10

"Hey, hi, Alan, could I have a quick word?"

Should've known better than to try and sneak out the front way when Jimmy Henderson was in the building. The bloke had an office, but it was out back where he couldn't spend his time talking shite with our receptionist Laura and parking his gym-rat arse on the edge of her desk. Six months he'd been getting blown out by her, but he kept on. It was that persistence that'd put Jimmy Henderson in the sales manager's office. That, and his dad owned the company.

I followed him back through to his office. He closed the door behind me, and I faced off against a wall of plaques and awards that probably meant a lot to Henderson but bugger all to the rest of the world. Henderson gestured to a chair in front of his glass-topped desk. I took a seat. He unbuttoned his jacket and planted himself on the corner of his desk. Smelled like a changing room in here. I could see the source through the table top – Henderson's Adidas bag, spewing sports socks.

"Thanks for this, Alan. I appreciate you're busy."

"No problem."

"Hear you pulled in a full house."

"Just windows and a front door."

"Maybe some other time, then."

"Yeah, maybe." I wasn't going to sell fascias and soffits to anyone. It was cosmetic. "What's going on?"

"You got much on this afternoon?"

"A couple."

"Anything promising?"

I was about to shake my head when I remembered the Henderson positivity. "They're all promising, Jimmy."

He smiled. For a moment, I didn't know if he knew I was taking the piss or not. Then I realised I didn't care if he did know. "Good. That's good. It's good to see you bringing in the sales."

"Good to be bringing in the sales."

"How's Les?"

I blinked. "Sorry?"

"Les. I noticed he hasn't been bringing much in, you're his friend ..."

"Just a bad month."

"You believe that?"

Henderson was looking at me as if we shared a secret.

"Yes," I said, "I believe that."

He scratched the side of his nose. "Because I have to say, this bad month is pretty much the culmination of a bad year. I know he won't mind me telling you, you being friends and everything, but your man Les hasn't pulled in anything significant for a long time."

"Why are you telling me?"

Henderson smiled, as if the answer were obvious. "Because you're his friend."

"And?"

"And, I don't know, as his friend perhaps you could take him to one side and have a quiet word about his volume."

"He knows about his volume."

"Then maybe you could show him a few tricks, yeah? Get him back in the game. We're all in this together."

I stared at Henderson. He shifted on the edge of the desk.

"You want me to tell him he's in the shit, Jimmy?"

The smile flickered. He moved his shoulders. "Well, that's not exactly the way I would've put it—"

"But it's the way it is. He doesn't pull in the numbers, he's out on his arse. So what do you suggest I tell him, Jimmy? Why don't you show me a few of your tricks, eh?"

Henderson licked his lips, shifted again. He clasped his hands together and looked at the floor. "I honestly don't know, Alan. You can tell him whatever a concerned friend would tell him. I don't want to let anyone go, but I've found it's good practice to at least give some warning. The business being what it is—"

"No, I get it," I said. "Market's constricting like a frightened arsehole, belts need to be tightened, all that. I'll have a chat with him, see what we can do."

"Great. Like I said, I don't want to let anyone go."

"Of course you don't."

Henderson showed me out. As I left the reception, my mobile rang.

The first thing out of her mouth was, "Alan Slater, you're taking the piss."

"I'm sorry—"

Lucy continued talking over the top of me. "That's the only way to look at. You call me up, tell me you're coming over, and then I get the other phone call."

"I know."

"Do you, though? I mean, you want to go on like once a week, don't get me wrong, that's fine, but don't piss me about either. I'm not going to spend my whole life sitting around waiting for you to get your arse in gear."

"It's not like I meant to. Stuff just came up."

"You're full of shit. What is it really?"

I opened and closed my mouth a few times. I didn't know what to say. Instead, I stared around the inside of my car for inspiration. I heard her huff on the other end of the phone. What was I going to say? It'd been a weird week.

"Seriously," she said, "what is it? What kind of stuff is it? Is it work? Is it stuff you honestly can't get out of, or is it a last-minute panic attack that your wife will find out about us?"

"It's work stuff."

"At ten o'clock at night."

"It's Beale stuff."

She laughed. "That's your excuse? Beale takes precedence?"

"He had some games he had to go to—"

"I don't want to fucking hear it, Alan."

"See, I knew you wouldn't. That's why I didn't tell you."

"You know how that sounds to me?"

"It's the truth."

"You know what, I don't doubt it, Alan. I really don't. But it's not like that makes it any better. You're blowing me off for Beale."

"He's a mate."

"Yeah, I know. He's your best mate. He's such a good mate you call him by his surname."

