Lottie Biggs is Not Mad

by Hayley Long

  Placing the box back on the shelf, I couldn’t help smiling. No lover of mine would ever be seen dead in a pair of man-made fawn and brown SHANE shoes. Neil Adam, for example, is most definitely not a SHANE type of man. Come to think of it, he’s not a khaki-hair-colour type of man either.

  Life isNt aLL fuNNY ha ha, aPPareNtLY

  Keith Bright has a heavy beard and wears aviator-style tinted reading glasses. Gina thinks that Keith Bright looks like a young Kirk Douglas. I wouldn’t know whether this is true or not because I have never actually bothered to establish who Kirk Douglas is, let alone what a young version of him might or might not look like. What is clear is that Gina fancies the pants off Keith Bright. And maybe, just maybe, she actually has a good chance of him fancying her back because Keith Bright is the owner of Bright Eyes Optician. Which must mean that his vision can’t be up to very much.

  On the other hand, I’m not sure if Gina does have any chance with Keith Bright because I am saddened to say that Keith Bright is secretly in love with me and Goose. This is blatantly very weird and slightly pervy but it is also the truth. Sometimes he stands in his shop window, directly opposite ours, with his arms folded and an expression of desperate desire all over his furry face. Just staring. This sends me and Goose into screaming panicked hysterics but it does make the time pass a little faster. Working in the kind of shoe shop which hardly ever gets any customers can be terrifically boring.

  Last Saturday afternoon me and Goose were in the shop and for over forty minutes no one had come in to even so much as browse. Goose had hurried back to work after a super-quick application of Melody Midnight Brown, and although it had definitely taken the edge off the Brussels sprout colour, there was still more than a hint of green when she stood under a light. Considering that Dionne had sent her home at ten to nine and Goose had got back again by twenty past eleven, she had done a fairly reasonable job but it wasn’t up to her usual high standard of hair-colour application. One of Goose’s ear lobes was a bit brown on the end and she’d dyed most of her scalp as well. I didn’t tell her this though in case it turned her existential.

  For a while we sorted out the YOU PAYS, and then we re-laced a few pairs of trainers, and then when we’d got bored of that we made Emily do some hoovering, and then, when we’d got bored of that, I even did a bit of hoovering myself. By the time I’d finished, Goose had recovered from her hair-dye trauma and was feeling more chatty and we talked about Neil Adam and school and stuff. Goose said that Neil Adam had almost collided straight into her when she had run down the high street that morning with her green hair. Goose said she would have rather been seen by anybody in the entire world at that moment than by him. I said, ‘Don’t worry, Goose, he probably thought you looked really cool. I mean, how many other people are there around Whitchurch village with green hair?’

  This definitely cheered Goose up. Goose is not as easygoing as I am by a long stretch. Apart from the occasional bout of random behaviour and that time last year that I got a three-day exclusion from school for trying to throw Samantha Morgan’s desk out of the window, I am very easy-going. To cheer Goose up some more, I said, ‘Do you want to see the gymnastics routine that I’m preparing for my PE practical?’

  Between you and me, I’m not really all that interested in PE but I decided to take it as a GCSE option because the only other choices were RE, French and Welsh. And as Mrs Rowlands the Welsh teacher quite blatantly hates me and as I have precisely no desire at all to be a French vicar, I chose PE.

  Goose said, ‘OK then – if it’ll provide temporary relief from my terminal boredom,’ and then helped me to move a rack of tights and a couple of the YOU PAY baskets so that I had a good clear performance area and wouldn’t bang my head while executing any of the more complicated gymnastics manoeuvres. I have to admit that I was quite excited by the prospect of performing my routine on the shop floor with a proper audience. The shop floor is a lot bigger than my bedroom floor, and the only audience I ever have at home are my cuddly orang-utan collection and my James Dean posters. And as Gina had gone home a couple of hours earlier with a headache (probably caused by the weight of her side-on ponytail) and as Dionne hadn’t surfaced from her office all day, it seemed like a really premium opportunity to get some practice in.

