Skippy Dies: A Novel

‘SERVICE: Smile; Efficiency; Reliability; Volunteering product information; Instant attention to new customers; Courtesy; Excellence.

‘Smile. The Smile is your personal storefront. It is the first point of contact between the Customer and the Café-restaurant, and so should be as carefully maintained as the espresso machine or the counter display.

‘Efficiency. Ed’s Doughnut House is dedicated to offering the Customer the two Q’s: Quality, Quickly…’

The boy isn’t even pretending to listen; he is chewing gum, which is banned on the very first page of the Employee Manual, and gazing off at the upper reaches of the kitchen walls, which Lynsey notes are discoloured by grease. She keeps going anyway, and the more he sighs and shrugs the slower she gets, just to remind him who’s in charge.

‘These are the absolute basics,’ she concludes. ‘Any Level One employee is expected to know them off by heart, before he or she even begins to think about Level Two. Now, let’s proceed to the espresso machine. Why don’t you make me a skinny mochaccino.’

Off he goes, slouch slouch scowl scowl, as if she’d just asked him for a pint of blood.

In ordinary circumstances, someone like Zhang would not have even a snowball’s chance of making Level Two. But of course these aren’t ordinary circumstances. We need to tread carefully here, Lynsey, Senan told her. This business has caused enough trouble for us already. An employee claiming trauma is the last thing we want. Have a chat with him, take his pulse. If he seems disgruntled maybe a promotion would sweeten him up a bit.

Well, Lynsey’s not sure how she feels about that. Okay, fair enough, Zhang’s been through a traumatic experience, she doesn’t deny that. Having someone die on your shift, that’s pretty unlucky. At the same time, he hasn’t actually put in for a promotion, and Tragedy or not, in her opinion it’d be totally unfair on Ruby and every other Level One worker if Zhang got promoted and they didn’t. Because, like, when is he not disgruntled? He’s always like that. But Senan’s Regional Manager, so what he says goes – plus, he’s hinted there could be a promotion in store for Lynsey too if they ever manage to get this mess sorted out. And why wouldn’t there be? The stuff she’s had to do in the last week has been way outside of her job description! Management calling her from London every day for updates, the Food Safety people sniffing around, though the worst has got to be the newspapers – they will just not let up, those people. Someone once said there’s no such thing as bad publicity, well, in the Café-restaurant business there is!!! Unless you think that people are going to queue up to eat in a place someone’s died!!! So Lynsey’s been running around like a blue-arsed fly, barely getting a wink of sleep, doing her best to take the calls and field the questions, and as Senan said, just make it absolutely clear, as delicately as she can, obviously, given the circumstances, and with all due respect to the family, that the death of the boy in question, while tragic, was NOT caused by or resulting from or in any way related to any Ed’s Doughnut House product, in fact the police said he actually hadn’t eaten anything at all in the Café-restaurant, unlike his little porky friend who’d eaten about twenty-five doughnuts. She must have used the words ‘tragedy’ and ‘unrelated’ five million times this week – her dad is keeping a scrapbook with all her newspaper and magazine appearances, ten all told, although four spelled her name wrong and one said she was thirty!!! Excuse me??? And of course who gets his own headline except Spa-face – ZHANG: HEROIC EFFORTS. She supposes he was quite heroic doing the Heimlich manoeuvre and stuff, even though the kid Daniel didn’t actually choke, but still it seems a bit unfair on Ruby and the other staff members, like suggesting they’re not heroic just because they come in and do their job every day, when in fact if it wasn’t for everyday people like that the world would just grind to a halt and the economy would be ruined.

Also, this is the worst mochaccino she has ever tasted in her entire life.

The Principal of Seabrook College came in to speak to her too, a couple of days after it happened. He was a tall, dynamic man, in his late thirties maybe? Basically he was doing the same thing she was, trying to protect the school’s image and explain that while it was a tragedy it was just this one crazy kid, and not anyone else’s fault. Having said that – he put his hand on her arm – on behalf of the school I want to apologize for any distress this might have caused you or your employees. He shook his head. I’ve been teaching for nearly twenty years, he said, and I’m at a loss to understand this.

