I start to mop the floor. It’s pretty big and dirty so it takes a long time, and the bucket is too heavy for me to lift, so I have to keep stopping to push it around with both hands. I have never been inside the customer toilet before. It smells bad, so I stay standing in the doorway. The toilet seat is up, there are lots of yellow and brown stains on the inside of the white bowl, and little puddles on the floor. I don’t want to go in there wearing my favorite socks, so I just mop everywhere else instead.
I hear the door at the front of the shop and think Maggie has come back with the McDonald’s. But it isn’t Maggie.
“Hello, little girl, what’s your name then?” says the old man. He’s the one I saw when I peeked out the letter box earlier. He has a white beard like Father Christmas and a dog, so I think he must be nice.
“Ciara.” It sounds strange to hear the sound of my real name inside my ears again. I bend down to stroke the ball of fur next to him. It’s a little brown-and-white thing, with big eyes and a waggy tail. I think he looks like Toto from The Wizard of Oz.
“You’ll have to speak up, child. My ears aren’t what they used to be.”
“My name is Ciara,” I say a little louder, distracted with rubbing the dog’s tummy. I think he likes it.
“That’s a very pretty name.”
“We’re closed,” says Maggie.
I look up and see her standing right behind the old man. She is holding the McDonald’s Happy Meal, but she does not look happy.
“Oh, I’m sorry, my mistake.” He shuffles back out of the shop, as though his feet are very heavy.
Maggie closes the door behind him, locks it, then turns and hits me hard across the face.
“Your. Name. Is. Aimee.” She looks around at the shop floor. It’s all wet, I haven’t missed any. She walks towards the back of the shop, her shoes leaving a line of dirty footprints behind her, then she stops outside the customer toilet, looking inside. I know I’m going to be in even more trouble, I’m just not sure how much. She comes out of there so fast, it’s as though she is flying. With my Happy Meal in one hand, she pinches the top of my arm with her other, then drags me across the wet floor, my socks slipping and sliding all over the place.
“I told you that your name is Aimee, and I told you to mop this floor. Did you mop this floor, Baby Girl?” She points inside the customer toilet.
I look at the sticky yellow puddles. “Yes,” I lie, already wishing that I hadn’t.
“You did? Oh, well, that’s all right then. It really looked like you didn’t, but you wouldn’t lie to me, would you? Not after everything I’ve done for you, putting food in your belly and clothes on your back when your daddy didn’t want you anymore?”
I wish she’d stop saying that about my daddy.
“No,” I whisper, and shake my head, thinking maybe she doesn’t know that I lied and can’t see the puddles and dirt.
She tips my Happy Meal all over the floor of the customer toilet, then mushes it and slides it around with the heel of her shoe, until all the french fries are flat and all the chicken nuggets are broken.
“Eat it.”
I don’t move.
“Eat. It,” she says again, louder this time.
I pick up half a chip, the one farthest from the toilet, and put it in my mouth.
“All of it.” She folds her arms. “There are only three rules we follow under this roof. I keep telling you what they are, but seems to me you keep forgetting. What is rule number one?”
I make myself swallow the chip. “We work hard.”
“Keep eating. Why do we work hard, Aimee?”
I feel scared and sick, but I pick up a tiny corner of a mushed chicken nugget. “Because life doesn’t owe us anything.”
“That’s right. Rule number two?”
“We don’t trust other people.”
“Correct. Because other people can’t be trusted, no matter how nice they might pretend to be. Rule number three?”
“We don’t lie to each other.”
“How many of the three rules did you break tonight?”
“All of them,” I mumble.
“I can’t hear you.”
“All of them.”
“Yes, you did. I need you to learn a lesson, and it has to be a hard one, Baby Girl, because I need you to remember, and I need you to grow up. So, you’re going to eat all of your dinner off of this floor, no matter how long it takes, and then I hope you’ll never lie to me again.”
Twenty-three
London, 2017
“I really should eat something if we’re going to have another bottle,” I say. Jack appears to have ordered a second while I was in the bathroom.
“Nonsense, that will only make it more difficult for me to get you drunk and have my wicked way with you. It’s what I do with all my leading ladies on the last day of the shoot, haven’t you heard? It’s probably written in your contract somewhere, you really should read those things.” He tops up my glass.
There is a reason why Jack drinks. He hides it well, but I know his divorce earlier this year hurt him far more than he lets on. I never ask about it because I know he’s like me: he’s careful about which version of himself he lets others see. Some people don’t believe they deserve to be happy. We are only and always what we ourselves believe.
I give up resisting temptation and take another sip from my glass, glancing around the bar. It’s even busier now, standing room only, with more and more people coming here to relax and unwind after a long day of filming. Some faces I recognize, most I don’t, and when I see all the eyes staring in our direction, my shyness stings a little.
“You were great today,” Jack says. “The way you just turned on the tears was amazing, no eye drops or anything … how do you do that?”
I just think of something really sad.
I listen to Jack as he moves on to his favorite subject: himself, and continue to scan the bar from time to time while he talks. That’s when I see Alicia White. She glides in like a robotic swan, her long pale neck twisting out of a tight-fitting red dress in search of prey. I watch, transfixed, as she moves back and forth like a powerful Hoover, sucking up all the attention and any crumbs of praise in her path. I remember the lipstick, but dismiss the idea of her being involved with my husband, she’s out of his league. I almost didn’t recognize her; she’s dyed her blond hair dark brown, so that she looks a lot like me, albeit a much prettier version. I look away too late, she’s already spotted us.
“Jack, darling,” she purrs, interrupting him mid-monologue.
He leaps to his feet and embraces her, kissing both her cheeks and staring down at her cleavage briefly before making eye contact. “Alicia, how gorgeous to see you, tu es très jolie ce soir.” He allows himself another virtual drink of her body. My secondary-school French translates the compliment, but she looks a tad confused. “Let me introduce you to Aimee. We’ve been working on a film together, and she’s the next big thing, you heard it here first.”
Her face falters for just a second; she didn’t like hearing that. I wonder if Jack is learning French to try to impress Alicia somehow, and the idea of it hurts me a little.