AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“All right.” I curl round my phone so I’m not yelling across Nando’s. “What did Brian do this time?”
Claire makes a sound. A sound she keeps special for talking about Brian. “So, you know the alarm?”
“Yeah, I know the alarm.”
“You know the code for the alarm?”
“I do. I’m guessing Brian didn’t?”
“He did not.”
I’m beginning to wish I’d got a starter. “It’s 1-2-3-4. How did he forget 1-2-3-4?”
“He says he panicked. Apparently, the timer was too much pressure.”
“Tell me the police didn’t have to come out.”
“The police had to come out.”
I should really have got that starter. “Tell me they haven’t put us on a freeze.”
“They’ve put us on a freeze. They said it was the third time this month and they couldn’t keep answering frivolous callouts from a bed and bathroom warehouse.”
“We’re not a warehouse, we’re a superstore.”
“Strangely, they didn’t consider that to be an important distinction. Point is they won’t be responding to our alarms for another six weeks.”
Given how much Claire likes to yell across the shop floor, I have a flash of panic. “Don’t say that too loud, we’ll get burgled.”
“Don’t worry, I’m in the office with the door closed.”
That worries me worse. Which probably says bad things about my faith in my team. “Are you sure you shouldn’t be out supervising?”
“It’s fine, Amjad’s watching Brian, and I’ve assigned Tiff and New Enthusiastic Chris to different departments, so she isn’t a bad influence on him. How’s it going with His Royal Dickishness?”
“He’s still not happy you call him that.”
She makes a musing noise down the line at me. “I bet he is, you know. Men like that secretly love thinking other people hate them. They confuse it with getting results.”
My pitta arrives and I realise I forgot to order a drink with it. “I couldn’t ask yez for a coke, could I?” I ask the feller that brings it to me.
“Sorry, you need to use the app or go to the counter.”
I look at the queue at the counter. Things are a lot closer to heaving now, so I minimise Claire and order on the app. I’m too young to be saying things likeand they call that progress,but this does not feel like progress.
“Hello?” Claire is half-shouting from the other end of the phone. “Are you still there?”
“Sorry, my chicken came.”
“Oh, are you in Nando’s?”
“How’d you know that?”
“KFC doesn’t do table service, I remembered there’s one next to the Croydon branch, and in another life, I was Sherlock fucking Holmes. Now how’d things go with Forest?”
“Badly.”
“Thanks. Very clarificationy.”
