This summer I\u2019ve been working behind the counter in one of the kiosks along the seafront, selling doughnuts and bags of candyfloss and buckets and spades and everything to parents and tourists and children all day long.<\/p>\n
And the tourists and the children and even the parents are fine, it\u2019s the\u2026 fuck I don\u2019t what you\u2019d call them, the regulars, the arseholes and the cheats and the drunks and whathaveyou. Absolute arseholes every one of them. That\u2019s what makes it a shit job.<\/p>\n
That and the pay.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s this one guy, I see him walking up and down the seafront every day. And my boss always points him out if he\u2019s there and says I\u2019m allowed to take his money but never his cards.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s a right fucking creep, too. Not my boss, this fucking fella. He\u2019s one of those wankers that always manages to find a way to touch you, get close to you somehow, and it disgusts me. Christ it\u2019s just\u2026 He\u2019ll lean over the counter and tap me on the shoulder if I\u2019ve turned my back, he\u2019ll pat my hands if I\u2019m leaning on the counter at the front, put his hand round my waist if I\u2019m standing around outside having a fag. <\/p>\n
Actually one time I was out there smoking and I was sat on the seawall and he sat right down next to me. I mean like right fucking next to me. Closer than I\u2019d sit next to my boyfriend when we\u2019re at home watching something on the telly.<\/p>\n
\t\u2014 What did you do? I hope you fucking said something.<\/em><\/p>\n I didn\u2019t do anything. Well I got up and went back to work. I didn\u2019t say anything, though. It\u2019s not fucking worth it. It never fucking is.<\/p>\n And he knows what he\u2019s doing. It\u2019s never obvious enough that you could tell anyone what he\u2019s doing but well, I know what he\u2019s doing. You\u2019d know. But my boss\u2026 Nah.<\/p>\n Anyway, I went into work the other day. Wednesday, this was, or was it Tuesday? I don\u2019t know, about then anyway, sometime in the week, and there was this girl sat on the wall there by the kiosk, bawling her fucking eyes out. This was about 10 in the morning. She only looked about fourteen or something, although tears always make you look younger, I reckon.<\/p>\n I asked her if she was alright and she shook her head and just kept on blubbing away. I offered her a cigarette and she actually replied to this, although she said, \u201cNah, \u201cI\u2019m only sixteen,\u201d which threw me a bit. Seemed like a pretty random thing to say, really.<\/p>\n \t\u2014 You can\u2019t smoke until you\u2019re 18 these days.<\/em><\/p>\n Yeah I know that, but still. Like that\u2019s ever fucking stopped anyone.<\/p>\n Anyway she kept on crying and I left her there and went inside to work, and sat there all morning and she never stopped crying at all, not even for a minute. For like two hours!<\/p>\n I took her out some doughnuts when I went out there for my tea break, but she shook her head at those as well, and she\u2019s still crying of course. Imagine how upset you\u2019d have to be to not even accept a bunch of free bloody doughnuts.<\/p>\n Now, she\u2019s got this big bag sat next to her on the wall. One of those big sturdy bag-for-life bags they try to sell you in tescos for a quid or so. She\u2019s had it all morning, I don\u2019t mean it\u2019s just appeared, but anyway, it\u2019s got some rolled up clothes in their, a jumper and a coat maybe, something like that, and sat on top of them there\u2019s this wallet, not a purse but a wallet, a folded leather wallet, and it\u2019s absolutely fucking bulging with notes.<\/p>\n \u201cYou should hide that away,\u201d I said to her, and she\u2019s sort of followed my cigarette to see what I\u2019m pointing at with it, and then just shrugged again and burst into even more tears, deeper, louder tears. I had no bloody idea it was possible to cry for so long. You\u2019d think you\u2019d run out of tears.<\/p>\n The bloke I was working with that day, who was working at the other window, selling fish and chips and burgers and that, he kept muttering to me all morning and threatening to go out there and chase her away, but I told him to leave her be, the poor thing.<\/p>\n The poor fucking thing.<\/p>\n I\u2019d spent most of my shift wondering what had happened to her. Had she run away from home? Been abandoned or stood up by her boyfriend? Maybe someone had died. Maybe she was homeless and just really fucking tired and lonely and hurt.<\/p>\n Maybe she\u2019d failed her exams. Lost her phone. I don\u2019t fucking know.<\/p>\n At some point in the early afternoon, about 1 o\u2019clock maybe, that creepy fucking arsehole I mentioned earlier comes strolling down the seafront, and he clocks her straight away. Course he does. I can see his eyes light up, his whole fucking body light up, when he sees her. Like a literal shiver running through him. Expectation and delight. It\u2019s sickening.<\/p>\n He comes up to where she\u2019s sitting, and he crouches down in front of her so he\u2019s eye level with her, just below eye level actually, so he\u2019s looking up at her a little, ad he asks her if she\u2019s okay, asks her what\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n I\u2019m straining now to hear what he\u2019s saying, practically hanging out the little kiosk window, but I can\u2019t hear exactly what he\u2019s saying to her, and it\u2019s infuriating.