  I limbered up my muscles and was all ready to start when Emily said, ‘Won’t you need some music?’

  This was a very good point. Especially from someone who never speaks to boys. It is a well-known scientific fact that all teenagers perform much better in every subject if they are allowed to listen to music while they are working. Me and Goose looked at each other. ‘It’s your decision, Lottie,’ said Goose. ‘It’ll have to be either Justin Timberhead, Mad Donna or Kylie Binogue.’

  Now, if you’re thinking that this particular selection of musical artistes sounds putrid in the extreme, you are correct. In our shop, there is a really random rule which stops us from playing any original music to the customers. Instead we get sent specially recorded CDs from head office which contain popular chart songs sung by people we’ve never heard of whose voices aren’t quite good enough. So all day it feels like we’re nearly listening to proper music but not quite. This is a very aggravating sensation.

  After some deliberation, I opted for Mad Donna’s attempt at ‘Vogue’, and Goose and Emily took out a couple of cardboard signs from off the display stands so that they could use the backs to give me a score out of ten. The tension on the shop floor was electric. I took a few deep breaths and threw myself into my routine.

  Considering that I don’t actually like PE, I have to say that I was really rather good. In only two minutes, I managed several perfect forward rolls, an almost vertical headstand and a reasonably tidy cartwheel. Even Emily was impressed and she never speaks to any boys. Midway through mentally preparing myself to perform the whole thing a second time, Goose’s voice interrupted me and broke my thread of concentration.

  ‘Lottie, you’ve got an audience! Keith Bright is watching.’

  I looked up. Keith Bright was standing in the window across the road with his arms folded, just staring at us.

  Now Keith Bright might well be a dodgy old optician who is blatantly in love with me and Goose, but he is still a more appreciative audience for my GCSE PE gymnastics routine than my cuddly orang-utans and posters of James Dean. So I cartwheeled over to the window and did a majestic handstand right up against the glass. (Do not fear – I was wearing trousers.) Keith stood looking at us for a few seconds longer and then he turned around and walked away into the back of his optician’s.

  We knew he’d still be watching though. So we got Emily to turn the music up and me and Goose joined hands to waltz around the shop floor to ‘Like a Prayer’. Unfortunately, Goose trod on a TOPSY jelly shoe in pink, which had fallen out of one of the YOU PAY baskets, and she went crashing into the stand of ETHEL indoor slippers next to the till and caused us both to fall on the floor on top of a heap of foam-filled gorilla feet. My leg went a bit dead at this point but I wasn’t really thinking about it too much because, all of a sudden, I couldn’t stop laughing. Goose was laughing too. We were both laughing so much that neither of us could stand up. I was even finding it quite difficult to breathe because I was laughing so much that my heart hurt. This happens quite a lot actually.

  From somewhere out the back, we heard a door slam. Emily, who never speaks to boys, hurried over to the furthest corner of the shop and started sticking YOU PAYS into the vast quantities of OLGA gym shoes in PVC. Me and Goose remained where we were, on the floor, covered in foam-filled gorilla feet. We were in a laughter-induced state of total uselessness.

  ‘What on earth is going on?’

  I looked up and so did Goose. A few helpless giggles hiccupped out of us. Dionne was frowning down, all sun-kissed hair and thunder-filled expression.

  ‘Have you two been mucking about again?’

  With some difficulty I stood up. So did Goose. I couldn’t speak because my breathing had gon
e all funny and so had my head, but Goose said, ‘It’s my fault. I was wiping down the fixtures and fittings to keep myself busy and to keep the shop looking tidy but then a bit of dust got up my nose and made me sneeze really violently, causing me to momentarily lose control of my faculties, and my left arm swung out and thumped Lottie in the face causing her to collide with me and causing the two of us to collide, quite violently actually, with the display of novelty indoor slippers.’

  As I mentioned before, Goose is very good with words.

