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  Not that the rest of the shop don’t step carefully around us, though. Oh no. They know better. We have our own table in the canteen and woe betide anyone who isn’t a lipstick girl that sits at it. There are a couple of them that could cause trouble in an empty house, of course. One of the younger girls, Gina something or another always sits in a gaggle with her mates giggling at the rest of us and giving us dirty looks. Particularly me, for some strange reason. Not that I’m bothered. Well, not much, anyway. Sometimes she oversteps the mark, and I can hear her calling me names and the like under her breath to her mates. Not quite bullying, but only because I don’t want to call it that. You see, like you, she knows absolutely nothing about me at all. The only thing she does know is that by day I’m a lipstick girl, and perhaps she also knows that some nights I perhaps eat too little and drink too much. No amount of slap can hide that. Caught her writing, “Pisshead” on my locker at work one day. Just pushed past her and got on with getting my stuff out. I’m not sure if it’s an easy life I want, or even a quiet one. I just wish that my Mick was back in it, that’s all.

  Mick was my husband. We were married for ten years. No kids. We never really got round to finding out why that was the case, but that’s just how it goes, I suppose. He was an electrician. Twenty years ago pretty much at this time of year he went up into someone’s loft to fix their wiring. Some stupid sod had taken a few shortcuts with the electrics and my Mick ended up cutting through a wire that carried the mains that shouldn’t have been carrying the mains at all. Turned out that the guy who originally wired it up was keen to get off home early or whatever. Mick came down from that loft in a box, and I’ve been a widow for twenty years. That’s the unfair bit. The bit that gets to me. When the girls at work laugh about that. Ah well.

  I see him sometimes. Before you jump to any conclusions it’s not always when I’ve had a drink. Though most nights I suppose it is. He sits on the end of my bed and watches over me. It’s easier to sleep then. I do wonder though about a God who would allow him to be there and me here. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had the bottle and boxes of pills all set to one side and ready to go. I’ve had a nice hot bath with the razor blade near to hand, all silver, sharp and waiting. But as I said, I am a good Catholic girl and that’s against my beliefs. Or maybe I’m just scared I’d end up down below whilst he was up there. I’m not the kind of girl who would take that chance. I can wait a long time if I have to, because once that’s over then I have forever waiting for me.

  Anyway. Back to work. Mr Georges tries to do his best to get us all to work as a team, of course, but he’s a spineless little sod. Always takes the easy option. But as I said, I don’t get involved. I’ll turn up for the works night out at Christmas, and perhaps a few drinks every now and then for birthdays and what have you after work; the occasional meal. That’s about it really.

  Most of the girls who work on the department are a lot younger than me. Mr Georges likes that, apparently. I thought he was gay for a while. The previous three managers were. To be honest I thought that it was part of the job description. It’s not as if he’s a spring chicken, either. He must have a good five years on me, and I’m fifty two. Dirty little bastard. That’s always my mission on any new girls first day. To explain to them patiently but quite carefully never to find themselves in the stockroom on the fifth floor alone with him. Really not a good idea. He tried it on with me once, the old hand on the shoulder routine. Well, starts on the shoulder before it begins to wander, I imagine. Mind you, he only did it once. I just gave him the look. The same look I reserve for the twenty five past five lipstick shopper. Needless to say his hand soon found its way back to his side again.

  While we’re on the subject, you heard me right. The stock room is on the fifth floor. At the back of the department there’s a staff only cage lift that goes all the way up to the eighth floor. Now it strikes me that whichever idiot was responsible for putting the stockroom so far away it may as well be on the moon needs a bloody good kicking. But it’s just typical of the way that they do things at the shop. Don’t think things through. Arse about tit, I would say, and I think I would be right. Anyway, no point getting worked up about it. As I said, I just do my job and go home.

