The Overnight Read online

  "You need to give me more than that."

  "Fenny Meadows. Would anybody want to come here if they didn't work here?"

  Several mouths are opening when Woody says "You'll tell me why not."

  "Maybe they don't see it till it's too late."

  "You're making me do a whole lot of work. Too late for what?"

  "I mean, maybe they don't see the signs. When I drove here just now I nearly missed the junction for the fog."

  "That'll be what kept you, then," says Ray.

  Ross comes to her aid. "It's only if you work round here you know you're close when you hit the fog."

  "It wouldn't make much sense for anyone to build here if it was like this all the time, would it?" Woody protests. "I spoke to head office, and there wasn't any fog when they were checking out the site last winter. Yes, come in, don't just listen."

  He's staring at the stockroom door behind Jake, who feels a chill like a breath on the back of his neck and turns to find the door is open just enough for someone to peer through. Greg is rising dutifully from his chair when Woody hurries to lean into the stockroom. "Must have been a draught," he mutters, rubbing his upper arms once he has slammed the door. He looks as if he hopes that has wakened everyone as he says "Okay, does anybody think Lorraine identified a problem?"

  "Not enough people realise we're here."

  "You got it, Ray. So have you all been telling everyone you know?"

  The murmur of response is mostly the sound of people trying not to single themselves out. "Come on, team," Woody urges. "You're making me think you don't want to win. Who's going to get us pepped up?"

  He's performing such a parody of an American that Jake for one doesn't know where to look. Eventually Jill says "The parents I meet and my little girl's teachers know where I work."

  "That's a start. And your friends?"

  "They are my friends."

  "Sure, and we are too, aren't we? I want us all to be friends here. How about we don't just tell our friends about the store, we tell everyone we even slightly know."

  "How about everyone we meet?" Greg proposes.

  Gavin lets out a sound like a series of esses. "How do you want us to do that, Greg? Hi, you don't know who I am and you're going to think I'm mad or tripping, but I work at Texts and I'm why you should come and see?"

  "We needn't talk. We could wear something."

  "You want me to go clubbing with this around my neck," Gavin says, rattling his Texts badge on its chain.

  "Any other possibilities?" Woody says to silence it.

  "We could carry our things in a Texts bag," Jake suggests and feels exonerated until his name appears overhead. "Jake," Mad's voice calls. "Just letting you know your friend Sean says he has to leave."

  "Shall I answer that?" Jake asks Woody.

  "Do you have a reason to?"

  It's Gavin who saves Jake from any further reproof. "I could leave our flyers in the clubs I go to."

  "Why don't you each think of someplace else to leave some," Woody says and calls into the office "Connie, can they get a fistful of events sheets each?"

  "They can, but …" She takes a leaflet out of the carton she has just slashed open. "You aren't going to like this," she says.

  "Hey, I'd rather have misery than mystery."

  "A nasty little apostrophe's wormed its way in."

  As well as announcing that Brodie Oates will be signing his books, the sheet encourages the public to watch the press or ring up to learn of further events, but the first word anyone is likely to notice is at the top and half as large again as any of the others: TEXT'S. Woody stares at it until Connie brings it close enough for him to grasp with a fist. "Call the printers and tell them they need to fix this right now," he says, "and let them know we won't pay for it."

  "I don't think we can really do that." Her lips pinch inwards as if they would like to hide their pinkness, but then she has to say "I'm certain I checked the copy before I e-mailed it, only the computer must have thought it wanted correcting and never asked me. I've just looked and the mistake's on there as well."

  "Okay, here's what you do. Correct it and print out say a thousand we can distribute while we're waiting for the real thing. They won't look as professional, but at least we can get them out there."

  Connie is retreating into the office when he says "Wait, let's see if we can make this work for us. Before Connie starts, who's got ideas for events for us to run? That's besides Lorraine's reading group."

  Jake isn't shrugging off the question; he's moving his shoulders to rid them of a chill—a draught, of course, not the breath of someone who's hiding behind him to enjoy Woody's troubles. Nevertheless Woody stares at him until Ray says "Do we know any writers with local connections?"

