the latest Ian McEwan or if we had an obscure political book by a Scandinavian writer in stock. The first time I ran a transaction through the till I was so afraid of fluffing it that I spoke robotically, like a Dalek: ‘That. Will. Be. £12.99. Please,’ and had to be prompted for one of our paper bags. But I soon settled into the routine.
Today, it was my turn to unlock, so I arrived just after nine, turned on the computer behind the till and ran a Stanley knife across the boxes from the distributors. New stock to be put out. Although it might not have looked like it, there was an order to the shop that I understood. If a customer came in and asked for a Virginia Woolf or a travel guide to the Galapagos, I could point them to exactly the right spot. I knew the shop as well as I knew my home. Or better, perhaps, since I rarely went into Ruby and Mia’s bedrooms (too messy, used cotton pads everywhere).
I knew the customers who came in every day to browse but actually lived on their own and just wanted some company. I recognized the punters who were time-wasters, loitering between appointments, who would finger multiple books before sliding them back into the wrong shelf. And in quiet moments, it also allowed me time to work on my own book, a children’s book about a counting-obsessed caterpillar called Curtis who had fifty feet and was late for school every day because it took so long to put on all his shoes. I’d also come to see Norris as a sort of mad uncle and could tolerate his daily habits – sitting on the downstairs loo for twenty minutes after his coffee, ignoring the phone so I always had to pick it up, leaving indecipherable Post-it notes on the counter about customer orders that were often lost.
Then there was my colleague Eugene. He was a middle-aged actor who’d worked at the shop for the past decade to pay his rent since he was rarely cast in anything. He had a bald head that shone like a bed knob, wore a bow tie every day and made me rehearse lines with him behind the counter, which often startled customers. Recently, there’d been a dramatic death scene when Eugene, rehearsing for a minor role in King Lear, had ended up lying across the shop floor.
Either he or I opened up before Norris arrived late every morning, his shirt fastened by the wrong buttons, thermos in hand; this was special coffee he ground at home and made in a cafetière before decanting it and solemnly carrying it into work in his satchel. I’d made the mistake of asking what was so wrong with Nescafé not long after I started work there and the cloud that passed his face was so dark I’d wondered if I’d be fired.
Anyway, he’d arrive and there was always grumbling about the traffic or the weather before he went downstairs into his office to drink this coffee from his favourite mug – ‘To drink or not to drink?’ it said on the outside. Half an hour later, he would reappear on the shop floor in cheerier humour and ask whether any customers had been in yet.
But that morning, I was still standing behind boxes of new stock when Norris arrived early and rapped on the glass.
‘You all right?’ I asked, unlocking the door to let him in. He looked more dishevelled than usual, shirt and trousers both crumpled, and he was panting, as if 73-year-old Norris had decided to run into work that morning from his house in Wimbledon.
‘Let me go downstairs for my mug and I’ll be up to explain.’ He strode towards the stairs and disappeared. I returned to the boxes and wondered if he’d tried to get on the Tube using his Tesco Clubcard again.
He thumped back up the wooden stairs not long afterwards and put his coffee on the counter with a sigh.
‘What?’ I asked, frowning. ‘What’s up?’
‘Rent hike.’
‘Another one?’
Norris nodded and wiped his fingers across his forehead. There’d been a rent rise last year but we’d expected that. Uncle Dale had had a long lease on generous terms and it had been up for renewal. Also, Chelsea had changed since he died. What was always a wealthy area of the city had become even more saturated with money: oligarchs from the East, American banking dollars from the West, along with the