‘Alright, alright. I was only saying.’ Alan looked down at the floor for a second, then swiftly popped his head back up. ‘Hey, Nick, some fit bird came in to see you on Tuesday, didn’t she, Mikey boy?’
‘Yeah. I told her you were working today. She’s gonna come at the end of your shift to see you. She was tall, blonde, and pretty.’
‘She was fit,’ offered Alan, again, with enough enthusiasm to wobble his double chin.
Alan was single, in his thirties, and worked full time at Creaky Crystals. He seemed content with that, but then he didn’t share much about his life outside of work.
‘Okay. Thanks.’
‘Do you know her?’ asked Michael.
‘I don’t think so.’
Smiling mischievously, Michael said, ‘Janet’s probably set you up with her.’
‘Janet needs to set
me
up with her!’ Alan chimed in. Michael and Nick laughed, though Alan was starting to grind on Nick’s nerves. He was a nice enough bloke, but lately he seemed a bit blasé towards the reactions his comments received. Some things he said came across plain hostile.
‘Well, I don’t know who she is anyway,’ said Nick. As Alan went to say more, he was interrupted by a customer wanting to purchase an item. He took them to one of the tills to process the transaction.
‘So, is she as
fit
as Alan says?’ Nick asked Michael, sarcastically exaggerating the word ‘fit’.
‘Yeah, she was pretty. Not my type though.’
‘She sounds exactly your type.’ Nick was confused. Michael had always come across so simple; Nick had thought
he
would be the one saying ‘fit bird’. But no, ‘pretty’ seemed to be his word of the day, and with his angel face and unintelligent troll-voice, that word just didn’t seem like one he’d use.
‘No. Not really.’
‘You haven’t had a girlfriend in ages, since Kelly in fact,’ Nick remarked.
‘I haven’t met anyone I like.’
‘Fair enough.’ He shrugged, and the conversation ceased there.
Michael approached a woman sifting through a bowl of gemstones and struck up a conversation, and Alan was still serving the same customer, although they seemed to have turned to chatting.
Dawdling around the store, Nick was glad to finally have time to think about everything. Unable to think of many blondes he knew, he deduced that the tall blonde woman who’d come into the store was the gorgeous one he’d saved. Maybe she’d realised she never said thank you. But then how did she know his name and where he worked?
Maybe it wasn’t her who’d come by, but anyway, he didn’t feel much like a hero anymore. He might have saved
her
life, but now this other woman, Rowena Howard, had died in the exact same place Tall-and-Blonde was supposed to hit the ground.
What was this? Fate taking someone else in exchange? A blip in physics, compensating for what he took away? Just a freaky coincidence? Or did she commit suicide? And why was it
her
? She was the first person Nick saw and spoke to after snapping out of his vision.
The black-haired man had said it was almost as if she’d been thrown over the edge. All Nick could think of was the premonition and how the blonde woman had been vaulted a great distance.
There were too many parallels. He glanced out of the shop at the flowers, cringed, and then realised something. The flashes: flowers, notes, the lower grounds, cobbles, the wall, tears, pictures, bouquets.
Confused, he went to the staff toilets to compose himself. Those flashes, the ones that had given him a splitting headache … they were the future?
No, coincidence surely, they weren’t like the other visions.
Maybe it was denial, but he didn’t want to entertain the notion that the flashes were a form of foresight. Not when the daydreams had been so vivid and clear. Although he’d experienced pain
in
the vision where he was attacked, he’d been left in no physical agony when he’d snapped out of it.
Nobody seemed to notice his sudden disappearance, and when he returned he tried to stay out of the way.
Nearly every customer had something to say about the flowers gathered a few metres from the store: how tragic, what a shame, how young the poor woman was, what a horrible way to go, and so on. With every comment, Nick felt guiltier. But what could he do about it?
Nothing.
For distraction, he turned to people watching. Mora had asked him to keep an eye out for suspicious customers, so that’s what he did. Nothing peculiar caught his attention for a long while, but when something did it wasn’t a customer who was acting shifty.
Alan was hovering near the entrance and repeatedly glanced around the fairly busy store, as if counting people. Mora was serving behind the till, Janet had the day off, and Michael was helping a customer.
While serving someone at the second till, so they didn’t have to wait in Mora’s queue, Nick pretended to be engrossed in the transaction. In actuality, he was surreptitiously observing Alan.