  Gavin hasn't quite finished a yawn when he says "Isn't there what's his name?"

  "I should think there'd have to be," Ray tells Woody like a teacher apologising for a pupil to a headmaster.

  "The one who wrote about here," Gavin insists. "Somebody Bottomley."

  "Okay, Agnes, Anyes, that's your section. Find out what there is to know and tell Connie," Woody says. "All right, we need to move this along. I'm keeping you guys off the floor. Think promotions and events and give them to Connie by let's say three o'clock, but there's another way I hope you can all help. The chief and her squad will be here from New York to see how we're shaping up in less than two weeks. We're going to show them every book in order on the shelves and as tidy as the day before we opened, and not a single item in the stockroom."

  "Can we manage that?" Jill says.

  "Good to hear from you again, Jill, and the simple answer is I'm asking everyone to work all night the night before the big day."

  "Count me in," Greg says at once.

  "I'll have to see who could look after Bryony," says Jill.

  "Are we getting double time?" Lorraine asks.

  "Time and a half," Woody says. "That's everyone, me included. You know I'll be here."

  When nobody responds at once, he clears his throat so sharply Jake imagines it must hurt. "No absolute urgency," Woody says. "I'll put up a sign-up sheet so people can commit once they've cleared their schedules. Ray?"

  "I'll be on it, don't worry."

  "No, I mean will you assign jobs? Just remember," Woody adds as his gaze snags on each of them, "anything you do to help the store is helping you as well. It's the public that keep us employed."

  As he heads for his office at last, Connie takes his place. "Provocative window, Jill," she says. "I think that's the word."

  "So long as it gets people's attention, would you say?"

  "And brings them in. I haven't seen too many tickets going yet. When I've done my leaflets you could all make sure you give one to every customer, and it wouldn't hurt to start telling them now who they'll be able to meet."

  Jake sees Greg struggling on behalf of the shop to overcome his aversion to the idea. A laugh that tastes like a sneeze catches in Jake's nostrils as Ray dispatches him to shelve books. He's the first into the stockroom, where a hollow clapping of cassette boxes on the Returns shelf greets him—his entrance must have disturbed them. The skeletal shadows of the few empty racks twitch almost imperceptibly beneath the fluorescent lights, one of which is unsettled, buzzing like a torpid insect. His shelves are heaped with romances; books all the colours of candied sweets are close to toppling off the edge. He fetches a trolley from outside the lift, which for an instant he fancies he hears uttering a single word, and trundles it to his racks. He grabs the first heap of romances to turn it horizontal on the trolley, and the pile behind it spills backwards, sprawling in all directions wherever there's room. "Don't be damaged," he pleads, and manages not to knock down any more as he reaches for the books. He inches his fingers behind the bulk of them, and his fingertips encounter an object squashed behind them.

  It's as cold as the wall it slithers down. It seems to writhe away from his touch as he recoils so hastily that a stack of romances topples o
nto his chest. It must have been a book, however much larger it felt, as well as too clammy and obese and not even flat enough to begin with. He's already unsure how much he imagined or what sound he emitted that brings Ross into the stockroom. "That was truly camp, Jake," he says. "Were you calling for help?"

  "What does it look like?"

  "Here's some." As he grabs the topmost books from the pile against Jake's chest he bumps Jake's nipple with his thumb, perhaps to demonstrate he isn't threatened. "How did you end up like that?" he amuses himself by asking.

  "Something fell down at the back I couldn't seem to reach."

  "Shall I try?"

  "That'd be more than sweet of you."

  Ross leans across the shelves and gropes blindly about until Jake begins to grow afraid for him. He's breathing fast and shallowly, which appears to disconcert Ross, when Woody hurries in to demand "Who was making that noise?"

  "Nobody," Ross objects and renders his voice manlier by half an octave. "We were just talking."

  "We had a bit of a panic," says Jake. "Over now."