<\/p>\n It\u2019s all infuriating. I want to go out there and tell him to fuck off and leave her alone, but there\u2019s a sudden queue of customers, then, and I have to deal with them and over the bubbling noise of boiling doughnuts I really truly can\u2019t hear a word of what they\u2019re saying now.<\/p>\n When I\u2019ve served everyone I quickly pull down the shutter and rush out the side door to where they\u2019re sat and he\u2019s giving her a great big hug and whispering something in her ear. And she\u2019s finally stopped crying, wiping the tears out of her eyes, and nodding to whatever it is he\u2019s saying, and I\u2019m thinking, good christ what the fuck is this?<\/p>\n Then she breaks off the hug and gives him a kiss on the cheek and picks up her bag and runs off down the road. <\/p>\n It\u2019s baffling. That\u2019s what it is. Fucking baffling.<\/p>\n He turns round then and sees me standing there and he flashes me the most, the worst, the absolute worst and sickliest smile you have ever seen. And he steps toward me and puts a hand round my waist and says, \u201cYou aren\u2019t going to be standing around out here long are you, love? I\u2019ve got some money to spend.\u201d<\/p>\n I pulled his hand off me and threw it back at him and stomped back inside and slammed the door shut behind me as hard as I could. Oh christ I was furious then, I was ready to quit right there and then, leave that stupid kiosk\u2019s shutter down and fuck off back home. Leave the other guy there to do the doughnuts as well as the chips. Fuck em.<\/p>\n But I\u2019m glad in the end that I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Eventually I pull that shutter back up and he\u2019s already standing there, a smile as wide as fucking fuck on his face, and he pulls out a wallet from his pocket. And it\u2019s her wallet, obviously, absolutely bulging with money, and it\u2019s obvious he\u2019s nicked it, and it\u2019s obvious that he knows I know he\u2019s nicked it. And I was going to say he doesn\u2019t even care, but he does care. He\u2019s fucking proud of himself. He wants me to see. He wants me to know.<\/p>\n And he orders some doughnuts and a coffee and a load of sweets and whatever, picking everything he can, showing off. It\u2019s completely pathetic. And I say, like I always say when he comes to the counter, \u201cWe can\u2019t take cards, I\u2019m afraid. Cash only.\u201d And he says, \u201cThat\u2019s okay, dear, I\u2019ve got plenty of cash,\u201d and he holds the wallet up for me to see, shakes it a little, for some fucking reason, then slowly opens it up and peels out a note. And it\u2019s a blank sheet of paper. It\u2019s all just blank sheets of paper.<\/p>\n And his face goes white, and I laugh and say, \u201cI\u2019m sorry we can\u2019t take that, either,\u201d and he\u2019s stammering now and searching through his pockets and patting his jacket and searching around more and more frantically for his own wallet and it\u2019s not fucking there. <\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing fucking there.<\/p>\n And he looks like he\u2019s going to be sick and he turns round looking up and down the seafront for any sign of the girl but she\u2019s long fucking gone and I can\u2019t stop laughing for the rest of the day.<\/p>\n __________<\/p>\n Notes:<\/p>\n 1. Written between 17th July and 22nd July, 2016<\/em> This summer I\u2019ve been working behind the counter in one of the kiosks along the seafront, selling doughnuts and bags of candyfloss and buckets and spades and everything to parents and tourists and children all day long. And the tourists and the children and even the parents are fine, it\u2019s the\u2026 fuck I don\u2019t what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[258,120,23,162],"class_list":["post-916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-short-story-or-two","tag-crimes","tag-essex","tag-fiction","tag-short-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":917,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions\/917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/things\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2. Although it was outlined mostly in May<\/em>
\n3. At the same time as A Mistake Of Identity<\/a><\/em>
\n4. As I was trying to think of Essex crime tales<\/em>
\n5. To submit to that competition<\/em>
\n6. That I did not win<\/em>
\n7. I don’t especially like this one either<\/em>
\n8. I’m sorry to say<\/em>
\n9. Please don’t hate me<\/em><\/p>\n__________<\/br>Support An Accumulation Of Things<\/a><\/h3>If you like the things you've read here please consider subscribing to my patreon<\/a> or my ko-fi<\/a>. <\/br><\/br>Patreon subscribers<\/a> get not just early access to content and also the occasional gift, but also my eternal gratitude. Which I'm not sure is very useful, but is certainly very real.<\/br><\/br>(Ko-fi contributors<\/a> probably only get the gratitude I'm afraid, but please get in touch if you want more). <\/br><\/br>Thank you!<\/i><\/br><\/br>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"