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CHAPTER 1
It probably says good things about modern Britain—or maybe just about modern Liverpool—that when I was growing up, I got way less shit for being gay than I got for being named after a hobbit. And while I’m glad my classmates weren’t homophobic, the hobbit thing did hack me off a bit, especially because the hobbit I was named after wasn’t even one of the weird ones. If I’d been called Meriadoc or Fatty Bolger that’d have been one thing, but my name was Sam. Still is Sam, really. But my fulllegalname is Samwise Eoin Becker and so every time I started a new class, on the first day, the teacher would be reading the register and they’d call out “Samwise” and I’d have to say, “here, miss” and that’d be it from then on. It didn’t help that the first set of movies came out just as I was starting primary school and the second set hit just as I was starting my GCSEs, so I had jokes about second breakfast and hairy feet from the age of five until I was eighteen.
Still, you’ve got to laugh, don’t you? My dad taught me that. And it’s probably the most useful thing I’ve ever learned.
For example:
“Hey, Ban.” yells one of my employees. He knows what I’m really called, but this is Amjad, and Amjad is even nerdier than my mam and so once he found out I’d been named after a hobbit hethought it was hilarious to refer to me by Sam’s original Westron name from the appendices that he apparently knew off the top of his head. And I let him get away with it because at least it was an original bit. “They’re going to need you in bedding.”
I love my team. Notlovelove, obviously. More tolerate bemusedly. But the phrasethey’re going to need you in beddinginspires a feeling so far from confidence I might almost call it concern. “Why?” I ask.
The only answer Amjad gives is the only answer I need. “Brian.”
I give a small internalfuckand head over to the afflicted department. Bedding’s half the store which means I’ve got quite a wide area to search, but Brian has a way of creating a little zone of chaos around himself so I’m not terribly worried about finding him.
And find him I do. He’s standing next to the Country Living Hamsterley mattress, which with its double layered calico pocket springs, hand-teased soft natural fibres of lambswool and mohair, and one hundred percent natural Belgian damask, is one of the most luxurious, most expensive, and—importantly—most “don’t-trust-Brian-with-this” mattress in the store.
He’s looking flustered. He’s also holding an extremely ominous mug.
“Please,” I tell him as soon as I’m close enough to be heard without shouting, “please for the love ofeverythingtell me you did not just spill tea on the Country Living Hamsterley mattress with the double layered calico pocket springs and the hand-teased natural fibres.”
“No,” he says, “I didn’t.”
And like a muppet, I let myself feel relieved.
“I spilled coffee on it,” he explains.
It’s not the detail I should pick up on. It’s really not. “I didn’t think you drank coffee.”
“I don’t.” He’s doing his best to look apologetic. “But I thought Claire might want one so I was bringing a mug through to the office just in case and, well, here we are.”
So many details to address. And so little time. “And you picked a path straight past the most expensive mattress in the store because…?”
“Well, I thought I should steer clear of the Flaxby Nature’s Finest 9450 Pillow Top on account of what happened last week.”
The fact that I hadn’t been aware of anything at all happening last week as regarded the Flaxby Nature’s Finest 9450 Pillow Top probably said not-entirely-great things about me as a manager. “Should I ask?”
“Well, I was having a jam sandwich—”
“You got jam on the Flaxby Nature’s Finest 9450 Pillow Top?”
Brian nods, sheepishly. “It’s fine, though. Tiffany helped me flip it over, so it doesn’t show.”
Once again, I make the mistake of feeling relieved. Then the bits of my brain that are professionally required to know how beds work start talking to each other. “Hang on Brian, you can’t flip a pillow top mattress. Because it’s got a pillow top. On the top.”
“Ooh.” Brian winces in a way you ideally never want a man in charge of two grand’s worth of mattress to wince.
I decide that the pillow top issue can wait. “Well, I suppose we can at least flip this one. Come on.”
Flipping the mattress is hard work but at least it’s simple work and, once I’ve reminded him to put the bloody mug down, Brian can handle it with something approaching competence. We heave the whole kit and caboodle up onto one side, pivot it about the middle, and lay it down nicely on the frame that’s being used to display it.
Then I step back and check it looks okay, and I see another large, brown stain spread right across the middle.
“Ah,” says Brian, “now that oneistea.”
I’m heading back from bedding, trying to work out how to replace not one but two display models of high-end mattresses, when Claire, my assistant manager, sticks her head out of the office door and yells “His Royal Dickishness is on the phone” the entire length of the store. Which she follows with, “And don’t worry, I’ve got him muted.”
“That just means,” I yell back, “that you can’t hear him, not that he can’t hear you.”
