Someday Find Me by Nicci Cloke Page A

phone-box and a postbox all rolled into one and she looked at me and said, ‘Whoops,’ again but this time even quieter. All her hair was falling out of her ponytail onto her face, and her white shirt, which all the waitresses had to wear, had these big wet patches under the arms.
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, and she looked like she was about to cry.
    ‘No worries,’ I said. ‘Bit of beer never did anyone any harm.’
    And that made her smile a bit and she was probably just bus and phone-box red by then. And then there was a bang from over by the bar and a fat sweaty man who looked like he might be the manager started hotfooting it over, making all the floor wobble as his chins went from side to side.
    The waitress went white as a sheet and the tears started popping back up. ‘He’s going to kill me,’ she said. ‘He’s going to take it out of my wages.’ Like they were one and the same thing, which I guess for a lot of people working shitty jobs in the city they are.
    ‘Here y’are,’ I went, taking out my last two pounds and holding them out so as he could see. ‘My fault,’ I said, nice and loud so he could hear me over the thundering of his chins. ‘Sorry about that, miss.’
    He stopped and looked at us for a minute, then he made a little huffy noise and turned around and wobbled all the way back. The waitress stood there with the two pound coins clutched in one hand and the tray still lying where it had fallen across one of her feet, and she was shaking like a little leaf all over and she was just staring at me.
    ‘Why’d you do that?’ she goes. ‘You never had to do that.’
    I shrugged. ‘’Sall right. I do things like that all the time, a right butterfingers.’
    She looked down and saw her tray but she didn’t pick it up. She looked back up with eyes like saucers. ‘Thank you,’ she goes, and her voice was all little again. ‘Thank you.’
    I shrugged again. It was only a couple of quid. I thought I should probably be getting back to Saffy anyway. I really was worried about her the more I thought about the party and the bloke from next door and this debt we were gonna have to pay and I didn’t think all of it was going to go away this time. Every time I looked at her hair all hacked off I had a little shiver, even though it did suit her. The gap where the rest of it had been made me even sadder than the gap where my decks had been. The waitress was looking at her feet, well, the one without the tray napping on it – tracing the patterns on the minging carpet with her toe and going red again. ‘I’ve finished my shift now,’ she goes, looking really hard at a sicky yellow spiral. ‘I get free chips if you want to share?’ and she pointed at the little noodle-chip bit under the karaoke rooms but without looking up from the floor.
    Well, I’m never one to turn down a chip and when I came to think of it I was pretty hungry, plus she seemed a bit on the lonely side and I really don’t like seeing people on their tod and I thought, What’s ten minutes of my time to keep her company for a bit, in the grand scheme of things? ‘Why not?’ I said, and I hopped off my stool.
    We walked over to the food bit and I sat down at a table while she talked to the man behind the counter. There was a fly walking across the plastic table, all little dots of salt stuck to its feet. I blew at it and waved it away with my hand and it zoomed off up into the greasy air and into the bits of song that were floating out from under the karaoke-booth doors. She sat down opposite me with one of the squeaky white trays of chips. ‘I didn’t know what sauce you wanted …’ she goes, and her voice trailed off. We both looked down at the plain yellow chips.
    ‘Looks good,’ I said. ‘Maybe just some salt, eh? Can’t go wrong with the classics.’ And I shook the salt with a little flourish and dug straight in to make her feel better. She held one between two fingers like she was afraid of it. It’s