  None of this of course, goes to explain why I had applied for the job of assistant department manager. It certainly wasn’t the money. Another tenner a month, I’d worked it out as after the robbing bastards at the tax office had their way with it. The current person in the job was Susan, who had got a promotion to kid’s shoes. I think I’d like to work with kids someday. Not ever having had any myself, they fascinate me. I think it’s their innocence, their simple joy. Susan had got there before me on that occasion though.

  This time I was paying a bit more attention, and I’d seen the job of assistant department manager put up on the noticeboard outside the personnel office. I can remember quite clearly where I was when I decided to apply for it. I was in the stockroom on the fifth floor. No Mr Georges about thankfully. It was quite a large stockroom, loads of shelves and what have you that ran to ceiling height. You really wouldn’t think a cosmetics department would need so much space, but we did. It was a sunny July afternoon and I was staring out of a small open window that was pinned open above the main glass frame that didn’t open at all. I imagine that it had something to do with security and all that. Though why that would be the case on the fifth floor was way beyond me. Perhaps they were expecting Spiderman or something. But the small windows above them did open if you could reach them, and someone had pinned this one open. Probably to let some fresh air in, I imagine.

  On the day I decided to apply for the job I was looking up out of that stockroom window balancing on a box, high heels and all, looking up at the lazy deep blue summer sky. From nearby but almost as if far away at the same time I could hear the sound of people chatting from the street below, street musicians mixing in. People talking, bright sunshine and the sound of guitars. It seems to me that it was at that moment that I knew what it feels like to be a caged bird, and how much I would pay to be free, to soar up out of that window, higher into the bright summer sky, instead of standing behind a window, balancing on a box, whilst blinking at the sun, listening to the sound of guitars coming from below. I could be gone. I stepped down from the box and there in the corner of the stockroom, just at the edge of the shadows at the corner of the room stood my Mick. He nodded at me once and slowly faded away. The first time this happened it scared me soft, but I knew Mick better than that. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt or scare me. Never in a million years. But I knew what he was up to. With a sigh I decided to apply for the job.

  It turned out over the next week that once I had filled the form out and it was accepted then I had to have an interview for the job. Bloody cheek! The last time I had an interview I was at least two dress and possibly bra sizes smaller, it was that long ago. You would think that thirty year’s service would count for something, but it didn’t look that way. The problem pretty much became apparent once the jungle tom toms started to go around. There hadn’t been much interest in the job, and as I said the money was hardly worth it, but there had however been two applicants for the position. Myself, of course and Gina off the lipsticks counter. Giiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiina. I mean.. Giiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiina. She’s the one I mentioned earlier. The one with a permanent sneer stitched onto her slapped up face. The bully who thought writing “pisshead” on my locker was funny, and the fact that I had a dead husband was hilarious. I’m not a hateful person. I’m really not. Most of the time I think it’s because I just don’t have the energy to put into disliking someone. Perhaps I keep myself too much to myself. I’m not sure. But I will tell you this. I hate that girl – I won’t call her a woman – with a passion. It didn’t help of course that she must have been nearly seven foot high, natural blonde hair half way down her perfectly proportioned back, the rest of her all tits and teeth. Bloody hell. She was that young she probably still believed in Father Christmas, for Christ’s sake.
Anyway, it was me and her, and that meant interviews. Great.

  On the day of the interview I spent a little longer getting ready. It was a bit weird really, because part of me wanted to take my time and get it right, and the other half really couldn’t be arsed. I had surprised myself by applying for the job in the first place, but I wasn’t going to let it worry me. Oh no. The interviews were being held by Mr Georges (who, as I have already said is a spineless little idiot so no worries there) and Miss, sorry Ms Andrews from the HR department, or more likely the HRT department from head office in London.. Actually, she was Scottish, but also six foot one and the biggest snob I have ever had the misfortune to come across on the infrequent times she deems to descend from her throne in head office and go and see what the scousers up in Liverpool have cocked up now.. I reckoned the best way to deal with her was to speak just a little bit posher. If I could be bothered to lower myself that far. Which I most definitely was not. Nor was I going to play the game of licking her finely polished gold plated shoes either. I’d just go and be me.

