Moderate Violence Read Online Free Page B

hour was. An hour of
Computer Studies felt like five minutes, but an hour of Biology, or History, or
especially French – oh Jesus, French! – seemed much, much longer. The hours at
the job she’d had last year, in the pet shop, had gone at a sort of jogging
speed, rather than serious running. So what would an hour selling expensive clothes
feel like? Waterskiing? Or doing a marathon with blisters on her feet?
    There weren’t hundreds of other interviewees. There
were only two. One was a girl who was older and had much better hair than Jo,
and the other was a good-looking boy.
    “Now,” said the man whose identity tag said Gordon
Ritchie, Manager, “I’ve asked you all to come at eleven thirty so I can show
you round the shop together before interviewing you separately. That OK? Oh,
and there are two vacancies today.”
    Jo considered making an excuse and leaving. She could
have handled being one of a hundred rejects. But the humiliation of spending
time with these two nice-looking people, even chatting to one while the other
was interviewed, then being the only candidate left unemployed at the end of
the morning was just too great.
    “Welcome to Rose and Reed! Do you wear our clothes?” the
manager said as he led them up the stairs. “My name’s Gordon. I’m the branch
manager. I thought we’d start with Menswear.”
    Gordon had a Scottish accent, tight trousers and
expensive pointy shoes. He talked a lot during their tour of Menswear, then
Womenswear, then Lingerie, without leaving them a space to answer any of his
questions. Jo was relieved. Older-Better-Hair Girl could obviously afford to
shop at Rose and Reed, and Good-Looking Boy was too good-looking for it to
matter. She wished she was at home with Blod on her stomach, watching Saturday
morning TV.
    “Joanna Probert!” Gordon consulted his list and fixed
Jo with his rather bulbous eyes. “You don’t mind going first, do you, darling?”
His fingers closed around the arm of a passing sales assistant. “Oh, Eloise.
Get some coffee for our intrepid interviewees, please.”
    “Black for me,” said OBH Girl. “I mean, black coffee.” Eloise
was black. OBH Girl went red. Eloise smiled.
    “Can I have a Coke?” asked GL Boy.
    “’Fraid not,” said Eloise. “Coffee or tea?”
    “Nothing, thanks.”
    Eloise turned patiently to Jo, still smiling. Jo wanted
to smile back, but found that her smiling muscles wouldn’t work. “White,
please,” she mumbled. “One sugar.”
    “Now…” Gordon took Jo into the office, guided her to a
chair and sat on the desk. “Have you worked in a shop before?”
    “Yes, a pet shop. It says it on my CV.”
    “Have I got your CV?” He moved some papers around on
the desk. “Doesn’t look like it.” He smiled brightly. “Sorry! So what goes on
in a pet shop that might be relevant to working with fashion?”
    Jo still wanted to run away. But she persevered,
telling him that she had learnt about stock control and knew how to work the till,
and understood what customer relations were. “People don’t know how to treat
pets, you see,” she pointed out. “So they’re always bringing them back and
complaining that they’re not doing what they’re supposed to.”
    “Like the Monty Python sketch!” exclaimed Gordon in
delight. He put on a face. “This. Parrot. Is. No. More!” Jo smiled patiently.
    Eloise came in and put Jo’s coffee on the desk beside
Gordon’s thigh. As she left the room she gave him a look that Jo wasn’t
supposed to see. It said, “Get on with it, Gordon, it’s Saturday out here.”
    “Well, yes,” continued Jo. “You hear quite a lot about
that Monty Python sketch when you work in a pet shop. And the other thing about
animals is that people often buy them for other people, and the people they’ve
been bought for don’t like them, and want the shop to take them back, and of
course they haven’t got any proof of purchase, and one gerbil’s very like
another, so – ”
    “When