*

At the Christmas party, Kevin and I were both rewarded with a bottle of Chardonnay. I think we were supposed to be awed, or at least grateful. Back at the garage, we strung handfuls of fairy lights around the plant. I placed the star, sideways, on top. All lit up like a Christmas tree, that old story. We sat heavily on the spotless floor, mixed our drinks in paper cups, and watched the motorway opening and closing in front of us like an accordion.

‘You never know, Kevin, you might get laid in the stationery cupboard.’

‘We don’t have a stationery cupboard.’

‘That was a joke.’

‘Didn’t Management warn you about those?’

I liked Kevin’s sincerity, his skinny torso, his rancid, red-light district aftershave. I was fond of it all. It had nothing to do with his looks – which were limited – or where he lived, or if he was interesting and successful in a way that was supposed to appeal to me. Nowadays, you have to be careful who you fall for, but I liked Kevin. He didn’t ask anything of me. That wasn’t nothing. If it was, more people would have done it.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘You won’t get laid. You are weird and flat-broke.’

‘Ah.’ He took a swift drink. ‘But so are you.’

I nodded, my expression grave. ‘That is correct, Kevin. Very clever of you to notice that.’

*

The first person to occupy a seat on the garage forecourt was a local man in his late seventies. He arrived in early January, wore a three-piece suit and leaned heavily on a gnarled cane, like a guest from another era. He was harmless, his own deterioration driving him out of his house and into the world. I thought he sat on the high stool with a magnificent dignity, his back resting on the chain-link fence.

‘Keeping busy?’ he shouted at me across the forecourt.

I waved my arms around in a demonstration of busyness. ‘Yes, yes, I am.’

‘Nothing like it. Great to see it.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I hear you were away?’

‘I was.’

‘What did you do over there?’

I shrugged. ‘Nothing good.’

‘Well, you are back now and you are doing a fine job. Stay at it.’

Sometimes his wife came with him. They’d hobble down the motorway path together, so tiny, so diminished, they almost disappeared. Each time, they brought me strange gifts that I suspected they found on the roadside: a scratched CD of affectionate love songs, a silvery disco jacket for a Barbie.

‘But I don’t own a doll?’

‘Consider it a present,’ his crinkly wife winked. She was maybe deaf.

Whenever Management appeared, the old man liked to bellow and point.

‘That’s a great girl you have there!’

Management always spun around rapidly, fiercely, like she was in a cop show, hoping to find a new, normal person. But, no – it was just me.

We were both equally surprised.

*

At night, the garage often welcomed other, less accommodating visitors. Young men who stepped out from behind the wheels of their tin cans like small, showy princes. They all drove cars that looked like they were designed to be in accidents – scraps of metal with a colony of screaming girlfriends trapped inside. I squirmed at their clumsy, implied intimacy.