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I walked to the end of the track and stood with my back to the wall, keeping my gaze on my filthy socks until I heard a train approach. Wrapping the coat tight around me, I strode straight onto the train, head down, wiping blood on my sleeve.
I picked up my phone and tapped the screen.
Then I laughed. I’d lost it. I’d truly lost it. I couldn’t stop laughing.
Congratulations.You have reached your daily fitness goal of 10,000 steps.
I put the phone back in my pocket.
Then the doors closed and the train moved off towards the city, the only place I could go. The only place that felt safe.
I didn’t breathe. I didn’t need to. I was just along for the ride.
Ben
Ididn’t know why I was feeling down. Perhaps I was just overdoing it. My life was heading for that halfway point when I should have been able to sit back and relax. I’d always thought that by now, I would have settled down, met someone, had a couple of kids. I’d always hoped my life would have been good.
It was good. Just differently good fromeveryone else’s.
My mum laughed at me when I said things like that because she never complained about anything. She’d divorced. Struggled. Raised me. Made good on her promises.
I’d always be safe with her.
We’d once not been safe, though. Shouting and threats. Doors banging. The air, thick with unease.
I never wanted to feel that way again. And to be truthful, I hadn’t. My life was good. Her life was good. I had nothing to complain about.
But being this tired all the time was dragging me down, and we were short-staffed once again. Three of my good trainees were moving on, and I dreaded the new people who would take their places. I loved when things ran smoothly, when I could orchestrate my shifts like symphonies with everyone doing their bit to create greatness.
Today hadn’t been great. We’d had a shipment of questionably chilled dairy produce, and I’d had the local supermarket deliver replacements, which hadn’t made it on time, and everything had surely and slowly fallen apart.
I hadn’t even had time to stop. I’d been darting around putting out tiny fires all evening, and Mark was still off sick. I missed him. I definitely had Markitis. I needed a hug. I needed him to make me one of his special cups of coffee with the perfectly steamed milk. I needed someone to tell me things would be all right.
Things had been all right. Of course they had. Sarj had stepped up and covered for Mabel’s day off, we’d managed the floor despite being two waiters down, and my staff had sweet-talked our guests into accepting tonight’s substitutions and specials.
I still hated it when things weren’t up to standard, and now, as I sat in the empty restaurant at one in the morning, I wanted more than anything to have a sneaky cigarette. My hands were red raw from scrubbing the worktops, but apart from a nasty foil cut, I’d escaped with nothing more than a bruised ego when I’d slipped with the blender.
I needed more staff. I needed my head examined. I needed a holiday. Didn’t we all?
“You all right, mate?” tonight’s security guard called as he passed through on his rounds. I nodded to say I was. Next was Al, one of my kitchen stewards, waving as he headed up to get changed. I should go home too. I was lucky. I lived in a grand old building, in a one-bedroom flat that now had my name on the door but had been my grandmother’s, and I’d spent many happy days there as a child. I was slowly renovating it, but both Mark and I shouldn’t be let anywhere near DIY projects, and having to contract people to do the work took time. The bedroom had no ceiling, and the bare-walled living room housed a sofa and nothing else. Bachelor living was my forte, as Mark always pointed out when he came over, laughing and shaking his head at my lack of décor.
I did have a really nice kitchen, though, and until I could get the bedroom sorted, I slept in what had been my grandma’s pantry, a small windowless room that just about fitted my double bed. Why? I hear you ask. Well, shift work meant sleeping in the daytime, and having a cool place to rest with no daylight meant I slept like the dead.
Tonight, I could easily have slept right here, on this very chair, just let my head loll to the side and put my feet up on the table. It wouldn’t have been the first time—I didn’t care to think how often Mark and I had dragged a few decorative cushions into our small office and kipped on the floor before the early morning shift—but we weren’t young anymore, and I doubtedI could survive on as little sleep as we’d got away with in our twenties and thirties.
Still, I didn’t move. I sat here like a limpet stuck to the chair, wishing for the kind of magic that would instantly transport me directly to my bed instead of having to get an overpriced taxi home. Or the night bus. I hated the night bus.
Eventually, I forced my muscles to cooperate with me and pushed my tired bones off the chair, handed my radio in at the reception and grunted a good-night at the person behind the desk. I barely knew the night staff. Most were quiet students who lived their sleep-deprived lives in the twilight zone. Or maybe they worked nights for kicks. Who was I to judge when I lived that way myself? Working as the world slept, cleaning the remains of the day off my kitchen when everyone else had gone to bed.
Stumbling awkwardly down the corridor in my exhaustion, I took the lift up to our changing rooms with their dirty smelly lockers and showers that had seen better days. Don’t even get me started on the green towels. They were rank, but they did the job.
I yawned, turning the corner on automatic, and was almost run over by Al, the steward. I could’ve sworn he’d gone home already and would’ve said as much, but he spoke very little English, not that it usually mattered since both of us were fluent in no-bullshit hand signals.
Usually, Al was calm as anything, yet now he stared at me, his face was full of confusion and fear as he grabbed my arm and held up his phone, open on some translation app.
Man need doctor
“What man?” I asked and grabbed the phone, intending to type my question into the app. Al snatched the phone back and pointed at the door to the changing rooms.
