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Surely even Jay had the sense not to make a twenty-mile hike home. Then again, whatever band it was, they were his favourite thing in the whole damned universe.
Laura appeared from behind the hot food rack. “Didn’t you tell her? I said straight away. I’ve been sitting in my office waiting. I’ve got stuff to do, you know. I don’t have time to waste so that you two can gossip.”
“I told you. Didn’t I tell you?”
Jodi nodded, but Cathy had already turned away to serve a customer.
“I’ll come right now. Sorry. I didn’t realise you were waiting.”
Laura scowled in a way that made Jodi want to shrivel up. She marched her through the kitchen to the rear of the building, towards Laura’s little office. It was really only a store cupboard that housed a desk in amongst the tins of cleaning fluid and fat for the deep fryer. Instead of ushering Jodi inside, she marched over to the staff lockers. “I tried checking your references out, but they’re all strangely unavailable. I did have a good old natter with your last but one employer, though. Very enlightening it was, too.”
Jodi’s heart sank into her boots, already anticipating what came next.
Laura banged her fist against the front of Jodi’s locker, making the whole unit rattle. “Open it up. Empty it.”
“We don’t need to do this,” Jodi said, letting none of the emotion she could feel welling up spill over. “I don’t know what Mr McHugh said, but I didn’t do any of the things he claimed.”
“Open it. I want everything in there.” Laura thrust an empty cardboard box reclaimed from the recycling pile into Jodi’s hands.
“Is there something you’re looking for? If you’d just tell me, it’d save time.”
Laura shook her head. “Hurry up.”
Jodi hesitated, but there didn’t seem to be any way of getting out of this. As to whatever Laura expected to find, Jodi had no doubt she’d discover it.
All manner of things miraculously made their way into Jodi’s possession all the time. It always surprised her to find items about her person that didn’t belong to her; a set of keys inside her trouser pocket, pens, straws, napkins and electronics inside her bag, and all manner of strange and bewildering things at home. Though some of those, she was certain, belonged to her brother. Gray was always turning up with stuff and leaving with other stuff. If she lost this job, he was going to give her such hell. He’d been the one who’d come in and picked up the application for her and had a word with someone so that she got an interview.
Twenty-four days. That’s how long she’d been here. It’d started to feel like a real job, something she could get attached to. It might only be a service station fast-food joint, but the company had numerous branches, and there was the opportunity for promotion to team leader, then shift manager, right on up to regional manager.
“Hurry it up.”
She didn’t dare look at Laura after she tapped in the code, releasing the lock. Several items spilled out of the locker immediately. Packed to capacity, her coat and bag bulged out because of the number of items stuffed behind them. “I didn’t… I don’t know how this stuff got in here.”
She kept her head bowed, knowing her eyes were already filling, and that any sort of direct gaze would guarantee her inability to blink the tears away.
“What on earth?” Laura shoved her aside so she could reach inside the locker. “You utter—”
Cow? Bitch? Something went on the end of that phrase, that Laura somehow refrained from vocalising.
“I can’t believe you took my scarf.” She waved the elephant-patterned piece of fabric under Jodi’s nose. “You know that was from my granddad, and how ill he’s been.”
“I didn’t—”
“And what are these?” Laura scooped up a pair of baseball boots, black with a skull motif and white laces. “They don’t look your size. What are you, a four… five, tops? And these are an eight. Wasn’t Jay saying he was missing a pair of shoes last week? And we were all howling, because how could you lose something so essential? It was after he’d had to take them off and spritz them down following the ketchup incident.”
“I didn’t take them.”
“Course not. The faeries must have put them in here. Let’s see what else they magicked here too, shall we?”
There was no stopping her. Jodi simply had to hold the cardboard box while Laura discovered one item after another, most of them inconsequential, but still all adding up to create a picture of the worst sort of employee.
“You’ve got ketchup packets, at least of pint of milk between all these long-life cartons, a rainbow’s worth of straws. Should I even ask what the screws are from? Bottle tops, an earring—isn’t that Cathy’s lipstick shade? And that’s in addition to my scarf and Jay’s shoes. You can’t stay here.”
“You’re dismissing me?”
“Damned right.”
“Laura, I know it looks bad, but I really don’t know how this stuff ends up here. I don’t. I swear.”