  Dionne sucked in her cheeks and made her eyes go so narrow that they almost completely disappeared. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘It’s just that Mr Bright across the road says that you’ve been doing handstands, headstands, roly-polies and the tango!’

  Neither of us was expecting this response. I went all red and started to laugh again, and Goose’s mouth fell open. We both turned and looked out across the street. Keith Bright was back, standing in the centre of his display of contact-lens cleaners and spectacle frames. He was holding a mobile phone and smiling. When he saw us looking over at him, he waved. I don’t know why but seeing him standing there made me start to laugh AGAIN so hard that I thought my lungs were going to pop.

  Through my hysterics I heard Goose say, ‘We weren’t tango-ing, Dionne. I solemnly swear that there have been no tango activities taking place in this shop.’

  Dionne raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’

  Goose said, ‘Really’ and then, apologetically, she added, ‘It was more the waltz, I think.’

  Dionne gave a blatantly exasperated sigh and looked at me and Goose for a long time without speaking. Mostly she was looking at me. It weirded me out a bit, and I stopped laughing and started to feel bad. Dionne is all right, to be honest. She is not someone who I deliberately would want to make angry. Not like Mrs Rowlands, my Welsh teacher, for example. I chewed my nail and started looking at the pattern on the carpet. It was of lots and lots of tiny feet shapes arranged in circular spirals. It started to make me feel a bit dizzy. Dionne pointed her finger at each of us and said, ‘I don’t want any more of it. No more messing around. You understand?’

  We both nodded.

  Dionne looked at us and frowned. And you need to start acting more responsibly. Life isn’t all funny ha ha, you know.’ And then she sighed again, waved at Keith and turned to disappear back to her office. As she crossed the shop I caught sight of her reflection in one of the long mirrors. She was smiling to herself, but something about her smile made me go a bit quiet; it was like one of those smiles you see painted on the faces of sad circus clowns. It must just have been the effect of the dodgy fluorescent lighting in our shop.

  the Great tiGhts ChaLLeNGe aND resCuiNG esmereLDa

  Half an hour before closing time, Dionne called me, Goose and Emily into her office. For a sickly second I felt my belly do a backflip. The only other times I have ever been called into Dionne’s office are once when she interviewed me for the job and twice to get my ear bashed over random work-related stuff. I really don’t like ear-bashings. I am naturally a very non-confrontational person. Confrontation makes my heart heave and my brain crash and I try to avoid it whenever I can.5 It also makes me go a bit sweaty and panicky and I was just starting to get the first signs of clammy-skin-syndrome when I remembered that Dionne also wanted to see Emily too, and Emily, as far as I am aware, has never done anything in the remotest bit wrong in her entire life. Not ever. She is the embodiment of everything that is sensible and good. She is Mother Teresa, Lady Diana and Florence Nightingale all rolled into one. And she doesn’t talk to boys. Now Fm not saying that Goose and I are horrible, terrible people. We’re not. But we are normal, and normal people make mistakes once in a while. Like the time Goose got sent home from school for deliberately connecting her Bunsen burner to the water tap. Or the time I scratched my own name on to the living-room door with a compass. Or the time I put my baby brother’s water wings on my ankles and had to be rescued by a lifeguard because I got flipped straight under and swallowed half the swimming pool. I’d be willing to bet my life that Emily has never made a single mistake ever. So it was a bit of a comfort to have Emily alongside us just then because it meant that we couldn’t possibly be in trouble for once.

  ‘Shut the door behind you, girls, and sit down.’ Dionne had kicked her shoes off and was eating a very large custard slice from a paper bag. I noticed that there were quite a few other identical paper bags in the bin by her chair.

  ‘The reason I’ve called you in is because we need to increase sales figures. I think perhaps we could all pull our weight a little more, don’t you?’

  Dionne was looking straight at me, but I wasn’t sure if this question was meant for me alone or all three of us so I just shrugged my shoulders and pulled my I’m hearing you face, like this:

  Dionne poured herself a coffee and took another mouthful of custard slice.

