*
Don’t answer the phone. Back by lunch. Sort receipts.
The Christmas card pinned to the office door wasn’t even signed. The fat reindeer looked resigned to their cheap surroundings and the tacky tinsel convinced no one that this was a classy card. Shaun bet his boss had bought it in one of those Woolworth bargain boxes. The Apprentice ( Adrian loved to tease Shaun) left the sodden card where it was because karmically, the ink on the card was already blurry with the early morning sleet.
What was his boss up to now? Shaun gazed around the busy Mill Yard and noticed Adrian had borrowed the van. That meant he had taken their tools. Taken Shaun’s tools to be precise. They’d had a beer last night in the Hawthorns and not a hint of any new scheme. Not even a whisper. In fact, Adrian had not even mentioned the plans for the Department store at all. And normally he couldn’t stop talking about his plans, his innovations.
‘Curious and curiouser’. Shaun whispered into his sodden glove, borrowing one of his new friend’s favourite phrases. It was apartment speak apparently. Of course, Adrian hadn Shaun was just glad that even in his overalls and workboots he could keep up with them all. Sydney had helped him out straight away when they’d first visited the fifth floor and Adrian had patronisingly announced themselves ‘ as the Professionals, ’ only trying to help.’
Rot.
He read it out of revenge the same summer to make his reading better and it did.
Off with their heads. Too right.
Shaun pulled the Christmas Card off the door and put it in his pocket. He hated receipts and now the stupid word was totally erased anyway. If he couldn’t read the instruction, then surely not his fault if he ignored it or did something else?
His mind returned to that first visit to the apartment. Another girl whom he now knew as Cora, had offered them brown toast and a young man with the craziest hair Shaun had ever seen had offered them coffee. Of course, Adrian had refused saying something stupid like ‘not for me I’m on duty’ as if he was in the CID, not a scheming builder at all. For a moment he allowed himself to think of all that wild hair and then of Jack. He had tried to think the same about Naomi but it didn’t work.
Shaun felt reckless and lightheaded at his admission, so he shook his head, brought himself back into the yard and blamed the rush for the bus. He should have eaten his breakfast or bought one, that’s what young working men did in this town. He did need a drink, a real coffee, he lacked coffee. There he was again, edging towards Jack with the latter’s famous addiction to his gold cafetiere. His Coffee was like tar. Jack had flair.
But Naomi was nice. She really was. She smelt of baby powder. Drank her martini quickly and laughed a lot.
Shaun stamped his boots one after another and returned to the problem of Adrian’s whereabouts. Adrian was a man who liked to share. He flaunted his latest schemes in the same way he insisted on flaunting his gold jewelry, so this note was odd. Deeply uncharacteristic decided Shaun.
The Portakabin Office felt more lonely than ever in the mill yard. ‘Cheap and not very cheerful’ Adrian had joked when he’d moved the business ‘headquarters’ ( another joke) from out of town to this Mill yard, somewhere ‘more convenient’.
Shaun removed the key from the lock and held it to his nose as he always did when he felt wobbly. The old metallic smell steadied him. He wasn’t going into the office today. He was going to find what Adrian was up to.
He crossed the yard whistling, identified their latest skip and peered inside. Hardly anything except broken plasterboard and tangled wires. Lots of dust. And then leaning against one side as if innocent of any wrongdoing, Shaun noticed a large oblong cardboard box with the label still in place. Shaun heaved it out, the sleet now making him feel intrepid, on a mission. Sherlock Holmes, not Watson.
No one now smoking in the yard, took any notice. He was only the Apprentice after all. Shaun squinted down at the tiny writing on the label. Huguenot’s Mirror Ware and read the size, the dimensions mattered surely? Why was Adrian buying a mirror and taking the morning off? The Mirror sounded vulgar and ornate too. Not to Shaun’s taste at all. What was his boss up to and why the secrecy?
Shaun inhaled the key again. Gazed up at the forlorn, congested-looking sky and waited. He felt something fluttering neglected in his chest, something that felt abandoned. He lit a cigarette and waited some more. And then suddenly Shaun knew. He imagined the inside of the Caged Lift and the old elegant glass mirror on the back wall that reflected far more than travellers could appreciate with just their ordinary minds. Magic again.
He lit a cigarette and waited some more. And then suddenly Shaun knew. He remembered the Caged Lift and the old elegant glass on the back wall that reflected far more than travellers appreciated with just their ordinary minds.
Magic. Shaun shuddered. Bastard. Adrian was going to modernise the lift; going to tear out her soul.