  Ross drops an armful of books on the trolley. "I expect you shouldn't try to handle too much all at once, Jake."

  "I'm not sure what I'm seeing here," Woody says. "Ross, you need to deal with your own section before you start lending a hand."

  He watches Ross find a trolley and take it and his increasingly red face to the video racks. He doesn't return to the office until both Ross and Jake are busy with their stock. Jake's hands start to feel grimy with apprehension as he reaches further into the gloom in the depths of his shelves. He snatches the last books away from the wall to reveal nothing but concrete, bare except for a faint muddy shapeless stain. Whichever book unnerved him by slipping away from him, he must have retrieved it without knowing.

  All four shelves of the trolley are brimming with romances, and more are piled on top. Jake has seen funerals move faster than he dares to wheel them to the lift. He inches the trolley between the doors as soon as they're wide enough. As he steps in and thumbs the grubby button, Ross tries to catch him up. "Lift opening," the mechanical voice promises, only for the doors to close. The cage lumbers downwards and shudders to a halt before it repeats itself in, Jake thinks, not nearly so female a voice. Is the source already wearing out, or the lift itself?

  He has pushed less than a foot of trolley clear of the doors when they clamp themselves on it. Bruising his thumb on the button fails to shift them, and when he wrenches at them he feels as though his fingers are sinking into mud, an impression the greyish dimness aggravates. Of course the doors are edged with rubber, and after not much of a struggle they sidle apart. He runs the trolley out so fast that two books with hospital staff on the covers are left behind. As he picks them up he's fearful that the doors will seize the opportunity to shut him in, though why should that make him so apprehensive? He lurches upright and darts out to lay the books on top of the trolley, then pulls open the door to the sales area and trundles his burden out just soon enough to prevent the alarm from squealing about him.

  He's hardly begun to sort the contents of the trolley when Ross emerges from the lobby with another full of computer manuals. "Sorry it shut. I didn't mean to keep you out," Jake calls, which brings him a forgiving grin from Ross. It looks uneasy too, perhaps because the new guard is staring at them both with some distrust. As Jake wonders if he should save Ross from any further misunderstanding, Greg marches up to the guard and thrusts out a hand. "I didn't get the chance to introduce myself before. I'm Greg."

  "Frank," the guard discloses and shakes the hand while he does.

  "You'll have met the boss," Greg says in the tone of a second in command. "Do you know the others here? That's Ross. Angus. Madeleine, she's usually in the children's section. That's Lorraine just joining the rest of us." With a pause to quarantine the information, he adds "That's Jake."

  "We've met."

  Frank's lack of enthusiasm provokes Jake to shout "We hit it off right away, didn't we? I'm only sorry I didn't get to hold your hand like Greg."

  They stare at him with a dislike so identical he thinks it's as dull as the fog. For a moment he even imagines that the advancing murk beyond the doorway behind them has been attracted by the prospect of a quarrel, or something in the fog has; certainly he feels spied upon. Perhaps it's Woody at his office monitor or just the thought of him. It's enough to single Jake out until he turns back to his shelving and forces himself to ignore it, along with Greg and Frank and anyone else who disapproves of him. At seven there'll be Sean, but for now there are the colours of the bunched spines, colours he can almost taste as he wields the alphabet: cherry, orange, lime, lemon … It doesn't seem to matter that he's reducing the books to little more than blocks of pastel and himself to the kind of stereotype too many of his colleagues may assume he is, more a decorator than a bookseller. All he knows is that the colours are helping to fend off the greyness that has closed around the shop and, if he let it, around his mind as well.

  Ross

  When Mad returns from being called away by Woody her face looks as though it's hiding a mask that's capable of rendering her thoughtful bemusement blank. Ross recalls those layers of expression from when she was deciding to end the relationship. He's no nearer knowing if they mean he's expected to ask a question, but as soon as her gaze happens to encounter his, it draws him over to Teenage Texts. "What did he want?" he murmurs.

  "Seems I shouldn't have announced Jake's boyfriend had to go."

