On a Lonely Path

By Phil Redhead

Until now, supermarket manager Rob Worth has walked a lonely path. Out of caution. Out of self-preservation. Out of fear. No one knows a single thing about him. Only lies. Too many lies for a man to keep on top of. The cracks are showing...

All he needs now is for a girl to come along. A girl like Jane, a girl half his age, a girl with a past. A girl who will coax him off his lonely path. A girl who will tempt him into speaking truths better left unspoken; into acting upon desires safer kept as dreams; into committing an act that will shatter the lives of three people broken years beforehand.

“We're all such sensitive f***ing souls.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phil Redhead
• Release date: Sep 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301821570

Phil Redhead

Phil Redhead currently lives and works in Surrey, England. He has been employed variously as a delivery boy, a supermarket shelf-stacker, a vault supervisor, a salesman of DVDs, a foreign currency cashier, a factory machinist and a shipping clerk.His Little Streets Noir books are dark sex-and-violence dramas set in dead-end commuter towns. He writes about the lonely and the weak; the losers and the misfits and the ne'er-do-wells - the little people who walk the little streets.

Book preview

On a Lonely Path

by Phil Redhead

Editor: Sarah Barbour at Aeroplane Media

Photography: Heng-Hsuan Chu

Published September 2013 by Little Streets Books

Copyright 2013 Phil Redhead

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

About the author

1

Rob Worth sat in the staff cafeteria, his eyes averted from the clock. He stared out the window at some trees in the distance and swallowed down mouthfuls of the tea he had been promising himself for the past hour. It was too hot. It burned his lips and the inside of his mouth, and he felt its heat progress all the way down his throat and hit his stomach. He didn’t close his eyes against the pain. He clenched his teeth to prevent his lips from twisting into a snarl.

He was late. He was supposed to be downstairs to interview this girl. What was her name? He looked down at the completed application form in front of him and checked. Jane Reed. He forgot the name immediately and finally forced himself to glance at the face of the clock.

Seven minutes past five.

He gave a silent groan—internalizing it so that nobody could hear it, and controlling his facial muscles so that nobody looking at him would be able to guess at his annoyance. Then he swigged down the last couple of mouthfuls from his mug, gathered the application form from the table top, and pushed back his chair with a scrape.

And the old man wanted the dairy chiller empty by six o’ clock …

One long, wide corridor ran the entire length of the sprawling hypermarket, connecting everything from the warehouse and delivery yard at one end to the staff entrance and reception at the other. Along the corridor’s length were intermittent entrances onto the shop floor, as well as some offices and refrigerated storage areas for the various departments.

Rob looked in the dairy chiller as he passed. Still half full; useless bastards. Trained monkeys could have cleared it by now. And at the same time he was expected to fit in this interview?

He shook his head, barely making a movement, and slid the chiller’s door closed with a bang. Then he stormed along the back corridor and pushed open the door to reception.

Let’s get this damn thing over with …

The girl was there, standing at the desk talking to old Helen on reception. She was dressed in a smart white blouse and a close-fitting navy blue skirt. The tights she wore made her legs glisten.

At the sound of the door opening she turned around and instinctively recognized Rob as her interviewer. She straightened the grin on her face and took a step back from the reception desk. She ran her hands down her skirt and cleared her throat.

Her straight, light-brown hair fell to her shoulders, and even from the other side of the room Rob could see her piercing blue eyes. Her face was friendly and inviting, lightly freckled. Her body was full, falling just short of chubby. She smiled a restrained greeting and waited to be addressed.

Rob didn’t smile. He looked down at the application form in his hand and again read her name. Jane Reed? She nodded, and the two of them shook hands.

You’re late, Wortho, Helen said, sitting back in her chair. He didn’t look at her. Keeping this young lady waiting. How professional. Helen looked at the girl and winked to tell her it was all right to laugh. The girl merely smiled.

Nice and busy this evening, are we, Helen?

You know me, Rob.

Yes, unfortunately I do.

Helen’s crooked yellow teeth showed as she laughed. She turned to the girl. Isn’t he nice?

Miss Reed, if you’d like to come with me—

He opened the door and then held it open for her, gesturing for the girl to go first. She gave a final friendly nod towards Helen.

Good luck, love, Helen said. Don’t pay any attention to him; he’s a pussycat.

He slammed the door closed on Helen’s laughter.

He led the way down the back corridor, his heavy footsteps echoing, and the girl shuffled along next to him, trying to keep up. Out of his peripheral vision he could see the uneasy smile on her face. She didn’t know whether to continue in a jokey tone. The smile came and went, flickering like muscle spasms.

Wow, she said. It’s strange being behind the scenes of the supermarket.

People always said the same meaningless things. They were so predictable. He turned to her, grunted a Yeah, and half-nodded. They continued along the corridor in silence.

At one of the tiny back offices, he flicked the light switch to reveal a cramped bare desk pushed in to one corner. He pulled out the chair at the desk and sat down. Then, without waiting for an invitation, the girl took an upturned chair from the corner of the room and placed it down side-on from the desk.

He resisted the urge to apologize for not having done this for her.

She sat with a straight back, waiting in patient silence with her hands resting on her kneecaps, while Rob opened the application form and glanced at it. The thick brick walls blocked all noise from the corridor outside.

So, you’re after part time.

That’s correct.