Lynsey doesn’t understand it either. He’s fourteen, and he takes an overdose just because his girlfriend dumped him? Jesus, like, relax! That’s life! People get dumped! If Lynsey had killed herself over every fucking self-absorbed arsehole who’d dumped her, she’d… well, she’d be pretty dead at this stage. Anyway he should’ve known it would happen sooner or later, that girl was way out of his league, it’s obvious from the photographs – no shortage of those, needless to say, Ravishing this and Tragic Beauty that and Teen Heartbreaker the other, not to mention Gorgeous Juliet in Real-life Romeo and Juliet Story, which, hello, a) that would only make sense if her name was Juliet but it’s not it’s Lori, and b) if the person had ever seen Romeo + Juliet they would know that is nothing like what happened in the Café-restaurant.

Though at the same time… you can’t deny it’s romantic, writing her name with his last breath. Like in a way that girl is so lucky – most women won’t ever experience anything even close to as romantic as that. She wonders what he was like. Daniel Juster. She imagines the annoying Seabrook boys that crowd in here at lunchtime, and him standing apart, different, sort of quiet and wistful and melancholy… Life is so sad, and love is so unfair. She wonders if Zhang has a girl he’s in love with back in China. Maybe he’s saving up to go home and marry her. Maybe he misses her and that’s why he’s so grouchy. She temporarily feels sorry for him and she marks him as twelve out of twenty on the Product Information section even though he has actually scored a zero.

‘Zhang, let’s talk about the other night. How are you feeling? Are you feeling all right?’

He looks back at her blankly.

‘I mean, after what happened. With that boy?’ Hallo, Earth to employee! Remember, he took about five hundred painkillers? Died just over there by the jukebox? You were holding him at the time? ‘We’re just wondering if you’re experiencing any after-effects. Trouble sleeping, flashbacks, anything like that? Perhaps you’re finding it difficult to fulfil your work duties, maybe you need some time off?’

He draws a rasping breath, pulls his head back. ‘You wan’ cuh’ ma owas?’

God, he’s so obnoxious. She releases a light, fluttering laugh. ‘No, we don’t want to cut your hours. We just want to make sure that, although the company holds no responsibility for the events of last week, you don’t feel yourself adversely affected such that continuing to carry out your responsibilities here as per your contract might now or at some future date result in anxiety, depression or similar conditions. Also that you’re satisfied that the company has made available to you such time and resources as you might need in the course of making a full recovery.’

Suspicion gives way to the blank look again. Lynsey takes a card from her personal organizer. ‘If you do feel the need to talk to someone, this is the counselling service available to all company employees. It’s a special low-cost line.’

He flips the card between his fingers. It’s hard to be sure he’s taking any of this in. But it doesn’t look like he’s planning on milking them over the Tragic Event. She can go back and tell Senan to relax, and the relief and pleasure she imagines flooding to Senan’s face at this inspires an unexpected wave of sympathy and gratitude for Zhang. She promises him a prompt response on his appraisal, and as she leaves she is thinking that even if it hasn’t occurred to him to sue them (God, if it’d been an Irish guy behind the counter that night! €€€!) she may bump him up to Level Two anyway. It’s only twenty euro extra a month after all.

Halfway to the door she pauses, imagining she can see a trace of strawberry syrup still there on the floor tiles, and she disappears into a little daydream about Senan writing her name there – but instead of dying getting up, and staring deep into her, Lynsey’s, eyes, and unscrewing his wedding ring and tossing it over his shoulder… They’d have a house in Ballsbridge near the park, and another in Connemara by the sea, and three little boys who Senan would drive into Seabrook College every morning. But she wouldn’t let them come in here. Once you find out what’s in those doughnuts they’re actually really disgusting.