Me and Mr Carrington: A Short Story Read Free

only for a few seconds. And we could certainly do with some decent sales – as Eddie says, things have been extremely quiet this quarter.
    ‘Anyway, must dash sweetcheeks. People to please and all that …’ He plops his Costa cup in a bin before swinging open the door and sweeping away. And then, as if by magic, my phone pings alerting me to one lovely new email. I let my finger hover, savouring the potential promise this numerical symbol offers. And bingo! It’s another message from Tom. Maybe he likes emoticons after all! My pulse quickens.
    Pinning my gold Carrington’s name badge on to my uniform black top, I practically skip through the door leading to the staff corridor, bounce into the lift and float back downstairs to the shop floor. I’m going to save Tom’s email for later and then wait as long as I can possibly bear before replying. I don’t want look too keen, and besides, right now, a whole month without him feels like an eternity so I intend on savouring every single agonisingly exquisite second of this long-distance flirtation …

Chapter Two

    The shop floor looks amazing, all summery and happy, lifting my mood to practically euphoric – the display team have done a fantastic job. Giant daisies hang on lengths of invisible string from the ceiling and the podiums dotted around the floor are swathed in pretend grass and decorated with candy-striped deckchairs, buckets and spades and piles of brightly coloured towel bales from Homeware are stacked high with bottles of lotions and potions dotted in between. Molton Brown. Cowshed. Soap and Glory, they’re all here. Another podium displays a sleek silver luggage collection beside a couple of cocktail glasses and a stack of bonkbuster beach books. Even the traditional cherry wood gilt-inlayed panelled walls have had a makeover and are now adorned with a trillion tiny daisies, pretty and sparkly with their gold-dipped petals.
    I duck into the little alcove behind my counter here on the ground floor, next to the floor-to-ceiling window display giving me a magnificent view of the cobbled High Street with its white colonnaded walkway and pretty hanging baskets brimming with fuchsia begonias suspended from romantic
olde worlde
streetlamps. During quiet times, I love watching all the people milling up and down outside, or relaxing in a deckchair enjoying a musical performance on the bandstand opposite. And on a clear early morning, when the town is still empty, I can see as far as the peppermint-green railings down by the harbour and out to the glistening sea beyond.
    After surreptitiously sliding my mobile from my trouser pocket, (we’re not really supposed to have phones on us, but everyone does and as long as we’re sensible and keep them on silent mode, then nobody knows) I read the email.
    Hi Georgie,
    I’m looking forward to picking up from where we left off too.
    Tom x
    Ps – does that mean I get to kiss you all over next time after I’ve tickled you into submission??
    Mmm. Flirty. And I like it. A lot.
    I let out a long breath before smoothing down my hair and straightening my top – one of our regular customers could appear at any moment to catch me red-cheeked, and that really wouldn’t do. I like to think of the shop floor as a stage to perform on purely for the customers’ retail shopping pleasure where everything else can be left behind the scenes. It’s all an illusion. When a customer enters Carrington’s,
the store with more
, as our strapline says, they want it to be about them, not the flirty goings-on of the sales assistant.
    I sneak one last quick peek at the email before slotting my phone back inside my pocket.
    ‘Hey, what are you grinning like a looper for?’ It’s Annie, my assistant, and she’s scrutinising me from behind the biggest pair of sunshine yellow geek glasses I think I’ve ever seen.
    ‘Nice frames,’ I say.
    ‘Don’t try to change the subject.’ Annie flicks her frosted hair extensions back over her