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She’s not impressed. “Amjad told me what happened with the Country Living Hamsterley. And it wasn’t the first time.”
“Oh come on, he’s spilled a few things on a few mattresses.”
“Five since June. And he ripped the seat off a VitrA Sento rimless while he was trying to show a customer how durable it was.”
I’ve backed myself into a defending Brian corner and now I can’t get out. “Toilet seats are easy to replace. Besides, Brianneedsthis job. It’s just him and his nan, and he’s the only one can cover the bills.”
“I know.” Claire gives me a sympathetic look, which she doesn’t do very often, possibly because she doesn’t very often think I deserve sympathy. “But if Jonathan’s out for blood, and you can either save Brian or me, honestly Sam I’d rather you saved me.”
I want to tell her it won’t come to that. But I can’t. I can just hope like fuck that Jonathan Forest will be reasonable. Which, thinking about it, means that we aredefinitelyscrewed.
CHAPTER 2
I manage to forget how definitely screwed we are for about ten minutes until I take a walk out to make sure everything is where it’s meant to be and I realise we were supposed to have our Christmas displays up already and they are very much not up at all. So I go in to find Tiff, who I usually put in charge of that sort of thing because she’s good with design even if she’s not necessarily the most reliable person in the world, and she tells me that all the kit was meant to be delivered on Wednesday, but it never arrived and she didn’t think to tell me until now because she figured it’d sort itself out.
“I mean,” she asks, a lock of blue hair covering one of her eyes in a way I have to admit doesn’t radiate professionalism, “does it really matter? Christmas is a pagan festival anyway and—”
“Actually”—Amjad could hear a factual inaccuracy at eight hundred paces in a high wind—“that’s a misconception.”
“Is not.” Tiff is pretty young, and she still goes to the is not/is too school of debate.
Deciding that half past two on the first of December in the middle of a decorating crisis is the exact right time to get into the details of comparative folklorics, Amjad begins counting on his fingers. “The tree is a German protestant tradition, Santa Claus is the same—the early Lutherans pushed him as an alternative to theChristkind because they thought it was too Catholic—yule logs are eighteenth or nineteenth century, carols are—”
“Amj, is this important?” I ask. I don’t quite snap. I try to avoid snapping; there’s never any good reason for it.
“It’ll stop Tiff spreading misinformation.”
Tiff didn’t seem like she cared if she spread misinformation or not. “Okay, so Christmas is anauthentically Christianfestival but these days it’s just a celebration of consumerism and—”
I give her a look. “I know it’s a celebration of consumerism, Tiff. But in case you haven’t noticed, you work in a shop. Consumerism is our whole deal.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to support it,” Tiff insists.
“It kind of does.” I like my team to think for themselves, but sometimes fucking hell don’t I wish they’d do it less. “We’re not putting lights up so people will be reminded of the wonders of their salvation, we’re doing it so they’ll shell out a couple of extra quid for some novelty bedspreads with reindeers on them.”
Tiff looks at me with more disappointment than you should be allowed to direct at somebody who’s nearly ten years older than you and also your boss. “This is exactly what is wrong with late-stage capitalism.”
“Y’know,” I say, “you’re very Marxist for a trainee hairdresser.”
“Hair and beauty consultant,” she corrects me, “and isn’t the whole point of Marxism that it’s a philosophy for ordinary working people?”
She’s got me there. “I suppose, but it’s odd given the man himself had famously terrible hair.”
“You’re thinking of Einstein,” Amjad tells me.
“I’m not. There can be more than one famous historical person with bad hair.”
Tiff already has her phone out.
“What are you doing?” I ask. “Are you googlingdid Karl Marx have bad hair?”
She looks up. “Just finding a picture”—she turns the screen around—“hair looks okay to me.”
The picture she’s found is of his tomb in Highgate Cemetery. “That’s a statue. You can’t use statue hair as evidence. Plus, it’s on his grave. Nobody’s going to put a statue with bad hair on a feller’s grave.” Against all my better judgement I pull out my own phone, find a photograph of the man himself, and show it to Tiff. “There you go, look, bad hair.”
“According to this”—Amjad has joined in the google party, although knowing him he’s been searching for something likeKarl Marx Hair People Are Wrong—“he actually got his hair cut shortly after that picture was taken so it’s probably not that representative.”
“And,” Tiff adds—they’re ganging up on me, they always gang up on me—“that’s not bad hair.”
