves and handbags followed them.
‘Hey!’ yelled Roo, outraged.
The woman looked up, gave her a one-fingered salute, and shot out of the shop faster than Usain Bolt, the tartan trolley bouncing at her heels. Roo, cursing this morning’s unwise choice of four-inch zebra-print stilettos with multiple ankle straps, yelped, ‘Stop her! She stole stuff !’
But this clearly wasn’t going to happen. She was the only person in the shop under eighty. By the time she managed to unbuckle the fiddly straps and get her shoes off, the thief and her tartan trolley would be in Camden.
Pat, emerging from the back room, shot her a disapproving look. ‘Didn’t you chase after her?’
In reply, Roo pointed to her bondage heels.
A disparaging sniff, then Pat said, ‘In future, wear something you can run in. And what was that I overheard about you letting her have the cardigan for one pound fifty?’
Honestly, were there secret listening devices hidden under the counter? Roo was forced to bite her lip, hard. ‘It’s OK, I hadn’t forgotten. I owe the till five pounds.’
After six hours of breathing in the stale air of the charity shop—clearly not choosing to volunteer in one of the many clean ones had been a mistake—entering the beauty salon was sheer heaven. The luxury, the gorgeous expensive smells, the relaxing atmosphere, the absence of ungrateful shoplifters…
‘Oh, look at your poor nails!’ Having examined them, Yasmin said sympathetically, ‘And this one’s broken right down. That must hurt. How did it happen?’
Roo shrugged. ‘Humping heavy boxes around. Picking duct tape off a hundred-piece chandelier. Carrying an electric cooker up two flights of stairs.’