Henry had had a small, shitty life that had made waving a box-cutter in front of a few mildly frightened post-office employees seem like an empowering and enriching experience. In another better world he might have been a hero: a hairy folklore type with a soft, touchable face. Instead, he made beautifully constructed pie charts for a petrol station that did not exist.

He was beefy, mighty, capable of picking me up and swinging me around menacingly. I would shout, ‘Put me down, put me down, Henry!’ but not mean a word of it. It was all girlishness. I loved being picked up. Things were much clearer from that height. Despite my previous run-ins, I was still not immune to men like this.

Kevin didn’t have anything to confess. He used most of his allotted time to argue for the addition of hats to our uniforms and I half fell in love with him. He became a little agitated as he tried to describe his dreams for television which, as he spoke, seemed to grow even more vague and nonsensical. The way he saw it, the problem with modern viewing was that there were too many remotes. People wanted a single, functional remote for everything and he, plaid-clad, barely pubescent, would invent it. This was an example of hope. The garage was about giving us hope. The hope of a bright future, the hope of a high tax bracket.

After the first meeting, I felt so hopeful that I went out and had seven or eight large drinks. Kevin accompanied me, my boy chaperone. We went to a godawful place I wouldn’t normally be seen dead in, but it suited my state of mind at the time. The tawdry bar lights cast an angelic glow on us both. Kevin thought I drank too quickly; he put his hand over mine, said things improved if you went slow. So I drank seven or eight drinks, slowly.

‘The problem is they don’t listen to me. That’s the issue at hand, Kevin,’ I said.

‘That’s because you have literally nothing to say.’

Next day: the usual show. My bed; dry-mouthed; alone; my entire life still before me.

My mother, clad in one of my father’s more colourful golf shirts, confronted me: ‘I just don’t think that job is bringing out the best in you.’

*

Management always found an excuse to ‘pop’ into the garage, wielding an enormous coffee cup along with her tremendous power. Her latest plot was to put chairs of various shapes and sizes at the front of the garage. Management had a vision of the townsfolk sitting on these chairs, chatting happily amongst themselves, and gazing luridly at their young people as they busied themselves being employed. It was as if the chairs could sense the unreasonable expectations placed upon them; they vomited their stuffing, revealed dangerous wooden splinters, and discoloured horribly in the daylight.

During the chair-moving task I did my best to be well-mannered, uninventive, kindly.

‘The weather is cold today,’ I once offered.