  Which meant fading into the wallpaper, trying desperately not to be noticed, because if I was perhaps they would see how magnificently sad and lonely I really was. Most people mistake it for anger, and yes, I am angry, I suppose. I’m angry at life, at God and at every bloody thing that hits me when I open the door at home and it’s all just as I left it. Empty. Yes, empty. That’s me. Empty, sad, and alone. That’s when the drink helps. Perhaps I need to be saved. Saved from myself, probably.

  “So give me an example of when you last managed to provide excellence in customer service” asked Ms Andrews as we sat in the interview. I was momentarily distracted by the almost invisible (to probably anyone but me) thin grey moustache bobbing up and down over her top lip as she asked the question. Looking back on it now I can’t really remember the answer, to be honest. It was the usual bullshit and probably involved some eyeliner. Mr Georges sat nodding as I replied, but he seemed distracted, almost far away. They went through the rest of the motions of the interview, of course. They had to. But that was when I knew that Gina had got the job, and not me. Ah well. They said that they would let me know in a couple of days and off I went. Back to the shop floor and the slowest moving clock in department store history. When I went home that night I got absolutely off my head on a bottle of gin.

  It was a good thing that the results of the interview weren’t the next day as I had the worst hangover I’ve had for years. I vaguely remembered chasing a cat off the garden fence at the bottom of the garden at about one in the morning, during which I somehow managed to bang my knee on the bin. So the next day I was limping and seriously hung over. I spent most of the day holding on to the hairbrushes fixture, trying to get the floor to stop moving. Just before dinner Mr Georges minced across and tried to be funny. “Ah Miss Roberts.” he said, noticing me hanging on to the fixture for support. “Are you holding it up or is it holding you up?” and stood there grinning as if waiting me to burst into rapturous applause. To tell the truth if I had taken one hand off that counter to even to begin to clap I would probably have fallen flat on my face. So I just grinned and tottered off in the opposite direction, whilst at the same time silently cursing the fat little idiot to his seventh generation. Silently I wobbled back to the counter like a car with a burst tyre as several of the girls, led by Gina of course, openly laughed at me getting told off. Georges was already gone, though. Desperate for the day to end at twenty five past five I got a chair from behind the counter and pushed the clock hands forward five minutes and staggered off home.

  “So Sheila and Gina” said Ms Andrews as we sat waiting for her decision in her office. She still hadn’t shaved that bloody moustache. “You are both strong candidates but on this occasion I have decided to give Gina the chance to be our new assistant department manager.” I saw Gina shuffling in her chair out of the corner of my eye, and I think that she may possibly have been smiling. It was hard to tell, really. I turned my face to look at her and saw that actually she was grinning. Not at Ms Andrews on the other side of the desk, but at me. As I sat staring at her she gave a little wink and smiled even wider.

  “Thank you, Ms Andrews” she sang brightly, turning back to her royal highness whilst I silently counted up in my head whether I had enough money left for another bottle of gin.

  “This is of course no reflection on your ability, Sheila” continued Ms Andrews, turning her grey moustache in my direction. “On this occasion the stronger candidate won. Please feel free to apply for any other positions in the future. I am sure any such application would be looked on favourably.” Gina and I both nodded and left the room, our audience with “The Queen of the South” swiftly brought to a conclusion. Gina and I stood waiting for the cage lift to take us back to the department as we weren’t allowed to use the customer lifts whilst the shop was open.

