Polly Courtney - The Day I Died

‘I’ll expect you to do most of the flitting between tables.’ The man waved a stubby arm across the premises. She nodded again, wondering who had been flitting up until now. ‘Now, you’re wearing black trousers, I trust?’

Jo froze, suddenly remembering that she was wearing a tiny dress and no shoes underneath the jacket. ‘Well, I couldn’t find trousers, but—’

‘Ooh, Mr Jackson! First customer!’ cried Trevor. ‘First customer!’ he said again, ushering her towards the back of the café. ‘Your shirt’s in the store cupboard under the stairs. Quick, quick!’

It was with mixed feelings that Jo pulled the brown aertex shirt over her head. She wasn’t keen on the embroidered teacup that covered her left breast, or the fact that she had Trev’s Teashop’ plastered across her front, but she had to admit that it was more appropriate than her own attire, which she was desperately trying to convert into a knee-length skirt to cover the tops of her long legs.

Along with a trowel, a plastic rhino, a sketchbook and a rah-rah skirt, Jo found what she was looking for in the back of the store cupboard: a mirror. She peered at her reflection in the half-light.

It was like looking at somebody else. Jo pulled at her skin–young skin, she thought, probably early twenties–and tilted her head this way and that, inspecting her face. Her eyes were bottle green, with dark lashes, which were coated in heavy, day-old makeup. Her lip had been bleeding slightly. She gathered her long, knotted hair in one hand and tried to twist it into some sort of order. It was almost raven black, with a dyed red streak at the front.

She spat on her hand and wiped the worst of the dirt off her forehead, wondering how her appearance had passed without comment by the portly teashop owner. Something caught her eye in the mirror. On the back of her hand was a splodge of blue ink. Writing. ‘SASKIA DAWSON,’ it said.

Who was that? Was it her? Was she Saskia Dawson? If so, why had she written her name on her own hand? Saskia. It didn’t sound familiar. But then, very little did. Jo tore a page from the faded sketchbook and scrabbled around for a pen. Letter for letter, she copied it down and tucked it into the waist of her newly formed skirt.

‘Ah, Jo! Go and serve table four, would you?’

Jo quickly worked out how Trev’s Teashop operated. It wasn’t so much a teashop as a caffeine outlet for commuters on their way into London–at least, that was how it seemed at seven o’clock in the morning. She did her best to flit from table to table, but there was only so much flitting one could do with so few seated customers and a queue for takeaway coffee that occupied most of the shop. She marvelled again at her boss’s self-delusion.

‘Blasted thing,’ muttered Trevor, turning purple with exertion as he tried to break his way into a new tub of coffee beans.

Jo cast her customer an apologetic look and turned round. ‘Let me try.’

‘Doesn’t work,’ he said, reluctantly loosening his grip on the tin-opener. ‘The tub’s got some new-fangled seal thing on it. We’ll have to—Oh. Right. You’ve done it.’

Jo handed over the open container and got back to serving customers, trying not to smirk. It had just been a case of employing some common sense: twisting the seal, applying some pressure and then levering off the lid.

Common sense . That was something. At least she had that. And having it gave her a clue as to what type of person she was. Her brain worked in a logical way–like a scientist’s, perhaps. She could think laterally and solve problems. It was true, she made a reasonable waitress, but she didn’t think she’d been one before. Not properly. Maybe as a summer job a few years ago, while at school…School. That was another blank.

She tried picturing herself in various workplace scenarios. Sitting in an air-traffic control tower. No, too stressful. Patrolling the streets in police uniform. Too much authority. The Trevor experience had taught her that she didn’t like being told what to do. Staring at a computer screen in an office. Boring. Standing up in court dressed in robes and a wig. Not unfeasible, she thought, although she was probably a bit young for that…Jo poured another filter coffee and sighed. She didn’t have a clue.

Fortunately, Trevor seemed sufficiently unobservant to overlook his waitress’s lack of footwear. Her feet were freezing and the soles were turning slowly black, but there was nothing she could do except try to keep them in the shadows behind the counter. Occasionally, he would send her to check on table ten, the little bench outside the café where a commuter would occasionally perch as he waited for a train or a friend, and every time, somehow, he failed to spot the bare feet.

It was on one of these errands that Jo found herself in the situation she’d been dreading. Another girl, about her own age and of similar build and colouring, was running up the road towards the teashop, hair flying, satchel banging against her hip. She was dressed in black trousers and a cheap polyester blouse.

Jo caught her attention and stepped out to greet her. ‘Hi! You must be…’

‘Renata,’ she gasped, trying to push her way into the café.

‘Yes, you were due to start work at seven, weren’t you?’ Jo stood in her way.

‘Am so sorry,’ she said breathlessly. Her accent was Polish, or something like that. No wonder Trevor had been confused by Jo’s fluency. ‘Bus was not come, so I walk, then bus come but wrong bus…’

‘Oh dear.’ Jo smiled sympathetically. She felt terrible for doing this, but her need to survive outweighed her remorse. ‘Unfortunately, because you were late, we had to find someone else for the job. It was getting busy, you see.’ She gestured towards the queue snaking out of the café.

The girl’s mouth fell open. Her English wasn’t perfect, but she understood.

Jo couldn’t bear it. ‘But if you come back in three or four weeks we may well need another waitress.’ She nodded encouragingly. ‘Do come back, won’t you?’

The girl muttered something in her own language and looked at the ground. For a moment, Jo thought she might march into the teashop and demand an explanation from the boss, but then she just turned, shook her head and walked back the way she had come.

Jo wandered into the café to help with the coffees. She was filled with self-loathing. Good people didn’t behave like this. Good people didn’t steal wallets. They didn’t con innocent girls out of jobs. They didn’t reject the help of others and they certainly didn’t turn their backs on friends or loved ones who might have been hurt or even killed…

She stared into the frothing milk. It was a possibility–and one that left her feeling very uncomfortable–that actually she wasn’t a good person. Deep down, with everything else erased, all that was left was this. A lying, calculating, hard-hearted thief. Or maybe she was just desperate. Maybe the terror and guilt and paranoia had made her act in this way. Maybe she was just trying to stay alive.

Jo’s basket was filling up quickly. She hadn’t eaten since, well, sometime before the explosion, presumably. She was ravenous. Everything in the shop looked appealing: cakes, bread, meat pies…She even found herself salivating over the Budgens own-brand malt loaf.

The cashier girl was politely trying to extract herself from a conversation with the pensioner, but he clearly wasn’t seeing the urgency.

‘Well, it is August,’ she said patiently. ‘It gets quite warm. D’you need a hand?’

The man attempted to balance his shopping on his walking frame and started to release his grip on the checkout.