  Lorraine takes issue with this, though Ross isn't sure if it's Mad's comment that has attracted her from Information or the sight of him with Mad. "Why shouldn't you?" Lorraine demands.

  "I was supposed to call Jake to the phone because the message wasn't for the public. I just thought I was saving time."

  "If you ask me management won't let you win. I'll bet Woody would have been in a sulk if you'd called anyone away while he was trying to persuade us to lose our sleep."

  Lorraine and Mad are regarding each other as though they're competing at sweetness, yet Ross feels they're most aware of him; he feels like a device they're using to communicate. "I don't mind working all night," he says. "Could be an experience."

  "Why do men feel they have to prove they can do things there's no need for?"

  "I don't think that really fits, does it?" says Mad. "I'm on the sheet with Ross."

  "Oh, are you?" says Lorraine as though she couldn't be less interested. "Anyway, if you want anything from me I'm not far."

  "I think I've forgotten why I would, Lorraine," Mad says.

  "We call it sticking together, those of us that do. We need to when the shop doesn't hold with unions. If we let ourselves put up with even little things they'll just get worse."

  "That one wasn't little, it was microscopic. I'd have forgotten it by now if you hadn't joined in. Sticking together has to be good, though. When you're in my section it would be great if you could give it a bit of a tidy if you see anything out of place"

  "There's a few of those around the shop," Lorraine says more meaningfully than the words can really bear, and more than Mad bothers to acknowledge. She leaves Lorraine a smile so faint it contradicts itself as she returns to pulling out books that are leaning their spines against the Teenage wall in imitation of their readers. As Lorraine stalks back to Information, whatever she's hoarding up to say seems to trail over Ross like a shadow. No wonder he feels safest shelving his computer books.

  Quite a number of the manuals are at least twice the size of most of the rest of the stock, but though that means he has fewer items in a trolleyful, it also needs him to make more space for each. He has to move the contents of three shelves to fit just one guide to Linux in, and once he finishes lugging the books about he has to shift the subject markers. Without the dozens of plastic tags that name systems and languages and applications and every aspect of the Internet, he would have no idea where anything belongs. He's attempting to memorise at least some of the order when the phones begin to r
ing.

  The ten-second rule says that every call should be answered by then. Lorraine is bagging books for a man in a puffy anorak, and so Ross hurries to the phone at Information. "Texts at Fenny Meadows, Ross speaking, how may I help?"

  "Chief there?"

  Ross seems to have heard the woman's voice before. "May I ask who's calling?"

  "He'll know. He'll be seeing me."

  He isn't sure if he should take her brevity for rudeness—her voice is oddly stiff. "Still light, is it?" it apparently costs her an effort to ask. "Dark here."

  Perhaps she's tired. "I'll just put you on hold," he says, and does so before thumbing the Page button. "Woody call ten, please. Woody call ten."

  He has barely replaced the receiver when it shrills. "What can I do for you, Ross?"

  "There's a caller on line one for you."

  "With a name, maybe?"

  "She wouldn't say."

  "Always get a name and give yours."

  "I told her mine. She said you'd know her. I think she's calling from abroad."

  "I believe you could be right. Thanks, Ross."

  Ross tramps back to his shelves to find space for another blocky volume. As he rearranges books he hears a muffled fitful panting huge enough to be audible through the delivery lobby. Soon a giant or somebody with ambitions to be as loud as one starts pounding on the outer door. Ross is moving to respond until he hears the door clank open. He has made room for one more manual when Woody appears from the lobby, outside which Ray is loading cartons onto a pallet truck from a lorry that's adding exhaust fumes to the fog. Ross has the impression that the fumes are hardly moving, instead thickening the murk. The inner door shuts as Woody strides over to him. "What did you do to my call?"

  "Nothing. Put it through."

  "Nothing sounds more like it. There wasn't anybody."

  "I said I was putting her on hold. She'd understand that, wouldn't she?"

  "She'd have to be kind of stupid not to," Woody says and stares at him as though Ross implied it was the case.