Her voice was clear and confident. He checked her age on the application form. She was eighteen, but she was neither awkward nor cocky. Not like most of them. The know-it-all kids with a few qualifications, but they couldn't even look you in the eye—most of them stuttering and blushing and fidgeting while you tried to talk to them, or acting like they’d done everything before, hiding their ignorance of the world behind a wall of smug cleverness.

You’re at university, then? He couldn’t be bothered to check the application form, even as he glanced at it.

No, but I’m back taking some classes. I left school at sixteen and got a job—in a department store. But I realized I’d made a mistake. So now I’m doing a course.

Oh?

Leisure and tourism.

So you’ve other commitments?

I’ll be fine with whatever you give me. The ad said evenings and weekends. That’s right, yes?

He didn’t answer. So why’d you leave school in the first place?

She glanced up at the ceiling while she searched her thoughts for an answer. Rob looked down. The top few buttons of her blouse were undone. At the top of her cleavage, the flesh was wrinkled where her bra pushed inward on her breasts. Instantly, he returned his eyes to the application form.

She cleared her throat with a delicate cough. I guess you could say I was young and stupid. Thankfully I figured it out. And besides—I fell in with the wrong crowd.

She closed one eye, crinkling it at the corner in a wince.

That’s all far behind me now, I’ve straightened myself out. God. ‘Straightened myself out.’ That makes it sound awful, doesn’t it? I wasn’t into anything serious. It wasn’t anything terrible. It wasn’t—

She closed her eyes and sucked her top lip up, exposing her teeth as she cursed herself. Rob glared at her and offered no comment. She looked back at him, blushing and tongue-tied, unsure how she was supposed to continue.

There was a pause.

And why did you leave your previous employer?

Ah, she said, pouncing on it. That’s actually an interesting story. He stared at her without blinking. My department manager was a—well—he was giving me unwanted attention. You know?

Rob arched an eyebrow.

It was all settled in my favour, though. He had a history. He was asked to leave the company quietly. But there were other people there—other workers—lots of talking behind my back. I thought it would be better if I left. I think a friendly working environment is so important, don’t you?

Rob almost nodded. He looked at the application form and turned one of its pages for something to do.

What makes you suited to this role?

Well, I’ve got experience in a retail environment. I’m easy-going, hard-working. I work well on my own, as well as part of a team. I’m friendly and confident. Flexible.

The usual rubbish. The same bland stodge they all spewed out of their mouths.

And now there was really only one last subject to cover. The usual warning. But for some reason he didn’t want to say it.

Yet how many times had he been screwed over by these little prick kids, coming and going in no time at all, finding better-paid work, discovering that they found it boring working a job? The warning came out of his mouth, accompanied by his customary cold stare.

I’m looking for someone who’s gonna be able to stick it out, right? Not be gone three or four weeks down the line. All I've got to do then is employ someone else and train them up again, and all it means is a lot of wasted time. I need a commitment.

She nodded, her eyes wide open. Absolutely.

I don’t mean stay here forever.

Well, no, maybe not. But I’d be here for the foreseeable future. And she smiled.

It was precisely what everyone else said.

But he believed her.

Right, he said, I think we’re done here. There are still a couple of others to see. But you should hear something some time towards the end of the week.

Thank you.

She stood up and held her hand out for him to shake. He stood too and gestured for her to leave first. He remained at the desk for a moment, shuffling paper. He watched the movement of her backside as she walked over to the door. He pushed the chair back under the desk and followed her out, and they walked down the corridor to reception in silence.

He’d give her a call tomorrow to congratulate her.

2

Jane’s first shift was between the hours of five and ten on a Tuesday evening. From about four onwards, Rob dipped his hand in his pocket and withdrew his phone every five minutes to check on the time.

He had already decided to meet her and give her the tour personally. But each instance of clock-watching made him nervous. The other workers would turn to each other and grin. Hey, what’s that? Wortho giving the tour? That’s a new one. And then they would look to his side and see Jane.

At a quarter to five he finally decided, no, it was a bad idea. It was so obvious. He’d get one of the kids to do the tour.

Andy was in the aisle next door.

Rob stopped at the mouth of the aisle. He gave a sudden high-pitched whistle and the boy’s head snapped round to attention. Rob jerked his neck for the boy to come over.

Andy relaxed the sudden tension that had shot through him at the sound of Rob’s whistle. Then, slouching as he put a cardboard box back on his stock cage, he made his way down the aisle towards Rob.

Christ, the boy was a mess. His hair was shaggy and untameable. His trousers were an inch too short, showing white socks under their hems. And the green fabric of his work shirt was ingrained with stains that looked like they would never wash out.

Come on, Rob said. I haven’t got all night.

The boy sped up but only by the smallest amount. Finally he came to Rob’s side and stood there looking down at the floor.

Right, Rob said. Five o’ clock, I want you in reception. New starter. Give her the tour.

Yes, Rob. He didn’t look up.

Take her round the store, and for Christ’s sake remember to show her the fire exits. They’ll skin me alive if you forget that again. Understand? Me getting skinned means you’re next.

The boy nodded.

Just take her round the department and then talk her through the layout of the chiller. Be quick about it. After that, get her down here with you.

He paused, looking down into the matted strands of hair on the boy’s crown with a sneer. Think you can manage all that?

The boy nodded