  “I’m sure we can really work well together in the future” Gina said, and I noticed that her voice had an irritating, almost mocking tone to it. It would appear that Gina had problems with winning graciously. That and too much lipstick. I had already decided that I would do what I usually did and say nothing. Best way. No fuss. The lift arrived and we both got in. I pulled the inside cage door across and pressed the button for the ground floor and the lift began to descend. One of the bulbs in the lift had gone off and as the lift moved downwards Gina just stood there, grinning at me. It was obvious by her smug expression that she simply couldn’t wait to tell all of her mates that she had got the job. I just stood looking at her, but out of the corner of my eye in the half-darkness I saw my Mick slowly appear. He looked at me and smiled. That smile has broken my heart over the last twenty years and do you know what? I hope that it always will. I knew then what he wanted me to do. Enough was enough. Next time I glanced to where he had been he was gone. Turning to the inner cage door I grabbed the handle and pulled it open. This had the rather handy effect of bringing the lift to a sudden loud stop between floors. I’d been told that it is some kind of safety feature, apparently. I turned to face Gina, who had a look of confusion on her face.

  “I’m sure we can work together, Gina.” I smiled sweetly as the lift shook slightly as I approached her. From somewhere outside I could hear the sound of taped music playing. Guitars or something. Gina nodded beside me, pleased we seemed to have reached a mutual level of respect. Yet she also looked surprised as well, no doubt wondering why I had stopped the lift. Without further ado I rushed at her and practically threw her across the lift, grabbing her lapels as I did so. I noticed somewhere in the back of my mind that the back of her head knocked lightly against the wall of the lift as I grabbed her. Just enough to keep her quiet. Her eyes however, were full of fear. Like most bullies, I suppose, all she actually needed to keep her in check was a bloody good kicking. I, however, was so much better than that.

  “Just for future reference however,” I said, and gave her my best sweetest little smile, “I’m warning you now that just in case you suddenly decide to get any funny ideas let me say that the first time you do anything” and I paused in the semi darkness, relishing the total confusion on her face, “The first time you do anything to piss me off or step on my toes or generally cause me any inconvenience at all” Gina nodded her head nervously, not sure exactly where this was heading, “Then I am going to take you up to the fifth floor stockroom and throw you out of the effing window. God knows it’s only a small window, but I’m sure I can get you through it.” She backed away from me and I was convinced she was going to cower in the corner. “Do you understand?” I whispered. Gina nodded nervously and I nodded to her once again and pulled the cage door shut. The lift immediately began to move again. Smiling like a loon I made my way back to the department slowly, desperately trying to imprint the look on Gina’s face into my mind.

  So there we have it. I’m still the shop assistant and Gina has been raised to the lofty reaches of assistant management. She keeps out of my way, though. I remember someone saying to me once that
there’s a theory that every different choice that we make, every thing that we do can create a whole new reality just from that decision. Like there’s one world in which I did apply for the job, and other in which I didn’t. One world in which I got it, whilst currently I seem to be stuck in the world in which I didn’t get it. Seems a bit far-fetched if you ask me, but if it’s true then somewhere there’s a Sheila Teresa Roberts who is assistant department manager. I hope she’s happy. I really do.

  Me?

  I get by.

  I always do.

  There’s one last thing I need to tell you. That night when I went to bed I had a dream. It was probably the most realistic one I’ve ever had. I was sitting on my Mick’s lap. He looked as he always did, though it was now nearly twenty years since I waved him off to work and never saw him alive again. This time was different somehow. I have never before or since experienced a feeling as strong as that. It was raw, unconditional love as bright and as beautiful as a fire. It burnt me to my soul and filled me with love and sadness and joy all at the same time, until in the early hours it slowly ebbed and faded away. I knew by then what this was, of course. He had come to say goodbye.

  Was I sad? Not at all. He had filled me with such joy and left me with one certainty, and that was that the next time I saw him I just knew that we would be together forever. That feeling stays with me even now. If I am sure of anything it is that.

  Anyway, as I said earlier on, my name is Sheila Teresa Roberts and they say that I’m a lipstick girl. Or at least that’s what some people would call me. I work in the big fancy department store in Liverpool. I’ve worked there for nearly thirty years now. Always on the makeup and perfumery department. It kind of suits me really. Or it did. Because, just perhaps, there is something else out there for me. Cut out the drinking and do my best to leave these sad sods behind me. I’d love above all to work with children. Perhaps one day I will. I think what I am trying to say is that it is quite possible that I really am better than I think I am.