"That's just the way it is. Look, let me make it up to you. I'll come round this afternoon—"

"No, I don't think so."

I chewed the inside of my mouth. Thinking, this was it. This was the other shoe ready to drop, and I'd be dropped along with it. Hadn't expected it all to snowball so quickly, though. "Come on, Lucy, let's be sensible about this. You're pissed off at me, I can understand that, but you've got to let me try and make it up to you."

"No, those privileges have been revoked." She was adamant. "You can buy me a coffee and we can take this back a few levels."

"You what?"

"That's the way it's going to work, Alan. You don't respect me enough to treat me nice, you'll have to go back to square one."

"Now who's taking the piss?"

She hung up. I said hello a couple of times just be on the safe side, then disconnected. Unbelievable. It was worse than being dumped. She was making me beg for her attention. And part of me wanted to call it a day right then and there – this might be the time to do some serious decluttering of my social life – but then another part asked me what I would honestly do without Lucy. And the answer to that was spend more time with Beale, which didn't exactly appeal. And what was I going to do about Cath? Try to make it work? That'd be fooling nobody. My marriage got sick a long time ago. Any movement now was just a twitch of the death nerve.

I looked at my phone, thought about calling her back, then decided against it. Better to let her cool off for a bit, then maybe approach the situation from another direction. I had to be at a sit in ten minutes, anyway, and on paper it looked like a good one, came from one of the canvassers who'd been doing it a while. Normally his leads weren't the stuff of fertiliser.

The Lyons were a couple in their thirties who lived in Didsbury. Couple of kids, composter in the back yard, old wooden sashes that were badly in need of a lick of paint. Mr Lyon wasn't home, though. He should've been, but he'd had to go into the office.

"It's really quite awkward," said Mrs Lyon, a woman to whom two kids had done no favours in the arse department. "He normally works from home, and we arranged it so there'd be two of us in ..."

"We can reschedule if you want. I don't mind."

"No, no, come on in. We should probably talk about it, at least."

And while she was holding the door open for me, she might as well have slammed it in my face. A couple, one of which wasn't there, and the other one didn't seem to give a shit about anything I had to offer. Throw in the two kids, obviously off for half-term, whose sole purpose in life was to make as much noise as possible, and it was a dying pitch that stumbled out of my mouth.

Trouble was, other than the kids demanding something of her every couple of minutes, she looked more interested than I'd envisaged. So I kept it light and informative and had to repeat myself because she didn't pick up on everything the first time round. Sometimes she picked up on stuff I hadn't even said.

"Ah, you see, we don't really have room for a conservatory."

"That's fine, no, I wasn't going to mention them."

"You just did."

"I mentioned that it was the same Pilkington glass that was in the conservatories."

"Mummy, may I have a biscuit?"

Mummy. Jesus wept. I kept my mouth shut.

"No, Isaac, you may not."

"Noah has one."

"Well, Noah shouldn't have one." To me, "Sorry, excuse me."

She got up and went through to the living room. Isaac followed her, kept his distance, as if someone else had grassed up poor old Noah. I heard voices, one of which was Mrs Lyon's, then I heard a smaller, weaker voice kick into a whine. More voices. I looked into my cup of Tassimo and thought it tasted like Costa's bins. When I swirled around the coffee, I could see the mud in the bottom of the cup. I turned on my mobile to see if Lucy had called in the meantime.

She hadn't. That was fine. I could wait just as long.

Mrs Lyon came back into the kitchen. She rolled her eyes. "Honestly. Children, who'd have them?"

"Not me," I said, and immediately regretted it. "Look, perhaps we'd better reschedule for some other time—"

"No, that's fine. He's settled now." Mrs Lyon put a chocolate biscuit on the table. "Would you like another coffee?"

"I'm fine, thank you. So were you looking to replace the windows at all? I noticed you had wooden sash."

"Oh, I love them. They're original to the house, you know."

I nodded. "Quite high maintenance, I'd imagine."

"Not really."

"So was it the door?"

"Excuse me?"

"What you arranged the appointment for."

She smiled at me. It was bland and stupid and I wanted to break it with my foot. "I told you, I didn't arrange the appointment. My husband did."

"And he didn't tell you what it was he was interested in?"

"No, he didn't. I thought you'd be able to tell me."

I regarded her for a moment, wondered if she was taking the piss. I mean, I supposed she wasn't, but there was something about the look on her face that made me think she was either having a warm one or else deeply deranged. Either way, I didn't fancy spending much more time in her company.

