Noreen took one wobbly step forward, then another one after that. Towards the hall.
Jim could only stare after her.
‘It’s time for you to end this,’ she said, pausing at the door. ‘Do what needs to be done. Tomorrow night. No later. If anyone comes asking, I’ll swear you were here, with me, all night. But’ – she turned to jab a finger in his direction – ‘that’s it, Jim. That will be the end. We won’t speak of it and you will never do this again. Or I’ll be telling Katie about you myself. Do you understand?’
After a beat, Jim nodded.
‘Good.’ Noreen disappeared into the hall. ‘I’m going back to bed.’ Jim could hear her slippered feet shuffling on the floor out there, then her calling to him as she started up the stairs. ‘Clean up that glass before someone gets hurt.’
Friday mornings were the busiest at Centrepoint. Normally Jim liked them because they were his last shift of the week and the hours passed quickly, but today it was taking everything he had just to look like a functioning human being. He’d forgotten to set an alarm and so had to skip his shower and shave, and he’d only realised after he’d got to the Centre that he was wearing yesterday’s sweat-stained shirt. A dull ache was gathering at his temples.
Because Noreen knew.
Had known, all this time.
No matter how many times Jim replayed the events of last night, he couldn’t quite believe that they had happened.
Beep-beep.
The noise brought Jim back to now, to the display of newspapers and magazines by the start of Grocery. His radio. He pulled it from his belt and pressed the TALK button.
‘Go.’
‘Jim, come see me. I’m upstairs.’
Steve.
‘Can it wait? I was just about to—’
‘I can see you on the cameras, Jimbo. You’re not busy. Get up here. Now.’
Jim lifted his chin and glared for a long moment into the fish-eye lens on the ceiling a few feet in front of him. Then he set off for the STAFF ONLY doors at the back of the frozen food section, behind which a metal stairs led him to the door of Steve’s office.
Steve was sitting at his desk eating a breakfast roll. The crumb-filled paper bag it had come in was ripped open and resting on his laptop’s keys. The man’s face was smeared with brown sauce and a tiny piece of what might be fried egg-white was clinging to his lower lip. The room smelled of grease and stale coffee.
Bile rose in Jim’s throat and for a moment he thought he might gag.
The dull ache at his temples was ramping up to a thumping pulse.
‘Jim,’ Steve said through a mouth full of masticated meat. ‘Have a seat.’
On the wall to Jim’s right was a bank of TV monitors showing various black-and-white views of the supermarket. He searched for the camera feed that Steve had been watching him on. The view was so zoomed-in that Jim could read the newspaper headlines.
He sat on one of two empty seats in front of the desk. Steve set down his half-eaten roll and leaned back, looked at Jim. He smiled. His lips were shiny with grease.
Whatever he was about to say, he was looking forward to saying it.
‘We have to let you go, Jim.’
Steve paused, apparently waiting for a reaction.
Jim refused to give him one.
‘We had a complaint,’ he continued. ‘From a customer. Yesterday afternoon. She said that, twice now, you’ve been staring at her as she moved around the store. Leering at her is how she put it. I’ve checked the cameras, Jim. Seems to me like she’s telling the truth. You’ve already had a warning for insubordination, and another for that thing with the guy you thought had stolen the beer who tried repeatedly to show you his receipt. We have a three-strike rule. As you know. You leave me no choice but—’
One fluid motion.
A charge.
Jim got up and grabbed what was left of the breakfast roll and leaned over the desk and gripped the back of Steve’s neck with one hand and pushed the roll into his mouth with the other.
Smashed it against his teeth.
Forced it in, deeper and deeper, until the man started to cough and splutter and choke.
Jim stopped and stood back to watch as Steve rose from his chair and bent forward, over the desk. He clawed at his throat. His eyes were wide and bulging. His mouth was open but only a wet, wheezing sound was coming out of it. His face was rapidly turning red. The man couldn’t breathe.
Jim did nothing for ten, fifteen seconds.
Then he calmly went to the other side of the desk, stood behind Steve’s back and thumped him hard five times. Reached around to the man’s front, pressed a fist just above his navel and knocked it in and upwards with his other hand. Steve immediately sprayed bits of bread, sausage and egg out of his mouth and across the desktop. He fell forward, over the desk, coughing and spluttering and gasping for breath.
‘You should be more careful,’ Jim said.
Steve turned to look at him, his eyes wide with fear. He took a step back, away from him. Then he took another.
He backed up all the way to the opposite wall, his eyes never leaving Jim’s.
Jim smiled, satisfied.
Then he turned on his heel and left.
By the time Jim got back to the house, his headache was so bad it felt like his brain had turned into a hammer and was trying to knock its way out of his skull. He nosed the car slowly into the driveway, relieved he’d managed to get it home without incident despite the pulsing pain behind his eyes.
Derek was in the driveway next door, unlocking his car. Karen had just stepped out of the house carrying the geriatric shit machine awkwardly in her arms. The dog was whining loudly, as if in pain.
Karen was also carrying a small, clear plastic bag. Jim couldn’t say for sure at this distance, but it seemed to him as if there were a couple of dog biscuits inside.
She turned and saw Jim, sitting in the car looking at them.
He raised a hand in salute.
She glared at him murderously.
Jim smiled back. Karen could make all the faces she wanted. They’d never be able to prove it was him.
He waited for them to drive off before he went into the house.
He hadn’t even withdrawn the key from the lock in the door when Noreen appeared in the hall, her face pinched in concern.
But was it concern? After last night, he couldn’t be sure of anything any more.
Especially not anything to do with Noreen.
‘What are you doing home?’ she said.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I have a headache.’
Noreen peered at him as if evaluating the likely truth of this.
‘You’re exhausted,’ she said then. ‘Go on up to bed. I’ll bring you some paracetamol. What you need is a good rest.’
On any other day, Jim might have argued with her. Even when she was right, that’s what he liked to do. But he felt so horrible, the pain in his head so intense, he didn’t say anything. He just trudged his way up the stairs and into their room.
He kicked off his shoes, drew the curtains and crawled into bed, pulling the blankets up over his head to shut out the light. But in the dark, the pain seemed to grow even stronger.
It was so bad now he couldn’t think about anything else.
Noreen came into the room with a glass of water and two white pills. Jim didn’t even pause to check what they were. He knocked them back and then lay down again, burrowing beneath the blankets.