Page 19 of Things We Never Said
‘OK, honey. Look after yourself. And remember we all love you, yeah?’
‘Thanks,’ Sean says. ‘Bye, Mags.’
He hangs up the phone and then blows noisily through pursed lips. ‘Well, that’s that done,’ he mutters.
He makes himself a cup of coffee and sits and stares at the box of envelopes. He thinks about what Maggie said and allows himself to wonder if it is healthy.
Because she’s right, of course. Catherine isn’t here. And only he can decide what works best for him.
The thing is that hecan’tdecide what works best for him. Because though there’s a certain appeal to bingeing on the tapes, to getting it all over with, the image of him sitting with that pile of opened envelopes, the idea that there would be no more to look forward to and no more surprises to be afraid of, is terrifying to him.
In a way, of course, the tapes are keeping Catherine alive. As long as she remains unpredictable, as long as he doesn’t know what she’s going to say next, it’s as if she hasn’t, entirely, ceased to exist.
For want of a better idea, he decides that, for now, he’ll stick to the plan.
Snapshot #7
35mm format, colour. A young woman stands behind the counter of a local store. Her face is framed by the numerous products crowding the counter – a rack of multicoloured chewing gum packets to the right and another containing lollipops and bars of chocolate on the left. Behind her, a refrigerated cabinet is stacked high with cans of beer, and beside this a rack of cigarette packets can be clearly seen.
Sean peers at the photo and can actually remember the smell of the place: musky and spicy. For this is the corner shop where he once worked, his first ever part-time job. And it’s also where Catherine, who is manning the counter in the picture, worked once he had returned to college. She looks young and excited and beautiful.
It’s a stunning photo, but Sean has no recollection of it being taken – nor, in fact, of ever having seen it before. He scans the products in the store and remembers the taste of Tennent’s Extra and the sensation of Toffee Treets melting in the mouth.
Cassette #7
Hello Sean.
I’m not feeling so well today, so this is my third attempt at recording a message. Hopefully this time I’ll make it through.
So here we have the ‘Paki shop’. Of course, no one says that anymore, thank God. It’s quite shocking to realise how naturally we used to say that. ‘I’m just popping to the Paki shop.’ Horrific, isn’t it?
I even heard Bilal, the owner’s son, call it that once, but then I suppose that’s probably OK. I guess it’s like the gays reclaiming the word ‘queer’.
The shop is the reason you had to return to Wolverhampton that first weekend we met, only you were too embarrassed to tell me. How silly, eh? As if I of all people would judge you badly for something like that. But then, I suppose, you didn’t know me yet.
Your parents had cut you off and refused to pay their contribution to your student grant, as I recall, so you were earning a bit of money when and wherever you could. You also did envelope-stuffing and newspaper delivery. But back to Salman’s Mini Mart, because that’s the bit of history I want to tell you today. I want to tell you why I loved Theresa so much.
When your courses started again in September, I got the job instead. Do you remember how ecstatic I was to be working there? You had all agreed to let me live rent-free but I was so proud to be able to earn a little money and occasionally supply you all with dinner.
Salman was never anything but lovely to me. Do you remember how he used to give me all the stuff that was past its sell-by date? I used to feed the whole house with dodgy tuna sandwiches, out-of-date individual trifles and boxes of chocolates that had bloomed because of the summer heat. But it wasn’t all roses.
Do you see what I did there?
Anyway, Bilal, Salman’s eldest, was revolting. He used to push past me when I was behind the counter. He could always find an excuse to squeeze his way behind me when I was serving someone and couldn’t say anything. I used to feel him pressing his hard-on against my arse as he reached up for the batteries or lighters that were on that shelf above the counter. And after a couple of weeks, he started talking dirty to me as well. He used to ask me for blow jobs. ‘How much?’ he’d say, over and over again. ‘How much for a blow job in the storeroom? A fiver? A tenner?’
Now, I understood that he had grown up in Pakistan and everything and I realised that he was struggling to understand that a woman in make-up and a skirt wasn’t necessarily a prostitute, so I did my best to just ignore him. ‘More than you can afford,’ I used to say, thinking that taking the mickey out of him might help keep him at bay.
But it just got worse and worse and I started to become afraid that he’d actually try something on with me, especially when I was working evenings and it was dark.
These days, I would have recorded him on my phone or something and sued the arse off him for sexual harassment, but these were the eighties and this was Wolverhampton. And we needed that money so badly ...
I nearly told you about it a couple of times, but I was scared that you’d kill him and end up in prison. Really. I really thought that might happen.
In the end, I told Theresa and she was simply amazing.
I came home one afternoon, and she was the only person in the house. Alistair was off scoring dope somewhere, I expect, and you were still at college.
Theresa asked me, jokingly, how it was going with Bilal. She thought that he was cute, which, purely in aesthetic terms, I suppose he was. He was neatly groomed and smooth-skinned and muscular; he had olive skin and that amazingly shiny jet-black hair. But it was the wrong question at the wrong time. I’d been having my first bouts of morning sickness and I’d been feeling tired and irritable even before I had spent the day being hassled by Bilal. So the minute she asked me the question, I burst into tears.