"Okay, well, I think we should probably reschedule for another time when your husband can tell us both what it was he had in mind."

"I could phone him."

I was all ready to go. I didn't particularly want her to phone him, but I couldn't tell her not to now. So I waved my hand at her and gave her a smile that hurt my cheeks. She picked up a cordless phone and pressed a number, apparently at random. And if my smile was stuck in place, hers was so loose it looked doped up. Was she drunk? High? Maybe a little bit of both? You heard stories about middle-class wives who made it through the day with a bottle of red and a fistful of pills. Mother's little helper and all that.

"Hi, darling, it's me. Yes, he's here now." She winked at me. "Yes, well, we're both kind of wondering what it was you had in mind. You know, why you arranged the appointment." She listened. She smiled some more, showed some teeth this time. "Oh, right! Gosh, well, I'm not sure he'd ... Okay." She held the phone out to me. "He wants to speak to you."

Just like the bad old days when we had to phone pitch from the directory. At least this one wouldn't end with a whistle being blown down the phone.

"Mr Lyon," I said, "how are you?"

"I'm fine. Terribly sorry I couldn't be there. Work called, and I had to answer, I'm afraid." His voice was deep enough to be put on. And part of me still reckoned this was a set-up. It'd all looked too good to be true on paper, and now here we were, a grinning idiot in front of me and a basso profundo bell-end on the phone.

"Completely understandable. I did ask if we needed to reschedule—"

"God, no. No need for that. We've got you now."

"Fine, okay." Mrs Lyon gestured to my coffee cup again. I put a hand over it and shook my head. "So what was it you were looking at?"

"The windows," he said.

"You're looking to replace the sash?"

Mrs Lyon frowned then. "No, we're not."

"No," said Mr Lyon at the same time. "No, not the window, the glass."

"The glass," I said.

And the smile came back to Mrs Lyon's lips. I only wish I could've felt the same way.

"Yes, we were looking for a quote for a complete replacement of all the glass in the house."

"But you want to keep the windows."

"That's correct."

I felt Mrs Lyon staring at me now. This would've been easier with the pair of them here. But then it would've been easier if they hadn't been a couple of idiots, too. "I'm afraid that's a little out of our remit. You're asking to replace single-glazing with double, that's fine, but Warmsafe tend to do the whole window rather than just the glass."

"Okay," said Mr Lyon, "so how much for just the glass?"

"We don't do it."

"You do windows."

"Yes."

"So ..."

"But not just the glass. You'll need to talk to a specialist glazier for that."

"Oh."

He said it; she did the face.

"Okay," said Mr Lyon. "I wonder if you would pass me back over to my wife, please?"

I did as I was told. She took the phone. I heard him talking. Sounded loud. Her face crinkled in the middle. She opened her mouth to speak on a few occasions, but was automatically silenced by her husband's voice. I couldn't help but wonder how he did it, because when Mrs Lyon hung up, she was utterly contrite, and quiet with it.

"I'm sorry we wasted your time, Mr Slater," she said.

"Not at all."

"No, I am. We should have researched a little more before calling you out here."

"Not a problem," I said. "I hope you find someone who can do the work for you."

"Yes," she said. "I hope we do, too."

I held out my hand to shake, but she didn't accept. If anything, she appeared to recoil a little. She led me back to the large, hardwood door in an apparent daze.

"You ever change your mind, you know where to get me."

She looked at me as if she didn't understand, then closed the door.

As soon as she did, my phone rang. I took the call as I marched back to my car. "Alan Slater."

"Ponce." It was Beale.

"What do you want, Les?"

"Want to know if you've changed your mind?"

"About what? Tomorrow night? No, I haven't."

"You should. You're missing out on an earner."

"I'd be missing out on another night's sleep. Can't afford to do that, Les."

"I forgot you were a company man now. You been to the seminar yet?"

"No. I'm down for Wednesday. With you."

Beale laughed. "Fuck that."

"Come on, man, you've got to turn up." I got into the car, shut the door. "You don't turn up, they'll put you out on your arse."

"Fuck them."

"Les, you can't afford—"

"I'm serious. I've got bigger fish to fry, my old son. Fuck Jimmy Henderson, fuck Warmsafe. I'm better than that. You are an' all, you know. You should come in with me on this thing—"

"Hey, look, good luck with it and everything, but it's not me, I told you."

"You'll be crying Saturday night when you're stuck watching fuckin' X Factor instead of making money."

"I'm sure I will."

I was sure I wouldn't. Beale signed off. I tried Lucy's number again. She had her mobile turned off. I turned off mine as well. Two could play at that game.