Two people entered the shop. One a tall man with shaved dark hair, wearing a black bomber jacket. The other a lady with greasy mouse-blonde hair in a ponytail. Nick watched Alan and saw him give the slightest, almost undetectable, nod to them. He seemed to nod towards the CDs & DVDs section of the store.
Alan scanned the other staff, and Nick had to flick his eyes down when he was almost caught watching. When Nick finished serving, he headed towards the back of the store as if going to the toilets. Once out of sight, he hid on a corner that gave him view of the CDs & DVDs section. His heart thudded.
I feel like a spy.
The tall man stood sideways, partly blocking the view of the greasy-haired lady. She had a bag from Crystals Galore, one of the stores in the upper grounds, and slipped a couple of DVDs into it.
‘Hey!’ Nick marched up to them, already beginning to shake. The man in the bomber jacket turned and glared at him. ‘I saw you put them in your bag. Take them back out please.’
The leggy man rolled his shoulders and tensed his jaw. ‘You saw nothing.’
‘I know what I saw. Now put our stock back where it belongs.’
The thief-lady widened her eyes and gave a dumbstruck face, trying to act the victim.
‘Leave my wife alone.’ Tall-man said with an accent. Nick subconsciously took a step back when he saw the man’s fist clench.
Michael and Mora must have heard the commotion because they were at Nick’s side before he knew it. ‘What’s going on?’ asked Michael.
‘This lady put some DVDs in her bag without paying.’
‘No. I buy from Crystals Galore. See? I have bag,’ the lady’s voice was shrill.
Mora said, ‘Okay. Well if you did then you won’t mind showing us the items then.’ She held out her hand.
Nick looked over at Alan who watched intently. When he saw Nick looking, he twisted away and hurried to talk to a customer.
The greasy-haired lady thrust out the bag indignantly, and Mora took out the DVDs and turned them over, looking for the Creaky Crystals stickers they attached to most items. She found the labels, of course.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mora spoke authoritatively, ‘but these are our items and you don’t seem to have a receipt in the bag. What I will do is put them back on our shelf, and if you leave now then I won’t call the police. But if I see you in here again, that will be the first thing that I do.’ She stared firmly at the short lady.
The lady glowered back then looked at the lanky man for defence; her face read: ‘Are you going to let her talk to me like that?’
A fist shot towards Nick, but he just about dodged it. The fabric of the bomber jacket swept across his face with a
swish
. He heard the man grunt in anger.
‘Whoa! Calm down, man.’ Michael pushed the guy, toppling him back a few steps.
Embarrassingly, Nick’s bladder tightened. He was not used to aggression. He hated it. Alan sped over to intervene and said to the couple, ‘Come on. Leave the store now please.’
The man glowered at Nick on his way out, and the lady held her head high. Nick knew why the couple listened to Alan; they weren’t afraid of him, they were stealing on his behalf.
With her hands up to her heart, Mora asked Nick if he was okay. He nodded. Then his manger turned to Alan and said, ‘Thank you for getting them out of my store.’
‘That’s okay. Scum like that aren’t welcome here.’ He laughed affably, but Nick could see straight through him.
Alan shimmied back to work.
‘Thank you, Nick,’ said Mora. ‘Thank you, Michael. I’m sorry you got put in danger like that.’
‘No worries,’ Michael said. Nick smiled half-heartedly alongside him, and then Mora went to sit behind one of the counters.
Tapping Michael on the side of his arm, Nick said, ‘Just out of curiosity, was it your turn to tag-check the jewellery section last week?’
‘Yeah. Why?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I was only asking.’
‘Yeah, it was my turn, but Alan asked to swap sections with me. He did it instead.’
‘And you didn’t change it on the rota?’
‘Nah. What’s the point? We still got both areas done.’
‘Okay. Thanks.’ Nick said, then went to tidy some shelves.
So when it was Alan’s turn to tag-check the tarot cards, some were stolen. And then he did the jewellery section last week, and Mora noticed some missing. Nick quickly checked the rota for this week and saw that Alan was down for DVDs & CDs. He’d already figured it out, but now he was certain.
When Alan was due to leave at five, Nick found an opportunity to talk to him on the way out. ‘I know what you’re up to, Alan,’ he said. ‘You should stop what you’re doing. Mora doesn’t deserve this.’
