Oh, that’d be something all right.

He’s still there.

10

MY BOSS, DENNIS, has always insisted I get to work by 7:15 a.m. to answer the phones, which in reality never ring before nine o’clock and mostly not before eleven. It used to do my head in, because there was quite literally nothing for me to do that early except sit around and wait for the nonexistent phone calls. But things have changed a bit over the last few months.

Before I go any further I should point out that the occasional male workmate putting himself out to pander to my vulnerability certainly doesn’t ever include Dennis Pearl, who I’m pretty sure never spent a minute of his life looking after anyone or anything else, apart from his own gigantic quiff of hair. Although, to be fair, that does look like it needs quite a bit of maintenance.

But that’s fine by me. Because if there’s anything I hate more than my mind-numbing job, it’s the guy who puts the Pearl into Pearl’s Quality Pre-loved Cars. And if I have to hear the joke about pearls before swine as he drives his bouffant hair and rancid mouth through another doorway one more time, I may have to consider using my vulnerability as my defense in a murder trial.

The other person who doesn’t rush to help me is Leonard. Which is probably because he’s finished the cleaning and gone home by the time any high-reaching needs to be done, but also maybe because he’s only about an inch taller than me and eighty years old if he’s a day.

At first glance, Leonard Cobcroft looks like he’d be to cleaning what Prince Charles is to dubstep, and it’s not just his age. I’m getting pretty used to seeing trainee OAPs on the checkout or stacking the shelves at Sainsbury’s, and it always makes me a bit sad that after a life probably very decently lived, when they should be kicking back with their pipe and slippers, they had to go back to work just to make ends meet. But there was something different about Leonard. He always walked with a straight back and a purpose, and he wielded a duster and a bottle of Domestos like he’d been entrusted with the upkeep of the Rosetta stone. Like cleaning the back office and toilets of a used-car lot was exactly how he wanted to be spending the twilight years of his life.

Dennis had only taken Leonard on because he was receiving a tidy subsidy for hiring an over-seventy, and he was certainly getting way more than his money’s worth. The place had never been cleaner and he’d never had such an easy or more gracious target for his bullying.

“Hey, Leonard,” he’d called out one morning as Leonard passed through the office. “Bogs done? Kitchen done? Having a good day, are you?” Then, without waiting for a response, he’d raised himself half out of his chair and leaned over his desk to yell, “Mind you, at your age, any day above ground’s a good one, isn’t it? Ha ha ha.”