  ‘I need you girls to be giving it your all one hundred per cent of the time because I’m tied up out the back here doing the paperwork. I can’t be keeping an eye on you every minute of the day because I’m just too busy. So what I …’

  There was a white phone on her desk and it began to buzz like a grasshopper, interrupting her in mid-flow. She picked it up and said in a posh voice, ‘Hello, Sole Mates.’ Then in a much less posh voice, she said, ‘Oh, hi, Suze …Yeah … No …You’re kidding me, yeah? … Look, I’m working at the mo’ but I’ll call you back on my mobile in five … OK? Bye.’

  Dionne replaced the receiver, dropped her custard-slice bag into the bin and continued. ‘So what I was thinking was that we all need a little incentive. Start selling things that we haven’t been pushing. The shoes sell themselves but I want you to start using your sales skills to push other products. And I want to start with the tights. Whoever can sell the most pairs of tights next week wins a prize.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Goose.

  Dionne smiled. ‘Sell the most tights next Saturday and you’ll find out.’ With one hand, she pulled a very buff flip-top, Bluetooth, MP3 camera phone from her pocket and began to text, and with the other hand she shooed us out of the office. The tights-selling team talk was blatantly over.

  Me and Goose left Emily hoovering up out the front and disappeared into the darkest recess of the stockroom for a chat. We took up position at the twin summits of a pair of stepladders.

  ‘Do you think this prize will be worth having?’ I asked.

  ‘Who knows?’ said Goose, and then added with a shrug, ‘Who cares?’

  ‘Maybe it’ll be a free pair of shoes,’ I said.

  Goose snorted. ‘Probably But who’d want them? All the shoes in this shop are putrid. I mean, look at these.’

  She pulled a box free from the shelf, but the boxes were packed in so tightly that in releasing one she sent another four boxes crashing to the ground several feet below where we were sitting.

  A distant yell from Dionne’s office told us to be more careful. Goose rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the shoebox in her hand. Inside it was a pair of ladies’ brown lace-up brogues called HILDA. Without any shadow of a doubt, Goose was right. HILDA were putrid in the extreme. I wouldn’t have worn them even if they were the last pair of shoes on Earth and I was the world champion of bad footwear. Goose replaced the lid, wedged them back on the shelf and then climbed down to pick up the fallen boxes.

  ‘What have we got here? More pairs of HILDA in cream, navy and tan and …’ she paused, lifting the lid of the fourth box. ‘Hello? What are these?’

  Inside the last box was a pair of fiat black leather shoes the shape of ballet shoes and decorated all over with patterns of daisies. They were nice. In fact, they were blatantly ultra-nice. It’s not often you can say such a thing about Sole Mates shoes.

  ‘I’ve never seen those before,’ I said. ‘What are they called?’

  Goose tilted the box to read the label. It was covered with dust as if it had been untouched for quite some time. ‘ESMERELDA. And in size
five. Which is perfect! They must be an old pair left over from a discontinued line or something.’

  Goose looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Do you reckon Dionne or Gina would notice if this one lonely pair of ESMERELDA shoes vanished?’

  I laughed. ‘I doubt it. And anyway, even if they did, they’re hardly the Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson of the footwear world. It’s just a pair of poxy shoes. And they are your size, after all. It’s like they’re meant for you, Goose.’

  Goose nodded. ‘Yeah, and do you know what? I reckon we’d be doing the shop a favour. Dionne did tell us to tidy up a bit, and there is so much junk out the back here that everything is a mess. It’d be good to make a little bit of room. It would give HILDA a bit more space on the shelf to stretch out and relax.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. AH the shoes would be happier and ESMERELDA would be going to a better life. You would be rescuing her from a fate of eternal obscurity in the stockroom of Sole Mates. Those shoes would be much better off on your feet.’

  Goose nodded solemnly, slipped the shoes into her bag and crushed the box with her heel. Placing her finger on her lips, she whispered, ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.’ And she grinned. I swear to God, I shall love that girl forever.