Alan bit his bottom lip. Nick, not feeling so confident himself, could see the fear in his colleague’s face. Without a verbal reply, Alan nodded and hurried off with a wave, acting like they’d exchanged a normal see-you-later.
At the end of the shift, Mora let Nick finish ten minutes early. The woman who’d come asking for him would be there soon, so he got his jacket and valuables from the back of the store and waited outside.
It was dark already, but the lower grounds were lit by lamp posts and stores that were still open. Stood facing the flowers was the tall blonde woman. The rain had stopped a few hours ago and the woman’s hair danced in the wind. She was stood completely still, looking down at the flowers on the floor. Her hands were drawn up to cover her mouth.
Nick approached her, scraping his shoes along the ground so she would hear and not be startled. She turned and looked at him, her eyebrows pulling together.
‘I recognise you,’ she said.
‘Well, I did save your life … I thought maybe you’d come here to say thank you?’
Her eyebrows loosened. ‘I’m sorry; I was in shock. I didn’t stop to say thank you, I think … I mean …’ She turned and looked at the flower pile. ‘That should be me.’ She pointed at the picture of the dead woman. ‘
I
should have died there. I felt myself go over the edge. But you saved me.’
Nick remained silent.
And then she asked him, ‘What happened to this woman?’
‘She fell, I think. No one seems to know; it could have been suicide or anything. Why did you come here to see me? How did you know my name and where I work?’
‘Are you Nicolas Crystan?’
‘Yeah, what’s your name?’
‘Juliet Maystone.’
‘It’s nice to meet you again,’ he said, offering a shy laugh.
‘Can we go for a walk? I need to talk to you.’
‘It’s freezing cold. How about we go to the pub on the corner?’
‘Sure, anywhere. You’re not going to believe what I have to say ... I wouldn’t believe it.’ And on that declaration she headed for the pub. Nick followed her, pondering what on earth was going on.
She didn’t walk with him but slightly ahead at a pace he struggled to follow. It augmented the effect of the harsh wind on his face. He shivered, being one to never dress appropriately for the weather, but saw that Juliet had on fine clothes and seemed unaffected by the cold.
They entered The Crow pub, and Juliet took a seat in a far corner. Nick didn’t feel right using the place for conversation without buying at least a drink, so he offered to get one for Juliet. She said no.
He bought himself an orange juice. While he waited for the bartender to prepare the drink, he tapped the centre of his left palm repeatedly. He was nervous about speaking with Juliet; she was gorgeous, and he wasn’t sure what her intentions for seeking him out were.
I’m calm, I’m focused, I’m calm, I’m focused.
After being passed the orange juice, he walked over and sat across from Juliet in a warm and dimly lit corner. There were not many people in the pub, so they were distanced enough to allow private conversation.
‘So how did you know my name and workplace?’
Juliet didn’t reply immediately, then came out with, ‘Your mother told me.’
His heart pulled in on itself, inflicting a jolt of pain. Then it moved on to rapidly thud in his chest. ‘She’s alive? Do you know where she is?’ His voice came out weak, fragile.
Juliet frowned and fidgeted. ‘Why do you think she’s alive?’
‘She disappeared eight years ago, but you’ve spoken with her, haven’t you? When did you speak with her?’ He felt hopeful, maybe? He wasn’t sure.
‘I’ve gone about this in the wrong order.’ Shaking her head, she told him, ‘I’m sorry. Your mother’s not alive … I thought you knew that.’ She winced and avoided eye contact.
Emptiness grew inside of him; until right now, he hadn’t realised how much he’d hoped his mum was still alive and about to walk back into his life.
Maybe he was more like his dad than he originally thought.
But now he knew she was dead. He didn’t exactly feel sad; it had been almost nine years after all, so he’d grieved already. But maybe later he’d be upset, when he had time to process it all. He actually sensed some relief in finally knowing her fate, followed by guilt for feeling that relief.
‘How do you know she’s dead?’
‘Look, I’ll tell you what’s been happening to me since the day you pulled me out the way of the car. Just listen to what I have to say. I feel embarrassed enough coming here as it is, and I won’t be surprised if you think I’m crazy. But I’m not. I tried to ignore what was happening to me, but I couldn’t.’ She gave a stern look.